Author: Kurtis

I saw a Twitter message from my fellow 2009 debut novelist (aka “deb”) R.J. Anderson about wanting to write love stories but being a middle-grade novelist, and without thinking much about the topic I fired back that twelve year olds are the truest romantics in the world. I meant that not only are those topics not mutually exclusive, love is very much a part of middle school life. Especially the sort she was talking about, which is “smart, realistic, slow-burn romance.” Heck, who knows more about slow-burn romance than fifth-through-eighth graders, whose entire relationship can take the form of glances exchanged across a classroom?

It got me to thinking, and when I get thinking, I get blogging.

First of all, I meant what I said about kids being romantics. We tend to think that young crushes are cute and superficial, but my memory of them is that they were intense and all-consuming, as wonderful and pure and tragic as love ever is. They are part of middle school life, and hence should be appropriate for middle school books. If romance is discussed less in boy books, it’s not because boys are less interested in the subject, just that they’re more afraid to show their interest.  The idea that they shouldn’t be interested in the subject is part of the socialization of men away from caring about caring, and although I don’t spend much time worrying about themes or morals to my books, I do aim to tell the truth — and the truth is that boys have great big hearts.

There is a touch of romance in Mudville, and sometimes a kid will ask me why I had to go and muck up a perfectly good baseball book with romance. Note that these boys have never complained about there being girls in the story on the team — we’re raising this generation right — they just don’t like Roy’s interest in Rita as more than a teammate. I’m OK with that criticism, because it wasn’t my decision to have Roy develop a crush on Rita. It was Roy’s. I originally just wanted girls in the story, but the passages with them felt leaden and lifeless until Roy had an emotional stake in it.  And in retrospect, it makes perfect sense for Roy to want female companionship — his mother’s not in the picture, and he doesn’t have sisters or even an aunt or grandmother that lives close by.

In Mamba Point, Linus has a fleeting interest in a girl that has more to do with his wanting both a friend and social status than really liking (or even getting to know) the girl in question. In Wake, ME — at least the first draft — Eric hangs out with a girl but it never occurs to him to think of her as more than a friend and ally. To some extent these guys tell me how much love is a part of their story. But I would never call the topic off limits. Romance is not only a part of life from age ten on, it’s a huge part of figuring out who you are, the single theme that runs through pretty much all middle grade novels.

Still, I don’t think there’s many books that talk about romantic love from a young boy’s point of view, especially that’s written for boys. The examples I can think of — Tom Sawyer, or Herman Wouk’s City Boy — were written for grown ups as nostalgia. I reread both books as a kid because I was eager to read about what I was going through.

If I may get truly confessional, I even read a few of the girly youth romances, though I can’t remember anything about them except one featured a young man who arrived on the doorstep of the young female protagonist with flecks of snow in his hair, carrying an injured bird. For me, the image remains one of principle ones for romantic love. It always arrives out of the blue, on wintry days, and carrying limp and fragile fledglings that may or may not ever learn to fly.

Even first drafts have multiple draft, but tonight I completed the first draft of the first draft of the pending novel of colonial history, football, and fungal horror entitled WAKE, ME. It’s harder work (and immensely rewarding) to revise and edit and consult critique partners and editors and other thoughtful readers and see a manuscript through to a book, but the purest pleasure is just the satisfaction of saying, “There — it’s done. I wrote a novel.”

And I’m doing that right now, and watching speed skating. It’s interesting because although you know these guys are going super fast, it’s so quiet and peaceful looking, like they are just gliding along for the joy of it and don’t care when they get there.

I still have a Q&A going on over here, which is kinda fun. Ask me a question or just see what’s already come up. I’ve already addressed such issues as the AFC Championship Game (the winner of which I predicted accurately), the most beautiful place in the world, childhood memories, chocolate before bedtime, ghosts, favorite books, cats, local restaurants, and the air-speed velocity of unladen swallows. I hint around at the most overrated youth book of the last decade and take on the more difficult question of whether or not the kids book industry is dominated by women. Lastly and not leastly, some exciting news is revealed in a couple of the questions. So find my answers and ask a question of your own.

Zeno was born about 2500 years ago, but he’s still making life difficult.

