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Powell's Interview: Colson Whitehead, Author of 'The Nickel Boys'
by Rhianna Walton, July 11, 2019 9:23 AM
A new book from MacArthur Genius and award-winning author Colson Whitehead guarantees three things: a beautiful, snappy, and surprising prose style; a full-hearted commitment to the author's subject, whether that be poker, the Deep South, or teen angst; and a reading experience cocooned in Whitehead's seemingly limitless imagination and intelligence. The Nickel Boys, Whitehead's new novel about a boys' reform school in Jim Crow Florida, offers all this and a heartbreaking, galvanizing reckoning with the consequences and reverberations of slavery. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly writes, "Inspired by horrific events that transpired at the real-life Dozier School for Boys, Whitehead's brilliant examination of America's history of violence is a stunning novel of impeccable language and startling insight." We couldn't agree more, and were thrilled by the opportunity to speak with Whitehead about his approach to writing and the joys and challenges of creating The Nickel Boys. We're equally thrilled to present The Nickel Boys as Volume 81 of Indiespensable.
Rhianna Walton: The Nickel Boys feels structurally different from many of your previous books — the plot is firmly rooted in the real, and the prose structure is simpler. How do you determine the style of your books — is it an organic development, or do you sit down with a formal structure in mind?
Colson Whitehead: I've written realistic novels before, like Sag Harbor, Apex Hides the Hurt, and John Henry Days; of course, I've written books that have some level of fantasy in them too. You pick the right tool for the job. That's also in terms of sentences and tone.
I ask myself: Is the outlook of this book comic? Is it tragic? Is the story best served by a first person narrator who's telling his or her story? Is it best served by an omniscient narrator who can stand above and make connections about the characters and society and politics?
Part of figuring out how to tell the story is tone and voice, the same way I'm picking characters and places.
Rhianna: Do you outline your books?
Whitehead: I do. I would say it's like 60 percent outlined. I know the beginning and the end. Definitely with the last couple of books, I've been writing towards that last page, knowing what it is before I start writing. The middle can be fuzzy.
Definitely, I've learned that it's better to be open to where the book takes you. Characters become more or less important. I don't have to solve all the problems, such as where does Elwood live when he comes to New York or what his wife is like, is he married. I have to know what's happening on the last page. I have to know the main characters and most of what's going to happen.
Indiespensable Volume 81
We're thrilled to present The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead as our selection for Volume 81 of Indiespensable. Powell's subscription club delivers the best new books, with special attention to independent publishers.
Rhianna: Sometimes when I speak to authors, they mention this almost magical thing that happens where their characters take over the narrative. Is that something that happens for you — do your characters ever begin to determine the trajectory of the novel?
Whitehead: They don't take over, but there are definitely days. They're the really good days. When you, say, have to describe the schoolhouse and then in writing the schoolhouse section somebody does something that you didn't know was going to happen when you got up that morning.
In getting them to the page, they may do something at 2 p.m. that you hadn't determined when you started working at 10 a.m. Through a different kind of sentence or different way of sketching a scene, you've found a different way of telling a story in a way you wouldn't have five or ten years before.
For me, that's the real magical thing that happens: you're always changing. The book, in coming together, is not always what you think it will be when you sit down to write that morning.
Rhianna: You've mentioned in other interviews being an avid reader of horror, and your novel Zone One is a zombie horror story. You're very skilled at depicting violence. I was wondering if the horror genre has stylistically influenced the way that you depict historical atrocities, like those in The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys.
Whitehead: Again, I think the story determines how you tell it. The violence in Zone One is gorier. It's more flamboyant than some of the stuff in The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys. In those two books, I think the horrific brutality that they experience speaks for itself. They don't have to be dramatized.
This kind of language, I borrowed from reading the slave narratives. You don't have to dramatize or sell to the listener or the reader how terrible everything is that is happening because it speaks for itself. If the violence is speaking for itself, I can concentrate more on the characters and what they're feeling.
Rhianna: Several of your books incorporate themes of race to varying degrees, but both The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys suggest a more direct engagement with the politics of race, especially how the legacies of slavery and Jim Crow inform the present. In your advance letter to booksellers about The Nickel Boys you write in reference to Dozier, Eric Gardner, and Ferguson: "No one it seems was being called to account." Did it feel like an artistic choice to write The Underground Railroad and now The Nickel Boys, or more like a moral imperative?
Whitehead: I didn't feel an imperative with Underground Railroad except to get the story of slavery right, as opposed to how it's depicted in Gone With the Wind or something like that. With Nickel Boys I did feel... do I want to say a moral imperative? Sure.
My compulsion to write the story was from seeing so many people go unpunished, and so many innocents' stories being untold. I felt there was a need for a version of the Dozier School story to get out. I did feel a compulsion to get the story down in this case.
If you don't have that hope, what's the point of going on?
Rhianna: Do the issues of race and racism ever feel to you like narrative burdens that black authors are expected to bear regardless of their literary interests?
Whitehead: I've never felt that, but I think it was definitely true for, say, Richard Wright or Ralph Ellison, where I think the media could anoint one writer every 10 years, with each person being replaced by the next — James Baldwin or whoever.
My first book was about elevator inspectors. It wasn't about some conventional idea of what black experience is. I've written books that have nothing to do with race such as my book about poker or my book about New York.
Sag Harbor is about black teenagers, but it's really about teenagers; it's sort of incidental that they're African American. It's really about identity formation and being a teenager. Race enters very minimally into Zone One.
It may be that the media or the critical apparatus expect black writers to write in a certain way about certain subjects. I never felt I had to, and why would you follow someone else's idea of what you're supposed to write?
Rhianna: Civil rights leaders and direct action campaigns, especially the speeches of Martin Luther King Jr., are central to The Nickel Boys' protagonist Elwood's coming of age, both to his perspective of the world and his actions within it. What kind of research did you do into the civil rights movement and life in the Jim Crow South to prepare for writing The Nickel Boys?
Whitehead: I knew a lot about Jim Crow just from over the years. I reacquainted myself with some of the more ridiculous, arcane laws like those about bumptious contact. Apart from all the illegal ways that Jim Crow worked, the laws restricted black life to the most ridiculous extremes. It's not just colored water fountains, it's actually who gets to move first on a sidewalk. In terms of this book, it was figuring out what aspects of Jim Crow laws would work for Florida and for Elwood's story.
Even before I went back to my Martin Luther King and James Baldwin, I knew that Elwood would be a young kid who was very much influenced by them, and that they would be part of how I wanted him to see the world.
Then, I had to find the right Martin Luther King speech for each situation — which record, which LP would he own for him to listen to in 1963 — so it was more about timing and fact checking which things I already knew about would work for Elwood in the story.
Rhianna: Is the research process something you enjoy?
Whitehead: I find research usually enjoyable, because it's serving something that I'm engaged in and entranced by. It always makes the work better.
In terms of Martin Luther King, I hadn't read his speeches or listened to his voice for a long time. Going back and reacquainting myself with the mystery of how he came to be, and the magic of what he was engaged in, was enjoyable.
Rhianna: After finishing The Nickel Boys, I decided to check out the White House Boys website, which is where Dozier survivors post testimonials. I was struck by the total absence of African Americans on the men's stories page; at the very least, there are no photos of black students. Were you able to find black survivor narratives, or did you had to imagine them all into being?
Whitehead: Part of it was imagining them into being. There are families or relatives who have been quoted in various newspaper reports, like "My uncle was there in the '50s, we're looking for his body" or "his body's been identified." I think the White House Boys website is 95 percent white students.
Yes, I was struck by the absence of black voices. It was a predominantly black campus and most people they interviewed were not black. That was part of the impetus to write the book, imaging myself into their stories and imagining what black students went through.
The week before I finished the book, I wanted to see if anything else had come out about Dozier, and there was a black survivor who wrote a memoir. I haven't read it, but in between hearing about it and now, some more black students have come forward.
Rhianna: You've mentioned in past interviews the idea that, across your novels, your characters are motivated by the "impossible hope" of finding refuge from brutality. One of the persistent tensions in The Nickel Boys is between MLK's, and by extension Elwood's, insistence on retaining a sense of personal significance and a moral code and many of the other characters' equation of those qualities with having no common sense. Is the novel positing that there's an element of impossible hope in MLK's beliefs, and in Elwood's clinging to them?
Whitehead: I think, certainly. That "hope" was in reference to The Underground Railroad and Zone One, two novels that are built around finding a place of refuge. But, yes, in some ways it's impossible to hope that the kind of civil rights advances that Martin Luther King was fighting for, and that Elwood wanted to fight for, are achievable, or possible, or long lived.
On the other hand, if you don't have that hope, what's the point of going on? I think that tension is in all those novels.
Rhianna: That tension is so striking in this book, especially when you introduce the character of Turner, who takes a much more cynical view of civil rights and humanity in general. Is it okay to ask — are you more in agreement with Elwood or Turner?
Whitehead: I would say they're both aspects of my personality, definitely. Although, hearing Elwood speak and Turner speak, Turner seems more convincing on first listen, to me personally.
