New Frontiers: THE WESTERN MYSTERIES

Sometimes I go to the Hungarian Pastry Shop to write. It’s where I’m writing now. I’ve been coming here since I first arrived in New York and lived at the Deanery on the grounds of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine (long story) right across the street.

Yesterday I was here working on a picture book text, which I had owed to my gifted and clear-eyed editor, Lee Wade, for some time. I am proud to say I finished a first draft. Now Lee will tear it apart, at least I hope she will.

I was a little distracted – but not too much – by a fortyish, shaven-headed man at the next table who was pitching a business idea to a younger friend? intern? B-schoolmate? It was only when the pitcher described the business as “a reservoir of stories that you can go to any time” that of course my ears pricked up. Like the pitchee, I didn’t really cotton to what this business was. People wrote stories, posted them, and then other people could buy them as a plot for their own work? At least that’s what I think it was. Who would do such a thing I can’t imagine. (It would put Hollywood out of business.) But he was convinced, if not convincing.

It made me think of the Gold Rush and the last last frontier we had: the Wild West. I’ve been thinking about the Wild West because I’m the lucky co-agent of Caroline Lawrence’s Western Mysteries, the first book of which, The Case of the Deadly Desperados, is coming out in Spring of next year. If you think of the series as Deadwood meets Mark Twain by way of Richard Peck, you’ll have the right idea. It’s funny, original, unsparing, and it has the most original hero you’re going to meet anywhere in books next year. I love it.

For a while we thought that space was the next (and final) frontier. But virtual space is our own Gold Rush, and its power and allure are as palpable as they were in 1849, even if the coffee and beans have been changed to espressos and ischlers.

The Mozart Season rises again

Do you know about the Phoenix Award? I have to admit, shamefully, that I did not -- until tonight. Tonight, Virginia Euwer Wolff was named the recipient of the 2011 Phoenix Award for her glorious novel, The Mozart Season.

Could there ever be a better reason for giving a prize than this one? Here is the citation:

The Children's Literature Association Phoenix Award is presented annually to the author of a children's or young adult book, originally published in English twenty years earlier, that did not win a major award at the time of its publication. The award recognizes works of high literary merit and lasting significance.

Jinny Wolff is almost pathologically modest, so I will crow on her behalf. The Mozart Season is a book that bears reading and re-reading. (So great was my respect for her novel that I'd clean my apartment on druggy St. Mark's Place -- vacuum even! -- before I'd allow myself to open her manuscript and read her sentences.) Read it if you have a chance.

Hats off to the 2011 Children's Literature Association committee for their far-sighted choice; three cheers for the 17-year-old boy who composed that stunning violin concerto; and kudos to the brilliant Virginia Euwer Wolff for writing a book that will rise again and again.

Hats off to SIR TERRY PRATCHETT!

Interrupting the holiday quiet for some raucous cheering!!

This news made me smile enormously when it was casually mentioned to me by an industry colleague at a New Year's gathering last night--the first I'd heard of it, since I've been a wee bit disconnected from industry chatter while away from the office over the last two weeks. There's something transcendent about the power of Terry Pratchett's imagination, a fact that I think the literary world has been all too aware of since he went public with the difficult news of his battle with Alzheimer's Disease just over a year ago, and I'm just filled to the brim with pleasure that he's been so well-honored.

I love this quote from his video interview with the UK's newspaper The Telegraph about the news of his Knighthood--"It’s amazing what can be achieved if you just do something fairly quietly but quite well for a very long time." A statement to inspire many writers, I think.

(And as an aside, if you have a holiday bookstore giftcard that's burning a hole in your pocket, I'd humbly suggest Terry's newest YA novel Nation--a tale that by turns will challenge you, make you laugh, make you teary, and best of all, make you think deeply.)

Raising a glass or three of champagne, then, to master storyteller Sir Terry (it just *sounds* right, doesn't it?), and to his likewise brilliant editors, including the Bowen Press's own Anne Hoppe, who edits his children's and YA books, and to Jen B, editor of his adult works. Huzzah!