Welcoming the nation's librarians to Philadelphia, and celebrating our own Free Library (and Chronicle Books)

Last evening, I hardly felt the cold as I walked from 30th Street Station to the Warwick Hotel. The nation's librarians have come to my very own city for ALA Midwinter. So has Chronicle Books. And there I was, headed off toward a Chronicle-librarian vortex, with my mother's coat keeping me warm.

I found Chronicle's Ginee Seo, Lara Starr, Sally Kim, and my fabulous editor Tamra Tuller in the ballroom (note: these women are fashionistas!!). I also found Miss Adorable Herself, Lisa Morris-Wilkey, who made sure I would recognize her by the shimmer of that little pin she wears in her hair. The Grand Duke Walter was in the midst, as well as a librarian with a last name infinitely familiar to me—Novotny. It was a grand night as Chronicle's spring list was reviewed. I yearned to take every noted book home with me.

Asked to talk briefly about Going Over, I wanted to talk, most of all about Chronicle Books, which has been so extraordinarily generous to me. They keep placing surprises in my path. They keep thinking past me. I ask for nothing, and yet they appear with gifts. It is an extraordinary team. One example: Last week, a number of bloggers began to write to me, letting me know that Going Over ARCs had been sent their way. Facebook notes went up. Twitter feeds shimmered. And no one had ever said, Beth, we are going to do this for you, or, Beth, look what we did for you. It just got done.

So I am grateful to Chronicle Books, and I am grateful to Tamra Tuller, who brought me there and remains such a good friend, and I am grateful to the librarians who have come through this chilly weather to be in my city. I have written a love letter to a very particular Philadelphia library in this weekend's Inquirer—written my thanks to a program and to an individual, Andy Kahan, who makes sure that Philadelphians get their cultur-ating share of literature. But I hope that all librarians visiting my city today will know the love goes out to them, too.

I'll be back down in the city on Sunday, signing You Are My Only, now released as a paperback, for Egmont USA. Start time is 3 PM. I hope to see you, too.

Read more...

A You Are My Only Review—and Signing at Mid-Winter ALA

Through my friend Danielle, I discovered this honest review of You Are My Only, a book recently released in paperback by Egmont USA—and a book that I will be signing this coming Sunday, 3:00 PM, at the Egmont booth at the Mid-Winter American Library Association Meeting.

My work is not for everyone. Strangers have told me, and so have friends. It means an awful lot, therefore, to hear from a reader who struggled to find pleasure in my work, who couldn't figure out why those who fussed, fussed, and who persevered nonetheless.

GoodBooksandGoodWine tells that story in her review.

She begins like this:

When I first read a book by Beth Kephart, I wasn’t too keen on it. I did not get what all the fuss was about. Maybe I just wasn’t ready at the time or maybe it was the person I was back then.

She ends like this:

Here is the thing, You Are My Only is sparse in it’s number of pages. Kephart packs in so much emotion in so few words in such a gorgeous style that the book is almost overwhelming. It staggered me, it really did. There’s something sort of intense about Kephart’s writing style. She puts these images in her book where you are like, yes I know exactly what that is but I never thought of it this way before. I don’t know you guys. Just get your hands on a copy of You Are My Only, it is really good and beautifully written and just full of heart.

She packs this punch in between.

GoodBooksandGoodWine, your timing could not be more perfect. Thank you.

Mid-Winter ALAers.... Perhaps I'll see you in my snowy city Sunday.

Read more...

I found Katherine and Anna (of Dangerous Neighbors) at The Barnes Foundation, in a Renoir painting

My husband and I have returned from a magical 24 hours away from construction boxes and dust, from a sinkless and unusable kitchen, from ceilings finally painted and repaired, only to be ruined by the rain that leaked through the roof that we've been waiting (for several months now) to be fixed.

We needed to get away.

And so we went to Philadelphia, stayed at glorious, expansive Loews (seventeenth floor! corner room!), had lunch at the Reading Terminal Market among thousands of soccer coaches, and ate dinner at the magnificent Fork Restaurant (where we had the chance to tell Ellen Yin just had perfect the entire meal had been, and when I say perfect, I mean perfectly perfect, perfectly considered, perfectly surprising and comforting, perfectly served). Between lunch and dinner, in the cold heart of the afternoon, we went to The Barnes Foundation for the first time. Something every Philadelphian should do at least once.

I have never seen so many Renoir paintings in one place. I fell in love, again, Modigliani. I encountered a local watercolorist—Demuth—whose work I had not known before, or, at least, anchored with a name.

