writerly queries

[ewein2412]

1) Any professional YA authors out there who have the time and energy to write an essay on Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series and/or Christopher Paolini’s Inheritance trilogy?  Borders are commissioning a couple of anthologies of critical essays aimed at young readers.  The deadlines are quite soon (the Riordan essays are due 1 Dec 07); pay is $500 plus royalties for a 3000-5000 word essay.  If you're interested let me know and I'll pass your details on to the Powers That Be.

2) Anyone know of an agent who deals with manga or graphic novels in general?  IT'S FOR A FRIEND, HONEST.  Well actually it's for my husband, whose company is considering turning a game into a graphic novel.

that's it for the moment
 

Comments

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

2) If you find one, can you let me know? The last time I checked, there was so little money involved that I could not find an agent who specifically did that. Basically everyone's handing it to their pre-existing agents if they get offered a deal.

[ewein2412]

thanks for this info--I will let you know if they find anybody!

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

PS. Um, I haven't read those series, and I'm not sure if I'm technically a YA writer anyway, but if there's any other openings I'd love to be considered. I am a pro writer and I do read a lot of YA, and even did so for a living for a number of years at the Jim henson Company. Do you have more details? Rphoenix2@hotmail.com

[ewein2412]

I'll pass on your address (along with a glowing recommendation!)--I think this is a "don't call us we'll call you" situation but anyway I'll send you the actual details in case they do.

[marguerlucy.livejournal.com]

Liar. You've commissioned that kid in China to contact the Japan Manga Powers that be to make THE WINTER PRINCE into a graphic manga novel.... and I demand a portion of the royalties. Or a free copy. Whatevs. ;-)

[ewein2412]

what makes you think I haven't ALREADY DONE IT MYSELF? ahahaha

[marguerlucy.livejournal.com]

YES! seeing as how I salivate at the thought of a movie of Winter Prince, and graphic novels are so cinematic, I will now enjoy the thought of that.

I'm going to Salem on Halloween night, and was trying to think of a good witchy character to go as based on the fabric I have. I've decided to be Morgan le Fey...though she's not technicially a witch, she DID boil a cat, so I figure its six and one half dozen.

Can Morgause boil a cat in the graphic novel?
*uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuugh*

[ewein2412]

are you asking me to draw morgause boiling a cat?

actually,that WAS Morgause who boiled the cat, as I recall. She was bored.

[marguerlucy.livejournal.com]

i think she did it in The Once and Future King as part of the spell to make Arthur oblivious. If I remember correctly, I haven't read that in about 10 years and i had to read it for summer reading, which makes even the most enjoyable books a little more laborious.

[ewein2412]

oh great. I just opened my copy to check (being SURE she did it cause she was bored... and I am right, it's in the first chapter, if you care)--but I opened the book randomly to a page that tells EXACTLY the particular story I am repeating (and which version I thot I made up) in the book I'm writing now, only in White's version it happens to Lancelot

Ursula LeGuin says, "Go on, make up your own damn myth, it'll turn out to be one of the old ones anyway."

The thing is, I can never tell if I am remembering this stuff in my subconscious, or if I really am making it up

[ewein2412]

all of which just goes to show that what I really do best is write Once & Future King fanfic.

[marguerlucy.livejournal.com]

LOL.
Really really GOOD fanfic?

[ewein2412]

I meant The Winter Prince!

[tiboribi.livejournal.com]

Once and Future King that has gotten itself all mixed up with the Mabinogian and TS Elliot.

[ewein2412]

I write Waste Land fanfic too!

[tiboribi.livejournal.com]

I thought she started to do it to see which bone would make you invisible and got bored halfway through.

[ewein2412]

you're not wrong, but she was idle to begin with--she does it "to amuse herself, or at any rate to pass the time while the men were away at war"

[tiboribi.livejournal.com]

Oh, good. It's been ages since I read The Once and Future King. I have this very odd relationship with it. There will always be something that will make me say "Oh! I should read The Once and Future King! (At one point, it was my commencement address. Maybe now it will be these livejournal comments.) "I will pick it up, devour a book, think it is wonderful and amazing, and then stop, suddenly, about two chapters into the next book. I have been about two chapters into "A Candle in the Wind" for like three years now.

[ewein2412]

I read it about a million times in my teens, but I've mostly forgotten it now--along with lots of salient facts that I thought I'd NEVER forget, like the color of Mordred's hair

[tiboribi.livejournal.com]

I usually have no patience for Lancelot and Guenevere, but I really liked them in it. It's possible that my most recent distraction is because while I was reading it and made some comment about that, someone foisted the Fionavar Tapestry into my lap.

