Gwenda

I don’t usually put the tiny letters up here, but since this is a year-end round-up and look ahead, I thought I would. Sign up if you want to always get them!

Last week I was in a reflective mood and I should have written this then. At that moment, I felt like I was caught up on everything — and mostly, I am — and other than having planned to write more than I did, this is the first year I haven’t been on a major deadline over the holidays. Which was actively nice, particularly in terms of being able to help Isabelle the dog settle in (more on that anon). This week, the weight of all the things that need to be done — next, soon — is back and I wish I’d worked more over the holidays. Ah, brain, never change, I guess. 😉

Since this was my first year as a work-from-home writer, there were some big things I learned and did and, well, it was just a huge transitional year on the personal level. While I know this was a terrible year for many people and for our society as a whole in terms of terrible losses (Carrie Fisher! Prince! Bowie! Alan Rickman! Gwen Ifill! Valuing democracy!), it was a memorably significant one for me. The good news is not once have I regretted or questioned the decision to leave the job; in fact, what I find more than anything is complete shock that I was able to do both careers in tandem for so long. This is better. This year will be better still, in this regard at least, because I think I’ve figured out and settled into a working rhythm.

Let’s do a numbered list, just to make it easy. My 2016 in review and some resolutions/goals for 2017 all blended in together (so I actually finish this!).

1. I traveled A LOT. I have so many good memories of hanging out with writers and friends and readers in many, many locales this year. Some high points — YALLWEST and YALLFEST, North Texas Teen Book Festival, New York Comic-Con and many many more. A low point that makes an excellent memory — RT at the worst hotel in Vegas. Also, the annual Bat Cave retreat on the Outer Banks, this time, celebrating our fifth year. And, of course, the giant 40th birthday palooza aka GwendaGras trip to NYC (Hamilton!), Boston (ReaderCon!), and Northampton (FriendFest!). Christopher’s and my trip to Santa Fe, which was half-work and half-play (it’s not every day you get to ride in GRRM’s Tesla). And then tour with my Dangerous Ladies right after. This was a year in which I hugged many people I adore, and many of them more than once. It’s hard to complain about a year like that. Although I was only home for an entire month once.

(With many of my favorite people in a hotel room in Boston post some truly excellent champagne in honor of my 40th birthday! From left to right: Gavin Grant, mine Christopher Rowe, me, Chris McLaren, Barb Gilly, Kelly Link, Molly Gloss and Richard Butner)

(A picture of a polaroid, as you do, same bat channel — Kelly, me, Barb.)

(The photo insert made me and Margie Stohl upside down, but that’s okay. This is still my favorite picture of us; backstage at YALLFEST. Have you read her first issue on Captain Marvel yet? Well, have you?)

(Me and Christopher standing in line for Hamilton, aka my GIANT BIRTHDAY PRESENT — and a definite highlight of the year!)

(Dangerous Ladies o my heart! Beth Revis, Renee Ahdieh, Megan Shepherd, moi and Megan Miranda!)

This year I definitely still want to do some traveling — and with three book releases scheduled again (more on that), that’s a good thing. But I’m trying to stay home for the first several months this year and more in general in order to write more. Something I learned this year was that butt in my chair at home means way more productivity. Fair enough. What may happen is more short trips for retreats/writing purposes and just a few big events. We’ll see. My calendar is relatively clear of everything but regional events currently up through July. (That won’t last, but we’ll pretend.)

2. I kept going to aerials, though mostly to aerial yoga. My goal is to do more other classes this year! I’ve signed up for some regular yoga and hoop dance so far and I just signed up for an intro to trapeze. All that travel meant my silks training got waysided–it’s just too hard to make progress when you’re not in class consistently, so maybe I’ll take another crack at that too. Being able to end my days by going to see the wonderful ladies at Bella Forza is an A+ treat though and I love it.

3. I had a little more time to breathe. Which meant I got to spend more time with Christopher and with Puck and Emma the Dog (a gift, such a gift to have more time with her this year) and Hemingway the Cat and now Isabelle the Dog, aka Izzy — who we adopted right before Christmas on a shelter site (I saw her on the internet and that’s my super power).

