The book will be illustrated by Wendell Minor, who created the jacket art for Clark's 1975 bestseller Where Are the Children? The two have been friends ever since; Clark has the original cover art for that book hanging in her home in Cape Cod. Last year when she and Minor were reminiscing about it, he suggested to her that she write a story for children, and that she set it on the Cape.

"The book really came out of friendship," says Wiseman, who had edited previous works by Minor. "They are great collaborators, in every sense of the word. Mary wrote this wonderful ghost story and we were delighted by it. And Wendell's illustrations for it are superb. They're really enjoying the process of finally making a book together after 30 years of friendship."

Ghost Ship will have a 300,000-copy first printing, and a laydown date of April 3, 2007. And more may be on the way from the duo. As Wiseman says, "We very much hope this is the beginning of a long collaboration between these two publishing veterans. We hope many more books will follow."
—Diane Roback

In late July, Pinkwater and Ed Weiss, the independent webmaster of www.pinkwater.com (also reached from www.theneddiad.com), whose work is sanctioned by the author, posted the first of 79 chapters that make up The Neddiad, the colorful odyssey of young shoelace heir Neddie Wentworthstein as he moves with his family from Chicago to Los Angeles. It's a La La Land adventure that features "swashbuckling actors, omniscient shamans, hungry ghosts, mysterious turtles, and an elephant or two," according to the author's own description. A new chapter will be posted on Pinkwater's site each Tuesday.

Pinkwater's chapters are taken from his manuscript, a few typos and all, because, as he notes in a letter to readers, "I thought it might be of interest for some to see what the book was like when handed in."  read more

Still, most believe that live author appearances and signings translate into book sales and have the unique advantage of enabling authors to connect personally with young readers, parents, teachers and booksellers. Prime candidates for traditional tours are well-known picture-book authors and illustrators and big-name middle-grade authors, who tend to draw the largest crowds at store events and are popular choices for school bookings. Publishers view the young adult audience as the toughest to attract to author events, given teens’ busy schedules and independent lifestyles.

Conversations with publishers revealed some noteworthy innovations on the standard author tour. One ploy for building early excitement for a book is arranging pre-publication author publicity, a strategy that Little Brown Books for Young Readers used successfully for first-time novelist Stephenie Meyer, whose Twilight came out in October 2005 with a 75,000-copy first printing. By way of background: the Phoenix author, a stay-at-home mother of three young boys, had a dream one night and immediately started writing a story based on it. She sent her manuscript to Writers House, where it was picked out of the slush pile and submitted to editors, including Megan Tingley. Instantly hooked on the book, Tingley made a preemptive bid and passed the novel on to others in-house, who shared her enthusiasm. When Little, Brown distributed ARCs of Twilight at ALA Midwinter and sent them to accounts, librarians and retailers were also hooked.