Spring Flying Starts

Sarah Prineas

Sarah Prineas.

Sarah Prineas has a young reader of the children's magazine Cricket to thank for the impetus that led to her very splashy debut—a three-book contract, two starred reviews for the first volume, and 13 foreign rights sales. Prineas had written only three lines of a story—A thief is a lot like a wizard. I have quick hands. And I can make things disappear—when she came across a letter to the editor in Cricket from a reader who wanted “more stories with wizards and magic.”

“I'll turn that into a story for Cricket,” thought Prineas about her three lines about the thief with fast hands. “So I kept writing.”

The short story became the first chapter of The Magic Thief (HarperCollins, June), a middle-grade fantasy about the guttersnipe, Conn, whose talents as a pickpocket lead to an apprenticeship with a powerful wizard in a city desperately in need of new magic. Reviewers noted Conn's appealing narration, which speaks conversationally and conspiratorially, to the reader.

“It's the first thing I've written for children, but I feel like I've found my voice, and the thing I want to do,” said Prineas, who heretofore had published only short stories in fantasy journals. She read the first draft of The Magic Thief at Blue Heaven, a writers' retreat in Ohio two years ago. She went back last year with book two, and this month shared the third installment with the group, which had been comprised of writers mostly at work in the adult science fiction and fantasy market.

“That first year I was on the only one writing for children but now there are four and five. It's starting to spread,” she said.

A fellow Blue Heaven writer referred her to his agent, Caitlin Blasdell of Liza Dawson Associates, who sold the trilogy to Melanie Donovan at HarperCollins.

“I had fallen in love with another book Caitlin had but was not quite quick enough in responding and I lost it,” Donovan said. “Caitlin said, 'I feel awful but to make up for it, I have this fabulous story by a first-time author and I'll give you first crack at it.' ” This time, Donovan acted fast. Foreign sales rolled in even faster.

“I thought that it was something special, but you never know how people will respond,” Donovan said. She needn't have worried: the first person she gave it to—one of Harper's British scouts—“in love with it,” said Donovan. The reaction was the same from readers in France, Greece, Romania, Italy, Finland, Spain and six other countries.

“It was like lightning striking,” Prineas recalls, but the foreign excitement also meant they needed a finished manuscript fast. Revisions were completed in two weeks, while Prineas was coping with Lyme disease. “I did the whole thing with a 102-degree temperature. I don't even remember most of it.” Donovan says that was possible because the manuscript had come in clean, already having been vetted by Blasdell, a former fantasy editor at Harper Eos. “By the time it got to me it was in very good shape, especially for a first-time author. Sarah is one of those writers who has really worked to learn her craft.”

That said, novelist was not her first career choice. Prineas studied English literature, first at Minnesota's Carleton College, and then earning a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona. She intended to teach, until she wrote a story for an online workshop while she was supposed to be finishing her dissertation. The story was praised, and the teaching idea shelved, though she has taught at the University of Iowa where she holds a part-time job coordinating scholarships. Her husband, John, a physicist, is also on the faculty, but his research lab is currently under water—a casualty of the “once-in-500-years” flood that has ravaged the area. He is thanked in Prineas's acknowledgments as her “best critiquer,” though she relies on her kids, too—Maud, 12, and Theo, 8.

“When I'm blocked on a plot point, I go for long walks with Maud and talk it through. She always helps me figure out what happens next,” Prineas said. “And Theo gave me a great idea for book two. They're both full participants in this.”

Prineas has felt an itch to write a fourth book about Conn and his master—a quartet, or perhaps more, all sprung from that one short story she initially wrote for Cricket, which, by the way, did not buy it. “They're still considering it,” she said. —Sue Corbett

Ingrid Law

Remember your 13th birthday? Chances are it wasn't anything like the ones in the Beaumont family,

Ingrid Law.

whose members usher in their 13th year by receiving their “savvy,” or supernatural ability. Such is the magical premise of Ingrid Law's Savvy (Dial/Walden Media, May).

