Guest Post with Sands Hetherington: How Kids Inspire Us as Writers

I am an old man and live on the edge of town with my two Saint Bernards Dudley and Maggie. Night Buddies and the Pineapple Cheesecake Sacre is my first children’s book and another is coming out in the fall. And now let me cut to the chase and tell you how Night Buddies and the Pineapple Cheesecake Scare came about.

I raised my son John as a single parent from the time he was six. I can't remember exactly: Maybe one night John wanted more story and I was tired of reading and suggested he invent a buddy to go off to sleep with. Or maybe he did it spontaneously. He was six, I think. Anyway, before I knew it, John came up with this red crocodile named Crosley. I was duly charmed, and we started batting Crosley ideas around at night and making up episodes. Crosley got to be a real member of the family. 

In many ways the thing was ready-made for me, but I did need to figure out why on earth Crosley was red. I couldn't just dump something like that into a story without explaining. (I was determined not to leave the red part out; this was Crosley's trademark feature!)

It finally occurred to me: Crosley was red because he was allergic to water! In a roundabout way, that is. If he got any water on him, he broke out doing the Black Bottom dance and had to go on for hours and hours. Unless he took his antidote pills. These stopped the Black Bottom well enough but did have a side-effect, and you surely know what this was: they turned him red! This was fine with Crosley, though: "Not that I mind that part a bit. Cause when people see me now, they know not t' get me wet."

I give John most of the credit. He invented Crosley the red crocodile and all I did was figure out why he was red and drop the two new Night Buddies into a situation. I like to think of John as the writer and myself as the editor and rewrite man. John is thirty-two now and Crosley is obviously still a member of the family.

The second book in the series (the one coming out this fall) is called Night Buddies, Imposters, and One Far-Out Flying Machine. It features John and Crosley, is much longer, and introduces a bunch of new characters. My favorite part is the fantastic flying machine that I really can't talk about here. I hope you'll check it out, though, and thanks again for inviting me in.

Sands Hetherington

About the Book:

Night Buddies and the Pineapple Cheesecake Scare is the first in a series featuring John, a young city kid who isn't ready for bed yet, and Crosley, a bright-red crocodile who shows up in his room to rescue him and take him on an adventure.

Night Buddies is an astonishing and inventive adventure with unforgettable cast of characters that will make you laugh and win over your heart. The book has lots of thoughtful, multi-layered twists, giggles, and perils -- things kids can relate to and enjoy. 

Publisher: Dune Buggy Press; One edition (June 1, 2012)

ISBN-10: 0984741712

ISBN-13: 978-0984741717

Get a sneak peek of the book at http://tinyurl.com/7xxl8qw

About the Author: 

Sands Hetherington credits his son John for being his principal motivator. Sands raised his son as a single parent from the time John was six. He read to him every night during those formative years. He and young John developed the Crosley crocodile character in the series during months of bedtime story give-and-take. Sands majored in history at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) and has an M.F.A. in creative writing and an M.A. in English from UNC-Greensboro. He lives in Greensboro.

The World of Ink Network will be touring author Sands Hetherington’s nighttime adventure for kids, Night Buddies and the Pineapple Cheesecake Scare published by Dune Buggy Press all through July and August 2012.

You can find out more about Sands Hetherington’s World of Ink Author/Book Tour at http://tinyurl.com/6vgevbh

To learn more about the World of Ink Tours visit http://worldofinknetwork.com  

Would You Make a Good Reviewer?

There are so many reasons for becoming a reviewer, but for writers it's almost mandatory. While you probably won’t make a fortune writing reviews, you can earn reasonable money doing it, it is an excellent way to hone your writing skills, increase your understanding of what makes for good  writing if you are that way inclined, it adds depth to your own pleasure to evaluate what you would be reading, listening to or using anyway, and you can get a whole raft of high quality review copies including autographed first editions, galleys, pre-publication releases, and promotional material.  In addition, it is both enjoyable and valuable from a publicity point of view to have an impact on the choices other people make. In other words, if you’re a top reviewer, you will be the ‘go-to’ resource for information on what is and what isn’t worth buying, and therefore gain credibility and visibility for your other projects.

