Last week I had the opportunity to meet Gary Corby, a genius writer from Australia who is represented by the agency I currently intern with. He discussed his two manuscripts with us brilliant interns. He writes historical mysteries set in ancient Greece, and his main character is the older brother of Socrates. I read one of them, and it’s quite spectacular. His first book will be pubbed in Fall 2010. You should all buy it. Then he took our photo and wrote this awesome blog post about us, called “How to Poison an Intern.”

Note: Joanna, who is wearing the blue and gray stripped sweater, is not an intern but an agent. She also likes Vegemite.

Oh, and check this out. This is the annual fund-raiser/world-record-breaker “Thrill the World” dance. My sister Amanda participated this year. Watch this video. At about 1:10 in, you can see her doing the “booty bounce” and “swim together” parts of the dance. (And yes, those are the technical terms.) That’s her on the far right, wearing the red corset and black pants. She also gets screen time later, so watch the whole thing. And if you do, check out the young girl in the front row. Just awesome.

Last week I started interning for two literary agencies that share office space. Everyone who works there is odd in a good way, has unique tastes and areas of expertise when it comes to books, and is really nice and fun to work with. Even the other interns (there are 6 of us total) are totally fun. Especially when we’re sitting together reading query letters, passing around the ones with the most ridiculous contents, getting second opinions on the ones that seem like they might be worthwhile projects. I wish I could share with you all some of the amazingly stupid things I’ve read over the past two weeks, but unfortunately, I cannot. Not on the interwebz anyway.

Every time I go in there I know more and more that it’s what I want to be doing with my life. Reading manuscripts, talking about books, meeting new people… I’m even “required” to go to an industry schmooze fest with a bunch of Tor/Forge employees next week. At DBA. With Laura. Seriously. How could this non-job get any better? The long and short of it is that it couldn’t (well, I guess if I was getting paid, that might be an improvement, but I’ll take resume-improvement and school credit all the same).

I recognized at least two of those names, and I knew Chris Claremont to be funny and elusive with his question answering, from when I saw him at the “Comic Book Club” a few months ago. So I went, listened to them talk about previous and upcoming Marvel offerings for a bit, and then stayed to get the 70th Anniversary collection signed.

While they were talking, I looked around the room and realized I was the only female there ALONE. All the other girls, while many of them seemed like huge nerds, were there with other guys (mind you, not a single group had more than one female….) So when I was getting my stuff signed, all the Marvel guys were being super nice and extra smiley, like they’d never seen a girl before. Then the last of them, Klaus Janson, known for his inking (especially of Frank Miller’s works), flat out asked me if the autographed book was for me. Ummm, I know I don’t have the outward appearance of a comic book fan, but that doesn’t mean I’m not one. (not that I’m a really big into comics, but I like a good story, and Marvel has some of the best.) I honestly felt discriminated against. I was the minority in a room of fanboys, and let me tell you, I’ve never felt more inferior, yet surprisingly superior in my entire life.

What a strange yet satisfying experience.

Title: Ballads of Suburbia
Author: Stephanie Kuehnert
Publisher: MTV Books
Length: 368
Age group/reading level: Young Adult (14+)

Summary: The summer before her senior year of high school, Kara nearly died from a heroin overdose. As a freshman, when she moved away from her best friend and then her family fell apart, Kara turned to music, booze, drugs, self-injury, and bad-boy Adrian to make everything better. Between all the parties and concerts, her friends collected their heartbreaking ballads of the moments that defined them. After four years away from her friends and family, Kara returns to Oak Park to confront her past, and to finally write her own ballad.

Review: Stephanie Kuehnert knows angst. She knows how to write angst-y teens. From what I’ve read in interviews and what-have-you, she has first hand experience with cutting, and it definitely shows in how she handles the topic. The ballads, written in first-person from the perspective of Kara’s various friends, all have a different voice, and could easily have been actually written by different people. She deftly weaves them in at the most appropriate moments; they don’t break the narrative, and they give the characters far more depth than just the portrayal of them from Kara’s perspective. Kuehnert does a fine job dealing with every teenage social problem from sex to drugs to abuse to cutting to alcohol…. you name it, Kuehnert confronts, and effortlessly tackles, it.