(She and Puck are getting along really well! As are she and Hem! She is around two we think and a complete puppy.)

Anyway, I occasionally went to lunch with people or wrote with a friend. I meandered around town on foot and I went to museums in the middle of the day and to the library almost daily and listened to podcasts and playlists. I recovered. I only realized the other day that I was basically still burned out until, oh, I don’t know a couple of months ago. So I was working, but only when I was doing revisions for Lois 3 did my brain finally feel like it really, fully kicked back on. And I think that’s going to be better going forward…

Because my new plan for this year is to work in focused 90 minute blocks, with rest periods in between for reading or playing on twitter or walking the doggos. Inspired by this NYT article. The goal is to learn how to juggle projects more effectively in the same day, and how to refresh during the actual work week in order to not ever get to that level of max burnout again. In addition, I continue my challenge to myself to go do something fun I wouldn’t have been able to when I had a day job at least once a week, whether it’s a museum or lunch or wandering the library.

4. This is more admission or confession than a report of anything good. But like many people this year, I leaned on some less than healthy stress-relief techniques at time (election, cough cough, I blame Trump). Most of my stresses this year were money related. It was a bigger transition than I realized going from full-time to part-time and freelance and adjusting to the flow of moneys is still happening. I traveled too much, only some of which publishers pay for, and we ate too much crap and had too much wine and etc. So this year, resolving to do better about all that. To budget more aggressively and keep stress lower through #3. While still taking actions and being politically active. Of course. If you want to kick some funds my way, there’s always the Patreon, aka the tip jar for this newsletter, life — and I’ll be posting more there this year.

5. I had books come out! And a comic! This year’s releases (buy them!):

Lois Lane: Double Down, which got a starred review from Kirkus and was just named an honorable mention in Entertainment Weekly’s Best YA Books of 2016 (eep!), and which I still think is better than Fallout and most people seem to agree and you DO need to read it to fully grok Lois Lane: Triple Threat so get on that already. 😉 It’ll be out in paperback in March, so you should snag the HC soon if that’s your pleasure.

Amazon – Barnes and Noble – Indiebound

​Girl in the Shadows, the second novel in the Cirque American world, came out and got very nice reviews from SLJ and White Tops (circus trade magazine!) and nice coverage from the Hollywood Reporter (along with Girl Over Paris), and is where I stuffed all my obsession with women and stage magic and some of my obsession with con artists. It’s a companion to Girl on a Wire with a different main character, so you can read them in any order.

Amazon – Barnes and Noble – Indiebound 

Girl Over Paris, originally released as a miniseries, now you can get it as a collected graphic novel, along with some extras. This was a complete thrill to work on, and if you wanted to read the Cirque books in order it’s Girl on a Wire, Girl Over Paris, then Girl in the Shadows (though you can read them in any!). Girl Over Paris follows the characters from Girl on a Wire to Paris where they have a run-in with a forward ghost. I’m so very proud of all the hard work everyone did on this — Kate Leth and Ming Doyle are geniuses (and Andrew Dalhouse and Deron Bennett are also, as well as our variant artists Brittney Williams and Jen Bartel).

Amazon – Barnes and Noble – Indiebound – Comixology

Next year’s releases are Lois Lane: Triple Threat and Supernormal Sleuthing Service #1: The Lost Legacy with Christopher Rowe (first middle grade! and some amazing art by Glenn Thomas! sneak peek at the illustrations). Both are out in May and so preorder! Tell your librarians and booksellers, especially about the middle grade because new series! Strange Alchemy, the rebooted, remade Blackwood, will also be coming next fall and more on that as I have it.

Amazon – Barnes and Noble – Indiebound 

(chapter one art!)

Amazon – Barnes and Noble – Indiebound

As far as writing goals, go — I’m working on a secret YA project that I hope will happen (and is my main writing goal this year, to write this novel; Patreon people got to see a working draft of chapter one), and waiting to nail down the details of ANOTHER secret YA project that I am confident is happening (and yay! it’s a dream), and we’re just starting to write the next middle grade (yay, which is going to be even more fun than #1, I’m confident!). Plus, I’ll be on season two of ReMade (you can go read all of season one now!). So, it’s going to be a good busy year with lots of writing. This I predict.

