The Paperback Release of IN THE SHADOW OF BLACKBIRDS . . . and How I Learned about Post-Publication Patience

Yesterday saw the paperback release of my debut novel, In the Shadow of Blackbirds, a 1918-set tale involving a bright and logical sixteen-year-old girl who’s forced to deal with WWI, the Spanish influenza, and a ghost. The hardcover came out in April 2013, and my publisher, Amulet Books, decided to wait to release the paperback right before the publication of my second novel, The Cure for Dreaming. In fact, the paperback includes a sneak peek of The Cure for Dreaming.

Because eighteen months have passed since the book first entered the world, I’ve had time to think about the most important lesson I’ve learned as a published author: patience.

Anyone who’s ever tried to get a book published knows that patience is required from day one. First you need the patience to simply sit down and write the book. Then you need to take the time to polish and revise the manuscript, share the book with early readers, and submit the work to literary agents. At that point, you then wait and wait and wait to see if the book will get published.

If you’re fortunate and land a book contract with a publishing company, more waiting ensues. You wait for your editorial letter to arrive from your editor and then for all the other various editing stages. You wait to see the cover, and then you have to wait to share the cover. Most importantly, your patience is put to the ultimate test when you’re given a publication date that’s slated for eighteen months to two years–and sometimes even longer–after the day you first learned your book would be published.

The April 2013 launch party at Powell’s Books, Beaverton, Oregon

Once that publication date at long last arrives, there’s cheering, there’s tweeting, there’s celebrating. In my case, my mom, whom I don’t see too often these days, flew in to Oregon from Ohio for a week. My sister flew up from California for my book launch party, and one of my best friends from college drove down from Washington state. We ate cupcakes. We went out to dinner. I signed dozens of books for readers.

Then, one week after the publication date passed, Mom flew back to Ohio, everyone else returned to their respective homes, and it became other authors’ turns to celebrate a release date. All I heard was silence. My book didn’t suddenly race to the top of the New York Times bestseller list or land me a spot on The Today Show. Life as I knew it hadn’t really changed. I was still a mom living in the suburbs of Portland, OR, driving my kids to school and cleaning up dog poop in the yard . . . still hurrying to squeeze in writing time and trying to get another book published.

Thankfully, I had a strong support team of other debut authors, who assured me postpartum book release depression is a very real thing. We hear so many stories of authors climbing to instant fame and having their books celebrated by the world, and so it’s a strange and surprising feeling to watch one’s publication date come and go with one swift rush of excitement. It’s hard to replicate that surge of sheer joy in the weeks following a publication date.

However, I learned a little secret about the way the YA book world works: buzz keeps building over time. Unlike what I’ve heard to be the norm in the world of adult fiction publishing, you do not need to have your book become a bestseller in the first weeks of publication in order for people to continue talking about it. In fact, some of my major book reviews for In the Shadow of Blackbirds didn’t even show up until after April 2013.

In May 2013 I got to fly down to my book’s setting of San Diego, California, and promote the novel in high schools. While there, I learned the book had gone into its second printing. I also learned the novel was starting to receive award nominations.

Over six months after the book debuted, I found out In the Shadow of Blackbirds was a 2014 Morris Award Finalist, which suddenly gave the book even more attention. In January 2014–nearly a year after the book debuted–I got to fly to Philadelphia and celebrate with all of the other Morris Award Finalists at the American Library Association’s Midwinter Meeting.

Spring 2014 saw the publication of the first translated edition of the novel, a Czech edition, as well as a Scholastic Reading Club paperback edition.

Eighteen months post-publication, to my utter surprise, I’m still receiving awards and accolades for the book (I just accepted the Oregon Spirit Book Award this past weekend), and I’m still hearing from both brand-new and established fans. If I could go back to the version of me who was driving home from dropping my mom off at the airport, wondering if that was it for my book, I would say, “Just stop! Have patience. Your job was to write the strongest book you could possibly write, and now it’s time to let others spread the word about your work.”

That’s the other valuable nugget of info I learned about writing YA fiction: readers of YA novels are amazingly supportive. Thank you so much for your incredible love and enthusiasm for our books. It’s meant the world to me.

Order the paperback of In the Shadow of Blackbirds online: 

Amazon

Barnes & Noble  

Powell’s Books  

IndieBound 

Book Depository

Abrams

Amazon UK

Indigo

Historical YA Novels at the Movies: When Will We Get Our Blockbuster?

