traveling far to write close (in the abrams and chronicle blog)

Over the course of the past several days, my Twitter feed has bloomed with posts from the good people of Abrams & Chronicle. Chosen lines from One Thing Stolen, posterized. Words of encouragement and hope. It's been a quiet, miraculous thing. This sense this UK publishing arm has provided of a story fully seen.

And so, when Abrams & Chronicle (through Lara Starr) asked me to write about how my travels have influenced my stories, I was more than happy to comply, writing the story that appears today, here. Please take some time to review the many lovely posts on A&C blog. I promise you good reads and eats.

But while I'm at this, I'd like to thank my dear friend Ed Goldberg, who has been such an exquisite companion through my many seasons as a writer of books for young adult readers. I was standing in the lobby of an Atlantic City hotel years and books ago when I first received an Ed email. I was standing in Books of Wonder when I first (a surprise) met him. And here he is again, reading One Thing Stolen and offering his support in his beautiful blog, Two Heads Together. I am forever grateful.

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UNDERCOVER remembered in "Classics Outside of the Classroom" story in VOYA

I began blogging some nine books ago, right around the release date of Undercover. This was my most autobiographical young adult story, a tale vaguely based on my own days as a striving high school poet with a love for ice, float, and speed, and with an English teacher who took note of all I was afraid to be.

Today my friend Ed Goldberg (of the blog Two Heads Together, among other things) sent word that Undercover has been remembered by Jennifer Miskec and Katy J. Stein in a February 2013 VOYA article called "Classics Outside of the Classroom."

From the article:

Over the last decade, young adult literature has seen a minor boom in the publication of adaptations of classic literature.  What can be an English teacher's best friends, books like Sharon Draper's version of Romeo and Juliet (Romiette and Julio) makes Verona a little more imaginable; Beth Kephart's Undercover, Cyrano d'Bergerac recast with fifteen-year-old Elisa, makes Cyrano just like one of us.  These adaptations can be a useful bridge between the teen reader's own life and the privileged space of classic literature, because authors modernize—and sometimes even sanitize—the famous stories, making them both familiar and educational for a new audience.

The piece goes on to describe a number of YA literary adaptations, including a beautiful long paragraph dedicated to Undercover.

I am indebted to the authors.  I am indebted, as well, to Ed.  I had always hoped that classroom teachers would discover Undercover and make it part of a broader curricula.

Thank you.

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Remembering Ghosts in the Garden (with a huge thank you to Ed Goldberg) and Small Damages

I had only just returned from Florence and was still adjusting to the hours and the lack of pasta when Ed Goldberg, now a long-time friend, read my fifth book, Ghosts in the Garden, and shared his thoughts on his blog, Two Heads Together.  Ed is the kind of guy who never shouts and will not boast and does not stomp his feet or pop his bubble gum to get attention.  Only yesterday did he whisper in my ear:  Beth, I read that book.

And so he did, reinvigorating for me, in his thoughtful, surprising way, a book I wrote when I fully believed I was writing my last.  Writing is hard on the psyche—not making the books (I am dangerously addicted to the making of books), but living with them when they are out in the world.  They're not going to please everyone, nor should they.  Some will say that kindly, some will say it cruelly, some may veer from the truth, some may hurt people you love. You have to live with that, when you write books, and in writing Ghosts, I felt myself fading, vanishing toward another life, searching for another art to believe in. 

That was too many books ago, but it was a time I remember well and a feeling to which I often return. Ghosts in the Garden is a wandering, wondering book. I remain a wanderer and a wonderer, never precisely sure.

Just as Ed whispered in my ear yesterday, Jessica Shoffel, my beloved Philomel publicist, wrote to share the news that The Repository, a newspaper out of Canton, OH, had celebrated Small Damages as a novel "Worth Your Time."  Michael Green, Philomel's head honcho, wrote something Michael-ishly funny, after that.  But we're not telling.  Not a chance.   

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The Small Damages Book Trailer

... featuring the words of authors I love, the kindness of bloggers, my photographs of southern Spain, and my husband's deliberately rough Spanish guitar, for that is the kind of guitar my gypsy characters play.

It would mean so much to me if you shared this trailer with others.

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Small Damages: the Two Heads Together review

I had a weekend of goodness—friendship, books, and sun, a crowd of azaleas on a woodsy path, the film "Kolya," (oh!), the book Inside Out & Back Again (breathtaking), simple meals that turned out just fine, the weeds gone from (most) of the front garden.

Enough for anyone.  Enough for me.  But this morning the overwhelming goodness continues, as I discover the ineffable generosity of Ed Goldberg, who read Small Damages one day after he received it, and wrote these stunning words the following day on Two Heads Together, the blog that he writes with his Susan.

Ed, you have buoyed me from the very start of my young adult writing career.  I am and will always be so grateful.

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it's all circling back: Dangerous Neighbors, Joe Polin, You Are My Only, Into the Tangle of Friendship

It's funny how things are circling back to me this week—Susan's review of You Are My Only, Bonnie Jacobs' discovery of my Into the Tangle of Friendship within the pages of Lauren Winner's Girl Meets God, and, early this morning, a note from the very brilliant young reader and critic, John Jacobson, who wrote to say that Emma, a reading/blogging friend of his (Booking Through 365), had read Dangerous Neighbors upon his recommendation and had had kind things to say. 

I was particularly moved by Emma's observations about the end of the novel, something about which very few have commented.  And so I share those words here, with the hope that you will visit Emma's blog and discover not just her review of Neighbors, but her fine mind in general. 