One problem I had with the book was all the oblivious parents. I mean, they’re all conveniently explained away. And for some of the characters, it makes sense that their parents don’t really care, but the excuse given for Kara’s mom (and Maya’s dad for that matter) not noticing or caring doesn’t really fly for me. Another issue I had with the book was that it was set in 1994-1995, and then, when Kara returns, in 1999. I’m not sure why exactly, other than to make sense of the choice of music Kuehnert picked as the anthems of the characters, bands like Smashing Pumpkins, Hole, Nirvana, Jane’s Addiction, etc. Other than that minor detail, all the events that happened could’ve easily been present day, with Kara’s return home taking place in 2009.

As for the design of the book, I’m actually quite impressed. MTV did a nice job, including resources to get help if you struggle with any of these problems, some discussion questions, and an interview with Kuehnert about her experiences with these topics. The cover is pretty good, once you realize that the teens in question hang out at a park most of the time. I have an advanced copy so I’m not quite sure if things are different or not, but the interior is pretty nice too, with the typeface of the ballads different from the rest of the story, and therefore easily distinguished.

1. How to be a Hepburn in a Hilton World: The Art of Living with Style, Class & Grace by Jordan Christy (Available Aug. 13).  A humorous guide to not being a “stupid girl” a la Paris Hilton, Lindsey Lohan, etc.  I’m only on the first chapter, but already it echoes my thoughts about the behaviors and dress codes of a majority of young women today.  Christy gives advice on dressing well, expanding your vocabulary to include words other than “like,” finding, making and keeping good friends, and so on, all designed to make the females of the species more respectable.  Chapter two, which I look forward to reading, is titled “Keep Your Chin up and Your Skirt Down.”  Fantastic.

2. You Are So Undead to Me by Stacey Jay (out now!) Young adult fiction – “paranormal romance” according to the author herself.  Pretty much the complete opposite of the previous book, in that the main character, Megan, is all about getting the attention of dudes, being friends with the “popular” girls, and going to homecoming dances.  The only catch?  She’s a zombie settler, meaning the dead who aren’t completely satisfied at the time of their death, who have unfinished business, climb out of their graves and go to her to get their business in order.  They’re “friendly” zombies. Mostly. Except for the Reanimated Corpses, raised by somebody out to ruin Megan’s social life.  Jay’s first novel, You Are So Undead to Me has plenty of humor, suspense and zombies ON FIRE.  While this book is aimed at high school girls, I’m enjoying it because it puts a new slant on an old horror classic.

3. Candor by Pam Bachorz (Available Sept. 22, buy it for yourself on my birthday!) Young Adult Fiction.  Oscar’s dad founded the resort-like town of Candor to provide relief for families with “troubled” children.  How does he provide said relief?  By using subliminal messages to brainwash the children, and their parents, into behaving.  Except Oscar, having watched his father create these messages and their delivery system, has managed to overcome their effect.  He has the ability to push them away, to behave how he wishes.  Then Nia moves into Candor, and Oscar finds himself drawn to her.  Not wanting the Messages to wipe away the personality he’s so attracted to, Oscar uses his own Messages to counteract those of his father.  Everything is going Oscar’s way, until Nia discovers the truth, and Oscar must do everything in his power not to be discovered.

How can I even begin to explain the amount of love I have for this book.  Bachorz wastes not a single word in this novel.  Her sentences and paragraphs are short, to the point, but pack an amazing punch.  The transformation of all the characters from the beginning of the novel to the end is beautifully crafted.  When I finally figured out what was about to happen, in the second to last chapter, my eyes got watery.  When I got to the end of that last chapter, the one I described on twitter as “devastating” and “haunting,”  I was pretty much sobbing.  I’m telling every person who will listen that this book should not be missed.