Lovers of historical fiction have patiently waited through the mass hysteria known as the Twilight and Hunger Games movie adaptations. We’re even cheering on upcoming contemporary YA adaptations, such as The Fault in Our Stars, even if the settings are considered far hipper than what we’re used to reading and loving. 

But, let’s face it, if you’re like me, you’re waiting for the rock star of historical YA movie adaptations to show up in a blaze of killer costumes and settings and take the movie world by storm.

In April, we Corsets, Cutlasses, & Candlesticks members blogged about the current golden age of historical TV series—a wonderful trend for the small screen. I love being able to turn on my TV during almost any month of the year and finding myself treated to smart and entertaining period pieces. But those shows are typically created for adults, not teens. Most of the series don’t draw their source material from novels, especially not YA novels.

One of my all-time favorite YA novels, Markus Zusak‘s The Book Thief, showed up in movie theaters last fall. I crossed my fingers and hoped the movie would be a huge hit, and it did fairly well. As I expected, the movie was up for awards, including an Oscar nomination in the category of Original Score. However, it did not become a major event movie comparable to Twilight and The Hunger Games. The Book Thief isn’t the type of story that inspires “Team Max” T-shirts and other to-die-for merchandise featuring pretty people glaring at the camera with smoldering eyes. To be a rock star of YA  movie adaptations, you have to come across like a rock star. And that’s not where the beauty and magic of historical YAs typically lie.

Several other historical YA novelists have sold film rights to their books, including Libba Bray (The Diviners), Ruta Sepetys (Between Shades of Gray), Elizabeth Wein (Code Name Verity), Rainbow Rowell (Eleanor & Park, set in the 1980s), and Megan Shepherd (The Madman’s Daughter). Whether these films make it to the big screen is entirely up to the producers and others involved, but the sales of the rights alone give hope for a potential blitz of historical tales hitting movie theaters in the coming years. I asked Megan Shepherd how she personally feels about historical movie adaptations, and she said, “One of the things that excites me most about the prospect of YA historical fiction being made into movies is because those were some of my very favorite films as a teen (and still are). I loved the moodiness of movies adaptations like Mary Reilly and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. There’s something so lush and atmospheric about historical stories that translates perfectly onto the big screen.”

A Room with a View, 1985

I agree. As a teen and a young adult, I gobbled up Merchant Ivory adaptations of novels by E.M. Forster, such as A Room with a View and Howard’s End. These films weren’t adaptations of YA tales, but they fulfilled my need for visually arresting and emotionally intense period pieces. The costumes were glamorous, the settings divine, and the characters complicated. In short, the movies involved people finding their way in the world (like I was) while living in stunning surroundings (like I wanted to do). Who could ask for anything more of a book or a movie when one is young (or even not so young)?

Furthermore, movie adaptations of favorite books are fun. It’s delightful to find an amazing book and then to learn that said novel will be celebrated on a universal level. Sure, there’s the risk of filmmakers butchering a beloved story and making huge casting blunders, but complaining about those blunders allows us to further bond with other readers who fiercely adore the same novels.

On the other hand, a book doesn’t need to be adapted into a movie to be a true book. I think some readers feel a film adaptation is the ultimate stamp of approval for a novel, which is a shame for all the wonderful stories out there that won’t ever receive the big-screen treatment. Every author will tell you that frequently asked questions from readers invariably include “Will your book get made into a movie?” and “Who would you cast in the movie version of your book?” Adaptations (the good, the bad, and the nonexistent) should never be used to judge the worth of a novel. They should be seen instead as a bonus feature for a book. An entertaining extra. Sure, movies help increase a book’s exposure and sales, but they typically won’t make the source material any better or worse than what it originally was when it first became a full-fledged novel.

Even if the rock star of historical YA movie adaptations never arrives, my love of historical fiction won’t wane in the slightest. The genre’s worth will not diminish. The novels themselves, if they’re strong enough, will allow us to feel as though we’ve already seen the movies inside our own heads. If we do end up getting to see our favorite historicals turned into movies—and if those movies happen to become blockbusters—their success will simply show the world what we already know: HISTORICAL FICTION IS FAR FROM BORING!

For now, let’s enjoy the wealth of historical YA fiction making its way onto bookshelves. Let’s keep our fingers crossed for all of the historical novels already on their way to becoming feature films. And let us remember that, no matter what Hollywood decides to do about historical YAs, the genre will continue to flourish, to entertain, and to gather new readers, young and old.

“A kiss is a lovely trick…”

Photo courtesy of Library of Congress.

