Posts for category ‘once was lost’

It’s about to get bananas up in here, y’all. Forgive me if I become scarce for the next couple of months or take longer than usual to deal with my various in-boxes. The Great In-Box of Life & Work calls.

Meanwhile:

- Over at Teen Fiction Cafe we are celebrating our third anniversary. To kick it off, I posted a reflection on the last three years of my career, including some Stuff I Have Learned. Today, Wendy Toliver posts, and there are going to be such posts every day between now and the 13th. Prizes, too, people. As in: free stuff.

- Good news for Once Was Lost: It’s been named to the CBCC (Cooperative Children’s Book Center) Choices list—their best of the year. Thank you, CBCC! And, a lovely five-star review from a teen reader at TeensReadToo. Thank you, Melanie.

- Wow, that was a good Olympics. So much epic drama! (If you were fascinated by the Vonn/Mancuso story arc, you will love Sara Bennett Wealer’s book Rival, coming out next year.) But man, we watched every minute of prime time coverage and it was exhausting. Back to 9:30 bed times.

- Huge thanks to Jacksonville Much Ado About Books for taking such good care of me at the Fest. Sometimes it’s hard to believe my “job” involves being served hors d’ouvres and forcing my own personal party escort (hi, Cindy!) to take pictures of me pretending to talk on the phone in a prop phone booth. It was especially great to meet the teens at the Mandarin Branch—many thanks to librarian Donald Carpenter for setting that up.

Author and Readergirlz diva Holly Cupola graciously invited me to participate in her Story Secrets series, and I put together a video blog about how the story of Once Was Lost developed from real life events. (No spoilers, don’t worry.) Thanks for having me, Holly! Don’t have your copy of Once Was Lost yet? Find it at a local independent book store, or ask for it at your school or public library.

Congrats to the PEN/Faulkner fiction award finalists—a blessedly diverse group in light of the white-male-ification this season among the bigger awards. I’m especially pleased to see comrade Sherman Alexie honored for his wonderful collection War Dances. Congratulations also to L.A. Times Prize finalists; I love how comprehensive the categories are. The only book from that entire roster that I’ve read is Dave Cullen’s Columbine, which is definitely a worthy selection.

See you back here next week, or in Jacksonville this weekend!

• In the Once Was Lost department, many thanks to BookBrowse.com for naming it Editor’s Choice, to VOYA for saying “Zarr’s fans will not be disappointed by this beautifully crafted novel about a teen coping with a loss of faith,” and (I don’t think I’ve linked to this yet – if I have, forgive me, oh merciful Internet!) Forever Young Adult’s great review, including this, “when it comes to the mysteries of the teenage heart, zarr knows how to create the Real Deal: the sweet awkwardness, the angst of uncertainty, the shimmering highs and the crushing lows.” Awwwyeah. Crushing lows, baby! You can’t have the shimmering highs without ‘em.

• How about them Saints? I thought it was a pretty great game, as Super Bowls go. Of course the best part of the S-Bowl is that it’s an excuse to re-arrange the furniture for maximum TV viewage, have people over, and eat the kind of crap food one normally denies oneself, such as kettle chips with classic onion dip. A veritable bomb of salt and fat. Until next February, my sweet!

• Over the weekend I read Richard Yates’ The Easter Parade. While I’ve always admired Yates’ prose and Revolutionary Road is a favorite (if you’ve only seen the movie, read the book!), it was pretty bleak (as is RR but this felt more so). Characters trying to transition from post-WWII times to pre-Vietnam, going from cocktail to cocktail and lover to lover, children neglected hither and yon…basically it’s Mad Men without the laughs. Okay, a couple of laughs, but it really could have used an in-office John Deere mishap. It was a fast read, about the same length as your average YA. For Sara the Slow, that is a plus. But now I want to read something happy. I’ve been peeking at G.’s library copy of Douglas Coupland’s Generation A, which looks promising if not happy.

I mention this song in the acknowledgments for Once Was Lost. I mean, I mention Karin and Linford of OTR and this song as it would be weird just to acknowledge a song. For awhile I was thinking about putting lyrics from it at the end of the book in addition to kicking it off with lyrics from OTR’s “Long Lost Brother,” because I liked the sense of getting from there to here but not really being done with the trip. Especially: We’re all riding on the last train / trying to find our way home again.