Why would you follow someone else's idea of what you're supposed to write?
Rhianna: He felt more convincing to me too, as did Elwood when he reflects, "But to love those who would have destroyed them? To make that leap....What a thing to ask. What an impossible thing." Because how could you get there?
Without giving anything away, the end seems to suggest that survival is predicated on both internalizing that "impossible hope" and maintaining a cynical world view.
Whitehead: Certainly, yes. A lot of people would argue that a sane person integrates the chaos of the world and also some idea of order. The ending is open to the reader's interpretation, but I think most people I know who seem to get through the world in a semi-functioning state have both the optimistic and pessimistic aspects of their personality integrated.
Whether that's the right way or not, I have no idea.
Rhianna: Towards the end of the book, there's a chilling passage about inherited brutality. It reads, in part: "Their daddies taught them how to keep a slave in line, passed down this brutal heirloom....The state outlawed dark cells and sweat boxes in juvenile facilities after World War II. It was a time of high minded reform all over, even at Nickel. But the rooms waited, blank and still and airless....They wait still, as long as the sons — and the sons of those sons — remember."
It's just one of several places in the text — the secret graveyard, the Richmond Hotel, New York City — to raise the ideas of erasure and memory. It reminded me a little bit of Walter Benjamin's angel of history. We keep moving into the future, often blindly, either consciously erasing the past or thinking we've resolved problems that still exist and so ignoring them.
I know it's an everyday occurrence for minorities in the U.S., but it's also like something out of a horror film, to be trapped by historical evils that a lot of people claim not to see or believe have been resolved. Was that on your mind at all as you were writing?
Whitehead: I haven't read Benjamin, but as a human being, I am thinking of the injustices that we're blind to and our self-delusions, our ideas of ourselves versus how we actually are.
In terms of the inherited hatreds that some people embrace or reject, we're disposed to hatred. We're disposed to demonize or otherize people of different religions, skin colors, sexualities, genders.
We find it very easy to make villains of other people, which doesn't mean that we can't work against that. It doesn't mean that your nature or your environment can't counteract that, but we do easily fall to cruelty. It takes a lot of energy to fight against that, particularly a lot of social reinforcement.
Rhianna: Do you find that history makes an especially effective literary tool for examining the present?
Whitehead: It's one of many. Writing a contemporary novel provides some material and a different way of thinking about society and how we are. History, with the distance that we have, provides a different way of accessing who we are as a country, as a people, as individuals.
I don't think history has a corner on the market. You can find inspiration for all the things I'm talking about in The Nickel Boys in contemporary life as well.
Rhianna: As an adult, Elwood makes his home in Manhattan. In your nonfiction book about the city, The Colossus of New York, you write, "No matter how long you have been here, you are a New Yorker the first time you say, That used to be Munsey's, or That used to be the Tick Tock Lounge...when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now."
Is it that quality, being a place where the erased evades invisibility, that made you choose New York as Elwood's refuge?
Whitehead: No. The quality in that section from Colossus applies to anywhere we live. For me, that book is about New York, but it's also about any place you love, where you're seeing your elementary school even though it's been razed, or the place where a movie theater or your barber shop used to be.
All those places still persist because you're still here to record them and superimpose them. For me, that's more of a universal feeling, not necessarily just tied to New York. In terms of Elwood coming to the city, that is because I'm a New Yorker. It made sense. I wanted to write about New York in the '60s, '70s, and '80s.
I've learned that it's better to be open to where the book takes you.
Rhianna: I was really struck by the Christmas lights spectacle at Nickel and the comparison Turner makes to Funtown, which is a location that's mentioned repeatedly throughout the novel. It's a really complicated moment that packs a lot of meaning into a short narrative space.
Whitehead: It does, yes.
Whitehead: I was just thinking about it when you started talking about it. Yes, that was a hard section.
Rhianna: It's an incredible section. Was the festival drawn from your research? How did you decide to include it?
Whitehead: There was an annual Christmas pageant. When I was trying to organize the book, I asked myself, what arenas do I want to pick for Elwood and Turner, and that one made sense. There are pictures of it online I could draw from. Then there was the question of what kind of story could I get out of the two weeks they're making the displays.
I thought: Martin Luther King has a Funtown speech. Let's have Elwood be attached to it. Then it's part of the book. [I'm always thinking about] how I can use different things I've introduced later on in the novel. It's not necessarily conscious, but as I was writing I was thinking about how I could bring Turner into Elwood's Florida and Georgia, and how I could contrast them. When you're working on something and introducing different variables, eventually when you think about them a lot, they come in and influence each other and converge, hopefully successfully, as I hope they do in that section.
Rhianna: They absolutely do.
You write beautifully evocative and surprising sentences. For example, when Turner reflects on how ice cream is often used to assuage adults' guilt and appease children, the narrator remarks, "Had the flavor of that fact in his mouth when he ran away from his aunt's house that last time." Another phrase I particularly loved, about institutional neglect: "the pitiless constellation of negligence." What's your writing process like? Do you spend a lot of time crafting each sentence?
Whitehead: Sure. They don't come out in the way I want them to be. I do a lot of revising. I go forward and back and forward and back. I'm constantly going over what I worked on six months ago, or three months ago, or a week ago, or this morning.
If something new emerges, like the narrative changes or I realize something about Turner or Elwood, I don't just keep going. I go back to page one so I can see that through and make sure it's all working. Some sentences come out fairly easily. Some, it's nine months before you realize you have that extra comma or you've inverted the clauses.
Rhianna: One of the narrative strategies you employ is to shift perspective somewhat suddenly between characters or voices in the text. The novel mostly moves between Elwood and Turner, but it occasionally introduces other characters. How do these fluid transitions in perspective play into your approach to world building?
Whitehead: I set up a rule for the narrator. It's going to be mostly Elwood and Turner. Then I ask: Do those sections where the perspective changes earn their shifts and their space on the page? It's funny. I'm working on something now. I gave it to my editor. I wrote the first 100 pages. I was trying out something like that. It didn't work, giving a paragraph to somebody or half a paragraph to somebody.
You're always calibrating your effects. It serves The Nickel Boys. It doesn't necessarily work in a different kind of book. In the case of The Nickel Boys, I had 95 percent. I guess I allowed myself to break the rule five percent of the time if it served the story.
Rhianna: I loved it. It expanded the world of the novel.
Whitehead: In The Underground Railroad, there are what I call the biographical chapters. Those are short, from Caesar's point of view or the mother's, and they open up the world to places where Cora can't go. They serve the book in that instance, but they don't always work.
Rhianna: A coworker who read The Nickel Boys said that one of the things she really loved about it was feeling like you were holding her hand throughout the narrative, bringing her with you to bear active witness to what happens to the characters. Do you envision or anticipate the reader's experience as you write?
Whitehead: It's always filtered through: Is this paragraph working? Is the rhythm right? Is that one sentence shift to the woman watching Clayton through the window working? It's more about: Are my choices serving the work? Am I going too fast or too slow? I don't think of an audience personality, really. It's more like an invisible nudge pushing me in a certain direction or asking me if a sentence or a paragraph works.
Rhianna: It seems like it would be emotionally exhausting to write story like The Nickel Boys, and then to tour with it. How do you decompress after writing a book like this?
Whitehead: Writing The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys back-to-back was definitely draining, and for the last two months of working on Nickel Boys, I was very depressed. I had set out a course for the two boys and had to follow through with it. Of course, as I followed through page by page, it was left abstract. I left it abstract and it came into being. That was depressing. After a day of working on it, I couldn't read anything more about it.
What I did do, when I completed the novel, is play video games for six weeks. XCOM 2 on my Mac. I just played that for six weeks. I totally stared off into space, cooked, and didn't do any work, and it was very helpful.
I spoke with Colson Whitehead on June 6, 2019.
÷ ÷ ÷
Colson Whitehead is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Underground Railroad, which in 2016 won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction and the National Book Award and was named one of the Ten Best Books of the Year by The New York Times Book Review, as well as The Noble Hustle, Zone One, Sag Harbor, The Intuitionist, John Henry Days, Apex Hides the Hurt, and The Colossus of New York. He is also a Pulitzer Prize finalist and a recipient of the MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowships. He lives in New York City.
Books mentioned in this post
Colossus Of New York
Intuitionist
Apex Hides the Hurt
John Henry Days
Colson Whithead
The Underground Railroad: A Novel
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Moe: "I think you see, here today, quite simply, they've had enough"
Premier Scott Moe reacts to Regina rally just outside of his office
Brian Zinchuk Jan 29, 2019 10:36 AM
1 / 1 Pipeline News' front page photo for February edition: It was frigid on the steps of the Legislature, but that didn't stop Premier Scott Moe from giving a fiery speech to the protesters in support the resource sector.Brian Zinchuk
Regina– Premier Scott Moe generally doesn't attend protests in front of the Legislature, but he was front and centre on Jan. 6, speaking at the Regina rally for resources.
