Karen Sandler

Category: Books

  • My Dream Bookstore

    BookshelfThis week, YA Highway asks a very fun question:  Imagine you get to open your own bookstore. What would it look like? What kinds of books would you sell?

    It wouldn’t surprise me if 99% of avid readers and maybe 95% of authors have at some time in their lives fantasized about opening a bookstore. I certainly have. Even knowing how difficult running a small business is, even with how dicey the book business can be and how it’s changing so quickly it’s hard to keep up, I still dream about being a bookseller.

    hp photosmart 720So, what would my bookstore look like? Lots of shelves crowded with books, of course. Comfy chairs for readers to relax in while they’re considering a purchase. Maybe a couple of display cases filled with cool gift items, like dragon sculptures, and pewter wizards, and unusual jewelry made by local artists. And of course, there would be a bookstore cat.

    What kind of books would I sell? I’d focus on genre fiction. Plenty of science fiction and fantasy, a section for mystery, another for romance, a little horror. Books for adults, but also a generous offering of young adult and middle grade. Of course, a corner for wonderful picture books with a few toys for the little ones to play with while their parents shop. And I would emphasize diversity in all my offerings.

    I’d also have a full calendar of author visits. Set up chairs or throw pillows on the floor, have the authors do readings, or talk about how they wrote their most recent book, or about whatever they feel passionate about. I’d have a storyteller come on Saturdays for the little ones. I’d have fundraisers for local schools or other causes. I’d want my store to be a community center where people would look forward to visiting, and even though they could save a few bucks on Amazon, they’d buy at my store instead because it’s just such a wonderful place to be.

    Yeah, kind of a pipe dream. But if I’m going to imagine my own bookstore, I might as well imagine big.

    How about you? What would your bookstore be like?

  • Goals–Fear & Loathing

    Goal KittenThis week for Road Trip Wednesday, YA Highway asks, What are your goals for the new year–for reading, writing, or other? I gotta tell ya, this kind of question always terrifies me.

    It goes along with that equally frightening question, Where do you see yourself in five years? Luckily I’m not out there pounding the pavement looking for a job and so I don’t have to answer that one.

    The thing that’s so scary about goals is that I immediately fear I won’t be able to reach them. I’ll promise myself I’ll lose five pounds, and that bowl of ice cream will tempt me. I’ll declare I’ll read four books a month, and I’ll come up one short. It’s much easier to do things “unofficially,” that is, having the idea or notion or half-baked whatever that I might want to eat half as much ice cream next time I scoop up a bowl. And maybe I’ll count the number of books read without stating that this many reaches a goal.

    That’s not to say I can’t meet deadlines or finish tasks. I do that all the time. I have a few book deadlines in the upcoming year that I have to meet. But those aren’t really goals. To me, a goal might or might not happen, and let me tell you, these books have gotta happen. No choice there.

    So what is it about the word goal that makes me cringe, that makes me worry? What’s up with that, do you think?

    Well, whatever it is, let me put on my big girl panties and fess up to one goal I’d like to achieve. Here it is: I want to become more disciplined in my writing life. I’d like to accomplish that by resisting the allures and attractions of the Web and Internet when I should be writing. It is ever so much more entertaining to read blogs and tweets all day than it is to put words on a page.

    big-foot-wavingGulp. There, I said it. And I will work toward it, I promise. I will do my best to achieve that big, scary goal.

    How about you? What are your hopes for the new year?

  • Best Book in December

    I completely forgot about YA Highway’s Road Trip Wednesday this morning. Today’s topic was What was the best book you read in December? Since it’s so late, I was tempted to just give RTW a pass this week, but I just finished a phenomenal book and I’ve been itching to give it a mention.

    Before I get to the title, there were some things I was pondering about highly recommended books. Such as, I sometimes pick up a book that lots of people rave about and for me it turns out to be kind of ho-hum. I don’t much like the characters or the plot drags for me. Other times I read a book (The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater comes to mind) that I just swoon over, but other people didn’t much get into it.

    Then there are those books that I know will be a bit of an emotional roller coaster so I’m hesitant to buy them. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green is a good example of that. But I did put on my Big Girl Panties and read TFIOS and despite the gushing tears that blurred the words sometimes, I loved-loved-loved it.

    WonderMy fave book for December falls into this latter category. I’ve seen many recommendations for R.J. Palacio’s Wonder, but it seemed like it would be an emotionally hard book to read. But I went ahead and bought it a few days after Christmas, and wow! It was fabulous.

    The characters were fantastic (especially Auggie, the main character) and the uplifting plot was just a joy to read. It was one of those impossible to put down books that I kept thinking about even when I wasn’t reading it. Truly, the ideal holiday read. I can’t recommend it enough.

    So, what have you been reading during the holidays?

  • Who Are You (woot-woot)?