“…designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.”
—Ingrid Bergman

I love writing love scenes. They can be challenging to choreograph so they don’t come across as false or schmaltzy or even gross (unless the scene calls for false, schmaltzy, or gross, of course). But if a writer lets the characters and the situations take charge, a kiss can tell so much about the fictional people involved…and it can add a surge of conflict to a plot.

After all, even in real life, a kiss can change the course of a person’s story.

When I wrote In the Shadow of Blackbirds, I admittedly spent a great deal of time getting a kissing scene at the beginning of the book just right. The love story in the novel involves just one brief physical moment between my protagonist and her first love/childhood friend, so I felt it important to make that moment count. I pulled out my box of writer tools. I added sensory details and worked on developing the characters through their actions. In the end, though, it was my characters’ dire situation that made the scene come to life for me. One of the characters was about to leave for war. The two of them had been close friends since they were in grammar school, but they had never once kissed before. The world seemed to be falling apart around them. Once I threw all those obstacles at them and really felt the urgency of their encounter, the kissing scene fell easily into place.

Before I could say anything awkward to break the spell, he pulled my face toward his and kissed me. I lost my balance at first, but then I closed my eyes and held his smooth neck and enjoyed the warmth and hunger of his mouth. His hand moved to the small of my back and brought me closer. Our stomachs touched. Our chests pinned the photograph between us. He wrapped his arms around me and held me tight against him, as if he were kissing life itself good-bye.
—In the Shadow of Blackbirds, Chapter Three

Photo courtesy of Library of Congress.

My Fall 2014 release, The Cure for Dreaming, also entails some kissing scenes, although I can’t yet discuss in detail who is doing the kissing. I will say that the kisses lead to conflict, alter relationships, and throw the characters’ worlds a little off-kilter.

Love scenes are a delightful way to hurl curveballs at characters. How the characters react in the aftermath of intimate situations can tell so much about their personalities and their situations. If you’re a writer and you dread the thought of sitting down and describing two people kissing, I recommend concentrating more on what happens after their lips part. How will your characters react? What will they say? Does one character feel more confident than the other? Do they want to talk about the kiss, or do they part without a mention of it? How does that newfound intimacy change their relationship? Will it help or hinder their greater goals in the book?

Image courtesy of Library of Congress.

If you’re undaunted by the idea of getting up close and personal with your characters when they experience a love scene, then simply let go of inhibitions and allow your characters to react to the moment in ways that are either expected or deliciously unexpected. I always imagine my kissing characters becoming suddenly tipsy when they’re in the heat of the moment, and what they say and do is often a little bolder than their normal selves, especially in the case of my early-twentieth-century female characters.

In short, let go of your fears and enjoy tossing your characters into moments that might throw their worlds and the plot off-balance. Conflict is a must in fiction, and there’s no better way to add tension and confusion than to have two characters suddenly find themselves entwined.

For a little added inspiration, I’ll leave you with this lovely collection of kissing scenes involving silent film star Rudolph Valentino. Happy Valentine’s Day!

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Cat Winters‘s critically acclaimed debut novel, IN THE SHADOW OF BLACKBIRDS (Amulet Books), was named a 2014 Morris Award Finalist, a 2014 YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults pick, and a School Library Journal Best Book of 2013. Her upcoming books include THE CURE FOR DREAMING (Amulet Books/Fall 2014) and THE UNINVITED (William Morrow/Publication date TBA). She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and two kids. Visit her online at www.catwinters.com.

The Ugliest Word in Historical Fiction: Anachronism

A is for Anachronism

In the age of the Internet, it’s extremely easy for readers and movie viewers to hunt down holes in a historical writer’s research—and to publicly cry out “ANACHRONISM!!!” on blogs and in website comments sections. Even bestselling, award-winning historical novelists aren’t immune to the accusations, as exemplified by Elizabeth Wein’s Setting the Record Straight post about readers’ complaints of anachronisms (that aren’t even actual anachronisms) in her hit novel Code Name Verity. In his NPR article Historical Vocab: When We Get It Wrong, Does It Matter?, Geoff Nunberg explains that even the greats like Shakespeare and Dickens were guilty of anachronisms in their historical fiction, but their audiences were likely ignorant of the errors…or at least they couldn’t publicly complain about them with the ease of twenty-first-century Internet users.

Modern consumers of historical entertainment, however, are on high alert for inaccuracies.

