Book Deals: Adam Sass' The 99 Boyfriends of Micah Summers to Philomel!

It’s wild to me, to think about how Adam Sass first sent me his query for Surrender Your Sons in 2016. I’d been living in Virginia, my wife and I were wild fans of his. You follow him on Twitter, right? He’s a delight.

Fast forward to 2018. We’re working together. In 2020, Surrender Your Sons comes out with Flux, nets critical acclaim. Starred review from Kirkus and Booklist. A 2020 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards Finalist, a 2020 Booklist Top 10 First Novels for Youth selection, a 2020 Kirkus Reviews Best Young Adult Books selection… the list goes on.

To know Adam, is to know a rising star who knows stops hustling.

Please join me in cheering him on, as he continues to take off.

I’m so pleased to say his latest book, THE 99 BOYFRIENDS OF MICAH SUMMERS, has been picked up by Philomel in a six-figure, two book deal, a children’s imprint over at Penguin Random House, and home to so many huge names, from Ruta Sepetys to Jenny Torres Sanchez.

You can learn a bit more about the book via the announcement in Publisher’s Weekly, but here’s a blip from there:

Kelsey Murphy at Philomel has bought, at auction, in a six-figure deal, North American rights to The 99 Boyfriends of Micah Summers by Surrender Your Sons author Adam Sass, plus an Untitled Book 2. The contemporary YA rom-com is about Micah, a teen boy who posts sketches of his imaginary boyfriends to Instagram—99 of them to be exact—while dreaming of having the courage to one day ask someone out. So, when a meet cute with the much-anticipated Boy 100 goes wrong, Micah embarks on a Prince Charming-like quest throughout Chicago to find true love. Chelsea Eberly at Greenhouse Literary brokered the deal on behalf of Dovetail Fiction/Working Partners, and Eric Smith at P.S. Literary represented the author.

For more, hit up Publisher’s Weekly, and be sure to send Adam all the congrats.

Discussing Barriers in Querying and Pitching for Neurodivergent Writers

A little over a week ago, I posed a question inspired by some messages with a writer friend of mine, who said they were struggling with query letters as a neurodivergent writer. This surprised me, and I’d sent them some recommendations, some query letter examples, proposals, and the like. They explained that that wasn’t the problem.

There were other challenges, that had to do with length of time, specific questions, the limbo waiting for a potential rejection or acceptance, website accessibility, the challenges of phone calls, the difficulty of submitting anything in the first place… the list went on, and when I surveyed Twitter for further insight, that continued.  

It was eye opening, in a way that was distressing.

I’m not coming from this as a person who is themselves neurodivergent. I feel like I need to stress that. I have no formal education there, I’m not an expert. I’m just someone who cares and is concerned, both as someone who works in the industry, a friend of many neurodivergent people, and as the father of an autistic boy. And the definitions here, for neurodivergence, are wide and have many interpretations. I’ll touch on a few from folks who spoke to me, but it’s not by any means definitive.

I’m just sharing what I learned. And I’m hoping neurotypical industry friends can take away all this valuable feedback that was volunteered my way.  

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Two Quick Disclaimers

First and foremost, I want to link to this blog from Matthew Broberg-Moffitt, an autistic writer who back in December wrote about their experience querying. Everything in here is fantastic, and this line here is such a powerful takeaway:

If you are issuing the call for Own Voices neuro-diverse writers, you are openly saying that you want to see work that breaks the mold from writers that aren’t mainstream. If you issue such a call, but then use the same process that you apply to all queries and proposals, you’re being unintentionally disingenuous. You are, in effect, saying that you want rhomboid pegs created by dodecahedron artists when you will only accept square pegs fashioned by the spherical.

This was the single biggest piece of feedback I got online and via email. That industry pros say they are eager to see these works… but then apply the same process, when it simply won’t work. I’m definitely guilty of that.

Matthew breaks down a few of those things in their excellent blog post (again, please go read it), and I highly recommend following them on Twitter. I’m eager to get my hands on their future books, that is for certain, and to continue listening to their voice in this industry.

Secondly, there’s no single answer here that solves everything. You use words like neurodiversity because of that word, diversity, no? We don’t fix one query problem and then magically, it’s all fixed for absolutely everybody. No one’s experience in monolithic or representative of everyone, I know that just as an adoptee and a person of color who often writes about the experience. That’s not what writing down any of this is going to do, but what I hope it does, is get my peers talking.