And then, at near the end of our tour through those many rooms, I gasped. For there on the wall was this painting by Renoir. Titled La Sortie du conservatoire, it was painted in 1876, the year of my Centennial story, Dangerous Neighbors. It was as if I'd seen this image before, as if I'd worked from it, as if I'd lifted those two girls from this canvas. My Katherine and Anna, the ginger-haired twins that live on the pages of my slender novel, are Renoir's two girls. They look and stand precisely like this—the color of their hair, Anna's vivacious pose, Katherine's steady watchfulness.

We are back home now, with leaking and unfinished things, and with way too much work for the week ahead. But Katherine and Anna are in the house. They are alive again.

Read more...

It's the official You Are My Only paperback release day!

With great thanks to Egmont USA for believing in a book that means so much to me. And to Alison Weiss, for her beautiful note. I'll be joining Margaret Coffee, Michelle Bayuk and the Egmont team at ALA Midwinter in Philadelphia on Sunday, January 26, 3 PM, for an official first signing.

Many thanks to everyone who helped make this book—and to the glorious dozens upon dozens who cared so much when the hardback debuted. I will never forget you. Amy Riley and Pamela van Hylckama Vlieg—Look what happens when you read that small type very carefully!

Read more...

YOU ARE MY ONLY: the paperback arrives

I had been with a client most of this day (except for the part when I took a walk, saw a friend, came home to a note from the one and only Tomie dePaola—oh, my). So it was dark when I walked back up to my porch and stumbled against this box.

What is it? my husband wondered.

I have no idea, I said.

And truly I didn't. Had no idea that You Are My Only—a book I loved writing, a book that so many of you supported, a book that means to much to me—was actually and truly being repackaged as a paperback.

And being released.

I am filled with the desire to go out and do a reading, celebrate this book, make something happen.

You, my blogging friends, are the party I am throwing.

Read more...

Dangerous Neighbors (paperback) and Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent: two upcoming releases

In just a few days, Dangerous Neighbors, my Centennial Philadelphia novel, will be released by Egmont USA as a paperback, with a bound-in teacher's guide.  A few weeks after that, in mid-February, Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent, an 1871 Philadelphia novel that features Dangerous Neighbors' own best-loved boy, William, will be released by New City Community Press/Temple University Press.

Dr. Radway's introduces, among many other Philadelphia places, Eastern State Penitentiary.  In this scene (below) William and his best friend, Career, are making their way toward the old prison, which was known back then as Cherry Hill.  They're going to keep William's father company, in the only way they know how.

The image above was taken two years ago, when I was in the midst of my research for this book.

Career pulls a stone out of his trouser pocket, drops it to the street, and kicks it ahead to William, who smacks it crosswise and up, stepping back to let two twin girls in dresses like pink parasols pass, their mother stern in blue.  Career lopes and knocks the stone to where William would be if he wasn’t still staring at the girls, both of them with the identical ginger hair and jewel eyes, neither somehow like the other.  Neither, mostly, like the mother, who casts her opinion on William and hurries her exotic procession along.  

William feels the heat in his face and runs for the stone.  He smacks it hard Career’s way.  The game stays good between them now—past Spring Garden and Brandywine, Green, Mt. Vernon, Wallace, all the way to Cherry Hill, where finally they stop and stand in the long skirt of the prison’s shadows, its massive gothic gloom.  Cherry Hill runs the full block and back, two-hundred feet in the east-west direction, four crenellated towers on its front face and a watchman high, looking for trouble. Career works another match into the shallow bowl of his pipe, and it takes.  The tobacco flares sweet. 

“You going to call to him, then?” Career asks, after a while.

“Walls too thick.”

“You going to try it anyway?”
            “Your whistling,” William says, “goes a longer way.”

Career blows the smoke of his pipe through the spaces between his teeth.  He clears his throat and finds his song, and it carries.  William closes his eyes and imagines his Pa inside—past the vaulted doors and the iron gates, beneath the eye of the warden, and of God.  People are puny at Cherry Hill.  People are locked away to consider what they’ve done.

“You think he can hear that?” Career asks now, stopping his song.

“Keep on.”

Career picks the song back up, and William stands there in the shadows, at his best friend’s side, trying to see Pa in his mind’s eye.   “Don’t do it, Pa,” Francis had warned him, Ma, mostly.  Don’t, don’t, don’t. 

Career whistles a professional melody.  William hears what he thinks is the wind, but it’s that bird winging in close, that dove tucking its wings then letting them go, its rise and its angling in effortless.  Career stops his song and looks up.  The bird goes on, north and west—a free line across the prison wall and out, toward the river.

