Lisa YeeIn Conversation with The Pen And Ink

The Pen And Ink Blog Management admires Lisa Yee – author of Millicent Min, Girl Genius, American Girl's Kanani books and Bobby books, and winner of the best decorated cake at Brightwood Elementary School in Monterey Park, California. She has a charismatic stage and online presence. She maintains a blog, LiveJournal, a website, a Facebook profile, a Twitter account, and the LisaYeeAndSon's video channel.

Her 14 year old son helps Lisa create and shoot the videos. He’s a filmmaker and directs Lisa. “It’s fun for him to boss me around. We collaborate.” For the Peepy YouTube video, Cautionary Easter. Lisa and her son hashed out idea, shot it in one day and her son edited the footage. Lisa and son have an upcoming video for the International Reading Association blog.

Lisa has a charismatic stage presence. For example, on Target stage at the 2011 Los Angeles Festival of Books, Lisa started speaking about her recent American Girl book, and then commented on her black boots.

“I’m more nervous about time and logistics. Do I need water? Do I need to go to the bathroom?” She doesn’t write prepared remarks for stage appearances. “I go off-topic. There’s no editor. It’s whatever it comes out of my mouth. Then I’ll say ‘what was I saying?’ Then the audience reminds me.” 

She visits schools, libraries and participates at conferences. “I travel a lot and enjoy speaking to promote my books.” During an appearance at the American Girl Place for her Kanani books at The Grove, “My son lasted five minutes. He gave himself a headache got a migraine and ran out screaming.”

For the book launch of Warp Speed, the publisher sent a blowup of the book cover. “I decided to do something with it.” Lisa propped a life-size cut-out of the book cover next to the podium at Vroman’s. People posed next to the cover and had their photos taken. During the book launch for Absolutely, Maybe, Lisa supplied pink wigs and photographed people.

“It’s fun. It’s gives people something to do while I’m signing.” 

Her learning curve about the business was high. Lisa’s first book, Millicent Min, Girl Genius came out in October 2003. “SCBWI was a great help. I would have floundered without it. I took workshops on the business aspects. I’m still learning.” 

Lisa hadn’t planned on writing Warp Speed. At a middle school visit in Colorado, a nervous boy stood up during the Q&A. “I need to know what happened to Marley.” Marley Sandelski was a minor character in Stanford Wong Flunks Big Time. “I was trying to figure what was the boy talking about. Later his teacher told me it was amazing that the boy spoke. He is Marley.” Also a girl had written Lisa about Marley, “He’s like me. I need to know he’s going to be okay.” Now she had to write the book. “I was taken by the phrase ‘I need to know what happened to Marley’.” She wasn’t writing to address the current “bullies in school” topic. 

Lisa is often asked, “Where do you get your ideas.” She says, “Those kids” like the boy in the back of the auditorium, standing up and asking questions. “I’ve heard from kids, teachers, parents about bullying.”

“I get a lot of mail from kids that starts, ‘I’ve never told anyone this before…” Lisa Yee urges the student to talk to someone, a teacher, a parent, a counselor. 

Lisa has an essay appearing in the forthcoming anthology, Dear Bully: 70 Authors Tell Their Stories, edited by YA novelists Megan Kelley Hall (Sisters of Misery) and Carrie Jones (Need). YA authors tell true stories that recall bullying incidents. 

No discussion of Lisa Yee is complete without mentioning Peepy, who according to her website, “…a.k.a. Peeps, is my travel companion and muse.” 

Lisa’s family has a definite opinion about her relationship with Peepy. “‘Nothing you do embarrasses us, except when you take out Peepy.’” 

Julia Andrews

Alas, there will be no book about Peepy. Peepy is “spoken for.” She is copyrighted by Just Born, Inc. The company is aware of Lisa’s blog. She once received a VIP invitation to the East Coast for an event. People bring their own peeps to meet Peepy. At the 2011 Los Angeles Book Festival, someone tried to buy Peepy. “Is this for sale?”

Peepy is always ready to break the ice with such luminaries as Julie Andrews, Sid Fleischmann and MT Anderson. Despite the many famous authors and illustrators Peepy has met, she stays loyal to Lisa. Though Lisa may be fearful in a public venue, Peepy starts a conversation starts and opens doors for Lisa. 

