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To start off this month full of author interviews, I had the pleasure of introducing Lauren Baratz-Logsted, author (from Connecticut!) of many books for children, teens, and young adults. Her most recent young adult novel is Crazy Beautiful, a modern adaptation of Beauty & the Beast (I posted my review yesterday). For more about Lauren Baratz-Logsted and her writing, check out her website.

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Me: As an accomplished author, can you tell us a little bit about your road to publishing?
LBL: A little bit? I'd need to write a whole book to tell that story! Short version? I left my day job in 1994 to take a chance on myself as a writer. It took me nearly eight years and seven books written before I sold the sixth, an adult novel called THE THIN PINK LINE. I've since sold a total of 20 books to various publishers in various genres and for various age groups.

Me: How did you decide to retell the story of Beauty and the Beast?
LBL: I'd just seen the stage version on Broadway and I got to thinking about how out of all the Disney-fied fairy tales, it makes for the most successful stage and screen adaptations. I started wondering why that would be and decided it's the only one where the male is more than just window dressing for the female. And then I got to thinking how much fun it would be to do a contemporary version where, like the Beast, the male's otherness is a result of his own tragic mistakes and then find a way for him to redeem himself.

Me: Have you considered writing a modern adaptation of any other fairy tales?
LBL: Finally! A question I can give a short answer to! Yes.

Me: Yay! I can’t wait. So, names are important to any story. How did you decide on Lucius for the Beast and Aurora for Beauty?
LBL: Lucius Wolfe - both elements of his name are variations on wolf. Aurora Belle - Aurora is the goddess of the dawn in Roman mythology and Belle of course is beautiful.

Me: The cover of Crazy Beautiful certainly catches the eye. What role did you play in its design?
LBL: Zero! I had absolutely no say in the cover although I did mention I'd like to see something resembling a hook on it. I absolutely love the cover that the artistic design team at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt came up with.

Me: What is the most exciting part of the writing process for you?
LBL: I love it all, but I guess if I had to pick the most exciting it'd be the moment an idea comes and I realize the idea is so big and fresh, at least to me, it can fill a whole book. Wait. Can I pick two most exciting parts? If so, the other would be when I complete the book and realize I've gone the distance in telling the story I wanted to tell in the way I wanted to tell it.

Me: As you write books for all ages, how is writing for teenagers/young adults different than writing for children or adults?
LBL: Teens these days have more demands on their time and distractions than any teens in recent memory. As a result, an author needs to really be on her best game in terms of holding the reader's interest. You need to write tighter. The other big difference I find is the sense of responsibility. I give my readers credit for being intelligent but I still am very careful not to send the wrong messages through my work. I'd hate it if anyone ever jumped off a bridge just because they thought I told them to.

Me: Are you working on anything right now that you can tell us about?
LBL: I'm always working on something! I have two more YA novels scheduled for 2010. THE EDUCATION OF BET, due out in spring 2010, is about a 16-year-old girl in Victorian England who impersonates a boy in order to get a proper education. THE TWIN'S DAUGHTER, also set in Victorian England and due out in fall 2010, is about a teen whose life is changed forever when she discovers her wealthy mother has an identical twin who grew up in the poorhouse. Oh, and 2010 will also see the publication of Books 5 and 6 in THE SISTERS 8, the series for young readers that I've created with my YA novelist husband Greg Logsted - http://www.greglogsted.com/ - and our nine-year-old daughter Jackie. Phew!

Me: Now for a couple of random questions. Do you listen to music while you write? If so, can you tell us a few songs that show up on your playlist most frequently?
LBL: I almost never listen to music when I'm writing although I do listen to "General Hospital" on television every afternoon from three to four. The one exception to the no-music-while-writing rule would be the adult novel VERTIGO which I wrote while repeatedly listening to the sountrack from The Piano.

Me: Now one that seems to be on everyone’s mind: how DO you pronounce your last name?
LBL: HA! Baratz is like Barrett would sound if you made it plural and Logsted is exactly as it looks although for some reason people are always trying to insert the letter 'a' into it. Thanks for having me!

Me: Thanks for joining us!

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Lauren Baratz-Logsted's Crazy Beautiful will be released September 7th. Don't miss out!

Lauren Bratz-Logsted has come up with a hilarious, unique, and, at times, ridiculous series for middle graders, based on the lives of octuplet sisters. So much is jam-packed into these short little books that at times it seems like a bit much, I mean, we have missing parents, gifts, powers, mystery, weird inventions, humor, and on and on, but overall these are super-cute, quick reads, meant to be made into a series of 8. Of course...8 sisters, 8 books.

In Book 1: Annie's Adventures, we are first introduced to the sisters, Annie, Durinda, Georgia, Jackie, Marcia, Petal, Rebecca, and Zinnia. If you think that's a lot of names to remember, each girl is the proud owner of her own cat...they all have names too. :) These smart, quick-witted sisters are spending New Year's Eve with their parents, when both mom and dad mysteriously disappear, leaving the girls to fend for themselves. After finding a note left behind by an unknown person, the girls understand that each of them has a power and each has a gift, both of which must be found by each girl before they can find their parents.