One writer who emailed me about this added that there are “technical, sociological, and emotional barriers” that also add layers here. But I hope what it does is start some conversations and implement some changes to make things easier.

And now, onto some of the lessons I pooled from this Twitter thread, and from the emails I was sent.

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The Importance and Difficulty of Precision

There’s a lot to talk about here when it comes to being “precise” both on the side of the writer and the industry. How query letters that insist on being so exacting can be a barrier, and how websites that lack that precise navigation can also be a problem.  

This particular tweet from Sarah Kurchak really stuck with me:

For me, the querying process always felt like a list of reasons I could never be good enough. Too many unclear things I was afraid I would misread. Too many agents discussing bad queries in a way that made me feel I could never be perfect enough to bother.

I’ll talk about those agent subtweets shortly, but the idea that query letter instructions leave writers feeling like they’re not good enough is a massive problem. Queries are supposed to be our way of inviting writers in, not keeping them out. A query letter should be an opening door.

So, let’s break down some of the problems that were brought up.

• The Difficulty of Precise Queries. One thing you see agents talk a lot about on social media, are comp titles. I always found this to be an easy way to sum up a book and well… it’s not. Summing up a huge idea into something so tight, isn’t something always accessible to neurodivergent writers.

  Mix that in with the challenges of the “personalization” bit that often gets suggested in query letters, and the precise query letter poses a significant challenge. Writing the quick “look how well I know you” hook in a query can be an anxiety-inducing barrier.

• What Do You Expect in a Bio?: This was an interesting point brought up by quite a few people on Twitter. Are you asking the writer about their life, who they are as a person? Are you asking about their writing? Is it a mix of that? A little blip about that in the query process could clear this up a lot.

  I never really thought of it as a barrier or something that would cause anxiety, and it was really eye opening to hear this was a problem.

  One writer chimed in via email to discuss how ADHD is often treated unfairly in workplaces and can often lead to someone being fired. Sometimes, for one’s safety, these things can’t be discussed. The writer continued, “knowing an agent has a line stating ‘if you disclose your neurodiversity to me in a query, it will be confidential’ would be pretty big.”

Some big things to think about. And what are some potential solutions here, in terms of making things more precise and accessible when it comes to querying and agency websites?

• Sharing Sample Queries: Several writers chimed in about how seeing sample queries could be helpful and make the process easier. Asking clients to share the occasional query letter to have live on your agency website, could make a big difference.

  Though I do wonder, is this just challenging ND writers to fit into that box Matthew mentioned, instead of us being open to other communication?
  

• Precise Streamlined Websites & Instructions: Instead of having writers bounce around from resource to resource, this wishlist page separate from an agency page, this Pinterest page of favorite books… it’s far more helpful for neurodivergent writers to have all of that on one page. An author friend of mine reached out regarding this specific point, to explain that it’s “also really helpful for chronically ill people, people with executive dysfunction, and many others.”

Right there, precise, accessible.

One writer told me via email that doing all of that excess clicking and reading can lead to something they called “process burn out.” Writers and industry folks suffer burn out enough as is, if there’s a way to avoid this, having a clear accessible way to access these materials could be so helpful.

Clear guidelines, all in one place.

• The Power of Forms & QueryManager: I was stunned at the revelation that QueryManager has been a lifesaver in the pitching trenches for neurodivergent writers. But according to many of the writers who chatted with me on Twitter, the accessibility of having forms and clear instructions in one place like that, makes the process a lot less stressful and anxiety inducing.

One of my own authors chimed in on this, and I’ll link to bits of their conversation in another section here. But a number of writers talked about how QueryManager made pitching way easier, particularly those with ADHD.

That said, a number of writers talked about the problems they spot on QueryManager, like an agent asking wildly specific pop culture related references that end up feeling like a “societal norm” test. This tweet struck me in particular.

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Openness to Neurodivergent Stories

I feel like this should be a given here. If you want to work with neurodivergent authors, you need to be open to neurodivergent stories, right? But I was really struck (I’m saying this phrase a lot, because it’s true) by this post from Lorna Doon.

They talk about the experience of pitching a story and getting rejections because the agent didn’t understand the journey, because it was an ND one, not a neurotypical one. I talked earlier about authors who reached out to tell me I’d done this, so clearly this is a problem.