As a reader and a writer of historical fiction, I can see both sides of the coin. I want to believe the novels I’m reading are as thoroughly researched and edited as possible. When a historical novelist is blatantly lazy or knowingly inserts a major, clunky anachronism for the sake of the story, that’s when I bristle. However, I still remind myself that I’m reading fiction. If the rest of the book is stellar, I’m willing to forgive some mistakes. There’s a sense of smugness and self-satisfaction when catching writers and filmmakers in the act of historical blunders, but it’s much more fun to actually sit back and enjoy the work.

As a writer, I find that accusations of sloppy research sting more than negative comments about my characters or plot. It’s the equivalent of working on a school essay until your eyes and fingers hurt, only to have your teacher give you a D and claim you didn’t put in enough effort.  The hard truth about being a historical novelist is that anachronisms could be lurking in every single sentence that you write. Words that seem too modern to be from the past are often, surprisingly, historically accurate, but the phrases that everyone—including you, your editor, your copy editor, your proofreader, and your historical fiction-writing critique partners—overlooked because they sounded time-period-appropriate? Those seemingly safe choices may very well be the dreaded A-word of historical fiction. The errors just sit there in the published copies, and we all have to live with them.

Even though some skeptics might believe otherwise, we writers, along with our publishers, truly do our utmost to keep historical inaccuracies at bay. There are no behind-the-scenes, “The Making of…” featurettes proving the hours we spend perusing historical slang dictionaries and hunting down rare historical documents. I could post pictures of what I look like after spending a full day researching a minute historical detail that will show up in a mere three sentences of my novel…but that wouldn’t be pretty. Trust me, anachronisms make us authors shudder far more than they make readers cringe, and we do whatever we can to strike them down with our editorial swords before our books reach your sharp and watchful eyes.

The great William Shakespeare—yep, guilty of anachronisms.

Anachronisms simply happen. That’s life. We writers could beat ourselves up about them and feel like big, old phonies, but the truth of the matter is we need to simply get over them. No matter how skillfully we may transport readers to the past, we’re still modern-day people writing about eras in which we never lived. Heck, even if we had lived in these time periods, our fuzzy memories would likely cause us to slip up and use an anachronistic phrase now and then.

Our jobs are to entertain readers and to pique their interests in time periods we find absolutely fascinating. I can sleep at night knowing I put in the time and the effort to make my debut novel as accurate and intriguing as possible. I’ve done my best to provide further options for learning about my book’s time period in my author’s note. And despite any criticism I may receive, I know that no one—no real person, anyway—has ever died from an anachronism.

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Cat Winters’s critically acclaimed debut novel, In the Shadow of Blackbirds, is a nominee for YALSA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults and was named one of Booklist‘s Top Ten Horror Fiction for Youth. Her second novel, The Cure for Dreaming, is coming Fall 2014 from Amulet Books. She lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband and two kids. Visit her online at www.catwinters.com.

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My Teenage Love for Those Moody Men of the Moors

When I was in high school, I fell in love with Gothic historical fiction. And Gothic historical men. I can’t remember which tempestuous hero of the English moors first sparked this literary infatuation, but I was smitten.

Here’s a short tribute to the brooding Byronic males who won my heart when I was a teen reader.

Heathcliff of Wuthering Heights, you moody wild child, I didn’t care that you clashed with Catherine and embraced your dark side far too often. You had unruly hair and an undying love: that’s what mattered most to teenaged me (who also happened to be named Catherine).

Mr. Rochester, you lonely, haunted master of Thornfield Hall, when you fell in love with plain Jane Eyre, you gave this quiet, studious girl hope that romance could happen to just about anyone. I didn’t care what or whom you were hiding in your house.

Maxim de Winter, you charming, troubled widower from Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, I think I loved you most of all, although looking back, I see you were far too old for me…and you had one of the creepiest housekeepers in literature. Yet you inspired me to write my own Rebecca-style novel, The Days of Devonshire, which I lovingly wrote by hand in three spiral notebooks…and which will never see the light of day, if I can help it.

Even you, Count Dracula, caught my young fancy. That neck-biting move with the ladies was awfully alluring, and you were always such a nice dresser.

Now that I’m a grown, married adult, I realize these troubled literary heroes would all make terrible real-life boyfriends and husbands. Undying love is a beautiful thing…as long as you don’t have to deal with daily mood swings and troublesome first wives who don’t completely go away.

Still, there’s an eternal soft spot for these gentlemen in my heart, and I suppose, looking at some of the male characters in my own Gothic historical novel, I can see that my love for troubled heartthrobs haunts my writing to this day.

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Cat Winters is the author of In the Shadow of Blackbirds, a WWI-era ghost tale coming April 2, 2013, from Amulet Books/ABRAMS. Visit her online at www.catwinters.com, Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads.