I’m quite excited today to have Patricia McCormick, author of Cut, stopping by Galleysmith.  Celebrating it’s tenth year, Cut is a novel that provides insight into many of the difficulties teens often face when dealing with growing up and finding their place in the world.  Please join me in welcoming Patricia!

Cut was my first book, so I approached it like a “good student.” I read everything I could find on the topic of self-injury, interviewed experts, and read up on statistics and theories. Part way through the writing process, my creative writing teacher said, “This is fine, but it sounds like you’re writing about a disease, not a person.”

I was disappointed, of course, but he was right. I’d turned the book into a giant term paper about self-injury—instead of a portrait of one girl, one specific individual, who was struggling with self-injury.

I’d also tried to put everything I’d found into the book. I found that many people who self-injure have experienced some kind of sexual abuse. I wrote a scene where the main character is attacked by a schoolmate.  I read that some people have chronically ill siblings who command all the parental attention available. I gave the main character a pair of mean, checked-out parents. I read that some people who self-injure also have substance abuse issues. I gave my main character a drinking problem. And I ended up with an overloaded stew that sounded like an ad for Problem of the Month.

I think the other reason I’d done SO much research was that I’d been a journalist before turning to fiction writing. But another good piece of advice I got—from a different teacher—was to put all my research aside and to write from my imagination, from my heart. Otherwise, she said, the book would end up like a giant magazine article—not fiction. So I put away all my research. In fact, I put it in a suitcase, gave it to a friend in my neighborhood and told her not to give it back to me no matter how much I begged.  I felt incredibly vulnerable and lost without all my books and notebooks—something that threw me off balance and caused me to dig much more deeply into Callie’s character and mine.

I stepped back and thought simply about THIS girl—not ALL girls who self-injure. And little by little I took out all the extraneous material I’d collected. And I brought the drama factor down by about 50 percent. I decided that Callie wasn’t the poster child for a new mental health issue; she was a person. From a nice, well-meaning family who’d had more than its fair share of trouble lately. Someone who basically loves and is loved by her family but was so super-sensitive to the tensions at home that she was overwhelmed. Someone who was lost, angry, bewildered—but also funny, strong, and likely to get better.

I also—without realizing it—put a lot of myself into the story. Without my research to rely on, I drew on my own feelings as teenager, as someone who was confused and hurt, someone who didn’t have a voice to express those feelings. As a result, the book become much more of a father-daughter story than a story about an issue.

As soon as I started to think of her as Callie—a real person, from a real family—I started to like her a lot more, too. I realized I’d been standing apart from her, not really getting into her shoes. A very specific set of shoes, not the “generic” shoes I’d created. I’d also overloaded her character with too many problems to be believable.

As part of my cold-turkey research withdrawal, I also decided not to interview girls who self-injured until after I’d written a good solid draft of the book. But once I was finished, I took the manuscript to an inpatient facility for self-injurers. I was terrified that the girls would see that I was a fraud, that I had no idea what they were really going through.

To my surprise and relief, they said the book was quite accurate. In fact, they thought that I was a cutter—which was actually a compliment. It was the reassurance I needed to believe in the book—and to trust that I had done the right thing by walking away from my research and by leaving out all that extraneous drama.

It was hard to part with all that research. It was hard to throw away the scenes I’d written. And it was hard not to try to tell everyone everything I learned about self-injury. But getting that reassurance from the girls whose story I’d set out to tell was all I really needed.

Thank you for visiting Patricia!  I enjoyed reading Cut and knowing what has gone into it’s accuracy only makes me love it all the more.  If you missed my review please visit and please think of grabbing a copy for yourself.  You won’t be disappointed.

Hello!  I’m quite excited today to welcome Cara Chow, author of Egmont USA‘s Bitter Melon, to Galleysmith to speak about how her novel came into existence.  Is it auto-biographical?  Is it a little bit of her life or is it a little bit of fiction?  Read on to find out:

Though Bitter Melon is a work of fiction, the number one question people ask me is “Is Frances you?”  Because Bitter Melon is a mother-daughter story, the unspoken question they are also asking is “Is Gracie your mother?”  Some are so attached to the idea that Frances could be me that they have even asked me if the girl on the book cover is a photo of me when I was a teen.  My response to that is, “No.  I was not that pretty.”

The question of whether Bitter Melon is autobiographical is difficult to answer because the answer is both yes and no.  Let me explain.