Amy Goldman Koss

There isn’t anywhere Peepy won’t go. “Peepy knows not to get into a microwave. She has her own fans. People make her clothes and sent presents. They want pictures with Peepy. Other plush animals come to visit. The whole world loves her.” 

Although, Amy Goldman Koss once attempted to eat Peepy as a sandwich. 

The Pen And Ink Blog would like to thank Lisa Yee for this interview. Proceed at warp eight to your nearest local book store and get a copy of Warp Speed.

Edited by Susan Berger

Images Courtesy of Lisa Yee

Its Annual Chocolate day Again July 7, 2011

by Susan Berger
Last Thursday was chocolate day. In honor of the event, Here are some more Chocolate titles and two delicious recipes.

The Chocolate Touch 
by Patrick Skene Caitling

Chocolate Fever
by Robert Kimmel Smith

Sorcery and Cecelia, or the Enchanted Chocolate Pot
by Patrica C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer

Missing Persons Chocolate Lover
by M.E. Rabb

Dying for Chocolate
by Diane Mott Davidson

The Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder
by Joann Fluke 

And here are the recipes. These have been in my family file for over thirty years.

When I want to have a truly decadent cake, I use the Microwave Fudge as frosting for the Wacky Cake.

This is a link to the printable version of the recipes: http://www.scribd.com/doc/59144886/Chocolate-Recipes-From-Pen-and-Ink

Microwave Fudge

1 box confectioner’s sugar (XXX)
1/2 cup cocoa (or 2 squares unsweetened chocolate)
½ c butter
¼ c milk
2 teaspoons vanilla
In glass bowl, combine ingredients. Cut butter into about 8 slices and dot over sugar mixture
Microwave on High 2 minutes
Stir until all the ingredients combine, then beat vigorously for one minute, or until fudge hardens.
Pour it into greased 8x8 square pan.
Cool.

Enjoy!

This next recipe came from Hershey’s Chocolate in the 1930’s. It used to be know as Depression Cake.
     

WACKY CAKE

(This cake has no Dairy and is a family favorite Great with Microwave Fudge frosting, white mountain or cream cheese Frosting)

Preheat oven to 350
Use 9" x 13" pan
Bake for 40 minutes

INGREDIENTS:

• 3 cups all purpose Flour
• 2 teaspoons Baking soda
• 1 teaspoon Salt
• 2 cups Sugar
• 1/2 cup Cocoa (Hershey's dark cocoa)
• 2/3 cup Mazola oil
• 2 teaspoons Vanilla
• 2 tablespoons Vinegar
• 2 cups Water

Directions: Sift dry ingredients in bowl. Then make three (3) holes in dry ingredients. Put Oil in one hole, put Vanilla in 2nd hole, put vinegar in 3rd hole. Then pour 2 cups of water over entire mix. Stir until well mixed
 Bake for 40 minutes at 350.

(Original recipe says ungreased pan. I put foil in the pan and spray lightly with cooking oil. Because I turn it out to frost it.)

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It’s Chocolate Day July 7. 2010

Never Right the First Time or How I Learned to Love Revision

Mary Ann Rodman

When I was in school? Writing = grammar. Since creative writing was not part of the curriculum, I invented my own ways to sneak it in. The “make sentences with your spelling words” assignment became short stories. Science reports became episodes of Mr. Wizard or Wild Kingdom. Writing, I was in The Zone even before there was a “Zone.”

What was not to love about writing?

Revision.

Just as writing = grammar, revision = correction. A “corrected assignment” was perfectly spelled and punctuated, contained only complete sentences, with all the nouns and verbs agreeing.

Teachers also wanted tidy work. My papers looked like grey Swiss cheese, with streaks of partially erased words, and holes where I had erased, too hard. No one cared what I wrote. No one ever suggested revision as a way of making my writing more concise or interesting. Once I mastered the dictionary and erasing with less vigor, I was done.

My No Revision Policy continued into high school, where I won several local and national writing contests. I was a real writer, and real writers always got it right the first time.

Then I met The Famous Southern Writer.

One of my contest prizes was lunch with The Famous Southern Writer. I was fifteen and had zero Idea of who he was or how gifted. I was much more interested in the prize check he would award me at the end of the meal.

