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Krista Marino

you want it on the galley or ARC, and the best way to get one is author to author.

"the biggest part right now of putting yourself ahead of the pack."

And how she's seen them play such an important role in careers, like for Matt de la Pena, Chris Gravenstein and James Dashner.

A new opportunity at the SCBWI Summer Conference, these informal conversations with faculty members including agents and artist reps (Ginger Clark, Erica Rand Silverman, Tina Wexler, Kirsten Hall and Brooks Sherman) and editors and publishers (Krista Marino, Neal Porter, Sara Sargent, Melissa Manlove, Stacey Barney, Kat Brzozowski, and Reka Simonsen) are a big hit!

Attendees with agent Ginger Clark

Attendees with Publisher Neal Porter

James Dashner (pictured, via) will pen a new prequel novel for The Maze Runner series.

Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, has scheduled The Fever Code for publication in 2016. According to the press release, this new story “delves into the time before the Maze, and will tell the story of how Thomas, Teresa, and the Gladers found themselves in the Maze, and how the Maze itself was created.”

Publisher Beverly Horowitz negotiated the deal with Michael Bourret, vice president of Dystel & Goderich Literary Management. Executive editor Krista Marino will edit the manuscript.

(more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The Muppets and How I Met Your Mother star Jason Segel has inked a book deal for a middle-grade fiction series he will write with Kirsten Miller. Random House Children’s Books will publish Nightmares! in fall 2014.

If you want to read more, you can join Segel’s 2.3 million followers on Twitter. WME and Abrams negotiated the deal with Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers publisher Beverly Horowitz. Executive editor Krista Marino will edit the book. The release had more details:

Both scary and funny, NIGHTMARES! is an adventure story about a group of kids who realize it’s up to them to save their town from fear, which has manifested itself in the form of nightmare creatures that have slipped into the everyday world. At its heart, NIGHTMARES! is about kids overcoming their fears … Says Segel, “I couldn’t be more excited that NIGHTMARES! has found a home at Random House. Ultimately, it’s a story about learning that we can accomplish anything, as long as we are brave enough to try. These are the types of stories that always inspired me.”

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Novelist Arwen Elys Dayton has landed a book deal with Delacorte Press for a YA trilogy that mixes fantasy and science fiction. Last year, Dayton published a science fiction novel for adults with Amazon’s 47North imprint.

Writers House agent Jodi Reamer negotiated the deal with Random House Children’s Books executive editor Krista Marino. Here’s more from the release:

SEEKER is the story of Quin Kincaid, a young girl who’s been put through years of brutal training for what she thinks is the noble purpose of becoming a revered “Seeker”. Only when it’s too late does she discover she will be using the ancient artifacts and sacred knowledge to become an assassin. From a remote estate in Scotland, to a bustling, futuristic Hong Kong, Quin tries to escape her legacy, only to find she can’t evade it.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The Maze Runner author James Dashner has signed a 3-book deal with Random House Children’s Books’  Delacorte Press imprint. Executive Editor Krista Marino negotiated the deal with Dystel & Goderich Literary Management vice president Michael Bourret.

Starting in fall 2013, Delacorte will publish the titles of The Mortality Doctrine series for North American readers. Book one, The Eye of Minds, will come out in both print and eBook format simultaneously. Dashner (pictured, via) has also written original short stories to accompany this series; these shorts will be released in eBook format.

Here’s more from the release: “The series is set in an exciting — and frightening—world of hyper-advanced technology, cyber terrorists, and gaming…The VirtNet is total mind and body immersion, and it’s addictive. Recent reports claim that there’s a gamer going beyond what any gamer has ever done before. He’s holding players hostage inside the VirtNet, and the side–effects are horrific. His hostages have all been diagnosed as brain dead—and no one knows what his goal is. The government knows that to catch a hacker, you need a hacker. And they’ve been watching Michael.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The Novel Intensive

 Erin Murphy, Krista Marino, and Joyce Sweeney

 FL SCBWI Regional Conference 2011 in Miami 

This was an absolutely amazing intensive.  The three instructors worked so well together, it felt like they’ve been putting this intensive on for years.  I’ll share some of the highlights with you and wish I could blog about it in more detail…but I can’t give away everything.  If you ever have a chance to take a workshop or intensive with any of them in the future, sign up ASAP!