[marguerlucy.livejournal.com]

huh... its obvious that its been too long since I picked it up, as I seem to have melded "morgause" and "morgan le fey" into one person.

*goes off to wiki* oops hee hee.

I have a similar relationship to Gone With The Wind. I think I've stopped at her marriage to that first husband (for no good reason) every time i've tried to read it. Like 150 pages in. I'll never finish it lol.

[marguerlucy.livejournal.com]

ah so wait, is it Morgause or Morgen who boils the cat? or is she the same person in "Once"? ok i should just look it up when i get home, but god help me you lovely people have helped while away so many lovely minutes at work!

[ewein2412]

it's morgause who boils the cat. it's morgan le fay who lives in the castle made of lard. (does that clear things up?)

[marguerlucy.livejournal.com]

HAHA. awesome.

Hmmm. Well now I dont know which one I should be. Probably le Fey. the magical element adds more fun for costumes. Maybe Morgause for next year :-D

[ewein2412]

you could be Elaine.

hahahaha just kidding. Actually, I meant that as a lame Arthurian joke, as Elaine is their somewhat more obscure 3rd sister, but as I typed it I remembered that I have an unpublished novel featuring a character who DOES come to a Halloween party dressed as Elaine. (Only it's her cousin Elaine, but she is a fairly obvious counterpart to that particular Arthurian Elaine, among others)

I have an aunt Elaine (she is my father's sister). She has got Excalibur hanging in her living room. I am not kidding--she owns the sword Richard Burton used as Excalibur in the 1960 Broadway version of Camelot.

[tiboribi.livejournal.com]

Is that Lucy?

[ewein2412]

god, you scare me sometimes.

yes.

[tiboribi.livejournal.com]

Well, Lucy was awesome. I always did want to read the rest of that book.

[marguerlucy.livejournal.com]

Ah! she's not a witch - she's a sociopath!
Which book is it the first chapter of? not "Sword/Stone," I'm assuming, unless she was a kid. LOL of course the best of sociopaths started out torturing small animals as children.

LOL @ the Ursula Leguin stuff (her books are ones I'm always meaning to read). I guess the thing with the old legends though, the fun is finding your version of the story, and the wherefore and why!

what are you working on right now?

[ewein2412]

she's not a witch - she's a sociopath

well, yes, I'd say that's a pretty accurate description of MY take on her, anyway... So, have you read "No Human Hands to Touch" in Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers?

Which book is it the first chapter of?

The Queen of Air and Darkness (book 2 of The Once and Future King)

I am working on a book about Telemakos in Britain (heh)

[marguerlucy.livejournal.com]

OH! yes I did!! i haven't finished Fire yet, though I've started!

"Hands," interestingly enough, definitely captured some sympathy for Morgause despite her obvious f*ed-up-ness ;-) I was also thrilled to read the incident of the hunt that Medraut alludes to in TWP, and it was awesome to think back and figure out what he was covering up for Goewin/Lleu's (or his own) sake about it.

But it wasn't like... too much info - and i dont mean like "WHOA too much information," lol. I mean that I still have questions and assumptions of my own and pieces of their relationship I'd love to learn more about. etc. etc.

although it is interesting that it was in that particular collection of stories ("Sirens"), as it is much more of a personal story and doesnt really have the "magical" elements of the others. how did you get involved in that?

[marguerlucy.livejournal.com]

re: my "not too much info" comment - I mean that favorably (wasn't sure if that was clear, amidst my verbal diarrhea)

[ewein2412]

deliasherman and ellen_kushner are responsible for my appearance in that anthology. They were in London in 1996 and I went to an auction of 19th century children's book illustrations with them and then to lunch, and they said, you should submit a story to this erotic fantasy anthology. And I said, oh but I can't, I'm too much of a prude. And Ellen (I think it was Ellen) said, "I'm sure you have an erotic story in you."

And as it happened, all the backstory to TWP had been there for years and years, but I thot it was Rawther Inspired to let Morgause tell it. And actually, your comment re "not too much info" is well taken, as there was a lot more going on than I could fit into a short story... the whole "Medraut as executioner" episode referred to in the first chapter of TWP, for example

When I first read The Winter Prince, after writing "No Human Hands," I was kind of appalled at how *raw* all this must be for Medraut in the beginning--it starts immediately after he leaves Orkney

I had forgotten

I forget everything

God knows how it was ever published as a children's book.

[marguerlucy.livejournal.com]

yeah it is rather impressive, looking back, at how long medraut manages to hold it together.

when i read it at the ripe age of 12, i wasnt offended. LOL so i think you're OK.