The Writer liked to talk, mostly about the Agony of Writing. Of how he tore up five pages for every one that satisfied him. “I lose track of how many revisions my current book has gone through,” he moaned over his iced tea.

Gee, I thought, he must not be that good if he keeps writing stuff over and over. So when The Writer stopped talking long enough to take a bite of salad, I chirped right up. “You know, I never write anything but once.”

The Writer put his fork down. “Is that so?” he drawled. “Only once?”

I nodded modestly, trying not to blush.

“Well, my dear,” said The Writer, “some day you will learn to re-write and re-write and after all that, the d*** thing still will sound awful to you. Then you’ll be a real writer.”

You would think such honest and direct advice would’ve been my big “Ah-ha!” moment.

It wasn’t. Fifteen-year-olds often think they are very wise.

Not until the Vermont College of Fine Arts Program did I learn the how and why of revision. Then-faculty members Phyllis Root and Ron Koertge gave me an instant lesson in my first workshop. (Workshop is the heart of the VCFA program, where students share their work in small groups, critically assessing with praise as well as questions.) I listened in awe as Phyllis made rapid-fire suggestions.

“Have you thought about making it a short story? Or a picture book? Maybe the story belongs to another character?”

Then it was my turn. I stammered that the first twenty pages of my novel didn’t seem to be working. “I don’t know what to do with it,” I said, feeling very much not a real writer.

“I can tell you exactly what to do with it,” said Ron. Carefully, he counted out fourteen pages and thunked them into the trash can. “There,” he said. “Your story really starts on page fifteen.”

I looked at page fifteen of what ultimately became Yankee Girl and heard my old friend, The Southern Writer chuckling, “Told you so, girl.”

To quote William Zinsser’s book, On Writing: “Re-writing is the essence of writing well…We all have emotional equity in our first draft; we can’t believe it wasn’t born perfect. But the odds are close to 100 per cent that it wasn’t.”

WRITER’S WORKOUT: Here are a few revision tricks I use. One is to emotionally distance yourself from the piece, especially if your characters are based on people you know. Another (a la Phyllis Root) is to change a basic element: write it in third person instead of first. Change the tense. Change the point of view. And if all else fails, put it away for awhile, then look at it again.

Keep an open mind. What you think is a picture book (which was the case with Jimmy’s Stars) might really be a novel. Or vice versa. You can’t force a story into a genre, any more than you can force size 8 feet into size 6 shoes (even if they are really cute and on sale).

Mary Ann Rodman is a VCFA grad. Her first picture book, My Best Friend, won the Ezra Jack Keats and Charlotte Zolotow Awards. Her middle grade historical fictions books: Yankee Girl and Jimmy’s Stars, have won or been nominated for over a dozen awards, both here and in the UK. She is one of the six teaching authors featured on the blog www.teachingauthors.com 

Writing Sex Scenes in YA

Melanie Fishbane

As writers of Young Adult books, I think there’s a tendency to shy away from the complexities of sex because we are writing to a younger audience and there is a certain responsibility that comes with that. Perhaps, someone will think that if there is a sex scene that we are promoting pre-marital sex. Yet, there is also a responsibility to our audience to tell a story that speaks to them. It is an audience that is probably having sex or knows people who are having sex, or, who is thinking about sex. I believe we would be remiss to not include a sex scene if it’s an important part of a character’s overall development.

At Vermont College of Fine Arts, we are encouraged to read novels that use particular techniques or themes that we are working on to help us navigate questions of style. I think that this exercise works well, because it gives us insight into how to write something differently than we had before. This past semester, I read two books, Cassandra Clare’s City of Fallen Angels and Libba Bray’s Beauty Queens, in which the authors wrote a sex or make-out scene that was sexual and passionate, but also spoke to the complexities of how it feels to be thinking about being intimate with someone and having sex.

By observing how these authors write their own sex scenes, showed me different ways of approaching this scene in the novel. When Clary and Jace are making out in City of Fallen Angels, Clare combines the perfect amount of heat and intensity with Clary’s desire for Jace, coupled with the uncertainty of how far she wants to go. This fit in perfectly with some of the questions I had with my own character. Knowing that others seem to be asking the same kinds of questions, made me feel better about the scene that I was writing.