Immediately after the demonstration, Pipeline Newsspoke to Moe about the upsurge in activism in the oilpatch, something that was all but non-existent for the past decade, even up until last fall.
Asked what is going on with these energy sector protests, he replied, "I think you are seeing the frustration of an industry that is a sustainable industry. It's an industry that produces wealth and jobs for us, here, in this province and in Western Canada. It's an industry that is responsible, in many ways, for the high quality of life we have across the nation of Canada. You see that industry under siege from our federal government.
"We have the carbon tax that they're attempting to introduce on our wealth-producing industries, here in Saskatchewan, our job-producing industries here in Saskatchewan, like agriculture, mining, manufacturing, and most notably, energy. You then see, piling on top of that, ill-informed, ineffective policy, which we'll be fighting in the courts in just over a month – Bill C-69, the no-more-pipelines bill being introduced which will essentially stop all pipeline construction across the nation.
"Just the conversation around Bill C-69 caused the proponent for Energy East to leave that project. We see TMX (Trans Mountain Expansion Pipeline) in a stranglehold due to that bill making its way through the federal parliamentary system. We see the tanker bill being introduced which killed (Northern Gateway). We see it causing great consternation in the case of the Eagle Spirit Pipeline.
"We see a drilling ban in the northern parts of Canada that shuttered the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline. You see all of these regulatory policies that are being stacked on one another, essentially shutting down these industries that have been so important to the Canadian way of life, families' way of life, across the nation. I think you see, here today, quite simply, they've had enough, and they're starting to voice that."
Estevan is ground zero
With regards to the rapidity and the scale of the Estevan truck convoy, which was organized and took place in less than 48 hours, he said, "I don't know if I would expect it, but if I did expect it, I would expect it out of Estevan.
"When you look at Estevan, Estevan is ground zero for the siege that is being experienced by the federal government. Not only by the policies in the energy industry, and the lack of pipeline infrastructure that we have, ore are going to have the ability to have, if the federal government gets their way through the no-more-pipelines bill, through the carbon tax, through methane regulations, but also through the initiative of the federal government to phase out coal. Nowhere is that felt more than in the communities of Estevan and Coronach.
"Am I surprised or have I see this before? No I haven't. Am I surprised to see it come together so quickly and so forcefully in a community like Estevan? I think, if it could happen anywhere, it could happen there, because it is very indicative of the damage the federal government is exerting on all Canadians is most evident in a community like Estevan," he said.
Coal equivalency agreement
Moe expressed frustration with the federal government, which had been dragging its heels for many years on a on fleetwide equivalency agreement on carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power generation. Three days later, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, while in Regina, announced to the public that an equivalency agreement had been reached with the province.
That agreement had been printed in the Dec. 29, 2018, Canada Gazette. The agreement is now in a 60-day consultation period.
Moe noted that Saskatchewan has always operated on the plan we would have an equivalency agreement. This is to ensure not only that Saskatchewan is paying attention, but, "that we're doing right by the environment," he explained. "We're paying attention to our emissions as a whole as opposed to segments of emissions.
"We want to do better by the next generation. I think everyone wants to partake in that conversation. In order to do that, you need to pay attention to the global picture. For us, in Saskatchewan, that's our whole emissions portfolio, as opposed to just (Boundary Dam Units) 4 and 5."
Regarding the defunct Energy East Pipeline, asked if it could happen with a new government in Ottawa, within one mandate, Moe said, "I think it should, and could happen, anyway. It needs to happen, anyway. It needs to happen. Bill C-69 needs to be scrapped, right? Let's get that straight. Let me put that out there, out of the gate. The fact of the matter is Energy East is an important piece of infrastructure, nation-building infrastructure, in Canada. And we need to look at it. We need to look at it together, as provinces and the federal government and the industries that build this type of infrastructure, because of its important in Western Canadian supply to Canadians in Quebec and Ontario and Eastern Canada. That's point one, we need to do it for our own energy independence.
"Point two is that we have a very sustainable product here in Western Canada, and it's a product that we should be proud of, and we should talk about it. We should talk about it with other nations. So not only can we displace that dirtier energy product that's coming in from other areas of the world for the energy we use in our nation, but we can launch some of our sustainable Canadian energy product to other nations. Not only are we competitive, we're sustainable. We can displace some of those barrels of oil in other areas of the world.
"This is good for our economy, it's good for Canadians and good for the environment," Moe said.
The Energy East Pipeline, with the associated Cromer Lateral, would have allowed up to a quarter million barrels of oil from southeast Saskatchewan to displace foreign oil in Central and Eastern Canada. With regards to that, Moe said, "I'm going to be engaging, as the leader of this province, along with some premiers from some other provinces, not only with individuals and the leader of Quebec, as we move forward, but all of our leaders across the nation, because this is an important piece of infrastructure."
He said that's not only for Saskatchewan's opportunities, and from a carbon perspective, but also in New Brunswick, where it would terminate in a refinery.
He noted that New Brunswick's previous premier, and its current one, Premier Blaine Higgs, are both advocates of the pipeline, to put New Brunswickers to work and to ensure we're creating wealth, not only in Saskatchewan and New Brunswick, but all along the line.
"From Saskatchewan's perspective, when we have the opportunity for additional markets, and that's essentially what this is, an additional market in addition to the U.S, that's good. It's good for Saskatchewan energy producers. It gives us the opportunity to expand our sustainable production, but to ensure we can close that oil differential that we've been expanding across Saskatchewan," Moe said.
Dr. Mehdi Horri's licence remains suspended
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Classes set for February at Weyburn's CU Spark Centre
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CRUMBLE CATERING Reflects on the Elton John AIDS Foundation Oscar Party
By Leigh Beecham
West Hollywood Park in West Hollywood, was the scene for this year's Elton John AIDS Foundation Academy Awards viewing party, and Crumble Catering, once again, kicked it into high gear, preparing more than 1,000 five-course meals in a massive undertaking seamlessly executed by some of the top chefs in the industry. As the official caterer for the annual event for the past 15 years, Crumble is tasked with serving and pleasing the palates of Hollywood's biggest A-listers.
This year, thanks to BBVA Compass, Crumble's chef and co-founder Wayne Elias teamed up with Chef Joan Roca of El Celler de Can Roca, a Michelin three-starred restaurant located in the medieval city of Girona in Catalunya in Northern Spain.
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I know it isn't Tuesday, but hear me out: Tuesday got reserved for our book club post so I took Monday instead.
On that note, if you've read The Martian, by Andy Weir, join us tomorrow for our book club discussion!
Your character has favorite things, just like real people do. You may think it isn't important whether your character prefers chocolate to caramel, or red to blue, but those things inform who we are as people and can add depth to a character. So this Museday, make a list of some of your characters' favorite things, and think of ways to incorporate them into your novel. Bonus points if they actually affect the plot!
And even though it's not Tuesday, I'm still offering a critique to go along with this post. Let me know in the comments if you'd like fresh eyes on your query or Twitter pitch (both #PitMad and #DVPit are coming up!). I'll randomly select people for critiques, so include your Twitter handle or e-mail address so I can contact you if you are selected for a critique!
My July 2015 blog tour ran for two weeks and had eight stops.
My October 14, 2015 cover reveal ran for one day and had fourteen participants.
So far, we've talked about planning your tour, how and where to find potential bloggers, how to keep organized as you recruit, and how to successfully kick off the tour. And now your tour is underway. What do you do?
Share your bloggers' posts throughout the week and beyond. They're sharing their social media sphere of influence, and you're sharing yours. Re-tweet them, say thank you on Twitter (or FaceBook or whatever--sorry, my Twitter bias is showing), and generally give the impression that, golly gee, you're grateful for their time and energy. Which you should be, by the way, but if you're not, that's between you and your deity of choice.
In addition, as I linked to above, make a page on your website that showcases all your posts. People might someday stumble onto your website with a burning curiosity about you and what you have to say, and voila! There's a place where they can read some of the stuff you spent blood, sweat, and tears on!
Did you do a giveaway? Don't forget to send off the loot when the window closes. Rafflecopter reminds you and does the pick automatically, so it's super easy.
I also suggest poking holes in the boxes if you want the pet lemurs to survive the trip.
When your tour draws to a close, I suggest a thank you email to everyone who participated. Yes, in addition to the social media thanks. People like to know they're appreciated. I mean, don't send a crazy, "YOU HAVE MY UNDYING LOVE AND DEVOTION" email every day for the next year, but a final wrap-up won't go amiss.
And now's the time to spring that request I sprung on you at the beginning of my blog series: the newsletter.
I have three newsletters. One for fans, one for bloggers, and one for book reviewers. Since the second and third are many times one and the same type of person, I debated whether or not to merge them into one list. However, I've found that while there is cross-over in the subscribers, it's not 100%. So I keep them separate.
Thanks for being a part of my blog tour!
If you enjoyed working with me and want to be notified in the future when I'm booking another tour, cover reveal, or blitz, please sign up for my book blogger list (on the left side of the page). If you're a reviewer and want to be notified of when new ARCs are available, please sign up for my book reviewer list (on the right side of the same page).
