Tee has launched LitStack, a site for reviews and literary news. Check it out! And Sean and I are launching the Intergalactic Academy, a site for YA sci-fi reviews and news, on September 2nd. Keep an eye out!

And just a note, we are not affiliated with the recent YA vlogging group by the same name. If you’re looking for them, please go to their youtube channel.

Of course, I have my all time favorite openings: “124 was spiteful.” Despite my COMPs exam almost eradicating my love for Beloved, I recognize that’s a killer opening and a great American novel. But the following are some of my personal favorites that have come about over the past ten years though they are in no way a complete list…I’d be here all night if it were. Some aren’t ‘literary’ whatever that is supposed to mean, but they certainly have gotten my attention, are from amazing novels that I have loved and in many cases, these openings have made the narcissistic writer in me hugely jealous.

In no particular order whatsoever. Feel free to add your own favorites:

“Shadow had done three years in prison.” American Gods, Neil Gaiman

“Jude had a private collection.” Heart Shaped Box, Joe Hill

“My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name Susie.” The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold

“A man begins dying at the the moment of his birth.” The Husband, Dean Koontz

“My mother used to tell me about the ocean.” The Forest of Hands and Teeth, Carrie Ryan

Go forth and read these if you haven’t had the honor quite yet.

I love metaphors and similes and all those silly little English certainties that most avoid or muddle through during their freshman year. I crave them. I was the girl in college—that silly, somewhat nerdy girl—who took English classes as her electives, who opted out of Basket Weaving 101 for Arthurian Legends taught by Professor Wow-She-Speaks-In-Fifty-
Dollar-Words.

Yep, I was that girl.

But I won’t apologize for it. I’m not ashamed. Being an English nerd gives you a passport to another world, or worlds as the case may be. It’s not an exclusive club, this Literary Lovers Alliance, anyone can join. Just pick up a book, grab a journal, click onto a story site and you are a member. Perhaps not a life-long, super secret handshake member (I’m pretty sure you have access that particular membership only when you get your MA in English, or maybe that was just my university), but you’re a member nonetheless. The only requirement is an imagination and the ability to laugh as you read, (while ignoring the stares you may get), become engrossed in every portion of a story, in every emotional high and low, in every well thought out, purposeful bit of dialogue.

Ultimately, you must have to ability to become absorbed.

When I was in graduate school, I took a class, ‘History of the Book,’ I think it was, where the professor shared what he knew about how society went from Monks with feathered pens and parchment, to the latest Gaiman novel. We started at point A and ended at Z, very simple, a bit dry at some points, but still interesting. The objective was, however, to examine how words, mere simple words, had changed the world. See? It all started with English nerds or perhaps I should say Word Nerds.

Words are powerful. They can consume us like the sea, defeat us, flay us like the sharpest sword. They can also save us, they can transport us, make us feel, make us cry, make us fight and scream and laugh and love. There is nothing more powerful, not one thing more magical. Don’t believe me?

Case in point: John Trudell. He’s a poet and one time spokesman for the American Indian Movement. He was a speaker. All he did was speak. His only weapon was his words and the truth he believed. And for his words, his family was murdered. He’d been warned, in the county jail, to shut up, to stop protesting. Weeks later, after he’d continued to speak? His wife, mother-in-law and children were all dead because of words. Only words.

Another example? Have you heard of Harvey Milk? No need to list all the things he did, all the words he spoke because there is a phenomenal film that can explain it far better than I can. The point is, he used words as a weapon and he died for it.

There are others, countless others—Martin Luther, Nelson Mandela, D.H. Lawrence, Vonnegut, Dr. Martin Luther King, and many others, some of who are the reason we can call ourselves American. Words, my friends, simple words can change the world. So, respect them. Love them. Honor them.

In the end, when we’re all ashes, when the apes or robots or aliens (insert your chosen post-apocalyptic villain here) have taken over and memory of humankind becomes a fading myth, it will be the words—ours or theirs— that will endure.

This post originally appeared on my personal blog, but I wanted to share it here as well. What has been your experience querying a novel?

A little bit of a scandal has rocked the YA writer community of late, and I actually have something to say about it.