He was a Greek philosopher back in the day. Like a lot of philosophers, he was more like a not-very-funny comedian, and he asked a lot of not-very-funny riddles. A lot of them go something like this:

Say there’s a snail crossing a table. Will it ever reach the other side? Well, first it has to get halfway to the other side. And then it has to get halfway between the halfway point and the other side. Then it has to complete half of the remaining distance. Then it has to get half of the remaining distance again. And so forth — there’s an infinite series of infinitely smaller distances our slowpoke has to traverse, and in theory the snail never gets there because there’s always another halfable distance.

Whenever I am trying to get through a first draft of something, I totally identify with that hapless gastropod. I get halfway through, sure. And then I do half of what’s left. Then I do half of the remainder, and another half of what’s left after that. I never arrive, though. It’s not even true what Plato said about the divisions of time getting smaller. I find myself in a time warp where the half distances take longer as they get shorter. Einstein could probably explain why that is, but I wouldn’t understand the explanation.

In any case, I’m moving at a snail’s pace, crawling on my stomach and leaving a trail of slime… well, a trail of marked up pages. And I’m cursing Zeno the whole time.

Mudville the paperback will be released in four weeks. In many regards the paperback is exactly like the hardcover, with some important exceptions.

1. It’s smaller, lighter, cheaper, and more supple.
2. It’s got great review quotes slapped all over it.
3. It’s got a picture of a horse (the Yearling logo) instead of a picture of a dog (the Knopf logo).

I love the dog, but I love the horse too. I have good associations with paperbacks bearing the little horse logo. The little horse was on a lot of my favorite books, from Encyclopedia Brown when I was in first grade to Where the Red Fern Grows in sixth grade, and who knows how many in between. I love that little horse.

I preferred paperbacks as a kid because they were easier to read, easier to stuff into a hip pocket and tote somewhere, and cheap enough that I could buy one once in a while with my allowance. I’d walk a few blocks to a little store on North Fifth Street and pick up some life-changing treasure like The Pigman for maybe sixty cents. To be honest, I think some of the books piled up on the teen table had been sitting there a while so were sitting with the prices of ten years ago. There was a coke machine in that store that sold only bottled coke for a dime a pop (so to speak), so maybe the whole bookstore was in a time warp.

Anyway, paperbacks are inexpensive but awesome things to give someone, so I’m going to hand off a paperback of Mudville to somebody. Here’s the catch: I’m going to pick up a cue from Shaun Hutchinson and give it to a kid. So if you know a boy or girl who might like Mudville, let me know in the comments, and in a few weeks I’ll pick one commenter at random and send off a book with an inscription  to you or directly to the kid. Just make sure you use a valid email address when you leave your comment so I contact you if you win. 

 And you might want to take Shaun up on his suggestion to give a kid a book, too — especially a kid who might not read that much, otherwise, but would if you walked up out of the blue and handed that kid a book. That’s a great value for the cost of a paperback.

I haven’t done an interview for a while, and thought it was nigh time I did. So here in the blog is Josh Berk, author of The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin, which launches this week from Knopf Books for Young Readers and has already been given a smattering of stars by reviewers. This is Josh’s first book, and it’s a great one.

Dark Days reminded me of reading Three Investigators books when I was a kid… those were my poison, not the Hardy Boys (which are oft alluded too in DDoHH). It has all the spills and thrills of any mystery a kid reads by night under the covers with a flashlight because it’s just not possible to stop reading until you’re done, but it’s a contemporary story at the same time, and it transcends a formulaic mystery with characters and quirkiness and subplots that make it feel more classic.

The hero, Will Halpin (Hamburger is his IM name) is the hearing-impaired, round-bellied progeny of Holden Caulfield and Harriet Welsch. Well, he doesn’t match Holden’s cynicism, but he has his all-seeing critical eye and (like Harriet) records much of what he sees (and lip-reads) to his notebook. What Will has that Holden lacks is an essential need to belong, a desire to be liked even by kids he knows aren’t worth the trouble. That makes him likable and completely human.