Lorna went on to say “I think most agents haven’t accepted that having ND clients means repping different kinds of stories” and goodness, I am going to be thinking about this. 

One writer, Natania Barron, reached out with an email that had a statement that really hit me:

Our characters and stories are going to be different, too. I recently got one of those rejections that read like an acceptance, except that they found my MC "too emotionally distant." She's autistic. She isn't emotionally distant, but she expresses emotions very differently than a neurotypical person. It comes in waves. And the story is about her learning a more healthy approach to that. Sure, there were probably other reasons. I get that. But that's very frustrating, because that's something I have heard all my life: I don't express myself enough, I'm too serious. As if those things keep me from being an emotional human!

 If you want to champion these stories, you have to fight for them to be told the way they need to be told. And so do I.

Another tweet that stood out in this space was from Dani Redfern. They said:

 [T]he best thing an agent can do support neurodiverse writers better is to question their own internalized ableism & social conditioning to a level that fundamentally… frees up the agent’s perspective around biases they didn’t realize they had against ND communication styles/ways of relating.

There’s a lot of inward work to be done there. What does that look like? Reading works by neurodiverse writers, read about advocacy, and just ask for help when you have questions.

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Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria

What happens when you’re in a community that is used to being rejected due to not adhering to neuronormal standards, and place them in a position where they have to adhere to strict pitching rules, in a landscape where the gatekeepers so often make jokes on social media about those rules being broken?

Honestly, it sounds like such a horrifying nightmare, and from the responses I got, it certainly seems to be just that. Who wants to pitch someone, when it means you might end up getting made fun of in front of tens of thousands of followers?

This particular response in an email from accessibility advocate Mandy Montano really struck me:

Rejection—It is just different. Most ND face living in a world where we are forced to conform to the neuronormal and experience a different level of failure, it can be exhausting. We are a community dependent on learning and adjusting to neuronormal expectations and needs; it is hard to not know what was wrong, without a response, we are left guessing. No response makes you think the worst and there is no way to learn from it. It is also deeper, most of us spend our days hiding behind a curtain, faking it. Writing is showing behind the curtain and it hurts to be rejected at the core, it is like every part of you being rejected. For dyslexics, sharing writing is like showing someone your wound, and rejection is like someone gasping and turning away at the horror.

Several writers chimed in about this on Twitter, addressing how rejection sensitivity dysphoria and ADHD often go hand-in-hand including one of my own clients, K. Ancrum:

 … a thousand years ago back when I was querying the first time round, an agent had a form submission that had everything broken down into categories with drop downs and separate upload places for query letter and pages. It felt revolutionary.

Then when you pressed submit it gave a response like “if you don’t hear back within 2 months of submission, it has been rejected.  Then the form rejection, when it came, had a line about most authors spending 2 years querying & was actually a sweet encouragement letter.

This was back in 2012 so i don’t remember who it was who did this. But I do remember thinking very firmly “this very organized. This is how they all should be.” And my ADHD brain was buzzing with satisfaction.

A number of solutions were offered up here to combat this:

Adjusting the No Response Query: A number of ND writers on Twitter expressed that the “no response means a pass” isn’t helpful in dealing with rejection sensitivity dysphoria.

Firm Timelines: Better timelines regarding responses can help here. Agencies often have “responses in six to eight weeks” and then don’t get back nearly that fast. While yes, life happens and sometimes folks fall behind on queries and manuscripts (I’m very guilty of this), I wonder what we can do to make this better.

Be Understanding: I think this is going to be an ongoing theme in this post, but being understanding of mistakes in query letters is a big one. A bundle of writers on Twitter commented on agents and editors subtweeting about mistakes in queries, and maybe not taking into consideration that person might be ND.

• This section was updated to correct “rejection dysphoria” with “rejection sensitivity dysphoria.” Thank you Laura!

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 The Inaccessibility of Conferences & Events

Last year, so many conferences and events went virtual, whether we were talking about book festivals or publishing conferences, both of which offer up helpful events that can potentially lead an “aspiring” writer towards publication (you’re a writer whether or not you’re published, my friends). In my head, this offered up seemingly staggering accessibility. You could be anywhere and go to a big festival or literary conference. It felt like such a huge opportunity.

But it wasn’t, not for everyone.

One writer told me via email that they “want to be considerate of our time and make room for the people the process was designed for, instead of adding to the pile” when it came to conferences and querying events, which really just broke my heart.