There are some qualities which differentiate a good reviewer from a not so good one.  The following qualities are the key to being a good reviewer. 

•  Do you have the ability to follow through? This is critical.  If you agree to review something, or request a review copy, you have to produce through or you will rapidly lose credibility. Even if the book is awful, or virtually unreadable, or the product difficult to use, you must produce some form of review, or at least return the item with a polite note, clearly explaining why no review will be forthcoming.  This doesn’t apply to items sent to you on spec.  If you haven’t agreed, or requested an item, you aren’t obligated to review it, although a polite response is always appreciated. 
• Can you work quickly? Reviews generally need to be timely. In most cases, they relate to recently released items, and if a review isn’t produced shortly after release, or after a performance, etc, your readers may not be as interested and the value tends to diminish. No one wants to read old news. That said, there is always a call for reviews of classic or quality material. 
•  Can you write well? Regardless of what you are reviewing, a review is a piece of writing in itself. It needs to be clear, concise, entertaining, informative, critical, and well written. 
• Are you critical? You have to be able to accurately assess the value of an item you are reviewing and that may include digging deeply into the work. If you are too nice to say anything critical, or reluctant to probe, your reviews won’t provide readers with the information they need to determine whether a work is for them. 
•  Are you constructive? The ability to write with tact is important for a reviewer. A nasty review with no constructive comments or examples of where something can be improved is worse than a lukewarm review which is not critical.  Immature vindictive does not make for a good review and isn’t helpful to either the author or the reader. A reviewer needs to be able to express both positive and negative aspects of a work in a professional, thoughtful, and specific way, without causing libel or being ungenerous. 
•  Are you confident? Do you have the courage to make a clear judgment, and to back up that judgment with specific instances.  
•  Are you knowledgeable about the particular subject you are reviewing? As a reviewer you will need to know a reasonable amount about the class of items you’re reviewing. For a book reviewer, that will mean having a reasonable awareness of literature and particularly the genre you’re reviewing in. For a reviewer of children’s items, you will need to know something about that age group and their capability. Music reviewers need a reasonably broad and extensive awareness of music. Without this general knowledge, your assessment won’t come with the weight of experience that makes your judgment so valuable to others.  
• Are you honest? Honesty is one of the most important qualities for a reviewer. You must be honest in your writing, in your judgments, in your criticisms. Honesty is a reviewer’s stock-in-trade – it’s the backbone of what you do when you look closely at something and begin exploring why it is of value. 

If you have the above qualities, there's no reason no reason not to begin adding reviews to your websites, blogs, or even just on Amazon (with a link back to your own book of course).  

The piece above has been excerpted from my newly revised (now in its second printing) book The Art of Assessment: How to Review Anything. Grab a copy now for the full kit on becoming a well-respected reviewer.  I'll look forward to reading your reviews!

Magdalena Ball runs The Compulsive Reader. She is the author of a number of books including Black Cow, Repulsion Thrust and Sleep Before Evening. Find out more at www.magdalenaball.com

More Plot Possibilities...

Writer’s block? Try one of these:

·      Change of scenery: write a scene that takes place at: a park, the beach, the forest, the country fair, a theme park, the mountains, a relative’s house…

·      A Big Contest/Big Game/Big Prize is announced. Your character wants to enter, or maybe is convinced to enter by someone else…

·      Your character goes swimming.

·      Your character is called into the boss’s office. (Or, if writing a children's book, the principal's office.)

·      A stranger asks your character to do him/her a favor.

·      Your character sees someone in trouble.

·      Someone your character knows is in the news. Who? Why? What is your character’s reaction?

·      A fire breaks out. Or an earthquake. Or a tornado.

·      Your character sees a ghost.

·      Someone has been reading your character’s private journal/diary.

·      Someone breaks into your character’s house. Why? Do they steal anything?

·      Your character gets caught red-handed.

·      Your character does something he/she knows he/she’s not supposed to do.