When he leaves deaf school for public school (mostly for political reasons), he quickly concedes that his only pal will be a mutual outcast, the goofy Devon Smiley who sports a pony-tail and talks like somebody out of The Great Gatsby. He also realizes soon after that Devon is a much better friend than anyone in the complex social hierarchy at Coaler High School, with the gorgeous Leigha Pennington and the self-assured and obnoxious Pat Chambers at the apex. Those two break up, Pat meets with an “accident,” and as Will’s ex-girlfriend from the deaf school signs, “the game is afoot.” Devon, Will, and Ebony (the ex) are on the case.

There are plenty of LOLs and LOL2BIFTLOLISs along the way, but there’s a good caper here, too, with an excellent ending. Don’t let the deaf hero fool you — this is no “problem novel” about a kid with disabilities. Will would absolutely hate that.

K: I want to start with mysteries and secrets. They abound in your debut novel. What are some of your favorite mysteries? And, for that matter, what are some of your favorite secrets? Don’t worry, only like thirty people read this blog and only about half of them know you.

J: As a kid I actually hardly ever read The Hardy Boys, despite the fact that my book makes reference to them about a hundred times. I was an Encyclopedia Brown man myself. As an adult, my favorite mystery novelist is Kinky Friedman, the former country musician and candidate for Governor of Texas. His books are hilariously weird mysteries and I think he’s a fantastic writer. I also like TV mysteries like CSI and Monk quite a bit. I feel like authors aren’t supposed to watch TV but I learned a lot about how to structure a mystery, how to plant clues, introduce suspects, etc. from those types of shows. And maybe a few (hundred) Law & Order marathons.

Favorite secrets? Some of the stuff in the book about Will discovering long-lost relatives probably came to me because I not very long ago found out that I have a very cool aunt I never knew I had. It’s not exactly a deep family secret, but my grandfather re-married after he divorced my grandmother and had a whole second family I never knew existed. It was sort of a shock to find out that these other Berks were running around in the world and I drew off that a bit, having Will find out about some relatives he never knew he had.

Another family secret is that my son is a Yankees fan. I don’t know where he got that from and I shouldn’t have let that out. [Editors note: the editor showed extreme control by not inserting a comment here. – Ed.]

K: I know that you aren’t deaf and that you don’t have anyone in your family who is deaf, so how did you come to write about a protagonist who was? How much did you immerse yourself in the HoH world? Did you do anything like walk around with ear plugs to live the experience?

J: It came to me in a dream! It really did and I wish I had a better answer, but that’s the truth. I woke up remembering just one scene really, of sitting on a school bus spying on kids in the back. And it had that spooky dream feel, like something sinister was happening. I was in the mood to try a new YA novel and the fact that this was on a school bus where something spooky happened sparked me to ask myself more questions. The line of questions went like this: What sinister thing happened on the bus? How was this student able to spy on his classmates from afar? What if he was reading lips? Could I write a book from the point of view of a deaf student?

It seemed like a crazy idea at first, but the more questions I asked myself, the more interesting possibilities presented themselves. So I ran with it, despite having no knowledge of the subject or any real idea what I was doing. I didn’t walk around with ear plugs, but I did spend a few weeks where all day long I couldn’t stop thinking “how would this be different if I was deaf?” I’d come home and work that into the book. And then I did some more traditional research too — chatting with deaf people online, reading books on the subject, and consulting with a deaf librarian.

K: You’re a youth services librarian. I heard another author/librarian talking recently about how his interactions with young readers shapes his work. Is that true for you? Is there anything that came about because of interactions you have with young readers?

Note: I know our readers might be confused by that so let me clarify that Josh is (a) a dude and (b) a children’s librarian.

J: I actually don’t work in children’s services very much anymore because I’ve moved on to library administration. This means that I sit in an office and wear a tie and got to meetings about library policy and state subsidy re-allocations. It’s even more exciting than it sounds. Actually I rarely wear a tie. But sometimes they still let me do storytimes!  And being a librarian certainly shaped the kind of writer I’ve become. I wasn’t even very much aware of young adult literature as a thing until I went to library school and took a YA lit class. It made me realize that a lot of the types of stories I was playing around with writing would work much better as YA than adult books. We had to read something like 40 YA books that semester, lots of Printz Award winners, and a whole host of fantastic authors. So that was the first major influence. I started writing my first YA novel (it didn’t sell) pretty much right after I finished Rob Thomas’ RATS SAW GOD.