[ewein2412]

I believe tiboribi, who's been joining this conversation from time to time, first read it when she was 10

[tiboribi.livejournal.com]

I think I was 13. Didn't it come out in 93? I must have been 13. I met Madeleine L'Engle with you when I was 14, and it was the year before that.

[tiboribi.livejournal.com]

And also, I didn't get the weird incest stuff with Medraut and Morgause until I was in college. So...My guess is if you're innocent and oblivious, you'll miss it completely.

[ewein2412]

yes, it did come out in 93. you must be right. I was thinking you were one of those 6th graders who came along to the reading I did at the Walnut St library--but they were cathedral school kids, now that I think about it, so you mustn't have been one of them. (were you there on your own?)

[tiboribi.livejournal.com]

There were three of us (plus one staffer) from The Circle School there too. So, no, I wasn't entirely on my own. I had read the book the night before and had pronounced Lleu "Lou" the entire time.

[tiboribi.livejournal.com]

I started readind The Once and Future King again sometime last week, after I located it, and left the other book I was reading in my office. I have decided to read it all the way through without getting distracted by other books (I'll see how well this goes). Anyway, I just finished "The Sword in the Stone" on my lunch break, and and got about as far as Morgause boiling the cat. It was grosser than I remembered. Can yours please not boil any cats?

[ewein2412]

mine just goes around poisoning people and breaking their fingers.

[tiboribi.livejournal.com]

Well, good, just so long as she just poisons people out of boredom, none of this boiling cats business.

[firiel44.livejournal.com]

Since I couldn't make it past the prologue of Eragon, any essay on it would probably be about how they'll publish anything these days. They probably wouldn't be $500-worth of impressed with my resume anyway.

On the flip side, I would totally buy a Winter Prince graphic novel and shove it at all my friends and order them to love and adore it. (This can actually work. miladygrey commanded me to like Doctor Who and I was sucked in by the wormhole in the opening titles.) Come on, all the cool kids are doing it!

[ewein2412]

well, I should admit that *I* haven't volunteered to write about Eragon. But I do know that many of the same cool kids in Sara's class who are rabid Dr. Who fans are also rabid Eragon fans.

They are also rabid manga readers, and you can thank ME for this. Sara operates a little "Manga Library" and loans out manga by the kilo. (She has printed herself a business card with the title "Manga Librarian.") Her entire class now reads manga, but they are the only class in the school that do. There are a few kids in her little brother's class that read it as a sort of trickle-down effect.

[tiboribi.livejournal.com]

I haven't read Eragon. Is it as bad as I assume?

[ewein2412]

don't know--haven't read it. Couldn't risk reading it and hating it and then being forced to write about it, so didn't volunteer!

[firiel44.livejournal.com]

How cute! Of course, as a librarian, I have to heartily approve.

I can't speak for what draws kids to Eragon. It felt like a bad LOTR fanfic to me (all 6 or so pages anyway). I may get brave and watch the movie at some point.

[ewein2412]

I am convinced that younger brains have a much greater capacity for fluff than atrophied brains like mine. My re-read of Prince Caspian is convincing me that 1) I would not have read any of the Narnia books if I'd first picked them up at 40 rather than at 15 (and I did love CS Lewis at 15), and 2) that I would have LOOOOVED Harry Potter if I'd read it at age 11. I've always suspected this, but Caspian is convincing me of it. It feels utterly DERIVATIVE of Rowling, when of course it is the other way round! It must feel the same to kids who come to reading thru Rowling and then move on to Lewis... "What a copycat this man is. And his books aren't as long."

[tiboribi.livejournal.com]

I suspect younger brains just have less to compare the fluff to, so they latch onto the good ideas within.

[ewein2412]

well, in my experience younger people read a LOT more than I do, and faster. But if there's no style, no unique narrative voice, I just can't read it. I can no longer reader for plot alone. that's what I mean by fluff. Tons of people (and I suppose young and old alike... I mean it is a flaw in ME) seem to be able to eat up hundreds of pages of style-less plot in minutes, and I just can't do it any more. Not badly written, just not uniquely written, not artfully written. I used to be able to read it, and now it bores me. I need more than plot and character to keep me going.

sad, but true.

[tiboribi.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's something you instilled in me, then. I can turn it off long enough to read Rowling.

[ewein2412]

lots of people can!

I didn't mean to damage you.

[tiboribi.livejournal.com]

No, I really like that I notice people's writing styles. My friends who don't notice bad writing styles also rarely notice good writing styles, and I would much rather notice when prose is beautiful than not notice when it's bad.