And people do it. And they've participate in more than one of my events. It also takes the pressure off the spreadsheet I had you create a couple days ago as being the landing zone for future participants. It takes the awkwardness out of it, too. If they don't want to participate, they can hit the "unsubscribe" button without having to email you and demand to know why you're sending them emails.
Thank you so much for sticking with me to the end of this series. I certainly hope that you learned something you can apply. If you have questions, post 'em below or find me and the rest of the Operation Awesome gang on Twitter.
So far, we've talked about planning your tour, how and where to find potential bloggers, and how to keep organized as you recruit. And now the time is approaching for the tour to commence.
"Well in advance" means something different to everyone. I can't say that I'm the Patron Saint of Never Sending a Last Minute Blog Post, but my advice is to try sending everything at least a week ahead of when your posts are going live. If you wait too long, people start wondering, "Is she going to send it to me? Is she flaking out? What's going on? Do I need to email her? Did she forget? Did I get the date wrong?" And then they're at the aforementioned Step #1 themselves, and that you don't want.
Everyone is different. Maybe one of your bloggers always schedules their posts every Tuesday night. Getting it to them a week ahead of time lets them fit it into their life as they prefer.
Side note: It's perfectly acceptable to email people to tell them you're running behind. Better is giving them the date ("I'll have this to you by Sunday, April 3, in time for you to schedule it for the Tuesday, April 12 book blitz") and then sticking to it. But things happen.
This little tidbit was pointed out by one of the bloggers that participated in my July 2015 tour, Brian Basham. He said that one of the reasons he enjoyed working with me was because I made it super easy to participate.
In the weeks leading up to the tour, you've been writing and revising your posts. Once that's done, you package everything up to makes it the simplest possible experience for bloggers to get your posts on their blog. You've already created a lovely format and hyperlinked your links. You hit the "send" button, and out goes your posts.
Blogger pastes your content a new post.
Blogger schedules your post and presses "publish."
That's it. That is our end goal. That's what's going to win you friends and influence people.
I provide both because sometimes the first goes wonky and/or because some people really do like to tweak the HTML themselves (myself included). If you're an HTML tweaker yourself, so much the better, because then you really have ultimate control over what everything looks like. MWAHAHAHA, ULTIMATE CONTROL.
So make everything self-contained. Open -> Copy -> Paste -> Publish.
You can add all sorts of bonuses to your email. Pre-written 140-character tweets, several different graphic sizes, whatever else you can think of.
And speaking of graphics, yes. People like looking at aesthetically pleasing things. So use Pixabay. Unsplash, morguefile, or whatever other free graphic sites you like to find images, and then use Canva to create something attractive.
Send those with the post.
Tweet them out on social media.
Admire your awesome blog tour organizational skills.
Pop quiz: Why are you scheduling a blog tour?
Because I love writing blog posts. I can't get enough of writing blog posts. OMG, MOAR BLOG POST WRITING, PLEEZ.
Because some jerkface told me I had to do a stupid tour if I'm gonna be an author, or some crap like that.
Because I want to sell books.
The answer is, obviously, d) None of the above; Cthluhu thinks bloggers taste terrible, so I'm hoping to be spared when he rises from the deep.
OK, but on a serious note, take a gander at the end of these posts. You want something like that. A quick little bio and all your links jam-packed in a tiny, little space. Think I went overboard? Fine, then only include your Twitter handle or your webpage or your blog. Whatever. I'm not telling you how to do it. I mean, what do you think this is? A how-to guide or something?
This is beyond the scope of this blog series, but I also want to mention one of the most important things about peddling your wares (whether to potential book buyers or potential book blog tour participants): make yourself presentable. Have a professional quality cover image, an author head shot that looks like it was taken by a real photographer and not your cell phone, a book that's been edited, an author webpage that someone with an eye for graphic design helped you create, a purposefully crafted bio that makes you sound like an interesting person, and an awesome book blurb.
If you're not sure how to start polishing your image, spend a lazy Sunday afternoon reading the blog posts over at Rachel Thompson's blog. She knows a thing or two or fourteen about branding.
Got any questions? Post them below, and then come back tomorrow to hear about flawlessly executing and wrapping up your tour!
So far, we've talked about planning your tour, plus how and where to find potential bloggers. Now that you're all ready to go, it's time to prepare.
I'm an organization freak. I'm a planner, a rearranger, a planner of rearranging. When I was ten years old, I made my bookshelves into a "library," complete with Dewey Decimal System note cards and card holders at the front of all my books. I never got the date stamp I wanted, but that was ok since my brother didn't really give a rip about playing library.
So let me help you help yourself, by organizing your life... at least in regards to your book tour.
You've got your pre-written email and the book blogger lists. Now's the time for combing through the lists.
Open up your first potential blog. Now's the time to decide if it's worth emailing your shiny, new introduction email to its owner. Here's the checklist I use to decide.
Has this person posted in the past month? Sometimes I'll find a blog that looks like a perfect fit, but rats, May 2013 is the last time they posted! Don't spend your precious time on that. You have better things to do.
Does this person accept my genre? The "About Me" pages are nebulous things. If a blogger doesn't specify what genres they accept, look through some of their posts. You'll see immediately what they like to read. If they aren't interested in your genre, move along.
Is this person accepting guest bloggers or review requests (if that's something you're looking for)? Again, this may take some sleuthing. Do you see book blitz posts? Are they doing reviews of non-best-sellers?
Have they provided contact information? This is more annoying to find than you might imagine. Despite the oft-repeated advice, "PUT YOUR CONTACT INFO ON YOUR WEBSITE" (you've done it, right?), people don't.
I'm going to be honest here: You'll feel like you're wasting a lot of time as you sort through blogs, especially if you're as fanatical about me as the details. Like, what are these people thinking? Where is the simple information a poor author like me needs? Don't any of you want books to read or content creators for your blog? COME. ON.
The most frustrating thing is knowing what to do first. If I spend time hunting around for someone's email address, but then I discover they're closed for requests, I've wasted time. If I make sure they're a great fit for my genre and style of book, but then discover their email address is missing, I've wasted time.
But it's still time well spent. I refer you back to the statistics I posted on Monday. If you're emailing a dead blog, it's guaranteed you're not getting a response. Or a no six months after you've released your fifteenth book. Or if, miracle of miracles, they say yes, but then they forget and don't post your guest post or do a review of your book because, after all, they let their blog go dead for a year without bothering to tell anyone about it.
However, don't get discouraged. Their "About Me" page might simply say, "I love books and cats!" and that's all. But they might still end up responding to you. Don't rule people out just because they aren't exactly clear on what they want or how you can get in contact with them. But do rule them out if they say, "Please don't email me about [whatever genre/thing you're peddling]." That's just common sense, right?
And here is where I extol the virtues of spreadsheets.
O spreadsheets, how oft I have praised thy beauty!
A yes/maybe/no column for each thing -- cover reveal, book review, blog tour, etc.
And that's it. That's all you really need. If you're contacting 25 blogs a week like I do, it'll fill up fast. You can search and sort and do all sorts of nifty spreadsheet things, but the most important thing--keeping track--is taken care of.
You'll start hearing back, and that's when the magic happens.
Short section here because there's really only two things you need to do.
The first is keep your spreadsheet updated, so you have it to refer back to whenever you forget what the heck's going on.
The second is to keep your emails organized. Me? I have a folder for each and every blogger that responds. Then when Invested Ivana of One Book Two (who's awesome, by the way; go check her blog out) emails me, I can go refer to our previous correspondence. No need to sort through my inbox or panic because I can't remember what we talked about. No wondering if I've already offered her my link to my newsletter and worrying if I sound like I'm badgering her.
K, so off to the races you go. You're emailing your bloggers, you're starting to hear back, you're filling in spots in your blog tour.
Next up: Getting ready for The Big Week.
As always, let me know any burning questions in the comments section!
To add to my copious list of qualifications (as well as, apparently, to further inflate my already bloated ego), I'd like to turn your attention to the fact that for a year, I ran a book review blog accepting self-published novels. (I should probably mention here that many book bloggers do not accept self-published novels for reasons we are all aware of and which are beyond the scope of this particular series.) So when I talk to you like I know what the inside of a book blogger's inbox looks like, well, it's because I do.
Believe me. It's not pretty.
More Planning. Yes, I Said More!
Let's talk for a minute about how busy you are.
And what do you hate more than anything in the world?
Overcooked asparagus, spiders that menace you from dark corners when you're stumbling into the bathroom in the middle of the night, and spam.
Spam can come in many forms, and since we're not actually talking about you in this blog series, we're talking about how to recruit bloggers to your book tour, let's get back to talking about bloggers.
Bloggers, bloggers, dear, sweet bloggers, who have opened their inboxes to all manner and sundry of micreants. People sending them requests for reviews even when they don't do reviews. People adding them to email lists unrequested. People demanding things, being rude about things, being downright confusing about things.
Rule #1 of emailing anyone: Don't be that guy.
