Flying Starts

By her own admission, Heather Henson backed into the world of children's books. She never meant to start a career editing them, and she certainly never meant to write one. But somehow, at the age of 35, she has ended up doing both.

Her first novel for teenagers, Making the Run (HarperCollins/Cotler, May), is the result of a long journey. Born in a small town in Kentucky, Henson moved to New York City to attend college at the New School. "I actually came to study filmmaking," she says. "I'd always written, but didn't think that's what I'd do. But I had some great writing teachers in college, and ended up with a degree in creative writing."

A series of temp jobs followed graduation, including one in the children's division of HarperCollins. Henson discovered she liked working with artists and with texts, and found creating picture books somewhat similar to the storyboarding process in filmmaking. A permanent job in the division opened up; she was hired, rose in the ranks and became an editor.

Then came a crossroads. "At some point," she recalls, "I had stopped writing. I loved working with writers and books, but I missed writing. I was at the point at which I might have been promoted, and I knew I'd have to dedicate my life to editing if that happened. But I just knew I wanted to write. Of course, my husband thought I was crazy at first!"

So she left Harper to go freelance, doing some editing and also her own writing. It was a productive time: she finished up her master's in creative writing at City College, had a son and wrote what turned out to be Making the Run.

Her first and only submission of the book was to her former boss, Joanna Cotler. "When I finished it," she recalls, "I thought it was something she'd like. I had worked for Joanna for several years, and we have the same aesthetic when it comes to books. I finished it the week before I gave birth to Daniel [now 2 years old]. Within a few weeks after giving birth, Joanna called and said, 'I love it, I'll take it.' I was so happy, it was amazing."

Since she was so familiar with the editorial process, Henson was a bit surprised to experience life on the other side of the fence. "I didn't think it would surprise me at all," she says. "But it was very difficult to send my book out, even though it was to Joanna. And then there was the waiting. I used to be so busy as an editor. I didn't think about how long it took to get back to an author."

The editing part came as less of a surprise. "There were not a huge amount of revisions, but Joanna definitely asked for some, and I agreed with her. Because I've been an editor, I felt, 'Look, I know I need to be edited.' I do think writers can fall in love with their own words."

Lu, the heroine of Making the Run, is just finishing high school in Kentucky; she is poised on the brink of going out into the world, longing for new experiences but a bit afraid to leave as well. Henson says the book is "not totally autobiographical, but still there's some truth in fiction. The hometown is very similar to my hometown. I really wanted to write about my own experience of growing up in a small town, of being 17 or 18, not an adult but almost one. I also wanted to write about that intense feeling of being in love for the first time, which is never quite the same again."

All of Henson's writing, she says, is set in Kentucky. She has written several short stories, and an (as yet unpublished) novel for adults, but admits the idea of writing for children hadn't previously occurred to her. "And now I have so many ideas for middle-grade or YA novels that I don't have time to write them all!"

Her current project is a middle-grade novel, "again a little autobiographical. It's about a girl growing up in the theater [Henson's father runs a 52-year-old summer-stock theater in Danville, her hometown]. Place is very important to me, almost as important as the story. I'm so familiar with Kentucky and that culture." Henson has also sold a picture book to Atheneum, "which will come out in something like 2005."

Now that Making the Run has been published, and she can finally hold it in her hands, Henson says, "I love the way it looks. I'm so excited to have it published." Reflecting on the serendipitous route in which she discovered the world of children's books, left it, and then ended up writing a children's book of her own, she says, "It's like that line from The Godfather: just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!" —Diane Roback

"Persistence pays off." The adage trips readily off the tongue of author/illustrator Janet Lawson, who shares a spunk and steadfastness with her debut book's character, Audrey. While her young heroine's tenacity pays off in an entertaining adventure to India with her cynical cat, Lawson's has resulted in the publication of her humorous picture book, Audrey and Barbara (Atheneum, May).

"Writers need cheerleaders who keep saying, 'Do the work, do the work.' It's what you have control over," says Lawson, who finds support among a tightly knit writing group in Minneapolis/St. Paul, which she has been a part of for more than a decade. It was about that long ago when Lawson decided to earnestly pursue her passion for picture books. "I've always loved children's stories and movies, and I'm attracted to the dual audience of adult and child involved in picture books."

Around the same time she joined her writing group, Lawson left her job at an architect's office in order to do freelance architectural illustrations, work that provides a more flexible schedule. She remembers friends suggesting that she should illustrate books for others. "But in my heart," she recalls, "I really wanted to illustrate my own ideas. I was determined to stick with it until I could tell my own stories." She took every writing and illustrating class she could find.