A literary agent – who shall remain unnamed, but shouldn’t be too hard to figure out if you do some research on the Absolute Write forums – recently disappeared quite abruptly. She simply left agenting without notifying her agency or her clients, some of whom had submissions out to editors. She posted a message on Facebook and that was that.

Since then, a handful of former clients have come forward with different variations on the same story. Turns out this agent hadn’t even submitted manuscripts as she had promised. She hadn’t responded to important messages from editors.

I read through these blog posts and through the AW forums and I thought two things:

1. Why on earth would an agent behave this way? What is there to gain? How can she possibly continue to work in publishing after such an epic flameout?
2. Thank god I didn’t accept her offer of representation.

That’s right. At the end of last year, after 60+ queries, 10 partial and full requests and months of querying for THE MERMAID’S DAUGHTER I ended up with a few close calls but only one offer of representation. An offer from this very agent.

I had a few concerns about her at first. I did my research (not only because I love research, but because any aspiring author should do so) and I had some reservations. Her agency had been involved in some weird behavior in the past and had received warnings and non-recommendations on a handful of the agent resource sites I looked at.

On the other hand, she had recently sold a debut YA author’s series for big six-figure money and had a decent track record in non-fiction. What the hell, I thought. “Query widely” is the first rule of querying. You never know what agent will respond to your story. It doesn’t hurt to send her a letter and see what happens. Famous last words.

What happened was that as time went on, I began, and got excited about, a newer, stronger story. And I got promising rejections from legitimately impressive agents I would put on my “dream agent” list. I wanted the chance to go back to those agents with my new manuscript.

I started to hope she’d never get back to me. I started to wish, that out of all the agents I queried, she would be the one to forget about my full submission and just leave me alone. I wanted this because I didn’t want to face the decision of having to choose between an agent I really wasn’t excited about or remaining unagented.

In hindsight, it seems like a simple choice. But there really is a fear that this might be your only chance. This offer of representation might not be perfect, but at least it’s something. And isn’t something better than nothing? She scheduled the call. I came prepared with my list of questions. And the knot in my stomach only grew larger.

She seemed kind of irritated at a lot of my questions. I brought up my hesitancy about her agency, based on this prior activity they’d been involved in, and her explanation was completely lacking. I asked about her sales record. Yeah she had that one big YA sale over a year ago, but what else? What was on submission? What had sold in the past year since then? The answer: nothing. Big Red Flag. She was very complimentary, threw around all the names of the big publishers. Someone at Little Brown was a personal mentor of hers and she just knew she’d love THE MERMAID’S DAUGHTER. That all sounded good, but what was the point of saying you had these connections if you didn’t have any actual sales to back it up.

I kept coming back to that point. She kept getting more irritable. Up until that point, she was giggly and causal in a way that made me question her professionalism. Did I really want this person to represent me? I had a full ms still floating around with another agent, so I told her I’d need a week to let the other agent know I had an offer of rep and think about things. In the meantime, She’d send over her suggestions for the first three chapter revisions so I’d have an idea of the type of re-write she had in mind.

I hung up feeling conflicted. I emailed the Interrobangs. Returned to Absolute Write. Scanned the Publisher’s Marketplace listings. And I kept thinking, Little Brown, Harper Teen, Dutton, all great YA publishers she said we would submit THE MERMAID’S DAUGHTER to. I was so close. So why did I feel so uneasy?

In the end, she never ended up sending those revisions. It only confirmed what I had suspected all along. This agent was not for me. I sent the email saying as much and received two of the most passive aggressive responses ever sent in the history of Gmail. It didn’t matter though. My decision had been made. I still remained unagented. But at least I didn’t have a bad agent.

When I query RUN, ZELLA, whenever that may be, I will absolutely not “query widely.” Why should I? I know what agents I’d be excited to represent me. I know what types of sales history or agency activity will send up red flags. I’m going to query selectively. Querying widely is exactly what got me into this situation in the first place. I overlooked my hesitations in order to just get my work in front of an agent who would accept it. Any agent. But any agent isn’t good enough.