In Book 2: Durinda's Dangers, the girls are still on the search for each individual power and gift. Annie got her's in the last book, now it's Durinda's turn. While all of the girl's are getting themselves to school, paying bills, running the house, and looking for their parents (they're eight years old remember, a talking refrigerator and a nosy neighbor play keep getting in their way, as does fruitcake. Yep, fruitcake. Intrigued? You should be!

In the Sisters 8 series, we have a cross between the Powerpuff Girls and the siblings in Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events. The girl's a using powers and gifts to find their parents, who they don't know are mising or dead, and they continue to be quick-witted, funny, and smart. Sometimes names and personalities are difficult to keep track of, as with any series that includes 8 main characters, but it's not too bad. This is a cute new series, great for libraries, as it incorporates self-esteem and confidence into it's main themes.

Annie's Adventures and Durinda's Dangers (The Sisters 8)
Lauren Baratz-Logsted
136pages and 120pages
Middle Grade Fiction
Sandpiper
9780547133492 and 9780547133478
December 2008

On what writing is

"I always thought writing was arraying words in beautiful patterns, but now I think it's more like walking blindfolded, listening with your whole heart, and then looking backward to see if you made any tracks worth keeping." Sara Lewis Holmes in her recent Poetry Friday post at Read Write Believe.

On why fiction/fantasy matter

Ten days ago, I put up a post entitled "Why We Need Fiction", about which I remain pleased. One of my rationales for why fiction is important reads as follows: "We need fiction because it allows us to create an artificial barrier, behind which we can examine Big Important Issues in a hypothetical setting, instead of beating people's brains out, possibly literally, by addressing those issues in the real world."

I've started reading my copy of The Wand in the Word: Conversations with Writers of Fantasy by Leonard S. Marcus, and it appears that Lloyd Alexander agreed with me in part:

"Q: Why do you write fantasy?
A: Because, paradoxically, fantasy is a good way to show the world as it is. Fantasy can show us the truth about human relationships and moral dilemmas because it works on our emotions on a deeper, symbolic level than realistic fiction. It has the same emotional power as a dream."

On poetry

Here, the first seven lines of a fourteen-line poem by James Kirkup called "The Poet":

Each instant of his life, a task, he never rests,
And works most when he appears to be doing nothing.
The least of it is putting down in words
What usually remains unwritten and unspoken,
And would so often be much better left
Unsaid, for it is really the unspeakable
That he must try to give an ordinary tongue to.

And from Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, which airs tonight at 9 p.m. on most PBS stations, the novel of which I reviewed last July. Here is a portion of the text taken from a description of the developing friendship between Catherine Morland and Isabella Thorpe. This section is often referred to as Austen's "defence of the novel", and is found in Volume I, chapter 5 of the novel:

. . . and if a rainy morning deprived them of other enjoyments, they were still resolute in meeting in defiance of wet and dirt, and shut themselves up, to read novels together. Yes, novels; ——for I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel-writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding ——joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid pages with disgust. Alas! if the heroine of one novel be not patronized by the heroine of another, from whom can she expect protection and regard? I cannot approve of it. Let us leave it to the Reviewers to abuse such effusions of fancy at their leisure, and over every new novel to talk in threadbare strains of the trash with which the press now groans. Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body. Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried. From pride, ignorance, or fashion, our foes are almost as many as our readers. And while the abilities of the nine-hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from the Spectator, and a chapter from Sterne, are eulogized by a thousand pens, -- there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them. "I am no novel-reader ——I seldom look into novels ——Do not imagine that I often read novels ——It is really very well for a novel." ——Such is the common cant. —— "And what are you reading, Miss ——————?" "Oh! it is only a novel!" replies the young lady; while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. ——"It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda;" or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language. Now, had the same young lady been engaged with a volume of the Spectator, instead of such a work, how proudly would she have produced the book, and told its name; though the chances must be against her being occupied by any part of that voluminous publication, of which either the matter or manner would not disgust a young person of taste: the substance of its papers so often consisting in the statement of improbable circumstances, unnatural characters, and topics of conversation which no longer concern anyone living; and their language, too, frequently so coarse as to give no very favourable idea of the age that could endure it.

Seems the more things change, the more they remain the same. No?

Or rather, not. One year when I worked as a film reviewer for radio I took it upon myself to put together a year-in-review show that attempted to provide a summary of that year's films using soundbites from my fellow reviewers. I had nearly 60 hours of material to work with and in those analog days of rerecording and literally splicing quarter-inch tape I wound up living in the production

Alexander is having the worst day of his life, from waking up with gum in his hair to eating Lima beans for supper and kissing on T.V. Will he through the day without getting in trouble?

What I like about the book is that I have bad days just like him (just not as bad as he did).What I don't like about the book is that when he tells hes family that he is having a horrible day they just ignore him and would you like it if that happend to you?