In the meantime, I wish you all the very happiest New Year and that 2017 brings us all more hope and joy than we expect. Here are some dogs.

Love,

G

Calling is great, but I know some of my introverts have a tough time with that. Sending letters is also great — and why not do both, if you can?

If you’re not up to making phone calls to reps/senators/etc, sending a paper letter in the mail is the next best thing. Still gets tracked.

— Gwenda Bond (@Gwenda) November 15, 2016

Here’s the Bannon letter I’m mailing to Sen. Rand Paul today. Feel free to crib to mail your own! Sending to party leadership too. pic.twitter.com/McH1OWpLWn

— Gwenda Bond (@Gwenda) November 15, 2016

Two tips: If you are their constituent (which is best) say so up front and add a personal touch. Both make a response more likely.

— Gwenda Bond (@Gwenda) November 15, 2016

So I’m putting this here where it’s easily copy and paste-able for your own modification:

Senator Rand Paul
1029 State Street
Bowling Green, KY 42101

Dear Senator Paul:

As a constituent from Lexington, I’m writing to ask you to oppose the appointment of Stephen Bannon to the new president’s administration. While I know this appointment does not require senate confirmation, I encourage you to voice your opposition publicly, with your own party leadership, and in any communications you may have with the president-elect’s transition team.

Why? A few reasons, courtesy of the Southern Poverty Law Center:

• Bannon presided over a news empire where he, according to former staffers, “aggressively pushed stories against immigrants, and supported linking minorities to terrorism and crime.”
• “We’re the platform for the alt-right,” Bannon said in July, using a term that is really just a rebranding of traditional white nationalism.
• Under Bannon, Breitbart published a call to “hoist [the Confederate flag] high and fly it with pride” only two weeks after the Charleston massacre when the country was still reeling from the horrors of the murders.
• Under Bannon, Breitbart published an extremist anti-Muslim tract where the author wrote that “rape culture” is “integral” to Islam.

There are plenty more reasons I could list. My grandfather, who hailed from Eastern Kentucky, did not fight in World War II so a wealthy antisemite could be installed in an important White House role. History has its eyes on you, and so does this constituent.

Regards,

Gwenda Bond
Your address

Letter #2

Senator Mitch McConnell
771 Corporate Drive, Suite 108
Lexington, KY 40503

Dear Senator McConnell:

As a constituent from Lexington, I’m writing to express my concern over recently announced appointments to the new president’s administration and proposals being floated to end the filibuster in order to push appointments and legislative measures through the Senate.

To date, the president-elect has proposed or reportedly proposed appointing: Stephen Bannon, a man with ties to neo-nazi groups and with a history of domestic violence who many feel could not even pass a White House background check without the president-elect’s override; Jeff Sessions, who could not be confirmed to a federal judgship in the 1980s because of racist rhetoric; and General Flynn, a dangerously Islamophobic choice for national security advisor.

I don’t ask you to object to these appointments on moral grounds, though I could, because if that would be effective you would already have done so. But consider the strategy here: Do you truly believe your party will have a future if it tries to regress our country to some concept of greatness that never existed? America has often struggled to live the ideals we claim to hold dear — being the great melting pot, with equality for all people, prizing justice and our first amendment rights of free speech and religion — but if we don’t continue to try, if we actively trample on these, then it won’t be Republicans winning and Democrats losing. It will be all of us losing. It will be America losing.

Do you want that to be your legacy? Your office assisted my grandfather with his VA pension for his service in World War II and I know has helped many others among your constituents. I would ask you to consider those people who fought against the exact kind of hateful views that the president-elect now proposes to invite into our government.

Unlike Bannon, most other appointees will face the confirmation process. If you won’t stand up against these appointments, as I strongly urge, please do not remove the means for those with the will to do so.