·      Your character tells a lie.

·      What is the very worst thing that could happen to your character right now? Make that happen! How is your character going to get out of it??

Dallas Woodburn is the author of two award-winning collections of short stories and editor of Dancing With The Pen: a collection of today's best youth writing. Her short fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize three years in a row and her nonfiction has appeared in a variety of national publications including Family Circle, Writer's Digest, The Writer, and The Los Angeles Times. She is the founder of Write On! For Literacy and Write On! Books Youth Publishing Company and is currently pursuing her Master's degree in Fiction Writing at Purdue University, where she teaches undergraduate writing courses and serves as Fiction Editor of Sycamore Review.

Why Your Submissions are Rejected

Here are the top fifteen reasons agents and publishers reject our submissions. Provided by Anne Mini, from the 2006 Surrey, B.C. writers conference. Check her blog for more reasons and explanations.

1. An opening image that did not work.

2.Opened with rhetorical question(s).

3. The first line is about setting, not about story.

4. The first line’s hook did not work, because it was not tied to the plot or the conflict of the opening scene.

5. The first line’s hook did not work, because it was an image, rather than something that was happening in the scene.

6. Took too long for anything to happen (a critique, incidentally, leveled several times at a submission after only the first paragraph had been read); the story taking time to warm up.

7. Not enough happens on page 1

8. The opening sounded like an ad for the book or a recap of the pitch, rather than getting the reader into the story.

9. The opening contained the phrases, “My name is…” and/or “My age is..."

10. The opening contained the phrase, “This can’t be happening.”

11. The opening contained the phrase or implication, “And then I woke up.”

12. The opening paragraph contained too much jargon

13. The opening contained one or more clichéd phrases.

14. The opening contained one or more clichéd pieces of material. (The most I counted in a single submission was 5.) Specifically singled out: a character’s long red or blonde hair.

15. The opening had a character do something that characters only do in books, not real life. Specifically singled out: a character who shakes her head to clear an image, “He shook his head to clear the cobwebs.”

Have any of you received anything similar or different reasons? 

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A native Montanan, Heidi M. Thomas now lives in Northwest Washington. Her first novel, Cowgirl Dreams, is based on her grandmother, and the sequel, Follow the Dream, has recently won the national WILLA Award. Heidi has a degree in journalism, a certificate in fiction writing, and is a member of Northwest Independent Editors Guild. She teaches writing and edits, blogs, and is working on the next books in her “Dare to Dream” series.  

Small Towns

 Small Towns

One of my favorite things about the 4^th of July in the USA is small town parades.  Everyone has a part, everyone has a chance to feel special, and everyone’s gifts are appreciated.  

 One year I went with a friend to a parade in her hometown.  Old vehicles lead the way with mustangs, corvettes, model Ts, farm tractors and vintage fire trucks.  There were mostly men driving and they smiled and waved and gunned their engines.  The parade continued with school bands, VWF groups, Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops, SPCA dogs, and truck drawn floats.  Bringing up the rear of the parade was a horse contingency, which was a good place to put the horses.  As I waved to the men riding the horses, I did a double take; they were the same men that were driving the cars at the beginning of the parade.  I smiled and waved all the harder. 

 I learned some things that day: sometime in life we have more than one role to play and each role is important; in big events, it is the little people that make things happen; and when you smile and wave there is a good chance those around you will smile and wave back.

 What do you enjoy about about your hometown? Can you fashion a story around it? Can it be your setting? The people your characters?

 Martha Swirzinski, M. A.

www.MovementPlus.com

www.WholeChildPublishing.com

How Much is Too Much in YA Books

So who doesn’t swear or cuss on occasion? Right? It’s part of our current culture. Everyone does it—increasingly so and harsher as we go along. Swearing has increased in movies, television shows but especially books. When I was a teen reading Lord of the Rings or anything written by Ray Bradbury there wasn’t a single cuss word anywhere. Teens then were cussing up a storm when gathered in groups and such. 

But it wasn’t in our literature nearly to the extent it is today.