I love this song because it is a lament, but it’s also got incredibly beautiful and hopeful imagery (Til we walk like lovers through Bethlehem / how long, how long?). I think about it a lot in regard to my own life and also when there is bad news in the world. Like today, for example, and pretty much every day. Also when I am pondering the idea of “too late,” and if there is such a thing, and if so how do you know when that is? Here’s a live performance video. The image quality is terrible but the sound is pretty good (and very clear when audience member is inappropriately yelling out for a different song). The album (Ohio) version has a gospel choir backing, which I love, but this is also lovely, slower, pared down. Lyrics here - you have to scroll down a bit.

- Once Was Lost is featured at Duke Divinity’s Faith & Leadership site. Every author should be so lucky to get a thoughtful review like this one. Reviewer Laura Good writes, “Steering clear of both Afterschool Special clichés and trumped-up grittiness, Zarr handles drunken episodes, infidelity and the question of God’s distance with a delicacy that rivals that of any novelist. Its beauty is in its true, full-bodied reflections on human life and relationships. As such it’s exactly the kind of fiction that should be purchased and promoted by the much-maligned and mothballed church library, read as a part of a devotional study in a church youth group or even discussed in an adult Sunday School class.”

- While I was away, the finalists for the ALA Morris Awards (YA debuts) were announced. I was proud to see that 2/5 of the list is made up of books I blurbed: Flash Burnout by LK Madigan, and Hold Still by Nina LaCour. Congrats to all the finalists—no matter who wins, you ALL GET A SHINY STICKER! And as we know, there is nothing in life more important than a shiny sticker.

- In fact, the other books I blurbed in 2009 have done well critically, too: The Chosen One (Carol Lynch Williams) and Marcelo in the Real World (Francisco X. Stork). And, coming soon is Jandy Nelson’s The Sky Is Everywhere, which I loved. Loved! Loved! It’s already getting such great buzz; I can’t wait for you to read it. In conclusion, either I have pretty good taste, or have drunk the same Kool-Aid as list-makers.

- I hope you are reading Andrew Smith’s blog, if you are a blog-reader and YA-y person. He is not playing the game, and for that I love him. (He is also a damn good writer.)

- Another writer (of both adult and YA fiction) to be watching—Matthew Quick. We met at NCTE (scroll down for pictures, including two in which Sarah Ockler and I appear to be twins conjoined at the shoulder) and I’ve since become a fan, and not just because he shares a last name with everyone’s favorite brooding YA boy. (Okay, my favorite brooding boy.) His YA debut, Sorta Like a Rock Star, comes out later this year.

- Are you interested in coming to the Salt Lake Valley this summer for a weeklong conference and workshop on writing for young readers? Taking a class with me? Meeting other crazy people like yourself? Hobnobbing with top agents and editors? If so, block off the week of June 14. More info to come, but this I promise* you: it’s gonna be bananas.

(*Not an actual guarantee that would hold up in a court of law.)

First: Thanks all for your responses to my last post. Group hug.

Second: I really like this review of Once Was Lost over at Elle Strauss’ blog. Among other things, she writes (when taking a moment to reflect on how religious people are often portrayed), “[The] characters are flawed because they are human, not because they choose to have faith in God.”

Third: Happy 40th birthday to Mark Miller, who was the inspiration for Cameron Quick in Sweethearts. You don’t look a moment over 39! Here we are in Feb 08 at our old elementary school:

And now, the details about my time in Philadelphia this weekend. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’re probably not registered for the conference, and if you’re not registered you can’t see me! Unless you stand on the street outside my hotel, which would be creepy.)

Sunday

10:30 a.m. – Signing at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers booth #613

11:30 a.m. – Signing at Anderson’s Bookshop booth

Evening – ALAN/Joint Publisher Reception

Monday

2:45 p.m. – Panel – “Veterans in the YA Lit Business: Successful Authors & Their Editors” (I’m not sure three books makes me a veteran, but I’m looking forward to being a part of this.)

If you see me, signing or at the panel or walking the floor or loitering by the coffee stand, please say hello. I’m friendly.