“I wanted to write a book about children with huge abilities—a magical book,” says Law of her initial inspiration, “but there are so many books about magic already out there.” Aiming to take a distinctly different tack, she says, “I didn't use the word 'magic' and set the story in the U.S. hoping to give it a very strong sense of Americana and the look-forward spirit of a larger-than-life tall tale.”

While the characters in her book can cause hurricanes or generate electricity, it turns out Law's savvy may be in landing a publishing contract. Always interested in creative arts and a longtime fan of books for young readers (“I never stopped reading them, even before my daughter was born,” she says) single mom Law began sneaking free time to write in the genre, “just for fun,” about 10 years ago when her daughter, now 13, was just a toddler.

Law tried to sell a previous novel and has the requisite shoebox full of rejections to show for it. But a few of the 45 agents she queried encouraged her to send any future projects. “I thought, 'Oh, I better have a future project,' ” she recalls with a laugh.

In January 2007 she was determined to get that next project started, and vowed to write “whatever came into my head first. And it's still the first sentence of Savvy,” she notes. (“When my brother Fish turned thirteen, we moved to the deepest part of the inland because of the hurricane and, of course, the fact that he'd caused it.”) By May, Law had a finished manuscript to pitch. Daniel Lazar at Writers House responded to her email query in just a few days, offering representation, and after two weeks of polishing, Law's potential novel landed on editors' desks. It took less than 24 hours to get a bite from Alisha Niehaus at Dial, which at the time had a joint venture with Walden Media, the muscle behind such family-oriented book-to-film hits as Holes and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. “In three weeks I went from finished manuscript to publishing deal. My head was spinning,” Law says.

Both Walden and Dial demonstrated the kind of broad-spectrum support (editorial, marketing, promotion) that Law had hoped for. “Everyone's enthusiasm swayed my decision,” she says, in accepting a two-book contract. She was also swayed to say yes to Walden's first option of the book for film rights. “During an early discussion with Walden, we discovered a really funny coincidence,” Law recalls. “My daughter and I were diehard season-ticket holders at the Walden Family Playhouse in Lakewood, Colorado, which isn't even open anymore. They joked that we must have been the only ones.”

Much like the onset of one of her fictional savvies, this whirlwind turn of events has changed the course of Law's life. “I was fortunate that I got an advance that allowed me to write full-time for a year or two,” she says, a circumstance that enabled her to homeschool her daughter this past year and eventually resign from her county government job in December 2007. This summer will see more change, as Law and her daughter move from their Boulder mobile home of many years to a new townhouse in nearby Lafayette.

Local book events as well as some promotional travel have been a thrill, Law notes, but she especially enjoys talking with kids who have read her work. “So many kids ask me, 'What do you think my savvy is?'” she says. “I'm glad that a savvy is something that any kid could think is somewhat attainable. It gets them thinking, 'I'm a really fast runner' or 'I'm really good at math.' I wanted the book to be motivating and uplifting in that way.”

Whether they've found their savvy yet or not, readers will be pleased that Law has just turned in her first draft of a sequel, which takes place nine years after Savvy and is “about a boy no one has met yet, but also includes some familiar characters,” she explains. After that, Law plans to work on other book ideas kicking around in her imagination. And in the meantime, she's enjoying the “scary, fun and exciting” ride of her first success. —Shannon Maughan

S.A. Bodeen

The Compound was not the firs

S.A. Bodeen. Photo:  V Imagery and Design.

t young adult book Stephanie Bodeen wrote. In fact it was her 10th. But although she had published picture books before, she had yet to sell a YA novel. In fact, Bodeen had pretty much decided to quit trying after her agent returned a box of manuscripts to her, telling her they were unsaleable. But then she made another decision. “I decided I'm either a writer or I'm not a writer, so I signed up for National Novel Writing Month and on November 1, I started a young adult novel,” she recalls.

Of course, coming up with an original idea is not all that easy, even for a published author with an MFA. “People like to do edgy stuff in YA and everything's been done, anorexia and meth addiction,” she says. “It's like, well, where haven't we gone?” Cannibalism came to mind after seeing a television program in which a dinosaur fed a favorite offspring the bodies of its less fortunate brothers and sisters. The idea for The Compound (Feiwel and Friends, Apr.)—the grisly story of a family trying to survive underground after an alleged nuclear attack—began to gel.