Overcoming Obstacles

Led by agent Erin Murphy

Erin asked what our fantasy writing life would be like, and said that obstacles are usually assumptions and not reality.

What strengths/talents and weaknesses do you have?  Write them down…because we’re often too busy putting obstacles in our way to notice the good things.

Some people are over-disciplined (they might outline or have to write at the same time each day, and others are under-disciplined.

It’s great to have a support community.  She mentioned Verla Kay’s Blueboards as a wonderful one (I agree 100%--I’ve learned so much, made tons of writing friends, and even found my online critique groups through the Blueboards).

Erin mentioned a method called the Pomodoro Technique, which helps her stay on task.  You write down your goals the night before, then set a timer for twenty-five minutes and don’t let anything distract you from your goal.  If you need to look something up or come up with a brilliant idea for a different project, quickly jot down the info so you can work on it at another time. 

Joyce talked about the importance of a great critique group. She says to try to have at least one person who is better than you.&n

SCBWI's Annual Winter Conference in New York is just eleven days away! If you're attending, you may be planning your outfits and your evening activities in the city (which you certainly should), but you should also be thinking about how to make the most of the event. So I checked in with a few of the editors and agents participating in the conference to ask for some advice to pass on to you.

Today's topic: CRITIQUES

Editors Krista Marino (Delacorte), Franceso Sedita (Penguin) and Jennifer Rees (Scholastic) and agents Kerry Sparks (Levine/Greenberg) and Kary Kole (Andrea Brown) are participating in the Writers' Intensive that kicks off the weekend of conferencing. At this day-long event, writers have the opportunity to get feedback on a manuscript from a several editors and agents, and writers offer feedback to one another.

Intensives have limited space for writers and this year's Writers' Intensive (as usual) sold out super fast. But even if you aren't attending it, you probably have been or will be in a critique situation, whether at a conference with an editor or agent, one-on-one with a critique partner, or in a critique group setting. Here are some things to keep in mind offered by our group of industry insiders.

Krista Marino is a Senior Editor at Delacorte Press (Random House Children's Books).

I'm peeking in on Day 3 (of 4) of her premium workshop Finding and Revising Your Protagonist's Voice in a Young Adult Novel.

Dialogue is more than just words. It has to feel real. But dialogue is not only what a character says, but it's also the character's internal monologue, which might be even more important.

Anica Rissi is a Senior Editor at Simon Pulse, a YA imprint of Simon & Schuster. They publish young adult books from the very literary to the very high concept.

Krista Marino is a Senior Editor at Delecorte Press (Random House Children's Books). She works on YA and MG fiction.

Anica: There is a need to target teens where they live...on the computer. Teens are building a relationhip with authors in ways they didn't used to.

Krista: What I see happening right now (and down the line) kids are really moving away from the books that resemble their world. They're buying THE HUNGER GAMES instead of SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS. They don't have to think about what's happening at home, in their world.

Anica: A key of YA is the immediacy of the moments, intensity of the experience.

Many teens are leaning towards dark books. But the girl-ends-up-with-the-boy type of book is also still working.

Anica: There's no room for something that doesn't have layers.

POSTED BY JOLIE STEKLY

Special workshops are offered at the SCBWI conference. Krista Marino is presenting Establishing Your YA Voice throughout the four days of the conference to a limited number of attendees.

This is day 2 of her workshop. Today's topic is dialogue. Presenting with her is Matt de la Peña, author of MEXICAN WHITEBOY.

Fabulous editor Krista Marino (Delacorte) is giving a super in-depth workshop on how to establish your YA voice. After 5 minutes of listening, I thought, "Wow. I still have a ton to learn!"