Regards,

Gwenda Bond 

YOUR ADDRESS

So the great mentoring pair-up is complete! If you wrote me and didn’t hear back in one way or another, then feel free to ping again because it’s possible I missed your message. Otherwise, I hope your pairing works out fabulously! I ended up having some writers who didn’t get paired up, mainly because I didn’t have mentors with the right experience for them or because my first priority was pairing up women of color (and that is mainly what people volunteered to do, so I didn’t feel comfortable pairing up otherwise). So I wish all of you guys the best of luck too! And, likewise, I have some writers who volunteered to be mentors that I didn’t end up matching. You are all fabulous; I did my best bewitched attempt to get people together who I felt would be best for both involved.

A few people wanted to know if I had any advice and so I thought I’d just type up some basic guidelines here. I probably should have done this in advance, but oh well. 😉

For Mentors: 

Hey, it’s pretty awesome that you want to pay things forward and help somebody else. I don’t know a single professional writer who hasn’t been mentored along the way, and so thank you for stepping up and volunteering to help out with this project. Don’t underestimate your own experience — if you’ve finished a novel (or a bunch) and gotten an agent, sold a book or published one (or a bunch), edited books, written articles and proposals, or some combination thereof and are comfortable giving feedback and advice, well, you are 100 percent qualified to help this writer I’ve paired you with level up. Most of you writers I know doubt your own accomplishments: stop that.

Most important things: be encouraging and supportive, but honest and firm.

For Those Being Mentored: 

Be open to suggestions, and be honest with your mentor if you feel they’re suggesting something that’s not right for your ms. (Play this card wisely, though, and not just because suggestions feel extreme!)

Don’t waste their time; if you agree on deadlines, let them know if you’re going to miss one early. They’re making space in their schedules to help with your work. You missing a deadline you’ve set together screws up things for you both. Also, this is a good habit to pick up now — you will need it for the rest of your career.

If you feel overwhelmed or don’t know how to attack a project, ask your mentor! That’s what they’re here for.

For both of you, ideas on how this might look, which you can absolutely tailor to meet your needs and available time!

If you’re not sure how to structure things, here are some ideas:

• Get to know each other a little — exchange info on your backgrounds.
• Assess where the mentored writer is in the process; do they have a ms. they need to revise? Has it been through edits before? Do they have a feel for their strengths and weaknesses, what they want your help with? Etc.
• Mentors have writers send you some work, and set a timeline to get back to them with notes.
• Build in some time to process the notes, and then regroup on next steps: Is this planning a revision and setting some deadlines along the way? Maybe for each 50 pages, maybe helping to plan what the revision will look like and then setting deadlines? Maybe the book is ready or close to ready, in which case, maybe it’s time to put together a query and a list of agents to send it to?
• Career advice and goal setting: Is it time to start a new project? When will you have your book ready to go out and query agents with by? Accountability and structure is a great thing for new writers to learn.
• Celebrate and commiserate: Two of the most valuable things writers can offer each other; did your writer NAIL the revision of her first ten pages, did she get a ms. request? YAY. Did she get rejected by an agent? HEY, we’ve all been there. Maybe share a story about a similar setback. Rejection, it comes for us all. 😉

So, when I went full-time earlier this year, I realized I might have a little more time to pay it forward and mentor younger/newer writers. I knew immediately I wanted to focus my efforts on writers of color, because I say I’m committed to increasing diversity, so I should put my extra time there, right? Right. Put your time where your mouth is, as it were. And we all know that young writers of color often have a harder time breaking in; I can help with manuscripts, I can help with business advice, I can be a person in someone’s corner.

An opportunity to help out a guy who was having trouble tackling a revision presented itself almost as soon as I came to this realization. Unfortunately, on Friday I learned that the person I’d been helping has been behaving very badly and hurting many women writers and that until the talking started people had been too afraid to speak up, now there was a flood. I believe them. To say I am livid and dismayed is to understate things. But I still believe in my realization earlier this year too. So I tweeted this on Friday night, almost as soon as I learned about the situation:

So I’m going to need a new writer to mentor. I’m especially interested in helping WoC with novel manuscripts in need of revision. Write me!