Though my mother and I enjoy a very positive relationship today, we definitely struggled a lot when I was a teen.  My mom wanted me to be the best, and her way of motivating me was by being very hard on me. Unfortunately, her parenting strategy did not have the effect on me that she had intended.  I wanted to make her proud, but I always felt like a disappointment to her, and this really affected my confidence and self-image as a teen.  Those tumultuous feelings became compost for my imagination as I created the fictional world of Frances Ching a decade later.

When I began the first draft of Bitter Melon back in (gasp!) 1999, I was twenty-seven years old.  I was still processing the things that had happened between my mother and me, and our relationship dynamic was still similar to how it had been in my teens.  That messy first draft was the most autobiographical of the eleven drafts.  My long-time writing teacher had said that writing a memoir is particularly challenging because the writer is processing her own life while learning how to write.  Though I was not writing a memoir, this rule certainly applied to me.  For the first time, I was having to learn how to plot a story.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t tame my plot because an unconscious part of me needed to write about my life, and my life, with its multitude of characters and issues, refused to fit with a greased shoe horn into just one story.  Another shortcoming in my writing at the time was how I depicted Gracie.  I was told by two different writing teachers that Gracie needed to be more three-dimensional, that they wanted to be able to sympathize with her, even as they disapproved of her actions.  I tried very hard to heed their advice as I rewrote, but I was given this same feedback about Gracie over and over.  Years later, I realized that the problem was more psychological than mechanical.  I couldn’t depict Gracie in a sympathetic manner because I hadn’t forgiven my own mother and was unwilling to view her in a sympathetic light.

All this changed a year later when I had a freak, life threatening medical emergency, resulting in a major surgery.  I spent the next year recovering from this surgery and other health issues that I had ignored up to that point.  This experience really shook me up.  I felt like I had been given a second chance at life, and this motivated me to let go of many old resentments.  After being estranged from my mom for a year, I decided to reconnect with her.  Meanwhile, my mom was doing some soul searching of her own.  Within a short period of time, a few life-changing events forced her to reflect on her own life.  Our relationship had become almost non-existent because of our differences.  She was facing retirement and had achieved her life-long goal of financial security, yet she was wondering, “Is this it?”  Also around this time, my older sister gave birth to her first child.  Not long after, my mother’s mother passed away.  Over the next few years, my mom and I had many conversations about how she raised me.  I learned that, by withholding praise and criticizing me harshly, my mom was really trying to push me to achieve more because she believed in me.  My mom learned that, instead of motivating me, she was actually damaging my confidence.  I learned that she was really hurt that I didn’t appreciate how much she had sacrificed to give me everything I had.  On her end, she learned that shaming and guilt-tripping do not inspire sincere appreciation.

So how did this change my book?  In a nutshell, my life and France’s life diverged.  I had made peace in my own life, so I was able to get out of my own way and focus on the craft of writing.  For the first time, I was able to let go of the need to demonize Gracie.  Though she continued to be a tough antagonist, I was able to show the fear and insecurity that fueled her cruel actions.  My protagonist also became more three-dimensional.  Frances was no longer an innocent victim but instead a flawed hero whose selfishness got her into trouble.  The complexity of my characters reflected a more complex understanding of human nature.  I also gained more objectivity about my plot.  After years of confusion, adding subplots to an already complicated story, I was finally able to see the spine of the story, and I axed multiple subplots that detracted from the main story.  Gradually, a clean, clear story line emerged.  I almost forgot that the story I had created had been inspired by something that had happened in my own life.

Ironically, years after having moved on, I must once again revisit my past because of the publication of Bitter Melon and the question “Is Frances you?”.  Adding to this is the recently published Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua.  The tsunami of questions regarding Tiger Mothers doesn’t just come from media people.  I can’t push my stroller down the street without a neighbor mentioning Chua’s article.  Even my contractor, who remodeled my kitchen, had to put in his two cents about Tiger Mothers.  (He was one of the readers who asked if that was me on the cover.)  Recently, I did an interview that was titled “Raised by a Tiger Mother.”  I wonder, will people remember me as a Tiger Mother survivor first and a novelist second?  Will they view my mother as the Chinese Mommy Dearest?  How many will know or remember that this is the same person who said, “Though you are grown, I am still learning how to be a better mother,” or who supported my book by offering me encouragement, helping me with research, and booking me a reading with her senior alternative health class?