At the time, Lawson already held a double major in fine arts and business from Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota. "I guess I was one of those people who didn't have the courage to graduate with only a fine arts degree!" she admits with a laugh. But she certainly didn't lack courage when it came to getting her foot in the door at a publishing house.

After sending numerous samples of her work and cold-calling various publishers, she toted her portfolio to New York and Boston for a whirlwind three-day trip in 1999. She visited 13 publishing houses: "I begged. I said, 'Please see me. I'm not a waste of time... really!'" In her portfolio were the beginnings of Audrey and Barbara, which started out as a wordless picture book.

"The first inklings for Audrey and Barbara probably came out of desperation to fill a portfolio for that trip," Lawson confesses. "What I learned, though, is that all the years I'd tried to do it the writing way—words first and then illustrations—didn't work for me. I had to go in through the images and let the text follow."

During that turning-point trip, she hooked up with editor Caitlyn Dlouhy at Atheneum, who showed interest in the characters. So Lawson returned home to flush out the story, and to her amazement, found it wasn't really work at all. Lawson also discovered that her architectural experience informed her art. "In hindsight, all those hours and hours with pen in hand, drawing buildings and trees, was practice, practice, practice." The exactness of architectural drawings, though, gave way to a much freer picture book format. "It was play for me, almost like giggling," she says about creating the book's animated black-line and watercolor illustrations.

Lawson worked with Dlouhy and art director Ann Bobco at Atheneum, but there wasn't much going back and forth on revisions. "I was so surprised," Lawson says. "I think they liked what I did, and they let me do it. All those years of learning had finally gelled." Lawson did not work with an agent, a fact that forced her to learn all she could about the different publishing houses. "And my trip to New York gave me a great sense of where I would and wouldn't fit in."

Lawson is quick to list several authors and illustrators whose books surround her when she works, including Lisbeth Zwerger ("She's my goddess—the way she designs and the colors she uses, she's so fresh"), Stephen Gammell ("I love the whimsical and the wacky, and he inspires me in that direction") and Patricia Polacco ("That's the kind of line I shoot for. The lines are just flowing off her hands").

She also hints that Atheneum is interested in hearing more about the spirited Audrey and her nap-loving cat, Barbara. "My next task is probably the same, but different," she remarks, hoping the characters will keep inspiring her. "That's the magic of the creative process. You can put all this sweat into it, but then there's this spark. I'll keep dipping into the well and trust there's something still down there!" she says, adding, "But it would help if I could get a good night's sleep."

That could be difficult these days for Lawson, whose other passion is being mother to six-month-old James and toddler Ellen. But she is determined to keep at her dream. "It's persistence that pays off. Stick with it, and believe in yourself until you get it right!"

One can imagine Audrey saying the same. —Kathy Weeks

Rachel Cohn remembers how the rich and rebellious narrator of her novel Gingerbread (Simon & Schuster, Mar.), was born. A friend named Rob Coffman sent her a card he'd drawn: "[It] had a picture of this weird-looking girl on it with a doll trailing from her, and she had these combat boots on," Cohn says. She kept seeing the image during her morning walk through the hills of San Francisco's affluent Pacific Heights neighborhood, and the misfit girl—named Cyd Charisse after the famous actress and dancer—living among the huge houses came alive to her.

From there the story of the San Francisco love child who tries to escape her problems by spending the summer in New York City with her estranged father began to take shape. Cohn says she wrote the first part in a month or two, and the story was sold as a partial manuscript to S&S just 10 months later.

She was paired with editor David Gale, whom Cohn met for the first time when she was about to start writing the second half. She remembers asking if there was anything in the story so far that concerned him. "I said, 'Is there anything too over the top?' " she recalls. When Gale assured her that for him there was no such thing, she was ecstatic.

Cohn credits Gale with teaching her much about the young-adult genre, which wasn't an age group that she set out to write for intentionally. "I just kind of fell into it," she says. "I started writing fiction seriously about seven or eight years ago and I just seemed to get stuck in that age and that voice."

In fact, becoming an author wasn't exactly what she'd planned to do at this stage of her life, either. Although she says she always wanted to write, Cohn majored in political science at Barnard College. She says she dreamed, "I'll have a great career and then I'll settle down, then when I'm 40 or something I'll have this great novel in me." After she graduated, though, she says she hated every job she had, jobs that ranged from being a research assistant for public television to doing promotions for a reggae record company. She decided writing shouldn't wait, got a support job and started penning novels.