"So what's your point, Samantha?" you're asking. "I get that I shouldn't be that guy. I won't be that guy. But what does that have to do with planning?"
My point is this. The next thing you need to do before sending out emails to poor, unsuspecting bloggers is to write a short, polite, and to-the-point introductory email.
What you're offering specifically. Those dates we talked about yesterday? This is where you communicate them.
The third item (what they're going to get out of participating) will be part of what you're conveying with the second and fourth, but you need to keep it in mind. When you get something in your inbox, what do you think? "I certainly hope this is more spam that is asking me to do something that will waste my time"? No, you don't. You think--subconsciously--"What's in this for me?"
In this instance, what you're offering to the bloggers is 1) to bring content to their subscribers that they don't have to expend energy creating themselves and 2) a chance to advertise their blog outside their own sphere of social media influence.
Aha! Yes! That little tidbit we'll bring back in a couple days when we talk about what to do when the tour is going on, but it's super key. If you have an impressive number of **REAL!!** Twitter or blog followers, you can point it out as something they'll get out of it. If not, that's ok. If you're pitching HuffPo, well, good luck, but most bloggers aren't going to care. Most of us are just trying to scrape out a meager little corner of the interwebs, so we're all in the same boat.
We're all busy. I think I've said that before. I'd check back above, but I don't have time.
Don't ramble on in much the same way this blog post, to an extent, is doing. Don't copy and paste the blurb from all fifteen of your books into the body of the email. Don't make them hunt and search for what you're asking buried in fifteen paragraphs.
I recently received an email from a book-related mailing list that I signed up for at some point. It went on a bit about their organization and then it said, "Would you like to help with an awareness campaign on Amazon?" OK, I have no idea what that means. Not only that, but I don't care to figure out. I'm busy. I've got things to do: this blog series to write, a book to edit, a critique partner's novel waiting for my feedback, a short story languishing in my head, and another book outline to work on.
Instead, tell them exactly what you want in a manner that they can say "yes" or "no" to. Don't be shy. You're going to get a ton of no's by way of non-responders. That's life as a writer. If you don't want to get rejected, you need find a new profession. In fact, telling your "cold calls" exactly what you want is going to work in your favor. You're not their crotchety old aunt Betty who will complain about them at the Thanksgiving dinner table if they don't reply to your email. They have no obligation to wade through your head-scratching prose to get to the point.
Get to your point. Get them to the "yes" or "no." You do that, and you'll see yesses.
If any of these opportunities sound like something you'd like on your blog, please let me know.
I'm not going to go on about all the bits and pieces of this email because you can read it for yourself, but see what I'm saying? Short and to the point. You know what I'm asking. You can say "yes" or "no" to this. There's no hunting or wondering or head scratching.
Oh, and use their name. It will take a bit longer to find it, and in some cases you won't find it, but if you actually send out an email that says, "Dear Blogger," so help me, Flying Spaghetti Monster, I will hunt you down and make you eat your entire spam folder. In the cases where you really can't find it, just leave off the "Dear" part.
Where Are Those Secret Lists You Promised Me?
I didn't forget the lists I promised yesterday. Lo and behold, here they are! Because I'm a self-published author, they're skewed in that direction. You're welcome.
After booking my tours, etc., I've gotten through #1 and started on #2. The further into the archives you go, the more likely you are to find dead links. So it's a short list of lists, but it will take you a long time to get through them.
Please note: If you don't take a long time to get through them, you're not getting a refund on this course. Don't even ask.
Glad you asked. Now you start sending out emails and getting ready for the tour. Nothing to it, right?
Oh, you want some more info? Well, let's get into that tomorrow. You've already got some homework to do. When we reconvene, I'll talk a bit about organizing your campaign and responses.
Questions, comments, concerns? Post 'em below.
When I published my first book, I scheduled the cover reveal and my first blog tour through a company. However, I've a bit of a control freak--and I'm working with a limited marketing budget--so for the rest, I've scheduled my own.
Be warned: It's a lot of work.
However, there are many good reasons to DIY, and if you stay organized, it will run smoothly.
Create your plan ahead of time.
Be prepared for unforeseen circumstances, both by keeping a flexible mindset and by creating contingency plans in advance.
Have fun. If you're not having fun, why are you doing this?
The good news is that I'm going to walk you through the first three. Unfortunately, I can't manufacture fun for you, but, like, wear a clown nose when you're doing this or something? Watch some Mindy Project while you're sending out emails? You'll have to figure out what works for you.
So let's talk about your plan.
The things you need to decide are 1) when you want the tour to run, 2) what you want to contribute to the blogs, 3) whether you want to do a giveraway, and 4) how many stops you want to make.
In the case of a tour, you'll schedule multiple dates and (probably) fewer blogs. In the case of a cover reveal or a release date blitz, you'll schedule one date and (probably) more blogs.
When Do You Want the Tour to Run?
The "when" is pretty straight-forward. In the case of my July blog tour, I picked a two week period, and when I invited bloggers, I let them choose their dates within that range. As you can see from my tour page, not all the dates were filled, but that was OK with me. I was also doing a 99 cent promotion, which I advertised on Book Gorilla (ok results), eReader News Today (pretty good results), and some others that didn't net to anything (so I won't link them).
Make sure you plan your tour well in advance. It will take a while to send out requests to book bloggers--unfortunately, there's no "mail merge and send" option. Because you want this to be successful, you're going to pick through blog lists and individually email bloggers.
As you can see, just because you get a "yes" doesn't mean they'll pull through. I targeted to send out about 25 per week. It doesn't sound like a lot, but it is--but more on that tomorrow.
What Do You Want to Contribute to the Blogs?
In the case of a release day blitz or cover reveal, what you provide is easy and far less work because you're only creating one post for everyone.
However, in the case of a tour, you have to decide: Are you going to do a guest post? Excerpts from your book? Deleted scenes? Something themed? Any old random thing? Decide ahead of time so you can communicate that to the bloggers you're inviting. And I highly recommend a unique post per blog, which means you can cross-promote effectively. If it's the same post everywhere, people aren't going to go to other blogs, which works for a release blitz but not a tour.
For my stops, I did a combination of guest posts and deleted scenes. Some of the bloggers had specific ideas of what they wanted. For instance, Amaryllis at The Opinionated Woman wanted me to review something, and I picked a book I'd just read, Starship Troopers. Others, such as our very own Operation Awesome, of which I wasn't a member yet, wanted something in a theme--in that case, writing-related--so I wrote about a technique I use to flesh out characters. Others were open to anything, so I gave them deleted scenes.
Do You Want to Do a Giveaway?
You also need to decide how much stuff you're giving away. If you're doing a giveaway per blog, that's great! People love to enter giveaways! They'll hop around to all your stops! However, that means you have to do more organization both before and after.
I didn't do giveaways as part of either example I'm using, but I have in the past, and I recommend Rafflecopter. It's free and easy, although you still have to package up and send out the pet lemurs yourself.
How Many Stops Do You Want to Make?
This isn't quite as straight-forward as it might sound, and it's closely tied to the previous decisions. The more you plan to the do, the more work it's going to be. I mean, duh, obviously, but you really have to think about this.
If you're doing a unique post per stop, that's great! Bloggers love unique content! You'll probably entice more to participate! However, that means you have to write as many unique posts as there are unique stops. If you give yourself plenty of time, you can crank out 20 blog posts in the weeks leading up to the tour. Just be sure that you're prepared to do that much writing and editing and emailing.
My biggest problem? Coming up with interesting ideas. There's a reason I'm on a shared blog where I do more regular things like the flash fiction contest than blogging. But if you're someone who can crank out ideas, you'll have no problem with multiple tour stops.
Hopefully I've impressed upon you the importance of planning this in advance. Things will always arise that you haven't thought of, but make sure you've decided how you want everything to go. In the words of Yogi Berra, "If you don't know where you're going, you'll end up some place else."
Tomorrow we'll talk about the actual recruitment process. I have some secret lists of book bloggers that I'll share from my secret repository of secret things.
Just kidding, they're not actually secret.
If you have questions for me, I'm happy to answer in the comments section.
Good evening, all! Here ends another edition of the #OAFlash Fiction contest.
Long ago when the world was still new, the people of earth revered the Sun, for it chased away darkness and with it the creatures that lurked therein. It was a time before monsters were banished, and held captive in the minds of children. Warriors were trained up, and they prayed to the God's of their world to free them from the terrible creatures that tormented them in the night.
Many had failed to defeat the witch. The cave was her home, and her children were the snakes that adorned her head in place of hair. The last warrior was sent into battle against her. He was everything a warrior should be, strong, brave, and true. He marched into battle not wielding a sword, but alone with only his mind to save him. For the mind is the greatest weapon anyone can posses.
Entering the cave he peered over his shoulder and slunk into the shadows, whimpering, for while he acted the part of a brave warrior he was truly as scared as the rest.
Deep in the cave there arose a scream, and he knew he had won. He raced towards the sound, and upon seeing her he fell to his knees laughing, a deep belly laugh. The snakes were gone replaced by… spaghetti! The witch, no longer frightening or scary had no place in the shadows or darkness, and was banished from the land.