As many of you may be aware, writer LA Banks has taken sick, very sick from what I understand. To offset her medical expenses an amazing auction is taking place and I thought our readers should be made aware of this golden opportunity to not only work with some of the best in the business (who are offering marketing services, interviews and critiques), but to also help out someone who is not only amazingly prolific but, as reputation holds, incredibly genuine and giving.

I am aware that the majority of you are YA readers so Banks’ name may not be familiar to you. However, I believe that when situations like this arise, it’s important to reach out to one another, regardless of interests or genre. I’m a strong believer in helping out…in doing your part to benefit others…in serving, really. It’s a tenant that I strive to hold to in my daily life. Some days I fail miserably, others I manage to accomplish it even if that means sharing a kind word with someone or by reading a story or even RT’ing when I can. But, that’s me.

The point is, I believe, that in helping others, in doing what we can to brighten someone’s day, we reflect the truest sense of ourselves and of our individual potential.  So, if you wouldn’t mind, spread the word. RT and post about the auction (which begins on Tuesday, June 21st) on your blogs, your sites and your social networking spaces. I would appreciate it immensely and I’m certain Ms. Banks would as well.  If you can’t participate in the auction, then I ask (and this comes from me) a prayer, if that’s something you do, for Banks and her family.

Be blessed,

Tee

RT:#ShareYourHeartAuction for LA Banks wonderful items up for grabs! http://www.labanksauction.org/Auction.htm

Part of the trouble is that this is my first time writing sci-fi. I’m a huge fan of sci-fi books and movies, but don’t have much experience reading it. As a result, I’ve struggled a bit with the world building and world building is pretty much the essence of any sci-fi novel.

My first manuscript, about slutty, shoplifting mermaids in South Carolina came much easily, even if I had to revise many times to learn the basic lessons of storytelling. Still, I knew the mood and tone of the book from day one. And when I heard “Boyfriend” by Best Coast, I knew in an instant that it was the unofficial theme song of my book. It’s beachy, fun, and about unrequited love for someone else’s dude, which was also a plot point of my story.

So what is the theme song of a fairy-tale retelling set in a Dystopian Detroit of the future? I’ve listened to the Tron soundtrack a lot, and I love it, but it’s not quite what I need. It doesn’t have the song that I can play on repeat to get in the zone and really feel the world and the characters that I’ve created. Suggestions are welcome, of course. But in the meantime, I’d love to know, does your book have a theme song? If so, what is it?

I haven’t really thought about it much before now, but the formation of the Interrobangs really marks a turning point in my writing career (for lack of a better term). Before that I knew a little bit about how the publishing industry works, but I was pretty clueless as to the specifics. I remember being completely bowled over by how much everybody else knew about specific agencies: who was repping what, who was repping who, which agents they was planning on sending their books to, and so on. Before that, I thought it was enough to ‘just write’ (as they say) – now I know that it really isn’t. If you want to get published, you need to know your stuff.

Obviously, Phoebe knows her stuff. We’ve been chatting online since the group’s inception, so I know how much hard work and dedication it took for her to get to this point. If anybody ever says a particular author ‘had it easy’ in the early days, feel free to slap them for me. I’m convinced that almost nobody has it easy. Phoebe and I have spent an embarrassing amount of time agonising over our writing, about whether it’s good enough or commercial enough, about what we’ll do if the publishing industry completely implodes – that sort of thing. And that’s all on top of actually sitting down and writing an entire book, so…yeah. Writing can be difficult, is what I’m saying.

It’s much, much easier if you have a good group of people to commiserate with. Having other people around who know the industry is invaluable, You can share the anxiety and, sometimes, you get to share the successes. I think it’s safe to say that Phoebe’s agenting (it’s a verb now) counts as the biggest success in the group so far. I guess there’s a strange sense of validation in knowing that one of our members has gotten this far.

For those who aren’t aware of the many hurdles you need to jump to get to publication, I should point out that signing with an agent is the very first…or maybe the second, if you count finishing your book as the first, but even then you’re going to need to seriously edit that same book a few times (at least) until you finally get to see it on shelves. So why do people get so worked up over getting an agent? Simple: it might be the first major hurdle, but so many people never even make it that far. It’s the sad reality of the publishing industry, but even getting to that first stage of official recognition takes a monumental effort. Clearly, Phoebe was up to the task, and I know she’ll keep going in similar style.

