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

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Lilian Nattel Makes My Day

The older I get the less (certainly) I know and the less I also remember.  (Indeed, I am at work on a memoir now, but for this one, I've taken notes all along the way—proof, I tell myself. Evidence.)  But I do remember (I will swear on this) the first time I ever encountered Lilian Nattel's blog.  She had written about that northern lights phenomenon, aurora borealis.  She had posted (as she will) an extraordinary photograph.  I'd spent a few months in northern Alberta as a kid, fascinated by those night skies, and so I was enthralled by Lilian's post.  We're going to get each other, I thought.

And so we have.  We read with equal fervency.  We opine on the things we see.  We take our cameras out for walks.  We threaten to go ice skating together.  She's a Canadian and I'm a Pennsylvanian.  But there is much that we share.  When I read her novel The River Midnight, I knew we'd be friends for a long time.  When I follow her journey toward publication of her new book, Web of Angels, I feel as though I am preparing for a launch of a book of my own.

And so, Lilian, I am so very grateful to you for your beautiful and loving read of You Are My Only—for settling in with it so quickly, for sharing it with your daughter, for ushering in my yesterday with an early morning tease on Facebook.  The next time I cross the Canadian border, I'm strapping on a pair of skates, heating up my thermos of tea, and looking for you.

(The photograph above was taken at the Philadelphia Art Museum, this past Sunday.)

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In the stillness of now

I try not to let things get beyond me in this life, but the last few weeks were dense with work and pressure.  I paid no attention to clocks, working as much as I could to complete a corporate project that has meant a lot to me.  I wrote a few talks, prepared a workshop session, took care of some magazine work for clients.

In between was a certain book stock crisis,  Google's announcement that my account (translation: my blog) had been violated and was no longer accessible, a lost camera, and lost glasses.  Piles grew tidal around me (which is not a happy thing for a neat freak).  The refrigerator emptied (save for a bottle of milk and a quarter stick of butter, perhaps a square of cheese, jello made in a moment of hunger).  Bills sat unpaid. I wore clothes from another era because the right-era clothes were, shall we say, indisposed.  I answered emails many days late, with what, I am sure, was an humiliating array of mistakes.  There should be a book:  Beth's Email Mistakes.  The sequel:  Beth's Blog Mistakes. 

And books—at least a dozen books—came into the house and were placed in a growing teeter on the living room table.  Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending. Diana Abu-Jaber's Birds of Paradise.  A.S. King's Everybody Sees the Ants.  Peter Spiegelman's Thick as Thieves.  Philip Schultz's My Dyslexia.  Benjamin Markovits's Childish Loves.  Marc Schuster's The Grievers.  Ann Hite's Ghost on Black Mountain.  Anna Lefler's Chicktionary.  Roy Jacobsen's Child Wonder.  Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones.  Dana Spiotta's Eat the Document.  Chad Harbach's The Art of Fielding.  More.

Can I just tell you how much I have missed reading books? Finding my way into the thick of a story?  Decoding the music others make?

Today, on this freakishly autumnal snowy day, I will join my family of dance friends in the city to celebrate the joint 70 year old birthdays of a still-swinging couple.  We'll stay overnight and brunch the next day with beloved friends in a white city, then head to a museum.  I'm going to take one of these books with me.  And then, come Sunday night, leaning into Monday morning, I am going to lie on a couch and do nothing but turn pages and return to the reader I am.

Thank you for putting up with all the recent launch news of You Are My Only.  I'm eager to once again spend my time here talking about the books of others.  That is why I created this space.  That is what makes me happy.

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The You Are My Only Treasure Hunt Part III

Readers of this blog know that a You Are My Only Treasure Hunt has been put into play.  This week, I'll be wrapping that up.

A reprise: 

I've written five guest posts about the making of this book.  Those posts are appearing in the blogosphere.  Your job (should you choose to accept it) is to find those five entries and then post them collectively on your own blog.  Send the link to me, in a comment box on my blog, and your name will be entered into a drawing. 