Cherry Hill still locked up tight as a vault. 

Read more...

Talking about William from Dangerous Neighbors

For much of last year I worked on a book that took me deep inside the world of 1871 Philadelphia—the clank of Baldwin machines, the boats on the Schuylkill, the innards of Eastern State Penitentiary, the rattle of a newsroom, the world of William, first introduced in Dangerous Neighbors.

I wrote a book.  My husband made drawings.  And then I stood back and thought.  What next?

Today I am having a preliminary meeting about this book of mine, this character I love, this Philadelphia to which I will always be true.  I don't know what will happen, but I do know this:  Sometimes we have to step away to know what it is we should be stepping toward.

Read more...

The YOU ARE MY ONLY third printing arrives

and I like the look of this page.  Thank you, Elizabeth Law, for sending the copy my way.

Read more...

Can Book Bloggers Change a Life? A Definitive Answer in Publishing Perspectives

Anyone who follows this blog knows just how important book bloggers have been to me.  As first readers, as confidantes, as bright and rustling wings. 

I was recently given the chance to tell that story to Publishing Perspectives, an on-line magazine spearheaded by Ed Nawotka and sponsored by the Frankfurt Book Fair that covers the book industry here and around the globe.  I had thought, when I began to write, that I might list all the bloggers who have been so instrumental in my career.  It quickly became clear that that would be an impossibility—that I would consume all allotted characters on blogger URLs before I had a chance to fully explain.  You all know who you are, of course.  Many of you appear permanently on this page.  I hope you know how much you matter. 

(Please also see Ed's call for responses to the book blogger question here.  Perhaps you'll lend your voice to the conversation.)

Today I would specifically like to thank a certain Danielle of There's a Book, who has been a pillar in my writing life—a buoyant, thoughtful, endearing advocate who has cared deeply about these stories I tell and has—in her own time, just because she is who she is—found ways to spread the word.   I didn't know this until last night, but Danielle also named You Are My Only one of her top reads of last year, one of the books she most recommended to people in 2011, the most beautifully written book she read in 2011, and the book that had the greatest impact on her. 

Danielle also named Small Damages, due out in July from Philomel, as the young adult book she is most anticipating in 2012.

See all of Danielle's thoughtful recommendations here. 

I'm not sure that any writer could hope for more than that.  I am sure, however, that anyone who questions the value of book bloggers has not had the privilege of meeting Danielle.

Great thanks again to all of you who have made such a difference in my life. 

My other stories for Publishing Perspectives can be found here:

The Attraction-Repulsion of International Literature: My conversation with Alane Salierno Mason

Transforming Children's Book Coverage at the New York Times: My conversation with Pamela Paul

Success is when the world returns your faith:  My conversation with editor Lauren Wein

Between Shades of Gray:  The Making of an International Bestseller 

Read more...

A kind citation by Main Line Today

It is possible that magazines don't know how happy they make authors when they pay attention to the books that authors write.

For the record, this citation by Main Line Today and Emily Riley made me exquisitely happy, and I have a certain Kim (she's gorgeous, perhaps you'll someday meet her) to thank for letting me know.

From Main Line Today, then, which chose You Are My Only as a staff favorite:

With a story seemingly ripped from the headlines, the award-winning author and Main Line Today contributor spares readers the sensationalism and, instead, seamlessly weaves the dual narratives into a plot that races toward a stunning finish.  

Read the whole thing here.

Read more...

A little of Berlin. A lot of YAMO thanks. And the beauty of writing slow.

When I went to Berlin this past summer I had no idea that I would someday soon be writing about this storied, divided, chaotic, rich, surprising city.  I had gone for no other purpose but this:  I had not been gone, in a real way, from my office/home for three years.  I took photographs of what appealed to me, what intrigued me.  I read a little, but not a lot, wandered, consulted maps, got lost, and managed to hike all the way to Little Istanbul on the wrong day, when the outdoor marketplace was closed, a not-so-pleased husband beside me.

These days, between client calls, I reconstruct that journey, ask myself what I really saw, look for spires in the background of photographs.  There, I think.  That is the church.  Here, I think:  The canal that leads to the bridge that overlooks a view that once was barbed and different. 