Thanks for stopping by. Tomorrow, I (Samantha) will be kicking off a series on how to book your own blog tour. See you then!
Flash Fiction Contest #10 & Refractions Vol 3 Giveaway!
"On top of spagheeeeetiiiii / All covered with cheeeeeeeese / I lost my poor meeeeeatbaaaalll / When somebody sneeeeeezed."
Welcome to the #OAFlash fiction contest for this weekend. Need a rules refresher? Go here.
Would you like to take a guess what the prompt is? No? OK, then, I'll just tell you.
And new this week: A tweetable! Invite your friends and followers! Tell everyone about #OAFlash!
Go forth and create me something wonderful!
Win a copy of Refractions Vol 3!
And today, to celebrate short fiction, we're giving away one ebook copy of Refractions Vol 3, a bi-annual journal of short stories for young adult readers! Take part in the "Kuiper Belt Derby" or meet a Spirit King under an African sky. Includes work by Operation Awesome contributor Wendy Nikel, Anne E Johnson, and Danielle Donaldson.
My first novel had flow issues. Other novels I was reading at the time seemed to flow so easily from one idea to the next–like a slinky walking down the stairs, but mine was more like a dollar store slinky–it would make it to the second step and just roll the rest of the way down. I wanted that smooth flow for my book, but couldn't put my finger on the problem or decipher what made those other books work.
A couple years ago, I took Advanced Fiction Writing with Steve Alcorn--which I highly recommend--and in one of the lessons he presented the Scene and Sequel technique. I doubted him. In fact, I told him how wrong he was and set out to prove it. But, I soon realized, much to my irritation, he was right. Scene and Sequel not only remedied my story flow issues, but has been the technique that has most transformed my manuscripts.
tension and action at a high level, while giving your character a chance to react to what's going on. In every book there are hundreds of scene and sequel pairs and may be multiple pairs within each chapter.
An individual scene or sequel can be long or short depending on your genre and target audience. It can even be applied in dialogue.
Goal– What the character hopes to accomplish, big or small.
Conflict– A point of tension in reaching the goal or conflict with the goal itself.
Disaster– A setback, big or small, that increases tension. Can even be a reverse disaster, a too good to be true moment.
After the disaster we give our character a chance to react, which brings us to the Sequel.
Thought- What's your character thinking at that moment?
Action– What course of action will they take as a result?
This action will lead into the next scene.
Take a piece of your own writing and give it a try. With repeated use, it becomes second nature--the logical way to organize a novel. Check out Crossing the Threshold for a deeper discussion of Scene and Sequel.
Melinda Friesen writes novels for teens and short stories. You can find her first published novel, Enslavement, here. Unfortunately, she is all too familiar with automotive clicks of death.
I love that you love to read so much, and that you want to tell your own stories, too. Storytelling is an ancient pastime, a magical process, and a breathless escape from reality.
Start writing now. Don't think you have to wait until school's out, or you have your own computer, or you're an adult. You have stories worth sharing now, even as young as you are. It takes dedication and lots of hard work to write out an entire story, from start to finish. Many start; few finish. Practice being a finisher, right now.
Let other people read your stories, if you want. Share them with people that will love them. Ask each of those people for one idea of what you could do better. Get used to listening to other people's ideas, and deciding for yourself if you want to use them next time.
Keep reading books. Nothing helps you understand how to write better than absorbing the writings of those who have mastered the nitty-gritty of how sentences work. Pay attention as you read. At the end of a book, determine why you liked it so much (or didn't like it!). Those are valuable lessons you can apply to your own writing.
And finally, learn to shut out those voices (both yours and other people's) that tell you that you can't write a book. Surround yourself with people who will encourage and help you. Because you can write a book. Somewhere, floating in that head of yours, is a book only you can write. I hope you will.
Operation Awesome is excited about the next round of #PassOrPages, coming in March!
The January edition was a success, with four agents participating to give feedback on five randomly chosen entries in the adult mystery genre. You can look at what they had to say starting here, and you can read a little bit more about the contest and rules here.
We are not putting a limit on the entries accepted. As with last time, we'll be randomly selecting 5 entries to forward on to all the participating agents for feedback. We will not proofread them or change them in any way (except to remove bio information, if you forgot to do so before entering).
WE HIGHLY SUGGEST THAT YOU POLISH YOUR QUERY AHEAD OF TIME. Please no first drafts. The agents are expecting query-ready queries. But keep in mind that this contest is for people looking for feedback on their query letter and first page. It would be ideal for someone who has already workshopped their query and is about to start the query process or who has already begun but isn't getting requests for more pages.
Also, your manuscript should be polished and query-ready, too. Agents do have the option of requesting more--up to the full--so be prepared to send it.
We'll be doing the announcement as to which agents will be participating on March 7. See you then!
Our first Wednesday Debut Interview of 2016 is Sara Barnard, here to talk with us about her debut YA novel, BEAUTIFUL BROKEN THINGS!
Welcome! First off, tell us a bit about yourself!
I live on the south coast of the UK, just outside Brighton - where I lived for five years - in a small town with my boyfriend and my tuxedo cat. When I'm not writing books I'm a freelance content professional, which means I help companies with their online materials and websites. I'm a big reader, strident feminist and somewhat-lapsed Quaker.
How would you describe BEAUTIFUL BROKEN THINGS?
Beautiful Broken Things is a platonic love story about best friends. It follows three girls - Caddy, Rosie and Suzanne - as they learn about the world and each other. Along the way there's tears and giggles, beaches and Nandos, trauma and survival. And a lot of hugging.
Let's talk a bit about your writing process. How long has it been from the time that you began the first draft of this book until the date of its publication?
A long time! I wrote the very first version of this book when I was 13, which was 15 years ago now. It's obviously gone through a lot of incarnations since then - and so have I! I'm glad now that it took its time coming; it was worth the wait!
What scene, character, or aspect of this book did you most enjoy writing?
I always loved writing the scenes between the three girls when they're just being together. I honestly could have written entire novels based around just this, but I don't think that would have been as interesting to everyone else! The conversations were the easiest for me and when I was at my most relaxed as a writer. The best ones always felt like I was listening to a conversation instead of writing it myself - like they were there in the room with me.
BEAUTIFUL BROKEN THINGS deals with, among other things, mental illness. What research did you do to portray this in an accurate, realistic, and respectful way?
As with most things I write, I started with the characters. With Suzanne, understanding where she was coming from and how she'd react to things was central to the struggles she was facing with her mental health. If I'd started with research on depression or suicidal ideation, it wouldn't have been *her* in the way it needed to be. I needed to know her first and then do more specific research - and by that stage it was all coming very naturally.
It was slightly more complicated with a character like Tarin (Caddy's older sister), because I knew less about bipolar disorder, but again I researched everything from the perspective of her character. It's always character first and though that is of course influenced by things like mental health, it was important to me to show that it's not everything. Having bipolar disorder is the least interesting thing about Tarin - I hope!
On the topic of your publication journey: every writer experiences some rejection and setbacks along the way. How did you learn to cope with them and move on?
Unfortunately there's not a magic phrase or piece of advice that will make rejection hurt less - it's just something you have to go through as a writer. I remember when I got my first "real" rejection through (from a literary agency) I felt like I was earning my chops as a professional, because being rejected is what happens to professionals! It helped a *tiny bit* to think of it that way!
My brilliant agent - Claire Wilson - did all the hard work for me. She submitted the finished book to a number of editors at different publishing houses and then it was a case of seeing who was interested and what the offers were. The first publisher I met was Macmillan, and I knew immediately that was where I wanted to be. Their enthusiasm for the book was so clear and they're such a brilliant publisher. It was a no-brainer. The team who work with me and BBT at Macmillan Children's are so talented and passionate. I couldn't be happier.
Tell us about your book cover! Who designed it? How much say did you have in it? What do you want it to tell your readers about your story?
Rachel Vale at Macmillan designed it! It is obviously the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I was lucky in that I had some say in the cover design, but luckily I didn't need to get involved much because Rachel did such a brilliant job. We went through just one different design before this final one came through.
Above all, I wanted the cover to tell readers that this is a story worth reading, without giving the wrong impression of what they'd find inside and without giving too much away. I think it does it perfectly.
Beautiful Broken Things went through a *lot* of titles! It actually had a different title at every stage of the process! While I was writing it, I was calling it Third Wheels, but it was also known as Cracked and Thanks To You at various stages! My publisher felt the book needed a stronger title, and I'm VERY happy with the title it ended up with.
Can you tell us about some of the things you been working on between signing a contract for BEAUTIFUL BROKEN THINGS and its release?
I spent some time working with my editor to polish up Beautiful Broken Things, but I've also been working on my next book, which is another contemporary standalone about love, communication and anxiety.
It feels amazing! (And a bit scary!) I'm going to be doing several events that I'm excited about, such as the World Book Day Teen Fest event in March with Holly Bourne and Juno Dawson.