When writing the sex scene in my novel, I wanted it to be sexual, sensual and loving. I considered how my character felt to be kissed. What it would taste like to kiss her boyfriend after they’d just had some popcorn at the movies. How his fingertips lightly caressing her bare forearm would feel. I didn’t want to skim over the experience because it was an important development in their relationship that will influence how the characters relate to each other later in the novel.

I didn’t want the encounter to be perfect though. I remembered as a teen feeling confused and surprised at how my body responded to someone’s touch and my insecurities of my own “sexual talents,” so I tapped into that and used it in the scene. I wanted my character to have some of these insecurities. As she is enjoying the way he kisses her softly on the nape of her neck, she is worried if she’s doing it right. As he moves his hand up her thigh, she’s excited but also scared as to what will happen next.

At VCFA, I’m learning by reading other authors work, I can read as an observer, taking notes at how other authors do things, then incorporate those techniques into my stories.

Melanie Fishbane is starting her second semester at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. With over fifteen year working in YA/Kids lit at various Canadian book chains, she decided it was time to write one herself. She writes book reviews for the Canadian Children’s Book News and is active with online communities promoting children’s literature, Laura Ingalls Wilder and L.M. Montgomery. You can see her blogging about writing, YA and her love of classic children’s lit at http://melaniefishbane.blogspot.com/ . Feel free to contact her with any questions about this post or the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA program at melaniefishbane@gmail.com

Romancing Reality In YA Fiction

Mandy Robbins Taylor

I saw a bumper sticker slogan on a Facebook page recently that read: “BOYS IN BOOKS ARE BETTER.” Of course, the comment thread that followed was a long string of female readers' bemoaning agreement. I have to agree as well. But I'll take it one step further and ask—why is that? I've been thinking about this a lot lately as I plan on taking on this topic in my January 2012 graduate lecture at Vermont College
It's probably safe to say that this slogan originated with the YA set as opposed to adult readers—I'm basing this assumption on the use of the word “boys” rather than “men”. Though adult romances certainly don't get a free pass, I'm going to focus on the utter falsehoods about love and romance being perpetuated by most YA novels out there right now—even some of my favorite books are guilty of starring the ideal guy with perfect hair, glistening biceps and the soulful sensitivity of a poet or musician (which he usually is). This boy will, of course, aggressively make all the first moves and pursue our heroine, but when it comes time to be there for her in the midst of her grief/confusion/fear, he's as sensitive and perceptive as her best girl friend who's known her since preschool.

What's not to like? Way better than real life guys, right? As a teen, I would swoon over these 'book boys' and dream about the day when I would find my own and fall madly in love and get married and live happily (and extremely together-ly) ever after. I went through high school, then college, and never found him.

You could criticize me for being fantastically moronic and idealistic to buy into this. You could argue that it's clearly just fiction, a made up story. You might believe I'm singular in my stupidity, but hear me out.

Is there such a thing as “just fiction”? Doesn't good fiction mirror life—at least in the heart of it, in the big questions it asks? Even fantasy novels often bring out the deepest real questions we're all living every day. So why depart so wholly from reality in our depictions of teen romance?

I'm not saying there's no place for a Cinderella story. There are romance tales that are allegorical in their truth, I think Cinderella is one of those. And, okay, sometimes pure escapism is a justifiable guilty pleasure. That's another topic altogether.

But in your average, contemporary, realistic YA novel, why do the boys have to be so much better than real life teen boys? What are we telling our girls to expect?

As I've walked with my closest friends through relationships that turned to engagements that turned to marriage in the last half decade or so, I've seen us all struggle with similar issues. The heart of all of them lies here: love isn't a fairytale. There are (much) harder things about marriage than picking up dirty socks off the floor and snoring. Passion fades—'Edward and Bella' love is pure fantasy. We all have days and weeks when we are certain we will end up divorced. Real people have real, serious, heavy, painful baggage, and sometimes it collides and explodes and we don't know where to go from there. Sorry girls, it's sad but true. There's is no perfect—or even perfect “for you”.

The real question I'm asking is: why are we hiding that part from teenagers? Do we think sheltering them from this reality is doing them any favors? Do we think they don't already see and struggle with it all the time, in their own dating relationships and those of their friends?

Books full of easy, passionate, flawless romance are communicating to them that real love is out there; they just haven't found it yet.