It all comes back, new and different.  It comes back, not just as form and color, but as a rich and meaningful history, slowly understood.  There are great pleasures in writing a book at a quiet pace, in writing toward the not easily known.  You steep until the material owns you.  You steep, you read, you keep consulting those maps, you watch those films, you listen to those people speaking their foreign tongues until they don't sound so foreign after all.  And then one day you wake up, and you own it.  One day it's not about what you are studying, but what you know.  It takes time.  It is—indisputably—one of my very happiest times.  I have Tamra Tuller of Philomel to thank for the great privilege.  For being there, and for caring, while I work these details through.

To add to my happiness there is this.  Last night I discovered that that pretty spectacular reading/blogging/librarian team—Two Heads Together—cited You Are My Only as the top YA book of the year.  What?  You don't think that made me dance?  Check out all their reads, and the intelligence with which they present their musings, here.

Thank you, Ed and Susan.  (so much)

Read more...

Caribousmom, You Are My Only, and two very special citations

Readers of this blog may know this story:  A few years ago, I read and loved a book called The Elegance of the Hedgehog.  I said as much here.  Not long afterward that post became a particularly popular post of mine, and when I tried to discover just what had brought my few thoughts this blessed attention I discovered a blog called Caribousmom.  The creator of this blog had shared my passion for this story; she had also—thoughtfully—shared my own post with her enthusiastic readers.

What else did this blogger like to read, I wondered?  What else did she have to say?  It didn't take me long to understand that Caribousmom is a sacred book haven—an intelligent blog by a most discerning reader.  We tend to love the same books.  We look forward to the same releases.  Many of the volumes I own are directly related to reflections that Caribousmom has shared.  Her reviews are long and detailed.  They provide hints of the authors' own styles, own ways of speaking.  They are independently produced, in no way tied to any fiscal reward, which is to say that Caribousmom writes about books because she loves them.  Caribousmom is often one of the very first to speak out on behalf of books that will go on to win the year's big prizes.  Consider, for example, Salvage the Bones. 

Over the course of this year, if I am not mistaken, Caribousmom read nearly 100 books.  Yesterday she unveiled her favorite reads of 2011—long lists, short lists, winners, books that elevated the form, that stayed with her.  I am enormously blessed to discover You Are My Only on the short fiction list—the only young adult novel in that grouping.  You Are My Only also appears on her list of Buzz Books Which Did Not Disappoint, an honor equal to the first. 

Today is the first day of a new year.  My son is on a train at this early hour, returning from an evening in New York City.  I have printed out the first 30 pages of the new novel that I'm writing and will curl up beneath a quilt on the couch reading through and writing forward, while I await the sound of his footsteps at the door.  I plan to spend this day peacefully, in other words.  Caribousmom, thank you so very much for your generosity, intelligence, and heart on this new day.  You make the world a better place.

Read more...

Hope is personal. Thoughts at year's end.

I've been wanting to say something for a while, haven't known where to begin.  I'll start like this:  It was quite a year.

Amidst other things, I released a book called You Are My Only, a book I'd spent a long time writing.  I had, perhaps, too much hope for it, or that's what I thought at first.  As it turns out, I had the wrong idea about what hope is, and where its embers live.

Hope, I learned over the course of this year, is answered in the middle of night and in the heat of the day by kindness you don't see coming.  It is given wings by extra-ordinary readers who take time from their real lives to read your book, to think about it, to tell you and others how the story lives in them.  There was no official blog tour for You Are My Only, no physical tour, nor radio, nor TV (though I will always be grateful to my friend Darcy Jacobs, for her kindness to the book in Family Circle).  I had a book launch party but there were few books to be had.  And nonetheless—nonetheless—You Are My Only found its right homes.

If I tried to thank all of you who taught me what hope is and what it looks like this year I would not succeed.  There were so many moments, so many gifts, so many gestures, so many wild acts of compassion, so much unfathomable generosity.  Hope was born.  Hope was launched. 

At the end of this year, I want to stop and thank all of you.  I also want to stop—just plain stop—and thank the young woman who started so much of this for me:  Amy Riley.  It was Amy who discovered my blog a few years ago, when Nothing but Ghosts was set to come out.  It was Amy who threw a surprise launch blog party that year that left me in trembles.  Amy has been there ever since.  She has rallied her enormous community of friends around me—opened doors, built bridges, quietly insisted.

And there she is, at the end of this year, naming You Are My Only as one of her top books.

There are official lists.  There are personal lists.  Hope is entirely personal.

Thank you, Amy.

Read more...

waking up to loveliness

There is nothing quite like the sleep that comes after a day spent cooking and an evening spent celebrating.  Last night, in other words, I slept (sleep: I recommend it).

