new posts in all blogs
Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: James Lecesne, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 1 - 8 of 8
How to use this Page
You are viewing the most recent posts tagged with the words: James Lecesne in the JacketFlap blog reader. What is a tag? Think of a tag as a keyword or category label. Tags can both help you find posts on JacketFlap.com as well as provide an easy way for you to "remember" and classify posts for later recall. Try adding a tag yourself by clicking "Add a tag" below a post's header. Scroll down through the list of Recent Posts in the left column and click on a post title that sounds interesting. You can view all posts from a specific blog by clicking the Blog name in the right column, or you can click a 'More Posts from this Blog' link in any individual post.
I have written many times here about my dear friend James Lecesne. I have written about his talents, his kindness, his soul. James stands behind the renowned and supremely humane Trevor Project—"determined to end suicide among LGBTQ youth by providing life saving and life-affirming resources." (Click here to watch Harry Potter's own Daniel Radcliffe talk, with James, about Trevor.) James also, as you know if you read this blog, was a pivotal force behind "After the Storm"�an arts-based initiative, a documentary film, and an ongoing effort to support the young people of Katrina-ravaged New Orleans. "After the Storm," not incidentally, is also full-on proof that the faith we place in the arts is wise and fertile.
I have watched the "After the Storm" trailers for a long time (repeatedly!), read the reviews, talked to James. But yesterday my own copy of the DVD arrived. Bill and I ate an early dinner so that we could sit and watch it.
This, my friends, is a movie that can change your life. This is also an opportunity to make a difference by investing in a DVD you will watch again and again.
Please do.
I had one of those days yesterday (they come on me from time to time) when I asked myself some serious questions about the writing life. Does it matter, this thing that I do? Would life be simpler, less angst-producing, less panic stricken, altogether more orderly and calm, if I stopped writing stories down in favor of living more fully? Have I, in the end, achieved what I set out to achieve—or did I ever actually have a plan? What should I have done that I didn't do? What is still possible? Why, after all these years, is writing so hard? I write young adult novels (among other things), but I don't write
typical young adult novels, as the gorgeous (inside and out)
Booking Mama so poignantly points out on her blog today. I care a lot about the sort of things that many readers pass right by. I once tried to write a book that shimmered with big-time commercial possibility. I failed. Miserably. For the life of me I do not know how such a thing gets done.
For a long time I sat in a quiet place thinking about these things. I'd hear the ping of email coming in from across the way, but I didn't rise to find the news. Finally, feeling no less good or smart for all my mental meanderings, I returned to my desk, opened my email, and was forcefully reminded of why I am still, after all these years, a writer. Because I cannot help myself, for one thing. And because my life would be bereft without the many kind and intelligent souls that writing ushers in.
Yesterday my email was full of saving graces. You, you graces, know who you are (Julie P., you are pure grace, too), and how grateful I am. Among the emailers was one
James Lecesne—author, actor, activist, man of great heart—who wrote to say that he would be coming into town today to share his remarkable documentary film
"After the Storm" at the offices of one forward-leaning law firm. Maybe we could get together beforehand, James said. Absolutely, I thought. Absolutely. And so today, that's where I'll be—downtown breaking bread with James, a man I'd have never had the privilege of meeting had it not been for books and book festivals and a shared interest in writing stories that are invested in language and spring from the heart.
If there is anything that I've learned from writing the books that I have written, it is this: Take your time. Get it right. Don't send your book out for editorial review until you can't write it any better, or any more.
I have written three novels for adults in the past. One became, after fifteen years of radical reworking, the El Salvador memoir,
Still Love in Strange Places. One, following equally radical shifts and reimaginings, became the young adult novel due out this October,
You Are My Only. The third former adult novel is at the tail-end of a redrafting process; you'll be reading more about that no-longer-an-adult novel soon.
Last year, I sat down to write my fourth novel for adults. This time, I would not tolerate the ersatz in me. This time, I would work the novel and set it aside, work it and set it aside, until finally I asked my agent, Amy Rennert, and my friend, James Lecesne, to read. They had wise things to say, loving things, hopeful things, and I listened to them—reworking the structure of the book at Amy's brilliant suggestion and intensifying the heart of the story, at James's. I worked the book, set it aside, worked the book, and made a decision: Before sending this book to any editor in the land, I would mail the whole to my friend
Marjorie Braman, who recently stepped down from her role as editor-in-chief of Henry Holt to launch a literary consultancy. I value what Marjorie has to say; I have learned from her counsel in the past. I wanted to know what she would make of a story that means so much to me.
This is to say that I made the right choice, for Marjorie's notes, like Amy's notes, proved to be invaluable. It's not just that she was so enthusiastic about this project. It's that she read with care, wrote notes with precision, pointed me to places that needed rounding out and places that needed trimming. She was honest and she was galvanizing. I could not sleep (and I have not slept) for I had been given a new key to my own strange land. I have rounded passages and abbreviated others. I have softened and also clarified.
This blog post, then, is a thank you—to Amy Rennert, for sharing my hope, for believing in this dream, and for so conscientiously delineating ways that I could make this novel better; to James for being the love and light that he is; and to Marjorie for demonstrating her continuing commitment to the clarified page.