And although I don’t get to interact with young readers very much anymore, I certainly did while working on DARK DAYS. It was really fun to listen to kids talk about what books they liked, what they hated, and why. Also it was fun to just watch kids interact with each other and to listen to them talk. Basically I spied on them for details to make the book feel modern. It was quite enlightening!

K: Setting and family history both play into DDOHH. Is any of that based on your own family history in the mining country of Pennsylvania? Maybe historical sites you visited as a kid, similar to the one Will’s class visits? And if not, can you say something else interesting about your hometown so this question doesn’t bomb?

J: I grew up (and still live) just outside Allentown PA, which is just outside of “coal country.” The part of my family from Pennsylvania weren’t coal miners (rather Jews from Philadelphia) but I’ve always been sort of fascinated by the history of coal mining because it all happened just a few miles from here. It’s a fascinating history, full of strikes and cave-ins and ghosts and legends. “Happy Memory Coal Mine,” the old mine that Will and his class go on in the book, is based directly on the Lackawanna Coal Mine Tour in Scranton, PA. And yes! I did visit there as a kid. It was a summer camp field trip when I was probably about ten years old. You get to wear a miner’s helmet and ride in a coal cart underground. Highly recommended. And best was the part where we all stood around in the total darkness. That made a big impression on me. I probably didn’t care much about the history of coal mining at the time, but I really remember loving that part where we stood in the cool blackness a hundred feet underground. As soon as I had the idea to write a book where a student disappeared I immediately thought of that place.

K: I think you have another book or two in the works. What are their titles, and how are they connected to your first novel?

J: I am currently working on editing my second YA novel for Knopf. The tentative title is GUY LANGMAN: CRIME SCENE PROCRASTINATOR. It’s not a sequel or in any way connected to DARK DAYS other than that it’s also a funny mystery about a high school kid who finds himself at the middle of a mystery in his high school. It’s all new characters and a new setting, but quite a bit of the same kind of humor and intrigue.

K: As I always like to ask my guests, what’s the pet situation in the Berk household?

J: The Berk household is overrun with Boston Terriers. OK, there are only two, and they are small dogs, but they get into everything and it seems like we live with a herd of them. The female (Lily) only has one eye and hates everyone but me. The male (Oliver) loves everyone and is always happy and well-behaved, possibly because he was a stray before we took him in and now he lives like a king. He spends most of his life having his belly scratched and sleeping on fancy pillows.

K: And a bonus question–how’s the snake situation?

J: It’s been a cold Pennsylvania winter so no snakes in recent months! I’m sure come Spring they’ll be slithering all over my yard, scaring the wits out of the dogs (and their owner).

Find out more about Josh and his work at http://joshberkbooks.com or follow him on Twitter @joshberkbooks.

What are the fuzzy fliers called in an eponymous series of chapter books by Ursula K. Le Guin? Answer by February 19 to win. (Enter Here)

I have presented a couple of times on Web Presence for authors, and have thought about making my thoughts on that topic a regular feature on this blog, but so far I haven’t. The main reason is, although about half the people who check in here regularly are writers, I think of my target audience as readers, teachers, librarians, and parents — people who don’t want to read a bunch of shop talk. And being thoughtful about audience and what they might want to read is often the first thing I tell people about web presence.

However, I thought I’d drop a few rules on people who might be Googling “web presence for authors” and want a quick list of advice.