KEEP GOING. There is honestly no better advice I can give than that. Maybe I could have done some things differently, but I'm glad I didn't. I've ended up with the best agent, editor and book I could ever have hoped for. It was worth it!
And, just for fun, which book in your own library do you think would be your main character Caddy's favorite?
I feel like Caddy would be a big John Green fan, to be honest! I can imagine her shedding some tears over The Fault in our Stars.
Thank you so much for your participation in this Wednesday Debut Interview! And congrats on your new book!
Purchase BEAUTIFUL BROKEN THINGS here!
Do you or someone you know have a debut book coming out this year? If you'd like to be featured in a Wednesday Debut Interview, please email wendynikel at gmail dot com with your book's title, release date, publisher, and category/genre.
Write a scene in which your character does something that makes another character very nervous.
Need fresh eyes on your query letter or Twitter pitch? I'm offering up a critique this week. Speak up in the comments (include your twitter handle or e-mail) and I'll select someone at random for a critique!
I tend to talk to myself. Some people like to call it "thinking out loud" but I won't deny it; myself and I have some great conversations, and sometimes I'm a really great sounding board. But not always. Sometimes I just wish I had someone else who was just as passionate about and interested in my developing manuscript as I am, and could answer me every time I asked something like, "Okay, how does this sound," or "Does that really sound like something this character would say?" And sometimes I just need other-me to forget they've written anything, and read it with fresh eyes. I'm not ready for beta readers, but I need some new insight. How can I cleanse my palate a little bit and get a new perspective on my characters, or on my work as a whole?
Try online Text-To-Speech (TTS) readers. It's a tactic I've found enlightening, not to mention pretty entertaining. My main character is male, so I worry sometimes about whether or not he sounds masculine enough. Running his lines through TTS programs have helped me realize which lines really work and which need tweaking. When I can hear him speak his lines, I get a better feel for his personality, and how he might actually phrase his thoughts.
-Run whatever chapter you're working on in a UK accent (or an American accent if you're from the UK). Hearing it so differently from what I hear in my head really puts a new spin on the words and helps me pick up on little things, working and non, that I normally skip over. Plus it just sounds so fancy.
-Try lines for each character in different voices until you find one that is closest to how you think they probably sound. You may be surprised, and learn something something new about their personality.
-Create audio files for each line in a dialogue in each character's voice, and play them back in order. You will actually hear your characters converse, which is amazing, but you'll also be able to gauge whether each character is speaking as he or she would.
-If you're a woman, have a man read your book out loud, and vice versa. It might help broaden your perspective to hear how it sounds to someone who isn't you.
-Instead of reading a couple paragraphs back before you pick up writing or rewriting for the day, try playing those paragraphs out loud. You never know what ideas might flare up.
Although TTS programs have come a long way since the MagicSpell wizard used to read your ICQ messages to you, keep in mind that a computer still doesn't sound like a fully-produced audiobook. It will still sound somewhat robotic, with incorrect cadance and strange emphases. Do your best to listen past the weirdness!
http://ttsreader.com/ No character limit, US English is female, and UK English is Male. I like the UK English, and I like this reader because it's quick and responsive.
http://www.fromtexttospeech.com/ This is one where you have the option to download seperate files for each line. Also no character limit, and several different voices, including an Indian accent.
https://acapela-box.com/AcaBox/index.php This has the most choices and it's wonderful for hearing lines from diverse characters! In US English you can hear children's voices, a teenager (Scott), an old man, a Texan guy (Michah), a child with an Hispanic accent (Emilio), a child who sounds like she's from France or something (Valeria), a sad guy, a super happy guy, and yes, even a Yoda voice, with which I may or may not have spent my evening playing. Warn you I must: get distracted, you will. There are also several other choices under British, Scottish, Australian, and Indian English. If your character is from another country, select any language (Russian, Dutch, German, Japanese, etc etc) and the voice will read your English text with a thick accent. You can't download for free from here, but you can listen online.
Do you have any readers you love, or any other methods for seeing your work with fresh eyes? I'd love to hear them!
Flash Fiction Contest #9 Prompt: "The last thing I need is another child. I already have twelve to look after."
The pod was sitting on the step when I opened the door this morning. The last thing I need is another child. I already have twelve to look after.
I looked up and saw nothing but dirty gray smoke rolling across the sky. A drone must have dropped it off last night. Perhaps it was a mistake and they would return for it. I lifted it up. It was heavy and would hatch within a month's time. I placed it in the incubator, closed the lid and turned back to the clones. They were ready. All my hatchlings were ready in time. They were five years old now and would soon be taken away to be trained as warriors. I had done my job perfectly as always – except for one thing.
For sixty years I had been attending hatchlings – 144 total clones – teaching them the state-approved curriculum and nothing more; feeding them the special diet that would cause them to grow quickly and nothing more. But commandment four, "Show no affection," was one I could not follow. Indoors, where there were no drones to monitor me, I would kiss their identical cheeks and hug their identical bodies.
And for sixty years the war had raged on.
As they slept or studied I would walk the barren hills outside my hut. Being a preceptor is an honorable but lonely calling.
A week passed, then two. No one had come for my hatchlings. This had never happened before and I feared the reason. The war was over. There was no more need for me or my hatchling warriors.
But now I paced the hills for another reason – what was I to do with twelve grown clones? I worried and fretted this for many days.
Finally the new pod opened. It was a slow birth – not the ripping and tearing I had witnessed a hundred times and more. And I could see right away that she was different. This last pod that had been so unceremoniously dropped on my doorstep was a consolation prize – a child I could love and raise t0 adulthood to care for me in my aging. I fed her milk from my cow and food from my garden. I cuddled her and played with her and taught her silly rhymes.
And I sheltered her from the sight of the clones as they rapidly aged and died one by one like stars blinking out at sunrise.
Come back again in two weeks for the next #OAFlash Fiction contest. The week after, I (Samantha) will be sharing a week-long blog series on how to book your own book blog tour. Come back then!


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High death rate of calves sparks fears over survival of Hong Kong's dolphins
Annual government report finds nearly half of all newborns fail to survive beyond two years, for a species whose numbers have already been decimated.
Nearly half of all Chinese white dolphin calves in Hong Kong's waters failed to survive beyond two years, according to newly released data from an annual government report, with the record-low statistic sparking fresh concerns about the future of the species.
"The low survival rate of newborns, coupled with the worrisome declining trend in abundance over the past decade, is of great concern for the continued survival of dolphins in Hong Kong waters," the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department said in its 2020-21 report.
According to an estimate of regional dolphin numbers, the population mainly off Lantau Island stood at 37 – a far cry from 188 in 2003, which plunged to 32 in 2018 before rising slightly to 52 last year.
A Chinese white dolphin jumps out of the sea near the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge.
Despite the worrying data, some positive signs were observed, such as a more hospitable marine environment amid the coronavirus pandemic, with vastly reduced sea traffic, including the shutdown of ferry services between Hong Kong and Macau.
Doris Woo Ka-yi, WWF-Hong Kong's conservation officer, said: "In the absence of ferries, dolphins are using these areas more often – which is a good sign.
"Although the number is still declining and in view of the slow reproduction rate of the dolphins – which takes between three to five years – we really think a long-term monitoring and conservation plan is needed to see dolphins numbers recover," she added.
WWF-HK is calling for a conservation management area for the dolphin species.
There has been an 80 per cent drop in white dolphin numbers in Hong Kong waters over the past 17 years, caused by human interference, according to WWF-Hong Kong.
With the conservation group urging prompt action to protect the iconic species, Woo added that many human activities "threatened the survival" of the dolphins. She pointed out their displacement caused by the third runway expansion of Hong Kong's airport, as well as land reclamation at Shek Kwu Chau, south of Lantau Island, for a new waste disposal incinerator.
WWF-HK said it wanted to see a "dolphin conservation management area" established by 2024 spanning west and south Lantau, areas currently favoured by the marine mammals.


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Africa and Diaspora Studies x
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Johnson, Samuel
Jeremy Rich
historian and religious leader, was born on 24 June 1846. His father, Henry, was a member of the Saro community, a large group of people who had been liberated from slave ships by the British Navy and then resettled in the British coastal colony of Sierra Leone. Like many other Saro individuals, Johnson's father originally came from a Yoruba-speaking community in southwest Nigeria. Henry Johnson came from a royal pedigree, as he was the grandson of Alaafin Abiodun, king of the Oyo Empire in the late eighteenth century. Johnson married a Saro woman named Sarah, and their son Samuel was born in the Hastings village near Freetown. Samuel was the third of four children.
By the 1850s, many Saro chose to return to their home regions, and the Johnson family followed this trend by moving to back to Yorubaland in December 1857 There Henry Johnson became an assistant ...
Matsoua, André
A renowned civil servant, soldier, and labor organizer, André Matsoua's career continued even after his death. As a youth he studied to become a priest but resigned in 1919 to join the colonial customs service. He later traveled to France and joined the army, serving in North Africa during World War I. In 1926 he settled in Paris, where he became involved in labor-union organizing and founded Amicale, a self-help organization. Seeking recruits and financial contributions, the movement spread to the French Moyen-Congo, where the colonial administration, upset by Matsoua's outspoken opposition to the discriminatory indigenant, or indigenous, classification of many Congolese, arrested him in 1929.