How do we make conferences and events more accessible? And how do we make them more welcoming, so neurodivergent writers feel like those spaces are for them.

I don’t feel like the answer should be “well just don’t do those events” because it’s such an outstanding opportunity to get questions answered and feedback, what with the panels and all that surround these events.

I have no answer here. I don’t run events. But there’s got to be a way to make these moments smoother. Do we share the kind of questions we’re looking to ask with conferences organizers, so ND writers feel less on the spot during those kind of potential one-on-one agent interviews or pitch sessions? Does that make the situation easier to navigate?

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Website Accessibility, or Fewer Words, Great Comprehension

Rebecca Tapley, a user experience writer with ADHD emailed me, to talk about website accessibility. They took the time to look over my own website and my agency’s website (again, I can’t stress enough just how much kindness and work people put in when I asked for insight here, it’s staggering) for accessibility issues, and the notes they returned were so valuable.

User research confirms that it takes 3 seconds at most for the average online reader to decide if a website is worth reading. Every other type of popular online medium has trained people's brains for thinking short: consider the amount of time it takes to ingest texts, Tweets, and Instagram/TikTok posts. That's where the bar is ACTUALLY set in terms of average attention span, and why. 

Neurodivergent people's brains move even MORE quickly, regardless of which type of heightened state they might be in - both anxiety and hypervigilance produce the same basic result, oddly enough. The three-second rule I mentioned just above is even more important in these cases. If you give a neurodivergent person too much reading to absorb, they run the risk of being bored or overwhelmed, and either way they'll likely quit.

Fortunately, the overall remedy in terms of improving online content is the same: fewer words equals greater comprehension.

Tapley pointed out that my agency’s website had too much copy and that our content blocks looked equal in terms of how important they are. A lack of distinction here can be a barrier, cause ND readers to look more slowly, and spend more time figuring out what to choose. That time increase, increases irritation and frustration.

It makes things inherently more difficult.

When it came to my own website, it was pointed out that the sizing of the elements on the home page tell readers to scroll down. And for me, I did that on purpose, I wanted to have a big ol’ picture and my little bio there. But, this can be frustrating for readers on the neurodivergence spectrum.

What are the solutions there, for agencies (and agents!) with their websites? Again, I think it comes down to listening and reading, asking questions about what does and doesn’t work.

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So, What Do We Do?

There’s a lot in here. Lots of questions, lots of ideas. The TL;DR of this (though I hope you read, this took a long time to compile and so many writers were open about this on social media), can be summed up in some key bullet points:

• Be as Precise as Possible

• Be Forgiving & Open with Queries

• More Information, Less Pages

• Be Truly Open to ND Stories

• Rethink Conferences and Events for Accessibility

• Be Understanding

• Listen as Much as You Can

I know agents in this industry. Editors. I know everyone is overworked and underpaid and simply trying their best across the board. And the industry is flawed and has issues that need to be fixed at a systemic level. Support for others, often comes when you have support from within.

There’s no one click solution that takes all of this in and wraps it up, but I’m hoping that the things I’ve gathered here, from that Twitter thread and the emails that floated in, illuminate something. Helps someone shift this or that, think a little differently.

In the end, looking through all the feedback here, one of the big takeaways is just being more open and understanding. I’m trying my best and thinking a lot. I hope you will too.

Book Deals: Brianne Hogan's Joy in the Stars to Running Press!

I adored Brianne Hogan’s first book, Friendship Signs, a clever and fun book that paired astrology with one of the most important kinds of connections… friendship! And I’m just so pleased to announce she’ll have more astrology books publishing this fall, with our friends over at Running Press!

JOY IN THE STARS will be publishing this September, and in a partnership with BuzzFeed! You can even preorder the book already.

And that’s not all… there’s going to be a journal tie in! Two books! Go Brianne!

Here’s a bit more about it from Publisher’s Marketplace, but you can read about Joy in the Stars right over on Hachette’s official website:

Lifestyle contributor to HelloGiggles, SheKnows, ScaryMommy, and author of Friendship Signs, Brianne Hogan’s JOY IN THE STARS and JOY IN THE STARS COSMIC JOURNAL, a book full of self-care astrology tips and an accompanying journal, in a partnership with BuzzFeed, to Jordana Hawkins at Running Press, for publication in September 2021, by Eric Smith at P.S. Literary Agency (World).