So why do YA authors do this? I have a few theories. The most relevant to this topic: I think we process our own grief over the loss of the fantasy by creating it in our heads. That's to say, we make up what we finally realize we're never going to have in order to move on from the expectation. Is this healthy or functional? I don't know, I'm not a psychologist. It could be. But is it healthy and functional to then publish these fantasy narratives and hand them to kids?

As YA grows ever hotter and the market continues to expand (hooray!), the depth and scope of subject matter has increased greatly. But something that remains the same in most genres of YA (which, it's worth noting, is still primarily written by women) is the fantasy romance. Even books that try to convey some complexity and difficulty take the easy way out—the boy is too beautiful, his hair too perfect, his kiss too melted buttery, to not forgive in the end. Or he has a flaw—but really only one. And it's surmountable, thank goodness.

Boys in books are better because they are fairy tales. They don't exist.

There are some notable exceptions to this phony, fantasy romance epidemic: Sara Zarr's Sweethearts may be the best example I've read in recent years. Jenny Han does interesting things in The Summer I Turned Pretty and its sequels—her teen protagonist's gradual realization that we don't necessarily only love one person at a time is achingly real and bittersweet. With her third book in the series recently hitting the NY Times Bestseller list that should say something to the naysayers who insist girls only want to spend their allowance on the fantasy. And Varian Johnson looks at the complexities of childhood friendships turned adolescent relationships—with a side of grappling with religion—in Saving Maddie. If you haven't read these books, please do.

If at this point you're tempted to write me off as a hopeless non-romantic, please don't. That couldn't be farther from the truth—I think the fact that I love romance as much as I do is the reason I'm even grappling with this topic to begin with. As I write this I'm listening to Taylor Swift's Love Story on my iPod for the 847th time—pure fantasy. But I can't help it, I just love, love, love it. There is no drug that can beat the feeling (or illusion) of a fairy tale romance come true. But I have to say this... isn't there room for something more? Can't we dare to put our emotional realities out there a little more often, as opposed to our emotional fantasies?

Alan Cumyn, an advisor of mine at Vermont College of Fine Arts, engaged in extensive dialogue with me about writing from our core and dealing with our emotional realities. It isn't easy. I think there are as many reasons for avoiding it as there are people.

For example, Alan said recently about his upcoming YA novel, Tilt (Groundwood, August 2011): “Sex happens in this novel -- you might say it's the centerpiece. Stan's relationship [...] has its own complications, but eventually it represents a safe harbor for Stan. He doesn't have to manage the whole world alone, and he doesn't have to repeat his father's mistakes either.

“The intimacy is handled with some sensitivity, I believe. There is a moment of excruciating embarrassment -- there would have to be in an adolescent novel involving sex. In this case it's over premature ejaculation, a disaster that my lovers get through. But there’s also real tenderness and I hope a strong nod to the poignancy and power of first sexual experiences.”

Embarrassing stuff, right? When you're dealing with realistic relationships, complete with missteps, humiliations, complications, awkwardness, actions you can't undo and words you can't take back, I think it's bound to become more autobiographical, at least in spirit, than most writers are comfortable with. You'll get muddled, you'll get sentimental. You’ll get stuck at an emotional moment that hits so close to home it makes you freeze up. Yeah, vampire and archangel love will sound like a pretty novel idea at that point.

But I hope that one of these days, you'll take a deep breath, sit down, give yourself the “Nobody will EVER read this!” pep talk, and try to write your truth anyway. I hope you'll push yourself, make yourself cry, break your own heart again and rub salt in your wounds.

I hope you'll do it, and that despite your pep talk, you do let others, especially kids, read it someday. Because if you don't nobody will.

And I firmly, passionately believe (as my January VCFA workshop members who saw me start crying over it can attest) that these kids, our readers, deserve the truth about love—and all the garbage that comes with it.

Mandy Robbins Taylor will graduate from Vermont College's MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults program in January 2012, though she would truly rather not. Ever. She loves writing realistic young adult, funny fantasy middle grade, and goofy picture books. She occasionally teaches workshops for teen writers, passing on some of that hard-earned MFA knowledge and staying connected with her audience. You can find her this October teaching the teen portion of the inter-generational Pacific Coast Childrens Writers Workshop...Feel free to email her at MandyRobbins7@aol(dot)com with any questions about this post, her writing, or Vermont College of Fine Arts.