— Gwenda BOOnd ☠️🕸🗝 (@Gwenda) October 15, 2016

As you can see, it took on a life of its own. I have, at last count, about 35 or so emails from women of color looking for mentors. I’m on deadline this week, so it will probably be next week before I can sit and truly go through them. I don’t want to turn anyone away. But I can only take on one or two of these writers at most. Do I have time to coordinate this project? Well, I’m going to make time. Because this is important. This was a tweet on a weekend; this is a need.

So this is where you come in, writer friends. Are you a writer who’s further along? Who feels like you could mentor someone? Let me know (comments or email). If I’ve already heard from you–and bless you, six or so volunteers I already have–you don’t need to contact again. I’ve got you. You may wonder, what kind of time commitment are we talking about–I think that’s up to you and the writer you work with. I’ll sort through emails in an attempt to identify who will be a good fit, then work with you to pick who you want to work with out of a few people. Everyone is going to need something slightly different. I look for people who at least have a manuscript complete (and I assume that’s mostly who I’ve heard from), because those are people who are serious enough to have finished a project and who I can help push forward.

For me, mentoring is about providing manuscript feedback and career advice, it can be about helping a person wrap their head around a revision and set deadlines for themselves with outside accountability (aka me). That sort of thing. Your strengths may vary a little, so you may focus on different things. There’s no one way to mentor someone.

I would be remiss if I didn’t also plug a program several people have let me know about: Writing in the Margins. I don’t know all the details, but it’s certainly something I’ll be sharing with these writers (and I know one at least I’ve heard from has been through it already).

I’m so excited to share the cover for the very first middle grade novel from Christopher Rowe and yours truly. Behold! Here’s the cover for The Supernormal Sleuthing Service #1: The Lost Legacy, out next spring from Greenwillow Books!

I hope you guys love it as much as we do! The artist is Glenn Thomas and he’s also doing black and white interior art.

Here’s the about the book that’ll be on the back of the ARCs:

Three kids. A hotel full of monsters. And a stolen magical artifact that could disrupt the balance between the humans and the supernatural. Welcome to life at Hotel Monster! The first book in the hilarious and spooky series that is Hotel Transylvania meets Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library.

Stephen’s dad decided to move them across the country to New York City, where his dad is taking over as head chef in an exclusive hotel. A hotel that has the most elite of clientele: monsters! Surprise! Or as they prefer to be called, supernormals. And an even bigger surprise? Stephen is part supernormal himself. When a magical artifact goes missing and Stephen is framed, he must work with two new friends to navigate this whole new world to clear his name. Consequences can be dire in the world of monsters. Spooky, funny, and full of monstrous hijinks, The Lost Legacy is an inventive and accessible mystery-adventure full of friendship, humor, and a monstrous cast of characters—perfect for fans of Pseudonymous Bosch and R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps series.

We’ve had so much fun working with each other and our fabulous editor Martha Mihalick on this book/series and we can’t wait for you guys to step into this world. You can preorder if you like: Indiebound – Amazon – B&N.

Hey everyone! Here’s my schedule for next week at SLC ComicCon (come say hi!):

Thursday, September 1, 2016

1:00 pm to 2:00 pm
Writing for Teens :: 255F

4 to 5 p.m.
Signing – Shadow Mountain – Booth 1807

Friday, September 2, 2016

12:00 pm to 1:00 pm
Behind the Glasses – Why Superheroes Need Secret Identities :: 150G

6:00 pm to 7:00 pm
Romance in Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Horror :: 251A

Saturday, September 3, 2016

10:00 am to 11:00 am
Teen Author Boot Camp: Girl Power: Writing Strong Female Characters :: 255B

11 a.m. – 12 p.m.
I’m With HER-O — I’m not sure where this will yet, but it’ll be me and Margaret Stohl and Sarah Kuhn and Cecil Castellucci so get there!

12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.
Signing – Shadow Mountain – Booth 1807

I’ll post here if anything changes, but hope to see some of you there.

p.s. I started a Patreon, which I’ll post more about soon. I’m still figuring out how to make it useful!