1. Do have some kind of web presence. A three page website with contact info, a list of your books, and upcoming events are fine. When people Google your name or a book title and click “I feel lucky,” don’t you want to decide what they see?
2. Update that site regularly. People want to know that you are home.
3. Do not use a free webhosting site that will place ads and other rubbish on your professional website. Pay for hosting. It’s not that expensive and is well worth the price.
4. Don’t pay your web-savvy nephew forty bucks to put up your website (unless of course your web-savvy nephew is a grown-up professional web designer who usually gets paid twenty times that amount). When you hire a professional, you aren’t paying them for technical expertise—you can learn all of that in an hour. What you’re paying a professional for is design sensibility and marketing savvy. I think the DIY approach is fine if you know what you’re doing, but I am constantly seeing really bad websites for excellent authors and nobody would know what excellent authors they are if they were just judging by the website…. And I always assume that a combination of thrift and nepotism are to blame.
5. Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, book trailers, and so forth are all fine if you want to do them, but I am of the opinion that you should do anything beyond #4 unless you want to and it feels natural. A lot of authors say they feel they have to do a book trailer or a blog (or they are told to do so by their editor or publisher) and stress out over it. I think it’s better to not create any aspect of a web presence that you don’t intend to maintain and/or which you aren’t comfortable with. It’s true that they can be an effective part of your web presence, but only if they are used well.

One thing that J.D. Salinger was famous for was his privacy. No writer has gained more publicity for not doing a single thing in the way of publicity. Pynchon is well known for his obscurity, and Harper Lee (who is still alive, many are stunned to learn) keeps to herself, but Salinger became the prototype and paragon of a reclusive writer. Perhaps one reason so many people are fascinated by him is because they have not tired of him. He didn’t overstay his welcome on talk shows, issue a couple of bland novels or anthologies of previously uncollected scribblings, do cameos in films, or do much vaunted readings or get paid a gazillion dollars to do a commencement speech at an Ivy League university. Those are the usual rewards of attaining a certain level of celebrity and respect as an author, and he didn’t pluck them up. The only photo most people have of him is one that is sixty years old, where the author is young and earnest and rather dashing. We have no image to replace it.

It’s particularly hard to pull that off now, when everyone insists that authors spend about five minutes writing to every hour in relentless self promotion. It’s rarer yet given our American way of celebrating success more than accomplishment — we are obsessed with the Ben Franklin-styled narrative of the rag-adorned boy entering the city with a few pennies and making his fortune. For authors, this means life-sized cut-outs of the authors gesturing towards the books in his or her cardboard belly, and smiling with benevolent confidence that they have made it. We like stories of hardships bested, adversities overcome, and success hard-won, and we like to read books that become a part of such a story. Writers constantly talk about (and exaggerate) the numbers of rejections anyone on the bestseller list faced, the beatings they received as a bookish child, and the list of dead-end jobs they held while hammering out the first hit on a used Underwood with no letter c in the garrett above a butcher shop, beset nightly by flies attracted to the carcasses below.

Salinger either deprived us of his backstory or selected a brilliant one, but his life could not have been easy, and I think there was a certain integrity to it. Harper Lee says that there’s no point to interviews, everything anyone wants to know is in her book. Salinger might have said the same thing if he even offered us that much.

J.D. Salinger, author of the greatest adolescent angst novel of all time and important character in of the greatest baseball novels of all time, passed away today. In his honor, here is what might very well be my favorite short story by anyone, ever.

Somebody stumbled across this website while searching for “my favorite joke.” I’ve shared it before, but here it is again. What’s yours?

Please remember that this is a kid-friendly website. OK…. go!

One thing I’ve learned from my latest book is that mushrooms are really interesting. Whudathunkit? There are seriously more interesting fungi fun facts than I can even cram into the book. They are among the largest and oldest living organisms on earth, and are deeply intertwined with folklore and culinary traditions all over the world. There are amazing things about mushrooms that my own critique group has scowled at, telling me they liked it better when I stuck to the scientific. I can’t even use all the interesting stuff I’ve learned about one mushroom, the honey fungus, which has the rare ability to light up under the right conditions.

Here are some beautiful pictures of mushrooms from other blogs. Though the first is unfortunately scant in any information about what the mushrooms are or where they are found, the pictures are amazing.

Most Beautiful Mushrooms Ever [via Neatorama]

And, more in line with my work in progress…

Mushrooms You Don’t Want to Mess With

I’m answering anonymous questions at http://www.formspring.me/skutir. I’ll post some of the more interesting questions and their answers back here.

Of course by “ask me anything,” I mean, “I’ll answer if it’s a real question or even a silly question, but I’ll delete anything that’s overly personal or inappropriate.”