Ever since I published my first book I dreamed of finding a stranger somewhere—anywhere—curled up with one of my stories. It has happened only once; I was walking the path by the Schuylkill River and found a woman paging through
Flow. And once, of course, dear James Lecesne could be spotted reading
Dangerous Neighbors on an Amtrak train, but that doesn't really count, in the oh-my-gosh-what-a-surprise way of things, for I'd handed him the book hours before at the BEA.
Because, as you all know, I never google my own name or check Amazon ratings, I don't operate with any sense of who might be reading which of my books right now (nor do I ever presume that people are). And so, when, quite accidentally, I came upon
this Bookalicio.us review of
Dangerous Neighbors today, I felt that happy thing that happens inside when I know that a reader has been out there in the midst (and mist), and that a reader has read with such generosity and grace.
I will, however, confess to feeling badly for our reviewer, Pam, from whom I learned, in this paragraph, that reading can be a contact sport:
Beth Kephart is such a fantastic writer that I am always in awe of her prose and story telling ability, so much so that reviewing any piece of literature from Kepharts small but growing canon is always hard for me to accomplish. Kephart is astonishingly capable of making her characters come to life in such a way that putting down the book to do menial tasks such as walking the hound become impossible. Which is why August of 2010 will always be known to me as the month that I learned walking the dog while reading results in severe coordination disability, causing walking into a pole, nose bleeds, and incredible embarrassment to all who try. This life lesson is just one of the things Kephart has taught me while reading her books.
Thank you so much, Pam.
By:
Beth Kephart ,
on 11/23/2010
Blog:
Beth Kephart Books
(
Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags:
Melanie Hundley,
Matt Skilen,
Katie Halata,
Wendy Glenn,
Susan Groenke,
ALAN,
Egmont USA,
Tricia Rayburn,
James Lecesne,
Add a tag
I found myself in Orlando at the ALAN convention; I also found co-Egmont USA authors James Lecesne (Virgin Territory) and Tricia Rayburn (Siren). Egmont USA's Katie Halata, who coordinated our days so spectacularly, is snapping this photo. I didn't know what to expect of ALAN; this was my first time there. But what I found were teachers who—mostly on their own dime, taking their own vacation days—had carved out time to learn about new stories and where they come from. There is a powerful commitment to our young out there; I felt the heat and passion of it through the day and over the course of the dinner that Katie hosted—a dinner that included such guests as Matt Skillen, Susan Groenke, Melanie Hundley, Shannon Collins, Steve Bickmore, and incoming ALAN president, Wendy Glenn.
ALAN is a class act. I was proud and happy to be there.
This is Thirtieth Street Station, Philadelphia, 'round midnight, snapped with my raspberry-colored SONY digital that is a lot happier taking wide angles than it will ever be deployed in an up-close shot. I'll be taking that camera with me on my quick jaunt to the ALAN conference, in Orlando, and I'll also be taking my love of this city as I talk about
Dangerous Neighbors on an historical fiction panel also featuring Susan Campbell Bartoletti and Jeanette Ingold.
(And once I see dear fellow Egmont USA author James Lecesne there's no telling
what I'll be talking about!)
Maybe I'll find some of you there. I hope so.
My friend, hipwritermama, just informed me, the un-twitterer (but I might get there, I might still) of this photo floating around, hot off the Elizabeth Law press. So. That's Elizabeth Law (queen of all things, but especially of Egmont USA) behind the camera; Laura Geringer, fantastic-fabulous editor to the left of the frame;
Virgin Territory author James Lecesne, holding up his number 33 for the YALSA coffee klatch, and me, with my un-matching jewelry, being held up by James (in all ways).
Wherever Elizabeth goes, we interesting people follow.....
I was out of the house by 4:30 AM, and the day unfurled at lightening speed (save for the trains, which were both on the rather too late and slow side). In the first photo: The Egmont lunch for authors, booksellers, and librarians, held on the upper floor of a garment-district art gallery. In the second: Egmont Publisher Elizabeth Law, the remarkable James Lecesne (about whom I will soon be writing far more), Laura Geringer (who edits both James and me), and yours truly (in pink, because who else would wear pink on an 18 hour day spent among crowds and on trains?).
A huge thank you to all of you who stood in that line for the end-of-day, end-of-convention signing— I looked up, and there you were, and I won't forget the gift of your patience and enthusiasm. Thank you to all of those who found me and stopped to say hello. Thank you to the impeccable and beautiful Mandy King (I will always be grateful for our time together, and for all that led up to it). Thank you to Amy Rennert and Louise (you know why). A lasting thank you to the Egmont team—Elizabeth Law, Doug Pocock, Mary Albi, Rub Guzman, Regina Griffin, Greg Ferguson, Nico Medina, and Alison Weiss—who put together such a show, and who have welcomed me to the family in ways that I have never been welcomed before. (Nico, please note that I am thanking you despite your refusal to wear 19th century garb in support of my 19th century book.) Thank you, Laura, for being there throughout.
I came home to see my boys (a midnight rendezvous) and to attend to corporate work. I'm back on that train in a few hours, to join book bloggers at a convention and to speak about author/blogger relationships.
The horses are down the street; I'll sneak into their world early Saturday.
okay - that made me cry. I guess I have no choice at all... I need to buy the DVD!
I didn't know about this at all, but it sounds absolutely fantastic. Thanks for posting about it, Beth!
Sounds like this is a documentary everyone should watch