    Tankborn smlThis week, YA Highway asks the questions How do you decide on names? Would you ever name a character after a friend/family member/ex?

    Back when I was writing romances, I wanted everyday names for my characters. So I kept a baby names book near my computer. I’d flip through it for my hero’s or heroine’s name, looking for one that seemed to match the character’s personality. When I found the right name, a little bell would go off inside me. I could see the character that much more clearly.

    When I started writing the Tankborn series, I couldn’t use a baby name book anymore. The Tankborn trilogy is set hundreds of years in the future. To set the tone for the world, the names needed to be a little more exotic than what’s on offer in the naming books. Also, I had a multi-ethnic cast and I needed names that would suit them. So I had to rely on the Web, and sites that listed, for instance, Brahmin or Chinese or Zimbabwe given names and their meanings. Here’s one of my fave sites for finding international names.

    Kayla, the name of my main character in Tankborn, isn’t super unusual. At least it isn’t now. When I first came up with it, back when I was writing the movie script that later became Tankborn, I thought I’d made up the name Kayla. Not so much.

    When I wrote the first book, I did make up some of the names of other characters: Tala, Jal, Tanti, Quila. In real life, people make up names all the time for their children, why wouldn’t they in my future world? I used made up names mostly for GENs, sometimes for lowborns. And just as with Kayla, sometimes the names I thought were made up, that originated with me, were actually “real” names (Pia and Risa come to mind).

    For my trueborns, I used real names of various ethnicities. There’s Devak (Indian), my main male character, Devak’s friend, Junjie (Chinese), Devak’s father and mother, Ved (Indian) and Rasia, (Indian). Raashida (African), is an important character in Awakening, the upcoming follow-on to Tankborn.

    Do I ever use the names of real people in my books? Yes, although I don’t match the character to the real person. I just “borrow” the real name because I like it and it works for my book. I borrowed Zul (Devak’s great-grandfather) and Azad (Devak’s dead half-brother) from people I actually know.

    How about you? If you write, how do you come up with those character names? If you’re a reader, have you ever stumbled across a name that didn’t seem to fit the character, or a name that was absolutely perfect?

  • I Love You, You’re Perfect…Now I’m Gonna Revise You

    rewriting_265x265This week, with November and NaNoWriMo in the rear view mirror, YA Highway’s Road Trip Wednesday asks, How do you approach editing/revising?

    So, here’s the first most important thing about revising. You should write your draft knowing that you not only don’t have to get it perfect the first time through, you’re not expected to get it perfect. That’s one thing about NaNoWriMo that’s pretty great. The demand is so enormous (having to average close to 1700 words a day, every single day of November), you can’t possibly revise as you go. You just have to barrel ahead, getting the words down. But you have that freedom every time you write. You can always fix it later.

    Here’s the second most important thing–nothing that you’ve written is sacred. Nothing. Nothing. Every chapter, scene, paragraph, word, even character must be subservient to the story. If something doesn’t work, even if it worked at first, but in the course of revising is no longer relevant, that beautiful chapter, scene, paragraph, word, or character must go. And you must be ruthless in cutting out that dead weight.

    Here’s the third most important thing about revising. You must approach your revisions as if you were the editor rather than the writer of the book. You must go in there looking for trouble, not expecting a masterpiece. And you should never take it personally. Even the best manuscripts go wrong sometimes.

    Now that we’ve got those three basic musts down, here are a few other things I’ve learned over the course of writing and revising 20+ books.

    1. Give it a rest. After you’ve finished your manuscript, give yourself some time so you can return to it with a fresher eye. How much time? I personally don’t like to go longer than a week, and it’s usually just a few days. But you might need a couple weeks or even a month.
    2. Give it a read and think story as you go. Are the story questions answered? Are all the setups paid off? Is there extraneous material that doesn’t move the story forward? Are there characters who don’t pull their weight? This is where your major revising will be happening, where your bigger problems are solved.
    3. Give it another read and look at characters and details. Are your characters’ actions & dialogue consistent for them? Have you introduced word or phrasing repetitions in the course of your first big revision? Ditto for typos?
    4. Give it a final read. Are there any parts that just don’t flow? Awkward phrasing, expository dialogue, settings that are either overly detailed or not detailed enough? Anything confusing that you think a reader might stumble over or have a problem following?
    5. Let someone else give it a read. If you have a critique group or a beta reader, preferably someone who has never heard about the story, ask them to read it. It has to be someone whose opinion you completely respect and trust. And you have to be open-minded about their feedback.
    6. As needed, give the manuscript one last revision based on reader feedback.

    So is it a hard and fast rule that you must give your book three (and only three, no more, no less) readthroughs? No. But is it necessary to pay attention to all of the above elements while revising? I’d say yeah. If you can do that with one pass through the book, that’s great. As long as you’re reading with an editors eye, and are brutally honest with yourself about what’s working and what’s not.

    Happy revising!