What previous Newbery Award winning novel is the hero’s favorite book in the 2010 Newbery Award winning novel, When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead? Answer by February 5 to win. (Enter Here)

The other day I started back to my office after a meeting across campus. I came to an intersection where I could cross either of two ways and still make my way back to the office. I went with the green light. It was a slightly longer route, but I had extra time because the meeting had ended early. It was warm for Minneapolis in January, so I decided to make the most of it.

As I walked, I thought about an alternative reality where the lights had been different, and I’d taken the slightly shorter route. Instead of passing the alumni center and heading down the walk of scholars, I’d be going down Washington Ave., past coffee shops and restaurants.

Eventually the paths converge, and as I hit that convergence point, I imagined that alternative reality Kurtis being twenty-odd paces ahead of me, getting to the desk just a tad earlier. I wondered what could happen in that minute that might set me and that Kurtis on a different path for the rest of our lives; some random thing in a one-minute window that I’d miss because I took the longer route: a chance encounter with an old friend, a snow sweeper accident, a phone ringing in my cubicle with some extraordinary opportunity.

It’s like that when I decide what my next writing project will be, or how to take it, knowing that any decision might make the difference between fame and obscurity, an ALA honor or a “worst of” ranking on some snarky blog. I look to my friends and colleagues for green lights, but I guess the only thing I am really sure of is that I can’t stand there staring at the light trying to guess what might happen, or I wouldn’t get anywhere. I just keep walking, watching out for puddles and cars, hoping for the best. And if the weather is unusually pleasant that day, I enjoy the walk.

With all the excitement of the end-of-the-year bonanza, I let a trivia friday go by without a whiff of a question. The last question (from Dec. 25) was, what holiday classic was made into a musical by Mel Marvin and Timothy Mason. The answer is The Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Mason has also written a great science fiction book for kids called The Last Synapsid. Check it out.

Ogden Nash wrote:
I like the duck-billed platypus
Because it is anomalous.
I like the way it raises its family
Partly birdly, partly mammaly.
I like its independent attitude.
Let no one call it a duck-billed platitude.

I was thinking this morning about platitudes and ended up thinking about platypuses, because (a) they are more interesting and (b) I have written about them before.

One of my earliest works, now lost to the ravages of time, was a “Just-So” style story written (and illustrated!) by me in eighth grade. It was a partnership with John, a classmate and pal (wonder whatever happened to him?) but as I remember it, John, though an all around good egg, did not come through in the clutch on this one and I took on most of the writing and illustrating responsibilities. Either that or I was full of inspiration and rode rough-shod over John’s interest in the project, I don’t really recall. Suffice to say that I wrote and illustrated this story about how the platypus became a platypus. It was an amorphous shmoo-like animal in the beginning and wandered about the forest envying other animals. It envied the duck’s bill, and the beaver’s tail, and the bear’s claws. Well, the creator caught wind of the platypus’s complaints and bestowed him with all of those gifts, and the platypus was so horrified that it had been turned into a monster that it slinked off to Australia and hid in the mud.

I think I could tell pretty much the same story about a platitude, being a rather featureless sentence that wanders about the forest of rhetorical devices, envying this one for its humor and that one for its sharpness and a third one for its bluntness. It ends up a rather sorry amalgam of good intentions gone horribly awry, and is fit for nothing but the muck down under.

I’m not a big fan of platitudes, and they abound in writing (or any creative endeavor): that you should follow your dreams, that persistence will be rewarded, that you have to believe in yourself, etc. My main opposition to such platitudes is that they are untrue. Which is not to say they are false, just that they just don’t have enough substance to have a factual status. I think people become preoccupied with the platitudes, thinking of themselves as that storied ant with the rubber tree plant as they query an eighth round of agents, rather than taking stock of the situation after the seventh round of rejections. The truth is that the secret to success at anything meaningful is impossible to condense into a memorizable principle.

However, many years later, I feel bad for having maligned the misunderstood metronome. Platypuses are perfectly put together for the lives they live, and serve a purpose on the planet. Maybe you can say the same of platitudes, but I’m not so sure.