It might be tasteless for me to stop here and point out that I totally called it about this manuscript landing her an agent, but I did totally call it. In fact, I’d like the historical record to show that the aforementioned calling took place several months ago. I’m going to take this opportunity to make another sage-like prediction: the rest of the Interrobangs are going to get agents within, oh, let’s say a year. I was right the first time, wasn’t I?

One down, three to go.

The conference/convention/whatever was at the Javits Center. Already, many BEA wrap-ups are citing the Cyclopean horror that is this building. Let me tell you that they’re right: there’s something about a huge, warehouse-esque, difficult-to-navigate building set smack dab in the middle of Manhattan that seems to bring out stunned confusion in introverted, book-ish types. Still, I met a lot of great people this week, heard some nice talks about books, and it was definitely a worthwhile experience.

On the bus ride over, I fretted quite a bit about whether I was prepared for BEA. I googled “BEA tips,” “BEA wardrobe,” “What to eat around the Javits Center,” and all sorts of other minutiae. In the hopes of helping those of you who might be considering going next year, here’s my advice, formulated over three days of blisters, book-signing lines, and general shenanigans.

1. Have a blog? Then you shouldn’t pay to get in. For all I know, this might change next year, but I was able to get a press pass for the event thanks to my blog at phoebenorth.com. And I don’t get a ton of hits–I average around 5,000 a month. These free passes aren’t obviously advertised on the event site, so some of the people I spent time with during the convention paid a fairly substantial amount to get in. If at all possible, save yourself the dough and get a press pass instead.
2. Yes, you should get there early. If you want free books, you really do need to show up early, as they go quickly. In fact, by the last day I was ready to leave around noon–I’d gotten the review copies I’d come for, and was generally pretty tired.
3. Don’t worry too much about clothes. Some blogs will tell you to dress business casual. I generally did, but I think I would have been more comfortable in jeans. Generally, people don’t care what you’re wearing. Everyone will be stunned into confusion by the books and people and echoing rafters, anyway.
4. Introduce yourself, and give out business cards and all of that, but don’t go there in the hopes of pitching your book to editors. BEA is really meant to be an opportunity for booksellers to connect with publishers, not a place to pitch agents or editors. The only people I saw heavily promoting themselves were the self-published. This might be a good place to network in that you’ll meet like-minded people and establish friendly relationships with them, but the general feeling I got was that nobody there responded too well to hard-sells.
5. Don’t buy food at the convention center. Price of a sandwich and bottle of water inside BEA? Fourteen dollars. Price of a hot dog and a bottle of water directly outside? Three fifty.
6. Wear comfortable shoes. This is good advice in life, too, but if you don’t want to end the week with a few blisters, like I did, probably best to just wear sneakers!

If my hypothesis is correct, it means that the limits of written expression do not lie in dark matters of the human heart; instead, they lie in eating, dancing and sex.

Let’s break out the list, shall we?

1) EATING

I’d like you to do something for me. Pour yourself a bowl of cereal, with milk if necessary, and start eating it. Finished? Awesome. Now, would you describe what you just did as ‘taking a bite of cereal’?

Unless you were trying to dentally bisect your spoon, I’m guessing not.

For some unfathomable reason, the go-to phrase for written descriptions of eating is ‘He/she/I took a bite of food’, where ‘food’ may be substituted for eggs, lasagna, pasta, breakfast cereal or any other consumable imaginable except soup, and I’m guessing someone has even tried it with that one. Even in cases where it should be perfectly appropriate (like a burger, say) it still ends up sounding odd  - possibly because it’s just too overused at this point.

OM NOM NOM

My suggestion for remedying this pox on the face of writing is to avoid overt description of the eating process altogether. It usually adds nothing to a scene (if they’re sitting in front of plates of food, we can assume that they’re eating unless told otherwise), and you can do more with descriptions of things other than people shoveling lasagna into their mouths. Tell the reader where they’re looking, how they’re sitting, if they’re pushing their food around their plate rather than eating it (although that one also crops up a bit too often), but please, no more bites of cereal.