End: This book may have one of the very best YA plot climaxes I've experienced in recent history. While I knew instinctively how the climax would end, it still affected me. This is very, very powerful, and it might be the crowning glory of the novel. 5 flowers.

(Note to readers:  Emma talks about William in her review, a character that I, too, have not forgotten.  I hope I'll be able to share William's story, now completed as an 1871 prequel, with you in total soon.)

Finally, in this week (and it's only Tuesday!) of looking back, I am celebrating Joe Polin, a former student, whose beautiful essay was published in the Pennsylvania Gazette last year.  Joe is coming to class with editor Trey Popp to talk about how an assignment becomes a story becomes a submission becomes an edited final piece. 

Let's just say that I've been looking forward to this class for a long time.  I'm hoping Joe is still wearing his smiley-faced tie.

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Susan reads You Are My Only

Every now and then a reader returns to you your own story.  She reads with that rare passion.  She honors your relationship your characters.  She doesn't judge; she understands.  She stays up late because you have, and because you will again.

That has happened here, and I am deeply moved.  At Two Heads Together Susan writes of her response to You Are My Only, a quiet and yet still controversial book that will always mean the world to me.

Her words mean the world.

She writes, in part, this.  The rest can be found here.

I read the stories of Sophie and Emmy, one beautiful word at a time, savoring the words and images evoked by the poetry Beth Kephart brings to us.  Eager to turn the page but yet reluctant to let it go, I read on into the night knowing I needed sleep.  How can I turn out the light when Emmy and Sophie yearn for what they can’t have?  How can I leave them when they are trapped and alone?

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Florinda's Kindness. Best of Graces. K.M. Walton. DeWitt Henry. And the beach in winter.

I have been sitting here since four this morning, when it was all dark and all cold.  At one point I looked up, and there was blue within the black.  And then, a little while on, I looked and saw the float of pillowed pink.

Just ahead of the pinking, I went to my favorite blogs list and clicked onto the 3 R's Blog to see what Florinda has cooking.  Oh, good, I thought.  Her best of year list.  With great interest, I read.  The Warmth of Other Suns—a fabulous choice.  Tina Fey's Bossypants—absolutely; that book made me laugh when I needed a laugh. Just Kids by Patti Smith, one of my all-time favorite memoirs.  The Girls of Murder City.

It was when I got to the fiction list that I did a double take, for there was You Are My Only, alongside Faith, Girl in Translation, and Fathermucker. My little book beside some very big books.  Florinda's goodness forever transparent.

Why are there always 3,000 miles between me and the people that I want to hug?  I'm hoping Florinda can feel my hug today.  I am hoping there is pink in her sky.

Florinda, you deserve some major pink in your sky. Thank you. For everything.

My deep affection for the bloggers who have been so kind to You Are My Only is well-established.  I am so surprised and so moved by all of you who named You Are My Only at year's end (listing alphabetically): 

Caribousmom/Short List for Fiction
Caribousmom/Buzz Books Which Did Not Disappoint
Dear Author
My Friend Amy
On a Southern Breeze
The 3 R's Blog
Two Heads Together
Washington, D.C. Literature/Examiner.com

Tonight I'm going lift a glass in your honor in Atlantic City, where I'll be with my boys, doing that winter-at-the-beach thing we do.

I'll come home in time to lift another glass to K.M. Walton (though I promise not to arrive already tripping), who is launching her first book, Cracked, at the Chester County Book Company on Saturday night.  There's going to be a gonzo crowd.  Be there, I say.

On Sunday, I'm off to celebrate Little Miss Eva's birthday.  Of course there will be photos; there always are.

And then on Tuesday, I'll be in the company of my good friends, Elizabeth Mosier, Chris Mills, Kelly Simmons, and Pam Sedor as we toast DeWitt Henry, writer, founding editor of Ploughshares, and former Chair of Writing, Literature, and Publishing at Emerson College, who is returning to his childhood haunts on the Main Line with an evening talk at the Radnor Memorial Library.  I'll repeat myself, because I can: 

Be there.

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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)

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Two Heads Together: Announcing a Brand New Book Blog

Earlier this week, during my Facebook travels, I took note of a bit of news—a long-time correspondent-reviewer-friend (Ed) was starting a blog with his beloved (Susan).  Need to check that out, I said to myself, and in this blessed afternoon of quiet (I've been reading Leah Hager Cohen's The Grief of Others and hope to report on that tomorrow), I turned the computer on to see what Ed and Susan have been up to.

Their blog is called Two Heads Together.  I quote its purpose here: "...we're two avid readers who just happen to be librarians.  We deal with books all day long and then go home to read.  Geeks?  Maybe.  Lovers of books?  Definitely.  We've decided to begin this blog because we see so many wonderful books become orphans either because of lack of support from publishers or lack of word of mouth."

It's a lovely idea, I thought—to dedicate a blog to authors and books that might not be getting the Grand Tour treatment.  I was so very moved, then, when I realized that the blog's first post was dedicated to a suite of books by yours truly, and includes a truly kind review of You Are My Only.

Reading this blog post brought to tears to my eyes; it also revived for me a memory:  I was in Atlantic City, a one-night getaway with my husband, when an email came into Blackberry.  It was from a man named Ed, who had been trying valiantly to get a copy of one of my earlier books for review.  I am half blind at this point in my life and typed back what I'm sure was an error-rich message: Send your address; I'll make sure that you get one.  It probably read like this:  tbey sooe xxarrdss! I'll ,sru pfru u git 2.

Ed's been a dear friend in the book journey life ever since.  And Susan, I feel I know you and have always valued you.  Even if you did purportedly steal a copy of Dangerous Neighbors from Ed's own generous hands.

Thank you, both.

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