(Just for the sake of full disclosure, the Literary Agency for which I intern represents all these books, although they were already sold and scheduled for publication when I started there. I’m not just praising these books because I work for CJLA.  I’m praising them because I really do like them!!)

The only reason I bring this up is that How to Be a Hepburn in a Hilton World was/is represented by the literary agency that I’m currently interning for.  The Caren Johnson Literary Agency is a fairly young agency, with not a whole ton of books under its belt, but the books they have worked on have been getting great reviews and quite a bit of publicity, so that’s pretty cool.

I’ve been reading a YA novel called Candor by Pam Bachorz.  It’s about brainwashing. It’s fantastic.  It doesn’t come out until September 22nd though (hmm, that date sounds familiar… ) but it was also represented by CJLA. And I get to work on coming up with content for the book’s website! Pretty awesome stuff.

Joe’s visit was a blast. Did some touristy stuff, some not-so-touristy stuff, and some stuff I don’t remember (so it could be touristy or not, I have no idea).

Went to BookExpo America, which was held in NYC this year for the first time in a few years, and will be held here for the next few. Basically it’s a professional conference for the book publishing industry, where lots of publishers hand out advanced copies of yet-to-be-pubbed books; I got at least 30 free books.

Started my internship with Caren Johnson Literary Agency. Both Elana and Caren are super nice, and are probably not that much older than I am. I’ve been reading manuscripts and advanced galleys of the books/authors that they represent, or are looking to represent. I’ve read some good, some bad, and some kinda ugly stuff.  More on this to follow, in a not-already-bloated post.

Between the internship (for which most of my reading is on the computer. How I wish I had some sort of e-book reader) and the advanced books from the book expo, I’ve read 6 books in the past two and a half weeks; i’m in the middle of three more, plus trying to read the first three chapters of about 3 more books. I’ve got 5 critiques to write by Tuesday, so I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed, but I think I’ll manage. I’ve been nothing but productive since Wednesday. It helps that I have only like 15 hours at work (wish i had at least 10 more…), and no summer courses.

Last week we had a Scholastic employee come to my Children’s Book Publishing course to talk.  Then she sent us advanced reader’s copies of a book called Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater. It’s a YA novel… and the best way to describe the content is by calling it Twilight but with werewolves.  I really liked the premise—Stiefvater took the classic werewolf mythology (that the moon is what affects them) and made it about weather instead (winter being wolf season, spring/summer being human seasons)—but a few of the characters weren’t as developed as I would’ve liked, and some of the events seemed kinda abrupt.  While I generally liked the writing and the style, some parts could’ve used a bit more work.  But I finished the almost-400 pages in about two days, so clearly it’s not bad. In fact, I think if I had taken more time to read it, I would’ve enjoyed it more. I don’t think I properly absorbed it all.

The book doesn’t come out until August, and I’m sad that it won’t get completely huge marketing from Scholastic because they have the sequel to the Hunger Games coming out in September, so that’s where all the big bucks are going.  I think it’ll find an audience, though.  All those teen girls who wish there were more Twilight books, or that whats-her-head from Twilight had ended up with the werewolf instead.

One more thing to mention for now. Brittney made This video. it is hilarious and cute. watch it.

Currently I’m reading The Man Who Owns the News by Michael Wolff, about Rupert Murdoch. and I couldn’t be more uninterested. I’m seriously on page 22 (of just over 400) and I just can’t make myself read anymore. Not because the writing is bad or anything, just because I DON’T CARE. Stupid general publishing course and its making me read stuff about newspaper publishing. Good thing I have about 3 weeks to finish it. It’s supposed to be done by this coming tuesday, but this prof is so… unaware… that it doesn’t matter.

Anyway. Today is day two of my caffeine (and by extension, soda) detox. The headache is subsiding, but the sweet tooth is still nagging. I really want some candy!