Congrats Brianne! Be sure to follow her on Twitter, and send all your congrats.

Perfect Pitch: Olivia Chadha's Query for Rise of the Red Hand!

It’s that time!

I’m so excited to be sharing Olivia Chadha’s original query letter for Rise of the Red Hand, which publishes in January with Erewhon Books! As always, if you find this query letter helpful, PLEASE preorder (or order, depending on when you’re reading this) Olivia’s stunning novel.

Olivia is a #DVpit success story (if you don’t know about Beth Phelan’s amazing Twitter event, check out the website here and get your Twitter pitch ready!), and from the VERY TWEET I knew I was going to want this book terribly.

Here. Just look at this perfection. There’s a lesson to be learned in Twitter pitching from this.

I slammed fav on that tweet, read the book immediately, and the rest as they say, is history.

Olivia’s query did something that’s so important when it comes to Twitter pitch events… it followed up on the promise of that tweet. Her tweet promised a sci-fi thrill ride with cyborgs and mechs, and goodness did it deliver. Not just in the actual book, but in the longer pitch below.

And it’s also worth noting that she’d queried me just two weeks prior to DVpit! I wasn’t quite caught up on queries at the time, and this got it right to the top of my inbox, that’s for sure.

Let’s jump in to Olivia’s query here, and see what you can learn. And again, if you find this helpful, order the gorgeous book!

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Dear Eric:

I’m writing to you because of your #MSWL tweet about wanting to see more brown people in sci-fi. Perhaps my novel A GIRL WITHOUT will interest you. It’s an accessible YA sci-fi thriller set in a locale based on a future Mumbai, and would appeal to fans of Marie Lu, Cindy Pon, Marissa Meyer, and Axie Oh.

212 N.E., South Asian Province - Ashiva’s world is divided into those who will survive, and those who didn’t make the cut. Uplanders and Downlanders, those with freewill and those implanted with a neural-synch. Heat and disease have made it impossible to save the entire subcontinent. Most of the population has succumbed to rising sea levels. Because rations are in short supply, the Ministers of the Central District in the S.A. District relinquish control to a program, Solace, to make the hardest decisions. Solace’s algorithms decide who will live inside the city and who will be left to fend for themselves in the Unsanctioned Territories.

Ashiva is a cyborg smuggler who works for the Laal Haath, the Red Hand, a gang of revolutionaries. Her most important parcels are children discarded from the Uplanders. Kids who didn’t pass the tests, children like her. With her mentor and savior, Masiji, she helps rebuild them, care for them. Ashiva’s world turns upside down when her shanty town is emptied for the Fifth Pandemic by armed guardians who take all of the children to an off-site containment facility. Alone and desperate, Ashiva must work with a person she hates the most, an Uplander boy named Riz-Ali, to hack Solace and fight to free her family before it’s too late.

The novel is approximately 60,000 words and will be the first in a duology or a trilogy. I received a Ph.D. from Binghamton University’s creative writing program, and am an instructor at CU Boulder where I teach writing, graphic memoir, and mythology and fairy tales. I began my writing career with a stint in Los Angeles writing comic book scripts for Fathom Comics. BALANCE OF FRAGILE THINGS is my first novel, and some of my other works have appeared in Pinyon, Damselfly Press, and Every Day Fiction. I am an active member of SCBWI. I am first generation Punjabi Sikh/Latvian.

If A GIRL WITHOUT appeals to you, I’d be thrilled to send you the novel.

Thanks for your time.

Best,

Olivia

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Goodness, do I love this query. Let’s breakdown the things here that really work.

• Comps and Authors: So, instead of focusing the query letter’s comparative notes on specific books, she focused on authors. Which I love. I’m not generally drawn to comps that say “my book is just like this other book.” Instead, dishing authors who write expansive sci-fi packed full of world building, who also happen to be some of my favorites, was the right approach here.

• Personal Hook: Her note there about how I was looking for my sci-fi with brown people in it? That’s something I harp about on social media all the time. When you can make a personal connection while pitching, go for it. You can’t always, not all agents are all over social media or have huge detailed bios, but the ones that do? Make that connection, if you can.

• World Building in the Pitch: This is such a hard thing to do when you’re writing a SFF novel. How much world building do you dish? How much is too much? Olivia balances it out perfectly here, giving me just enough of the surface elements that I wasn’t left with a million questions… but not leaving out everything. I need to understand the world the characters are in.