My long-time writing teacher once said that one’s life informs one’s art but one’s art also in turn informs one’s life.  This has definitely been the case for me, in a much deeper way than I had ever imagined.

Thank you for stopping by Cara, it’s always fantastic to learn more about what goes into making a book.  Please check back tomorrow when I post my review of Bitter Melon.

It’s a busy week here on Galleysmith and I’m so pleased to be able to bring readers another fantastic guest post.  Today we’re hearing from Diane Zahler author of the middle-grade fantasy tale A True Princess.  Please join me in welcoming Diane as she talks about fairytale retellings.

The Path to the Witch’s House
Or, How I Came to Write Fairytale Retellings

When I was growing up, what I did best was read. I was terrible at sports. I was the kid who was picked last for the team in gym class. I’m guessing that probably some of you know how that feels. I wasn’t that great at math, either. But I was a really good reader. Everyone in my family was. We went to the library every week and literally filled a huge box with books to take home. We read everywhere. In bed after bedtime under the covers with a flashlight. In the bathroom. We even read at the dinner table. It wasn’t until years later that I realized people thought it was weird that the whole family sat at the table with a fork in one hand and turning pages with the other hand!

I kept on reading children’s books even when I got older, because that’s what I liked best. In high school I got a job in the children’s room at the public library. Mostly I just read there too, though sometimes I actually had to do some work. But I got to read all the new books before anyone else, so I loved it. I studied medieval history in college, and the world of courtly love in the Middle Ages became part of the way I thought about fantasy and fairy tales.

When I graduated from college, I went to New York and got a job in children’s book publishing. I didn’t last long there, though; I had to spend so much time working on other writers’ books that I couldn’t write my own. So I quit my job and I started writing textbook lessons. I tried to make them as interesting as I could – not an easy task! It wasn’t the same as writing my own books, but it was a way to make a living by writing. And it gave me time to think about and finally begin to write what I wanted to write.

My first children’s novel, The Thirteenth Princess, wasn’t the first book I wrote. It wasn’t even the first novel for kids that I wrote. I wrote one that was really bad, and nobody wanted to publish it. Then I wrote another one that was pretty bad. Nobody wanted to publish that either. Then I wrote a historical novel that wasn’t so bad, but nobody wanted to publish a historical novel. I got a little discouraged. Well, a lot discouraged.

All this time I was still writing textbook lessons. I stopped writing fiction and wrote some quiz books with my sister. We were completely shocked when they did well. Who’d have thought people would actually want to take multiple-choice tests for fun? After that, I wrote two nonfiction books for high-school students. One was on the bubonic plague, a horrible disease that killed millions of people about 600 years ago. The symptoms were really gross and what happened to people who got it was terrible, but I have to admit it was kind of fun to write. The other book was about the country of Burma, in Southeast Asia. I didn’t know anything about Burma when I started, and it was very difficult to find information about it. It was a real challenge, and I learned a lot from writing it. That was the best thing about the kind of writing I was doing then – everything I wrote was different, and a lot of it taught me something new.

Then I started thinking about fairy tales. I’d always loved fairy tales and fantasy. I’d read all the fairy tales in their original forms, and I decided I wanted to write a novel-length version of one of them. “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” was one of my favorites, so The Thirteenth Princess was born. It was two years in the making, but my publisher, HarperCollins, snapped it up pretty quickly, and wanted more. So then I wrote A True Princess, and now, here I am!

Thank you for the insight into how your wonderful book came into existence Diane.  I hope all of my readers come back tomorrow when I’ll be posting my review of A True Princess.

Happy day dear friends of Galleysmith!  I’m welcome you to The Iron Court as part of the Iron Queen Court blog tour.  Today I have the original Queen of the Iron Fey Ms. Julie Kagawa joining me to share her inspiration for the gorgeous Iron Court drawing I’ll be giving away.  It’s a beautiful piece of artwork that I encourage you all to attempt to win.  But before you run off to do so please check out what Julie has to say on it below.

**curtsies to the greatness that is Ms. Julie Kagawa**

Many thanks to Galleysmith for hosting the latest stop on the Iron Queen Court Blog Tour!  Lots of people have asked me how I came up with idea of the Iron Fey and the Iron Court.  So here is a little insight into how it came to be.

