{"id":2984,"date":"2006-06-13T19:41:00","date_gmt":"2006-06-13T19:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=2984"},"modified":"2018-11-20T05:25:27","modified_gmt":"2018-11-20T05:25:27","slug":"undercover-girls-and-king-dorks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/?p=2984","title":{"rendered":"UnderCover Girls and King Dorks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oh, man, is it ONLY<\/i> Tuesday!? I need a vacation already. Actually, I’ve just read that the U. of Hawai’i at Manoa is having their Thirteenth Biennial Conference on Literature<\/a>: Imagining Other Lives, Other Times, Other Places, <\/em>and I’m wishing I was going. Put on by Children’s Literature Hawai’i, the conference features one of my favorite middle grade writers, Karen Hesse<\/a>, and I just realized that if the PhD plans I had only a few years ago had panned out, I’d already be there. Sigh<\/em>.<\/p>\n

(Actually, I’m not sure what the sigh was for… I have enough to do this week without homework!)<\/p>\n

Well, I feel slightly vindicated for my little grip last week<\/a> on how so much of YA fiction is turning into a long commercial to a particular brand of something or other, since Monday’s New York Times<\/a> carried a piece on the same thing. Though there is still no money changing hands (and that’s really intriguing to me – would you, as a writer, do free advertising?) CoverGirl cosmetics is well mentioned in Cathy’s Book<\/a>, and the company is launching a website in August to help tie the two.<\/p>\n

Despite the buzz, this pat-my-back, I’ll-pat-yours routine isn’t anything new, really. I guess it’s simply the first time there’s been a formalized arrangement of you change that eyeliner to a color we make, we list your novel on our website<\/em>, but there are some issues that bear deeper thought. How long is your publisher going to be your <\/em>publisher if they’re taking funds from someone else to create your book? How long until that touches you as the writer?, On one hand, it’s a nifty idea to have websites and addresses where readers can get more information on the book, <\/em>and from what I hear of the novel, it’s kind of an updated, choose-your-own-adventure which uses technology to go even further with the storyline. That’s excellent! On the other hand… further ad space for makeup products? Even a tiny bit of marketing to teen readers seems in bad taste. Mmm, gonna have to think about that one…<\/p>\n

The Chron did a great piece this morning<\/a> on Frank Portman<\/a> and his new novel that’s already generated so much excitement (in its FIFTH<\/strong> printing after only two months on the shelves – wow!) King Dork<\/a>. I had to laugh at Portman’s assumption that someday he’d be a literati, smoking a pipe and teaching school somewhere like Maine. Yeah, that’s how all humanities majors start out, isn’t it? And then you interact with both academia and reality<\/em> for a bit, and realize you might need to think again. This novel wasn’t necessarily on top of my must-read list (okay, I admit it – I’ve grown out of my punk band phase), but the enthused folks at ‘not your mother’s bookclub’<\/a> have talked it up so much that it’s rapidly moving to the top of my pile.<\/p>\n

Happy Writing…!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oh, man, is it ONLY Tuesday!? I need a vacation already. Actually, I’ve just read that the U. of Hawai’i at Manoa is having…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-2984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-views"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2984"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3552,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2984\/revisions\/3552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writingya.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}