This begs the question: Is all of that cussing really necessary?

Sarah Coyne, professor of family life at Brigham Young University analyzed the use of profanity in forty young adult books on the best seller list. Thirty-five of them had at least one swear word. On the average there were thirty-eight instances of cussing, with one book containing nearly five hundred uses of foul language.

Is that really necessary to become a best seller with teens? The argument is the author is reaching for authenticity and grit. But there are plenty of books with grit and reality that don’t make us feel like we need a shower to rinse off the stench after reading them. Look at The Hunger Games Series. Could a story get any grittier or more realistic? How much cussing did you hear from Katniss or Peta? During the final battle with Lord Voldemort, did Harry Potter let loose a stream of expletives?

In my humble opinion, cussing is a cheap way out of finding a creative way to express oneself. And it cheapens the book as well.

Here's something interesting Professor Coyne discovered:

The characters doing the swearing tended to be of higher social status, better looking and have more money than their non-swearing counterparts.

So what does that say to the preteens who are forming their ideas of who they are and who they will become as adults? Everyone knows kids who read, tend to do so about three to five years above their age level. I’ve seen Fourth Graders reading the Twilight series. None of MY children would ever have read something like that at age nine, but I saw it when I was teaching. And the kids who were allowed to read material years ahead of their maturational level, refused to read age-appropriate, excellent literature, thereby missing out of a whole world of good books. 

The problem with today’s young adult books is a reader doesn’t know what they’re getting into until they’re knee deep in the mire. This goes for swearing, sex and violence. Ever try to stop a teen from 'enjoying' something which contains sex, foul language or gore? Of course an allowance is made for the genre bridging the innocence of middle grade books and adult-level reading. But how much is too much? How do we protect the sanctity of innocence until a young adult is ready to become an adult if what they’re reading reveals all?

As an author of Picture Books up through Young Adult, I feel the need to protect my young readers from what they’re seeing in movies and television, hearing in the lyrics of their music and experiencing while playing their video games. Teens aren’t allowed to remain innocent and naiive anymore…and I think it’s a shame on our society.

Great Marketing, Networking, and The Gift of Surprise

This post is as much about giving as it is about writing. And, yes, I equate giving with great marketing. This review appeared in a Google Alert. I didn't send a review copy. There was no query involved. It just happened. Thus, it was a surprise and very heartwarming. Regardless of what you've been told in the past about networking and marketing, that's what it's really about. Making friends. From the heart.

A review of an author's book is about the best gift you can possibly give him or her. This review is my Kathryn M. Weiland and I hope you'll take her example and review a book you've read lately. Post it on your blog and on Amazon. And then let him or her know about it--just in case they haven't tuned into the magic of Google Alerts yet! (-:

Review of Great Little Last-Minute Editing Tips for Writers by Kathryn M. Weiland

Carolyn Howard-Johnson is well known among writers for her helpful book The Frugal Book Promoter, and she continues to encourage and guide writers through her many other projects, including this fast read (56 pages), which she advertises as a supplement to her book The Frugal Book Editor. After opening with an intro, reminding authors of the importance of crossing our T’s and dotting our I’s in both our queries and our published works, she launches into the meat of the book: page after page of handy references for spotting and fixing tricky word pairs.

Organized alphabetically with word pairs separated by slashes (e.g., “bereft / bereaved”), the book makes it easy to look up definitions and identify which word should be used in specific circumstances. Although the book’s diminutive length prevents it from anywhere close to exhaustive, it’s a good starting place and can easily be backed up with the more complete list in The Frugal Book Editor.

Priced reasonably (especially the Kindle version) and packed with lots of writerly wit and humor, the book makes for both an enjoyable read and a worthwhile reference manual. To find it go to www.budurl.com/WordtrippersPB

~K.M. Weiland is the author of the historical western A Man Called Outlaw and the medieval epic Behold the Dawn. She enjoys mentoring other authors through her writing tips, her book Outlining Your Novel: Map Your Way to Success, and her instructional CD Conquering Writer’s Block and Summoning Inspiration.

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