I’ve cleared my desk, sorted my papers, mopped the kitchen floors and now it’s time to get to work.
At SiWC last month, I had a couple of appointments, one with Mededith Kaffel, and the other I lucked into at the last minute, with Sally Harding.
My goal for the conference was to pitch my two chapter books, but I brought my other goodies as well. You never know what an agent might want to see!
Meredith wasn’t representing chapter books, she’s more into mid-grade and YA. So, it was a pass for her. But while there, I asked about my Anastasis YA project. The original concept for the book was three 50,000 word books, and I’ve completed the first. Last time I was at the conference, the suggestion was to put all three parts together into a longer manuscript, of about 80,000 words. Meredith echoed the advice on length. Times change, I suppose, and 50,000 is not long enough to chew on.
Sally took a look at my chapter books. I’ve always targeted them to elementary school reluctant readers, or those in ESL or language immersion programs. My own kids were in a French immersion program and struggled in elementary school when the books that they wanted to read were too long and the language too complex, while the easier stuff was for ‘babies’. Sally read through and felt that I’d missed the mark. Even though they have a reading level of 2.5, some of the language was still too complex. As well, the first chapter of Tin Can Bandit was too wordy and needed to get to the action faster. “More Passion; higher stakes” she said, refering to the fact that the story seemed a bit too… nice. Guess I’m going to have to shed my Canadian niceness!
My plan for November/December had been to launch into a draft of the third book in the series, but instead, I’ll rewrite the initial chapters for Scarlet Cat and Tin Can Bandit. I think once the story gets going, it’s on track, but I’m wasting that first chapter getting to full steam and I need to start full steam. Once that’s done, I’ll draft the third book and enjoy Christmas.
One other thing that has become apparent while pitching these books. Few seem to ‘get’ that there’s a need for books like this for kids at the elementary level. What I thought was a unique positioning statement is NOT working in my favour. No one knows what to do with this type of book; where to ’shelve it’. The few children’s librarians I’ve asked don’t have a list of books for young readers who want an exciting story, with an older main character, at an easy reading level. In my opinion, these readers don’t suddenly show up as teenagers – they’ve had the same challenges all along. Why not target them sooner? Perhaps that’ll be another mission for me.