This workshop required preregistration and it's obvious that Krista worked very closely with these writers and will do so over the next four days. I'd highly recommend it if you're looking for some serious editorial advice.

Some of her great points were focusing on finding your authorial voice. If you read a Meg Cabot or Stephen King book, you know the author without having to look. How do they do that? She offers a handout with several elements that are key to establishing your voice.

I wish I had that handout!!!

But she did say that as adults writing for teens we should try to recapture our childlike outlook. Our perspective changes as we experience things, so it's important to be able to identify with that unaffected self.

All in all, I wish I'D PREREGISTERED! She sounded brilliant! Next year, I'm so in! Hope you wil be too!

Posted by Suzanne Young

Our Western Washington SCBWI conference is two weeks in the past now, and still some of the wonderful snippets of wisdom and tantalizing tips stick in my mind, and continue to to nourish me.

I'll not forget Nina Laden (ROMEOW AND DROOLIET) reminding us, "If you don't make mistakes, you may not make anything."

And Deb Lund (MONSTERS ON MACHINES) reading her unforgettable poem about that inner voice that harasses us as we write, and summing it up by telling us, "Sometimes we have to revise our own story, that story we tell ourselves."

Krista Marino, Senior Editor at Delacorte, reminded us to take cute out of our dictionary, when talking about children's books.

Nathan Bransford (Agent, Curtis Brown Ltd.) gave us his pet peeves for story beginnings: Don't start your book with

• the weather
• your character waking up
• looking in the mirror
• sarcastic characters (too flip and negative)

• forced pace-building (suddenly, quickly, at that moment)
• copious tears (only one tear per story)
• faces draining white or blushing
• exclamation points!

Emerging Editorial Voices Panel…

The last day of the SCBWI conference opened with a great panel of emerging editors, featuring four editors relatively new to the industry—Nancy Consescu of Little, Brown; Amalia Ellison of Abrams; Gretchen Hirsch of HarperCollins; and Namrata Tripathi of Hyperion/Jump at the Sun.

Krista Marino of Random House moderated, and opened by saying that, just as each writer has her own voice, each editor has her own unique voice in terms of what she acquires and how she acquires. Publishing, she said, is an industry based on apprenticeship. Editors start as editorial assistant (honing their Xeroxing and mailing skills), all the while learning from their mentors who pass their philosophies onto them.

Gretchen Hirsch include Allyn Johnston and Liz Van Doren among her mentors, and she currently works under Farrin Jacobs at Harper. She said she’s learned different skills from each of her mentors. She signed up two picture book authors at a recent regional SCBWI conference. She learned from Allyn Johnston that even when you think you’re done working on a book, you might not quite be there. She’s interested in smart teen chick lit, paranormal YA, and offbeat picture books. She said Harper is currently growing their picture book list. Books about dogs are an interest.

Amalia Ellison started as an intern at Scholastic before moving to Random House and now Abrams. She’s been working in publishing for three years and describes her interests as eclectic/commercial. She feels that writers should be really plugged into what kids are into—it’s valuable in abstract ways. She’s just recently completed her fist acquisition which was through an auction. She’s interested in “just something good.”

Namrata Tripathi describes herself as part analytical and part nurturing. She works on picture books through YA fiction and describes her style as eclectic/literary. She learned from Brenda Bowen that “interesting people make interesting editors.” Here interests are varied, including picture books, nonfiction, fiction and funny, quirky, truthful, and heartbreaking all appeal to her.

Nancy Conescu started working on paperbacks at Penguin then mass market books. Now she’s at Little, Brown working with Andrea Spooner, Liza Baker and Megan Tingley. She favors books that are ultimately somehow hopeful when it comes to fiction, and irreverent when it comes to picture books. She sometimes finds new talent (illustrators) online in places like blogs or etsy.com. She’s interested in a strong chapter book voice, which she says is missing on her list.