She completed two contemporary adult books before tackling her first YA novel, The Steps, a book she wrote a year before Gingerbread. The Steps, which is due from S&S next spring, follows "a very sophisticated Manhattan girl" who spends her holiday with her father and his new family in Australia. S&S has also signed Pop Princess, a book Cohn is currently writing, which features a one-hit wonder named, appropriately, Wonder, who drops out of school to pursue her singing career. "It's directly correlated to all the time I spend watching MTV," Cohn admits. "I have to make the time work back for me."

For now, Cohn is getting used to the attention (fan letters, mentions on Web sites) that she is beginning to get from readers, and she is adjusting to a new routine. She has recently begun writing full-time, working from her room in her Manhattan apartment, which has a "small view of a little courtyard outside," and pictures that Coffman drew based on Gingerbread while she was writing the book. "I have a rule that I have to reach 500 words before I can do something fun, and that means go get a manicure, go get a coffee, or watch TRL," she says, referring to MTV's Total Request Live. "If I can't, I literally have to just sit there and be tortured for 12 hours if that's how long it takes." —Kate Pavao

If you cross two of Kevin Brooks's favorite authors—J.D. Salinger and Raymond Chandler—you might approximate the hardboiled humor of the British author's first novel, Martyn Pig (Scholastic/ Chicken House, May). The eponymous narrator, a hapless and motherless teenager, spends his Christmas vacation coping with the corpse of his alcoholic and abusive father, in a plot that gets thicker (and funnier) with every twist. British and American reviewers have praised the book for its edgy wit and intelligence.

"I've always written," says the 43-year-old Brooks, speaking by phone from his home in Essex, a town about 50 miles from London. "But I started writing seriously, dedicating myself to it, only about five years ago." Brooks describes a peripatetic career—he grew up in Exeter, embarked on a university course in psychology and philosophy in Birmingham, and left after a year. (He eventually completed a program in cultural studies at Northeast London Polytechnic.) Brooks pursued music for many years, playing with others and writing and recording his own work, and later turned to painting and sculpture. He worked a variety of jobs to support himself.

"I always set a kind of limit for myself," he says, explaining that he had harbored an indefinite plan to stop what he was doing at some point, whether music or art, and concentrate on writing. "I had a drinking problem, and when I stopped that [also about five years ago], I found the discipline to write."

Why did he decide to write for children? "There aren't that many differences, I don't think, between writing for children and writing for adults," Brooks answers, "because children aren't that different from adults. But I would say the story is the main thing, with children. With adults you might use different styles and structures, perhaps indulge in fiddly niceties. Writing for children brings you down to basics."

Brooks was braced for some criticism, or "fuss," about the dark subject matter of Martyn Pig, which takes in not only Martyn's abandonment but also murder, blackmail and various other obstructions of justice. So far, however, reviewers have been approving. "I think you can deal with any subject as long as it is done in a reasonable way," Brooks ventures. "Martyn Pig is not gratuitous and it is not nasty."

Publishers, however, were more timid. The novel is actually the third that Brooks has completed; the first was an adventure story with some science fiction elements, for younger children, and the second was for adults. The first manuscript drew a few encouraging replies from major British trade publishers and agents, although no offers, and he sent Martyn Pig out to those who had responded positively in the past. Editors liked it, he recalls, but didn't feel it was quite right for their lists. Just as he was exhausting the possibilities, he came across a mention of The Chicken House in a magazine, and sent the manuscript to publisher Barry Cunningham, whose imprint publishes books simultaneously on both sides of the pond. "Barry helped me to focus on one direction," says Brooks. "I'm not ruling out ever writing for adults, but I think I write best for children."

These days Brooks is writing full-time. "I quit my job [for a railroad] a few months before finishing Martyn Pig," he says. "I just got fed up with working." (His wife, Susan, a freelance editor, "works extremely hard to keep the both of us in food and shelter," he adds.) "I've spent all my life doing jobs I don't enjoy. I know what it's like doing something you hate for eight hours a day, and it is quite different to be seated in front of a computer, working out ideas.

"I'm not stuck for ideas," he continues. "I've had so many over the years. It's more a question of picking the right one. But I don't mind taking an idea, working on it for a couple of months and putting it aside if it doesn't work."

A second novel, to be published by The Chicken House early next year, is a "story of love and hate, and death, and all sorts of things," he says. This time Brooks adopts the perspective of a girl, and describes the work as "more expansive" than Martyn Pig, with a "wider" plot. "Hopefully you can relate to the main character. That's something I want—my favorite authors have always been American. Somehow there's a closer relationship between characters and readers in American books, and the characters become a part of your life," he notes. "I want to do that, too." —Elizabeth Devereaux