She credits her agent and editor for helping her fill out her story. Scott Mendel of Mendel Media—whom Bodeen originally met through a Web site for Peace Corps writers—encouraged her to do a complete overhaul of the book, throwing out everything but the idea and most of the characters. Later, Feiwel and Friends editor Liz Szabla provided plenty of hands-on help. “I don't work well with the big picture,” Bodeen says, “so I think if I had just gotten this big letter about what was wrong with the book and what needed to be done, I would have just been paralyzed. But Liz would go through and comment on every page, and ask questions that would just get my mind going so I could go deeper.” The revision process was tough—and time-consuming—but worth it, says Bodeen. “I was amazed at how much better it got.”

For Bodeen, the payoff goes beyond the thrill of publication. The Compound has been nominated as an ALA Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers, and a teacher recently told her that her students—even the non-bookworms—were devouring the book. “That to me is what it's all about,” she says—“to get somebody who doesn't like to read to realize they can enjoy a book.”

Beyond school visits, speaking at conferences and teaching Gotham Writers' Workshops, Bodeen is hard at work on her writing. Next up is The Gardener, which is also a thriller, but “maybe a little more sci-fi” than The Compound. The book will likely come out in fall 2009 or spring 2010. And will she be returning to the cliffhanger she left at the end of The Compound? “There is talk of it,” she says, adding that her young readers always tell her they are sure the maniacal father is still alive. “We'll see what happens.” —Kate Pavao

Padma Venkatraman

Padma Venkatraman is a woman of many

Padma Venkatraman.

talents and passions. A lover of science, math, history and literature, she always wanted to be a writer but felt there was more financial security in following a different path. At age 19, she moved from India to the United States to attend graduate school at the College of William and Mary School of Marine Science, and she is currently a professor of oceanography at University of Rhode Island.

“I used writing as an escape from science,” she says. While studying and teaching oceanography, she managed to write and have published a total of 20 picture books and short story collections for Indian children before writing her first novel for American teens. Loosely based on her family's history, her evocative Climbing the Stairs (Putnam, May), is the coming-of-age story of a young feminist who witnesses both violence and peaceful resistance in India during the WWII era.

“I knew this book would be very different from the ones I wrote before, and I approached it with much more seriousness.” says Venkatraman. She goes on to explain that the idea for it was “setting-driven,” stemming from her fascination with a dramatic time in India's history “when the violence of Hitler and India's colonization were in sharp contrast with the intellectual ideals of peace” promoted by Gandhi.

“The first character born in my head was Kitta, a boy who embodies that contrast,” the author explains. “But as I began writing the story, I heard the voice of a woman.” As the story grew, the woman evolved into the story's narrator, Vidya, who is in some ways linked to the author's mother. Like Vidya, Venkatraman's mother grew up in India during the 1940s, lived in an extended-family household where heated political arguments were prevalent, prompting her often to “climb the stairs” to the family library to broaden her mind and escape the conflict.

Once Venkatraman achieved her goal of interweaving threads of Indian culture, diverse religious beliefs, feminism, war and peace into a compelling story, it was more difficult than she imagined finding an agent willing to represent her work. “I received at least 20 form rejections to my queries before I found anyone who would even look at the manuscript.”

Steadfast in her belief that the story's themes did have relevance for contemporary Americans, Venkatraman eventually did find an agent, Barbara Markowitz, who had no trouble finding an editor, John Rudolph, senior editor at G.P. Putnam's Sons, who was eager to acquire the book. “My agent told me that John was 'her toughest editor' and I thought of him as my varsity coach,” the author says with admiration. “He helped me take my writing to a whole new level.”

Now spending less time researching and teaching oceanography and more time speaking at schools and book clubs (where she has discovered a large base of middle-aged fans), Ventrakaman has her eyes set on new goals. She is currently working on a second YA novel, which Rudolph has already purchased.

“It used to be that science was my career and writing was my hobby,” the author reflects. “Now I know I want to be a writer, and I'm starting to think of oceanography as a hobby.” —Lynda Brill Comerford