• The Stakes: When I read a query, I’m looking for the stakes a characters can’t walk away from. She details them super clearly here.

• Series Potential: Olivia had a pretty clear vision for this book either as a duology or a trilogy… and it had to be a series. The story was too big for just the first book. And she came out of the gate saying just that, which I appreciated. I know there’s a lot of advice about a book having “series potential” instead of just flat out being a series. But if you know your book is going to be two or three novels… I’m a fan of saying it.

• The Things Left Out: I feel like this is also worth noting… Rise of the Red Hand is a shifting POV book. There are a few other characters who we jump around too, not just Ashiva. But here’s the thing. If the query letter dished every single character’s POV, every single character’s stakes and missions… it would be impossibly long.

  Instead, Olivia stuck to the heart of the story. This is what most novels with big shifting POV casts do, sometimes just giving a sentence nod to other voices. Don’t feel like you need to bullet point describe every single character. Give us that main story.

And there you have it. Perfect pitch.

And again, if you find this helpful, order the gorgeous book!

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My Favorite Reads of 2020

To say this year was a strange one, is such a wild understatement. There was a lot of loss and pain, and through all of that, I turned to what I usually do. Writing and reading. And goodness, did I read a lot of books this year. Did I write any? Well, depends on what your definition of “a book” is.

I wrote a little over on BookRiot about how in the midst of the pandemic, I turned to romance novels as my escapist fantasy reads. And it’s true. I found a lot of joy in rom-coms, getting lost in meet cutes and disaster filled dates this year. It was also an absolutely outrageous year for Young Adult books, my goodness.

Anyhow, time to share.

Young Adult and Middle Grade: Over on BookRiot, I mentioned how When You Were Everything by Ashley Woodfolk was my favorite Young Adult novel of the year. That still tracks. It’s a spectacularly moving novel about friendship and loss, that I will likely be screaming about for years to come.

Other Young Adult novels I inhaled, and haven’t stopped talking about this year? Not So Pure and Simple by Lamar Giles, We Didn’t Ask For This by Adi Alsaid, I Kissed Alice by Anna Birch, The Gravity of Us by Phil Stamper, Yes No Maybe So by Becky Albertalli and Aisha Saeed, Red Hood by Elana K. Arnold, We Are Not From Here by Jenny Torres Sanchez, Cinderella Is Dead by Kalynn Bayron, You Should See Me in a Crown by Leah Johnson, and The Sound of Stars by Alechia Dow.

From tackling toxic masculinity, to fierce political battles, to beautiful inclusive romances, these books all captured my heart in huge ways. They were novels that I threw at friends all year long, and recommended to my many MFA students writing their own YA novels.

In the Middle Grade space, I didn’t get to read as much as I’d like. I loved Con Quest by Sam Maggs (I even blurbed it) and Ghost Squad by Claribel Ortega, two wildly different novels that both have family right at their hearts. And of course there was Marvel: Avengers Assembly: Orientation by Preeti Chhibber, a heartfelt superhero book all about friendship. Ah! And The Only Black Girls in Town by Brandy Colbert! Okay maybe I did read a fair amount of Middle Grade.

Romances: Ah yes, the books that saved me this year. While attempting my own romantic comedy novel, I’ve been reading plenty of them. Beach Read by Emily Henry was my favorite of the year. I talked a little bit about it on The Writing Cooperative’s podcast last month. It’s the kind of rom-com written just for readers and writers, with two authors writing wildly different stories colliding, and fighting writers block (and feelings!) together.

I also absolutely devoured In A Holidaze by Christina Lauren (I just read this this week!), Get a Life Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert, You Had Me at Hola by Alexis Daria, The Roommate by Rosie Danan, Vanessa Yu's Magical Paris Tea Shop by Roselle Lim, Party of Two by Jasmine Guillory, Well Met by Jen DeLuca, and Undercover Bromance Lyssa Kay Adams.

Literary Fiction & Essays: Goodness, did I adore every single page of Real Life by Brandon Taylor, and I will be anxiously awaiting his short story collection next year. I also really adored A Burning by Megha Majumdar and Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed.

Graphic Novels: I have no words for how much joy Mooncakes by Wendy Xu and Suzanne Walker brought me. And then there was Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me by Mariko Tamaki and The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang. I read a bundle of graphic novels, finding a lot of comfort in the beautiful art and moving relationships found in so many of them.