Although Matsoua was by then a legal French citizen an African traditional court in Brazzaville sentenced him to three years in prison and a decade in exile in Chad Six years later he escaped was soon caught escaped again and found his way ...
Toledano, Joseph
Stephen Cory
was a Moroccan Jew who served, along with other members of his family, as a representative to the Dutch Republic on behalf of the ʿAlawi sultan Mawlay Ismaʿil during the late seventeenth century. The success of the Toledanos as emissaries for the Moroccan government reflects the considerable influence that certain Jewish families possessed in Morocco at the beginning of the ʿAlawi period.
By the seventeenth century the Moroccan government already had a long tradition of using Jewish diplomats as their representatives in European capitals There were two major reasons for this policy First many Moroccans felt the need to avoid direct contact with European infidels since such contact was believed by some to defile a Muslim religiously Jews who made up the largest religious minority in Morocco and who were already considered to be infidels themselves were more willing to conduct business with the Europeans This preference was magnified by ...
Tsega Ze'ab
Matteo Salvadore
Ethiopian cleric, known in Europe as Zaga Zabo or Tsega Zabo, traveled to Lisbon and Bologna in 1527 as representative of Emperor Dawit II (1508–1540) to King João III (1521–1557). While in Lisbon he drafted a confession of faith that Portuguese humanist Damião de Góis (1502–1574) printed in 1540 as Fides religio moresque Aethiopum sub imperio Preciosi Ioannis degentium. The facts of Tsega Ze'ab's upbringing remain unknown: when the 1520s Portuguese mission to Ethiopia led by Don Rodrigo de Lima (1500–?) reached Emperor Dawit II's court, Tsega was already a distinguished cleric helping in the writing and translating of the emperor's letters to João III, and he was later selected to represent Ethiopia at his court. To this purpose he joined the Portuguese party on its way back to Lisbon, which he reached in 1527 Traveling in the company of the mission s chaplain Francisco Álvares 1465 c ...
Turmeda, Anselmo
Matthew K. Myers
Franciscan friar who converted to Islam and wrote polemical works supporting Islam against Christianity, was born in what is now known as Palma, Mallorca. Turmeda was his father's only son and was possibly of Jewish descent. Mentioned as a witness in the will of James IV (c. 1336–1375), pretender to the throne of Mallorca, Turmeda's father, Pere Silvestre, was a prominent figure in the community and a member of the weavers' textile guild. Turmeda was conversant in both Catalan and Arabic as well as being experienced with Italian, French, Castilian, Latin, and Aramaic, allowing him to function as an interpreter and rise to positions of authority and prominence under the Hafsid Sultan of Tunis Abuʿl-Abbas Ahmad (r. 1370–1394) and his son Abu Faris ʿAbd al-Aziz (r. 1394–1434). The account of his conversion to Islam from Christianity is among the few such extant works.
Turmeda undertook training for the Christian priesthood ...
Yaʿqub ibn Killis
Christine D. Baker
vizier of the Fatimid Caliph al-ʿAziz (d. 996) in Cairo, was born in Baghdad in 930. His full name was Abu al-Faraj Yaʿqub ibn Yusuf Ibn Killis. As a child, he traveled to Syria with his father where he eventually became a merchant's agent in Ramla. Later in life, he traveled to Egypt, where he entered the service of the Ikhshid dynasty (935–969), who were nominal vassals of the ʿAbbasid Caliphate of Baghdad. In the service of the Ikhshids, Yaʿqub ibn Killis rose to preeminence as the chief of financial administration, but it was not until he entered the service of the Fatimid Caliphate in North Africa that he achieved his great renown.
Born a Jew Yaʿqub ibn Killis is famous for embracing Ismaʿili Shiʿism It is reported that he embraced Islam in 967 while in the service of the Ikhshids The Ikhshid governor Kafur 905 968 was so impressed ...


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New From Software game teased at The Game Awards
It's fairly vague, but From Software has officially confirmed a new upcoming game with a short clip that played during The Game Awards and a single quote: "Shadows Die Twice."


City bosses are cracking down on littering in Cambridge city centre – because it can trigger more anti-social behaviour.
Environment 'police' and rangers from Cambridge City Council are targeting shops and business that illegally dump waste as well as general littering by members of the public.
The move is part of a 'zero-tolerance' type approach - authorities believe messy streets can spark violence, rowdy behaviour and copy cat bad behaviour.
The council alerted residents to the plan in a report to its West Central Area Committee in December.
Joel Carré, head of environmental services at Cambridge City Council, said: "Littering is an anti-social act in its own right.
"The presence of litter tends to attract more litter, because of a perception that an area is uncared for and everyone else is dropping litter, so, what harm will one more piece of litter make.
"The presence of litter is unsightly and reduces the attractiveness of an area, discouraging people from wanting to spend time there. This can lead to a spiral of decline, with increasing acts of anti-social behaviour, such as graffiti, vandalism, damage to property and other types of criminal activity.
"Unfortunately, bags of trade waste, from shops and restaurants, which are left out at night, run the risk of being kicked open by irresponsible people, resulting in the contents spilling out and littering an area.
"To avoid this risk, shops and restaurants are required to put their trade waste out at the correct time, as advised by their waste collection company.
"Failure to do so is an offence and would result in enforcement action being taken against them.


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Introducing Swift For TensorFlow
Posted by the Swift for TensorFlow team at Google
At the TensorFlow Developer Summit in March, we announced and demo'd the Swift for TensorFlow project. Now, we're excited to launch Swift for TensorFlow as an open-source project on GitHub!
Swift for TensorFlow provides a new programming model that combines the performance of graphs with the flexibility and expressivity of Eager execution, with a strong focus on improved usability at every level of the stack. This is not just a TensorFlow API wrapper written in Swift — we added compiler and language enhancements to Swift to provide a first-class user experience for machine learning developers.
Our approach is a new and different way to use TensorFlow, opening new design opportunities and new avenues for solving existing problems. Though the project is in early development, we've decided to open-source it and move our design discussions to a public mailing list so anyone interested in the project can get involved.
Design documentation
We've written some detailed documents to outline our approach and explain how things work, all accessible from our project README. A good place to start is the Swift for TensorFlow Design Overview, which explains the major components of the project and how they fit together.
After that, we have a few documents which dive deeper into important areas of the project. A cornerstone of our design is an algorithm we call Graph Program Extraction, which allows you to write in an eager execution-style programming model while retaining all of the benefits of graphs. Our design also includes support for advanced automatic differentiation built directly into Swift. We also have a deep dive on Python integration with Swift, which allows you to use arbitrary Python APIs directly from Swift code.
Finally, our Graph Program Extraction approach imposed several technical constraints on our implementation, which led us to choosing Swift as a host language. The Why *Swift* for TensorFlow? deep dive explains the tradeoffs in more detail, along with the decision process that led to this choice.
It is a bit too early to rewrite your deep learning models using Swift for TensorFlow, but if you're interested in ML, languages and compilers, there are many ways you can get involved and contribute. We have pre-built packages for macOS and Linux that you can try now, along with a sample MNIST model. We also have instructions for building from source. At this phase of the project, there are many known issues — if you run into trouble, please reach out to us on our mailing list.
We are excited about building a beautiful new interface to TensorFlow that users will love, and we would really like to hear what you think about the project!
The Swift for TensorFlow Team
More from TensorFlow
TensorFlow is an end-to-end open source platform for machine learning.
Read more from TensorFlow
TensorFlow is a fast, flexible, and scalable open-source machine learning library for research and production.


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Application and Decision Dates for admission to 2021/22 School Year
The following are the dates applicable for admission to Junior Infants Farnham NS 2022 / 23 School Year
The school will commence accepting applications for admission on 31st January 2022
The school will cease accepting applications for admission on 11th February 2022
Applicants will be notified in writing of the decision on their application by 18th February 2022
Applicants must confirm acceptance of an offer of admission by:25th February 2022
application_form_2020_-_21_amended_nov_20__2_.docx


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Q: Parent pom with definitions that shouldn't be inherited I am trying to build a parent pom . I'm not using dependencyManagement or pluginManagement.  I want all the children to inherit everything.
However, the parent project itself has a specific build requirement that I'm using the maven-jar-plugin for.  I don't want the child to inherit this piece.  Is there a way to indicate sections that shouldn't be inherited by the child project?
However, the child projects do also use the maven-jar-plugin for another section.  Essentially, I have
 <plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-jar-plugin</artifactId>
    <executions>
         <execution>

         </execution>
    </executions>
    <configuration>
       <archive>

       </archive>
     </configuration>
 </plugin>

I want the configuration section to be inherited by all the children, but the execution section is only for the parent

A: Put the configuration into <pluginManagement>.
Put the execution into <plugins>.
Use <inherited>false</inherited>.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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