2) DANCING

It’s experiment time again!

Get up from your chair and attempt to dance in a manner which could aptly be described as ‘pulsing’. Don’t worry if you’ve never ‘pulsed’ before; it crops up so much in fiction, I figure it must be easy to do. I’m imagining a sort of full-body spasm, starting at the arms (raised over the head) and ending with a foot-flail that sends you crashing to the ground head first. Granted, this would make it rather difficult to pulse ‘in time with the music’, which is apparently how it’s usually done, but I”m guessing  that’s just a more advanced technique.

Other acceptable dance moves include gyrating, grinding (thankfully never described in detail) and the ultra-generic ‘moving’; as in, ‘she moved with the music’ – uh, good to know.

Simply dancing, without recourse to bizarre descriptions, will result in scorn being heaped upon you by the other patrons of whichever plot-riddled nightclub you happen to have found yourself in. Really, can you blame them? If they bothered to learn how to pulse, then you’d better make damn sure you do the same.

3) Sex

There is an annual award given for the worst sex scenes in literature. Here it is (NSFW). Here’s a sample (not NSFW):

She holds him tight and squeezes her body to his, sending delightful sailing boats tacking to and fro across the ocean of his back.

-Rhyming Life and Death by Amos Oz, who hopefully does not frequent marinas.

People, this one isn’t difficult. Don’t use metaphors. Don’t use analogies. Do not, under any circumstances, make torturous quasi-religious comparisons between certain body parts and places of worship, particularly if those places of worship are being ‘defiled’ by any kind of serpent. Avoid describing activities which are only physically possible for members of Cirque du Soleil.

In fact, don’t bother describing it at all unless it’s necessary to do so. (Are you sensing a pattern here?) There’s a reason why the fade to black has been so consistently popular for decades.

In an effort to share my love joy fest of the stories that affected me in the most profound way, I’m recommending a few to you now.

Go forth and read and read more and let me know your opinion of the following once you’ve done so.

• My first recommendation for you is not a solitary short, but what for me has been my go-to collection by He-That-I-Fangirl. Neil Gaiman’s Fragile Things encompasses courses of his finest works. There is humor, there is fear that borders horror and there is, of course, a snippet into the life of his American Gods’ protagonist, Shadow Moon. Gaiman has an ability that hints of the ‘not-of-this-world’ variety. He paints pictures with words that are in the best possible ways abstract unbelievability of psychedelic dreams. His is not a talent than can be ignored and his stories are not those that will be easily forgotten.

• Sometimes you find a writer without ever looking. Sometimes, when this happens, you are pleasantly surprised by the discovery. While purveying several online journals, I came across the work of Cat Rambo. In the three years since stalking her on Twitter (in my never-ending attempt to learn from the pros), there have two of Rambo’s stories that have left indelible impressions on me. The first, is the beautifully written story about a brother who attempts the impossible to make his sick sister smile. Magnificent Pigs, first published in Strange Horizons in 2006, breathes life into the importance of sibling companionship and demonstrates the strength of family and how that strength, like faith, can make the impossible real. The steampunker in me fell in love with Rambo’s Clockwork Fairies, published by Tor in October of 2010. This story draws an uncharacteristic view of a woman discovering herself, asserting herself and branching out into new worlds while shedding the dead weight of the man who would see her conform. Feminist, fantastic and surreal, Clockwork Fairies will leaving you smiling and possibly, cheering by its end.

• Because I’m an emerging writer and because I know talent when I see it (and this is in no way biased), I’m directing you to Pedestal and my friend Adrienne Crezo‘s brilliant new short Husband-Shaped. It is all thing literary and heartbreaking. Beautifully written and an expression of what some of you may have experienced = art imitating life in the most profound way.

• Jeremy C. Shipp is the strangest writer I’ve read in a very long time. Trust me, that’s a huge compliment. His brilliant ‘zombie’ short- which ain’t your mama’s zombie story- is evocative, thrilling and heartbreaking. Go check out Those Below.