And you know, I’m sure I’m forgetting a bundle of books, but here you go. I hope you’ll pick up some of these.

And hi, obviously this doesn’t include the books I worked on in my agent life, each of which are my favorite book of the year. Love ya’ll.

Book Deals: K. Ancrum's Lethal Lit to Scholastic!

When I was a kid growing up in Elizabeth, and the Scholastic Book Fair came around, I’d show up with that paper catalog and a wild amount of change in an envelope, ordering as many of the deeply discounted books as I could. It was like Christmas, every single time. And the way my friends and I would pool together the little bit we had, to order stuff together as a team…

Well, it’s no surprise books ended up part of my career. Right?

This deal is so special to me. Having a project in my agent life on the Scholastic list feels like the culmination of a long journey. And I’m so honored to see the brilliant Kayla Ancrum there at the end of that daydream filled road.

Kayla will be adapting the wildly popular Lethal Lit Podcast, created by Einhorn's Epic Productions (EEP), into a novel for Scholastic. Set in Tig Torres’ world, it’ll hit bookstores in the Fall of 2021.

You tune in and listen to the podcast just about everywhere, and you can even learn about the television show in development here.

So, keep an eye out! 2021 is going to be a busy, amazing year for Kayla, as we’ll also be seeing the publication of Darling, her reimagining of Peter Pan set in Chicago, in June.

Congrats Kayla! I’m so terribly proud.

The Strangest Year of Life and Publishing: Lessons Learned in 2020

I always love looking back and writing these “what I learned” posts, as both an agent and an author. I feel like there’s always something new, even after a decade of being in this business.

This year though… it hits differently.

2020 kicked off on such a high. Don’t Read the Comments published in January. I went on a book tour, up and down the East Coast, out to California, through the Midwest. It was the absolute dream. And then when I flew back from Minneapolis in March, I found out things were grinding to a halt. Everything was.

My coworking space shuttered. I built an in-home office. I’ve barely left my neighborhood these last nine months. And bemoaning losing all of those things, like time and personal space, feels so petty and trite compared to friends who lost loved ones as the world changed. I’ve kept going, working away, in a narrow hallway next to the bathroom in my home.

And I've had a lot of time to think and reflect about this year in writing and publishing, particularly as I started going to therapy for the first time. So let’s chat.

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If Your Self Worth is Tied to Other People, You Can Feel Worthless

Book festivals, conferences, teaching, events… there’s something about being around other people that gives me a lot of energy. Life. Joy. And whether it was my life as a teenager theater / band geek or my career as an author and publishing professional, there’s always been this element of finding my worth from being around other people.

And that’s… not great.

It’s especially not great when you come to that crushing realization in the middle of a pandemic, when all of those things are temporarily gone. Suddenly, the person who should be your biggest fan, yourself, is the only person you’re really spending time with. And when you discover you’re unable to cheer for you, there’s a spiral waiting.

I wish I had a concrete “well here’s the solution to that” moment here, but I don’t. It’s easy to say “well don’t do that.” It’s easy to say “you shouldn’t place your value on what other people think of you.” It’s way less easy to actually enact those feelings.

I’m working through it. I hope if you feel the same way, and have had a similar year, that you are too. My reading list has been decidedly less YA in this space, as I’ve been reading Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change by Maggie Smith, How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community by Mia Birdsong, Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed, and Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert while journaling.

It helps.

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Burning Out is Easy, Finding Balance is Hard

I’ve always been the sort of person who takes on way too much, but is comfortable with bearing the weight of it. I work as an agent, I write books, I teach in an MFA program… it’s a lot, but I like the juggling game. It’s all books, all the time, and it makes me happy.

But when a traditional 9 to 5 schedule is uprooted, those carefully set hours ripped away, without structure, it’s easy to completely fall apart and burn out. All the conferences I took on went virtual. But so did all my students. Books got shifted and moved. Deadlines for my own writing still had to be met. Suddenly I found myself staying up until wild hours, exhausted. Falling apart. My family only managed to find childcare in the last months of the year, and still, the hours are limited now.

I figured it out as the year wrapped up. Turns out the answer is saying “no” more often.