This morning I woke to these beautiful words about You Are My Only from a woman so dear to me that one of the book's characters was both shaped by the goodness of her heart and christened with her name.  My friend is in Australia right now, living an adventurer's life and writing about it here.  She's miles away, but she's close.

Love to you, Mandy.

Read more...

Following the Voice, Finding the Soul: My Cynsations Post

I feel as lovely as this creature today, for my words have found their way to Cynsations, Cynthia Leitich Smith's deservedly famed and remarkably generous blog.  She is an author who cares about other authors.  We're all better off for her bestselling books, and for her care.

My post is called "Following the Voice, Finding the Soul: The Making of You Are My Only."

It begins like this:

I think, when I write, about voice. I begin there. Not with the color of the characters’ eyes, nor with the plot. Not with a sweet synopsis or even a one-page outline that points from here to there.

The whole thing is here.

Thank you so much, Cynthia. 

Read more...

Beautifying the Sentence: today is the day

National Novel Writing Month-ers, today is the day.  Send me your best revised sentence (the before and the after) from your NaNo novel and you will be entered into a contest to win either a signed galley of Small Damages (Philomel) or a signed copy of You Are My Only (Egmont USA). 

For details and for thoughts about what makes a good sentence, please go here.  The contest winner will be announced on Christmas Eve. 

Read more...

A Little You Are My Only News

I've never been to Brazil, but I have longed to go.  For the time being, You Are My Only is going in my stead, thanks to the good work of Amy Rennert and the Jenny Meyer Literary Agency, Inc.  Brazilian-Portuguese rights to the book have been sold to Novo Conceito.

You Are My Only also, as many of you know, went into a third U.S. printing this week.  For that enormous bit of good fortune, I have the world of generous bloggers and independent booksellers (and of course Darcy Jacobs, of Family Circle) to thank. Thanks today especially to Serena Agusto-Cox, who placed You Are My Only on the D.C. Literature Examiner gift book buying guide.  Check out the entire list for some spectacular recommendations from a very fine reader.

I thank you all.  From the bottom of my heart, I do.

Many thanks, too, to Elizabeth Law of Egmont USA, for being the bearer of good news.

Read more...

Kidnapping in YA: The Live Chat

A few weeks ago, Alison Weiss of Egmont USA wrote with an idea.  Why not conduct a live chat with readers?  Why not, indeed, find a time when both Kristina McBride (The Tension of Opposites) and I could sit down for an hour for a moderated conversation conducted within the Cover It Live forum?

The question was asked.  A program was born.  An evening was chosen.

Please join Kristina, Alison, and me for a conversation about what happens when you choose to build a story within the frame of a kidnapping.  Did real-world headlines precipitate the story?  Are we obliged, as storytellers, to work the sensationalistic angles?  How much room can we make for language and heart and hope in a story that has such darkness at its start?

I'm really looking forward to the conversation, and I am very hopeful that you will find the time to join us.  The facts and link below:

Kidnapping in YA:  A Chat with Beth Kephart and Kristina McBride

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

7:30 PM EDT

Chat with us at this link

Read more...

Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent (and other fun things)

After playing a much-needed bit of hooky at the Jersey shore yesterday (not that Jersey Shore, believe me), I came home, woke early, and wrote the final pages of Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent, the Dangerous Neighbors prequel.  I rarely write with a book's closing pages in mind.  This time, always, I knew where I was headed.  I've printed the whole thing out now and will take it to a quiet place to read.  But since I have reworked all thirty-three chapters (save the last one) at least a dozen times each, I think I'm in a pretty good place.

This, of course, is William's story—that boy who rescues animal for a living and, in 1876, in the pages of Dangerous Neighbors, befriends Katherine during one terrifying day at the Centennial.  The year this time in 1871, and a primary scene takes place in the room above.

I have loved every single second of researching and writing this story.  I cannot wait to share it with the world.

In the meantime, I've got corporate work to do and, thanks to the number of schools that seem to be assigning my Juarez novel, The Heart Is Not a Size, to their students, I'm about to put together a teacher's guide for that book.  It is extraordinary—and extremely reassuring—that books do find their way in this world, even if we're not entirely sure how to help them get there.

Read more...

You Are My Only, the book, arrives

It flew through hurricane-force winds to get here, and I didn't see it coming.  But You Are My Only (Laura Geringer Books: Egmont USA) is a real book now, beautifully encased and designed.  It will be out on shelves on October 25th, but can be found for pre-order at Amazon and other e-retailers between now and then. 

Read more...