I implied — er, by outright stating — in a previous post that Sarah at Knopf did the artwork for the cover of Mamba Point. Sarah is a designer, and while I originally assumed there was a different painter involved, I somehow got confused along the way and thought she had in fact also done the artwork. The actual artist is Lisa Congdon, whose other works you can peruse via that link. She does a lot of great work involving animals and nature. She also has an etsy shop with lots of cool stuff. Anyway, I love the painting and the whole book design; so thanks and congratulations to both Sarah and Lisa.

Somebody found my website by googling “How to draw a Torii.” I am so happy that I can help. Here are my instructions on how to draw a Torii, and by a Torii, I mean, my rotund panthery kitty named Torii. It’s really simple, just circles and triangles. Have fun!

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Margie Gelbwasser challenged her writer friends to write outside of their comfort zone, which challenge I met head on with the following picture book story.

Manny, the Manuscript Who Wanted to be Loved

Manny was a manuscript in the slush pile of the noted children’s publisher, Books for Moppets and Wee Folks.

All the other manuscripts made fun of Manny.

“You’re in Comic Sans!” laughed a couple of chapter book manuscripts, dog-earing his pages and smudging his ink as they chased him around in the slush pile after all the interns had gone home.

“You’re amateurish and hackneyed!” jeered a vampire story.

“You’re a three thousand word picture book, fatso!” cried a clique of YA romances in their all-to-familiar harsh voices. “Plus, your title has a colon. What are you, an academic paper?”

Manny was so tired of being teashed, he left the slush pile and hid in the supply closet, hiding between a box of manila folders and a stack of office envelopes.

Why had his creator sent him to this awful place? He remembered the office in the basement where his creator had brought him to life, typing his words and illustrating his pages with colored pencils. Life was simple then. Manny felt like he was the only manuscript in the world that really mattered. Then his author sent him off, telling Manny that he might spend a few lonely days on an editor’s desk, but then he would be read, and something magical would happen: the editor would turn him into a book.

It could still happen, Manny thought as he drifted off to sleep. One day he would be a treasured book in the hands of a child. It would happen.

*

He woke up to a noise. Interns were shoving boxes around, talking excitedly. What was going on? He perked up his ears (he had many, thanks to rough treatment earlier) and heard the words “no longer taking unsolicited manuscripts,” and “disposable copy.” He didn’t know what any of that meant, but when he peered out of the closet he saw the manuscripts in the slush pile being shoved into boxes and then stacked up on a dolly and carted away, their SASEs stuffed with slips of paper and tossed into a different box.

He had to do something. He ran out into the hallway as the last dolly being wheeled into the freight elevator. He sneaked in just before the door closed and rode down with it. They came out in the sub-basement, where the boxes of paper were set in the corner. There was an incredible, frightening noise, like nothing Manny had ever heard.

“Just shred them all,” he heard someone say. “Then send the shreds to the recycling center.”

Manny panicked, thinking about all the helpless manuscripts and all their lonely, worried creators. He had to help, but didn’t know what to do. Then he remembered what happened once, when he was only a partial draft. His creator had been working, pushing and prodding Manny to grow, when everything suddenly went black. When Manny woke up, his creator explained that the computer cord had been pulled out by mistake.

The cords on things made them work! Manny saw the big cord to the big machine, which disappeared behind it and went into the wall. He jumped over to it and pulled with all his might, but he wasn’t strong enough to remove it.

Instead, he climbed the cord to the very top of the machine, picked up a loop of the cord and coiled it around himself. Then, without another thought, he leapt into the machine. He felt himself being ripped apart. Then the cord got caught in the blades of the shredder. There was a sound like lightening and a flash, and the machine went silent.

*

“Look at this,” said a kind voice as Manny’s mangled pages were pulled from the machine. “It’s a heroic little manuscript who tried to save the others.”

He was laid out gingerly on a desk, repaired with tape and glue, and he looked up to see the warm, intelligent eyes of an associate editor.

“Manny, you may not be much of a manuscript,” she said, “but we’ll commission a ghost writer to tell your story, and you’ll be the hero of very your own book.”

Manny smiled, took a deep breath, and said: “I need to talk to my agent.”

– The End –