It’s a simple thing, right? Saying no when you don’t have the time, the energy, the space? But in publishing, in all creative pursuits, really, we’re often programmed to say yes to every single opportunity. Because, what if you don’t get another one? What if this is THAT opportunity that brings you new ones?

If you’re burned out, if you’re exhausted, if you’re unhappy… that opportunity isn’t going to bring anything. Your work will suffer, and the people expecting something from you will notice. Burn out doesn’t lead to growth. It leads to collapse.

Say no.

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Surround Yourself With People Who Want Nothing From You

This year was a big year for “hey it’s been a while, here’s a book idea I’m working on” messages. A big year for it. And I get it. Some folks have found themselves with a surprising amount of time on their hands, and are maybe returning to writing, art, music, you name it. Anything to refill their own personal well.

But that doesn’t mean they’re entitled to drink from yours. Especially if they’ve never offered you a drink before.

Relationships shouldn’t be transactional. This is one of the big reasons I missed my coworking space so much, working with a bundle of people who code and make software and do other things I don’t understand. I miss people reaching out to grab lunch, ask about bad Netflix movies, who frankly did not care about book stuff. I need more of them in my life.

If you’re hinging your self worth (remember what I talked about earlier?) on other people, and those relationships are transactional, it’s even more damaging.

Because there’s a difference between people who care about you, and people who care about what you can do for them.

It’s a hard thing to spot. It takes practice and a bit of heartbreak. And I’m sorry if you’ve experienced it, or if you’re about to. But I hope you’ll come out stronger, with better friends in the end. You deserve them. And I do too.

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Community is a Circle, Not a Straight Line

This might sound odd to all my book people who aren’t quite familiar with my life outside of that space, but every August is a bit of a bummer month for me. I think about the old Philadelphia Geek Awards, a big ceremony I used to throw with my good friends, tied to a popular hyperlocal blog I once ran. It was a lovely affair, and I threw a lot of work into it year after year.

This year, being fairly cooped up as I’ve been, with a lot of my thoughts, it was harder than others.

When my wife and I left Philadelphia for a spell, a lot of the folks I worked so hard to uplift through that ceremony and that website… quickly forgot about me. And I struggled with it a lot. Where did these friends go? Who I spent so much time trying to help out?

Well, it turns out those people weren’t quite friends. And I’ve noticed a bit of a drop off in my book life too, when Paste Magazine shuttered their books vertical, and I stopped podcasting with BookRiot. It bums me out, but these are lessons, I suppose.

Here’s the thing about what a real community is. It’s not a straight line. It doesn’t start in one place and just abruptly drop things off. It’s a circle. It keeps going. You give back to one another. It doesn’t stop once someone does a favor. It doesn’t end because you got what you wanted.

If that’s your experience in your community, that’s not your community. But there will be others who work in a circle. You just have to look. I promise. This year, a number of authors also working with their kiddos at home, reached out. Writers with autistic children, who I’d never really spoken to before, emailed me, to offer up insight and love as my wife and I navigated our son’s diagnosis.

They didn’t want something from me.

They wanted something FOR me.

And that’s the only kind of relationship I’m interested in now.

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Hm.

Seems like all my lessons this year, had to do with work and relationships. I guess that’s 2020, for you. Navigating new spaces, figuring out old relationships, discovering new ones.

I hope whatever new normal you found this year, that you found some comfort.

I think I did. I’m still trying, but I’m getting there.

Book Deals: Remi K. England's ONE TRUE ME AND YOU to Wednesday Books!

I’m so excited to be writing this post!

I absolutely adored M.K. England’s first two YA novels, The Disasters and Spellhacker. It’s always a joy when you read a novel and feel like that author wrote the book just for you, and that’s been the case with every novel I’ve read by England. Including this one, the first book we got to work on together.

And I’m so excited to tell you about it.

They’ll be writing under the name Remi K. England when it comes to their contemporary romance novels, and I’m so thrilled to introduce you to them with their debut YA rom-com, ONE TRUE ME AND YOU. And it’s been acquired by Wednesday Books!

Here’s a bit more about the book from Publisher’s Weekly:

Alexandra Sehulster at Wednesday Books has bought Remi K. England's YA contemporary novel, The One True Me and You, a joyful, geeky romance where a beloved fanfic author and beauty pageant contestant find love, and learn what it means to be, and stand up for, yourself. Publication is set for Winter 2022. Eric Smith at P.S. Literary did the deal for World English.

Congrats, Remi!