Two winners will be selected. Each will win these two things: A signed copy of You Are My Only AND a critique (by yours truly) of the first 2,000 words of a work-in-progress. As many of you know, I teach memoir at the University of Pennsylvania and served as the inaugural readergirlz author in residence. I have written in multiple genres and critique adult fiction for major U.S. newspapers. Your manuscript can, I am hinting, be in any genre, save for a screenplay, about which I have absolutely zero expertise.

Today the third post has gone up.  This post, titled "When Emmy called I listened," tells the story of my discovery of Emmy Rane.  Why she is.  Where (in part) her story came from.  It is posted on a site that is beloved by so many of you, a place where the color turquoise lives, a blog developed and managed by a young woman who is an orthodontic assistant by day.  The post begins with these words:

You Are My Only is a book told in two voices—that of a young teen named Sophie and that of a young mother whose name is Emmy Rane. Emmy Rane’s voice has been with me for a very long time. She was inspired, in part, by a moment, long ago, when I noticed a small child left untended by his mother. I have one of those apocalyptic imaginations (for better or worse, and most times, in real life, that would be worse—just ask my son), and instantly I was imagining things. The sudden stirring of a storm. The evil intentions of a neighbor. A big fat wasp with a ready sting. Somebody, I thought, please rescue that boy!

Please note that I have decided to make the Hunt even easier for those who choose to play.  But I'll give you those details by week's end.

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I Want

I have about a half hour of typing in me each day before the arm goes numb (except for the last finger, which simply hurts like heck).  But I have ten daily hours, at least, of corporate work (yesterday was 14) and sometimes I write blog posts, and sometimes (though less so these days) emails, and every now and then I write a sentence or two of a novel.  I go around saying ouch ouch ouch ouch.  I'm just an old creak.  That's what I am.

What I would really like to do is sit back and read the work of others.  Just, like, sit here and read.  Monday evening, ahead of an event downtown, I slipped inside the cozy sleeve of a bookstore and swooned.  Oh, there they were, be still my heart—all those books that I have been craving (real books, real paper).  The Charles Frazier.  The Alexandra Fuller.  The Erin Morgenstern.  The Diana Abu Jaber.  The Chad Harbach.  I came home with the Harbach, only because the new Michael Ondaatje wouldn't be released until the next day.  (They had it in the store, I know they did, but the crafty lady at the front desk made like they didn't.)  

Oh, I want to read.  Oh, what writer doesn't.  Oh, yes.  My life is blessed.  But.  I just really want to sit and read.  I want to use this blog to celebrate the work of others.  I want to get the balance right.

Let me close by celebrating Miss Sarah Laurence, a multiply talented writer, critic, painter, photographer (and mom) who, despite being in the middle of writing a few books herself, took the time to read You Are My Only and to write so intelligently about it.  I won't hijack any of her words.  I'll just send you here.  Talk about balance, Sarah.  It's just so perfect.

Thank you.

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You Are My Only: The Generous Kirkus Review

Deep thanks to my friends for pointing the way to two separate Kirkus Reviews of You Are My Only.  The first can be found here, penned by Leila Roy of Bookshelves of Doom, on the Kirkus blog.

The second review, excerpted below, is the generous "official" Kirkus Review.

Again, I know how lucky I am.

The heartbreaking tale of a kidnapped child and her bereft mother unfolds in alternating narratives in this intense and lovely novel.

... the ripped-from-the-headlines plot is here treated with tenderness and depth. Kephart's deft employ of descriptive language—"Past the door is scuffle and howl, the slow and the fast moving. I see it through the window glass, the glass all scratched with black diamonds"—is extremely effective in setting mood and creating imagery.

Though the initial draw may be the sensational subject matter, readers will come away with much more.(Fiction. 12 & up) — Kirkus Reviews

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