I love Steampunk.  The gears, the airships, the strange steam powered machines—they’re all fascinating.  But when I started to design the realm of the Iron Fey, I didn’t exactly know where I was going with it.  I wanted to show what progress and technology had done to the Nevernever, but a glittering city of skyscrapers and high-tech machines seemed almost too sci-fi for the realm of Faery.  And it didn’t really drive home the fact that the Iron Realm was poisoning the rest of the Nevernever.  So, eventually, the Iron Kingdom became a bleak, desolate wasteland, with acid rain and piles of old technology lying in huge mounds across the landscape.  Not a very pleasant place, but if it was glittery and shiny from the beginning, the danger of the realm’s encroachment on the rest of Faery would not have been as severe.

When it came to its inhabitants, Ironhorse was one of the first Iron Fey that I created, and the concept that he was born from the old-fashioned steam engine really cemented the concept of these faeries in my head.  As other Iron Fey started to emerge—chaotic gremlins, creepy wiremen, tank-like iron beetles, musket elves, gliders—the Iron Realm began to take on a very steampunk feel.  And when I started writing The Iron Queen, the Iron Court was almost an entity in itself.

Steampunk and faeries.  Best of both worlds.

-Julie Kagawa

Thank you for stopping by to share your inspiration Julie!

Now, do you wonderful readers want to the chance to win a prize?  A really awesome prize?  If so, check out my Iron Queen Original Artwork Giveaway to enter.  Believe me, it’s totally worth your while!

Show some love to the other members of Team Iron Court Mundie Moms and Bookalicious as well as check out the next stop on the tour in The Summer Court at Word For Teens on Friday February 4th.  To see a full list of tour stops check out the Iron Fey Facebook page for more information.

Last week I reviewed author Martin Chatterton’s latest The Brain Full of Holes.  I so enjoyed Martin’s last visit I felt honored that he wanted to come back and share more with my readers.  Please join me in once again welcoming Martin to Galleysmith.

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Martin Chatterton ‘Terra Incognita’.

This is the latest stop on my whirlwind global blog tour. I’m still adjusting to the blogosphere, so please bear with me while I decompress. I’m here to spread the word about my glorious new book of total gibberish, ‘The Brain Full of Holes’, which is available from all good outlets, as well as a large number of quite frankly lousy ones.

‘TBFOH’ is the second installment in the adventures of Theo Brain (aged 13), the self-styled ‘World’s Greatest Detective’ and his trusty sidekick, Sheldon McGlone. While the first book (‘The Brain Finds A Leg’) saw the duo battling Australian corporate eco-polluters, killer koalas and deranged hippies, TBFOH sees them entering the murky world of particle physics centered around the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland.

Particle physics, on the face of it, wouldn’t appear to be promising material for writing a YA book. No-one understands the subject, not even – so far as I can tell – those who have made it their life work to study the subject. Its difficult, dense, dark stuff.

Which is why I think it’s perfect. Since no-one really knows what happens when you smash particles into each other at high speed, this gives the writer (me) the excuse to invent a completely new set of loopy situations. I’m particularly fond of the carnivorous cuckoo-clocks.

While the subject matter gives me carte blanche to explore the surreal, I think its important to retain at least a thin thread of plausibility. If I simply wrote nonsense, with no basis in reality, the situations would simply become whimsical. I don’t for a moment believe that any of the odder events I describe in TBFOH would happen, but there is a tiny speck of possibility in there somewhere. Example: almost all of what we think of as ‘solid’ objects consists of empty space. Or, at least, what we think might be empty space. The actual, observable physical matter contained in an atom – which constitutes the component parts of everything in the universe – is tiny. Some scientists believe there must be something else in there that we can’t yet measure, or see. And its that little nugget of information that gives me the opportunity to riff on the possibilities, unlikely though they may be, of exactly what else might be in there.

Or out there.

Science, when talking about the observable universe, freely admits that almost everything ‘out there’ is unknown. Things happen in space, and at the sub-microscopic level that we just don’t understand, or that we are simply not aware of. We are at the stage that ancient mariners were at when they scrawled ‘terra incognita’ across their maps when faced with the unknown. Often these maps were decorated with fanciful images of what the sailors imagined might be out there. This, essentially, is what I do.

Terra Incognita. My favourite place.

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Thank you for stopping by to visit again.  Sheldon and The Brain are definitely two characters I’ve enjoyed reading and hope to see more of in the future.