Blog Posts

Friday Five: Pandemic Worries and the 1918 Spanish Flu

8/8/2014

All of the recent Ebola news is quite frightening. That's why I was surprised to hear an interview on CNBC yesterday with Irwin Redlener, author of the nonfiction book, Americans at Risk. Even with the Ebola outbreak, what does he worry about most? A "natural occurring pandemic of avian-flu type." He feels that the United States is not prepared for that type of disaster. "To put it simply," he said, "no, we're not ready." This is primarily because of cuts to federal funding that would be used for preparedness training and the stockpiling of antibiotics and vaccines.

You can listen to the full interview here.

During the interview, the Spanish flu of 1918 is mentioned. Even though Pandemic is set in current times, I spent a lot of time researching the Spanish flu for my novel. Today, Darlene Beck-Jacobson is sharing my guest post on her blog about five interesting historical facts that I learned. That serves as my Friday Five for this week -- I hope you check it out.

You can leave me a comment about what diseases and natural disasters keep you up at night.

Teen Tuesday: Two Collingswood Book Festival Contests

8/5/2014

By Yvonne Ventresca

The 12th Annual Collingswood Book Festival will take place on October 11th in Collingswood, NJ, and I'm excited to be signing books that day. You can read a full list of the attending authors on the festival website.

As part of the book festival, the Collingswood Public Library is running two contests. One is a poetry contest with a sensory theme (smell, taste, etc.) for kids ages seven to thirteen. Entries need to be postmarked by September 15th. Complete details are available here.

Collingswood Book Festival Poetry Contest

In honor of Amelia Bedelia’s 50th anniversary, a second contest is being held for the illustration of an idiom (several examples are listed on the site, such as "hit the books" and "face the music") in a way that Amelia Bedelia would interpret it. There is one prize for kids ages twelve and under, and one prize for teens/adults. Entries are due October 1st. Go here for details and scroll down.

You can enter the contests even if you can't attend the festival. Good luck!

Collingswood Book Festival Illustration Contest

Friday Five: #TheLastShip and Pandemic

8/1/2014

The Last Ship is a new series on TNT about the aftermath of a deadly flu pandemic. After undertaking a secret mission in the artic where a scientist on board searched for the original strain of bird flu, the ship's crew discover that they are some of the world's few survivors and may be the only hope for a vaccine.

The Last Ship

Their mission is simple: Find a cure. Stop the virus. Save the world. When a global pandemic wipes out eighty percent of the planet's population, the crew of a lone naval destroyer must find a way to pull humanity from the brink of extinction." --TNT website for The Last Ship, which is based on a novel by William Brinkley.

Cover of Pandemic

Having written a young adult novel about a deadly bird flu pandemic, of course I had to watch this show. For those of you new to my blog, Pandemic debuted in May from Sky Pony Press. (You can learn more about the book here and read various reviews here.)

For this week's Friday Five, here are five things Pandemic and The Last Ship TV series have in common.

Lawlessness

In The Last Ship, the main threat (other than the deadly virus itself), is the Russians, who are desperate for a cure and willing to steal to get it. With countries around the world decimated by the disease, there is a general sense of anarchy. In Pandemic, there is also the threat of the disease. The bad guys in this instance are the looters who go from house to house in the main character's neighborhood. With the police busy with riots and the rising death-toll, there is a similar sense of lawlessness but in a suburban setting.

Avian Flu

The contagious disease in both The Last Ship and Pandemic is a deadly bird flu. The scientist on The Last Ship spends time in the Artic, looking for the "primordial strain," which is found in a specific type of bird, Artic Tern. The exact source of the bird flu in Pandemic is an unspecified water fowl that migrates up the East coast of the US. Coincidentally, I had already chosen an artic tern photo as an image for my Media page (more because of its squawking pose than a direct tie to my story.)

Romance

Dire circumstances might not necessarily seem conducive to romance, but when facing mortality. . . well, things happen. On the naval ship, there is the romantic subplot between Lt. Danny Green and Lt. Kara Foster, complicated by their enlisted status. In Pandemic, sixteen-year-old Lilianna Snyder is recovering from a traumatic incident and has difficulty trusting people. Her relationship with a neighborhood teen may help her both survive and heal.

Separation from Loved Ones

An underlying subplot in both the show and my book is the concern for other family members and hope for their survival during a crazy, uncertain time. Various characters during multiple episodes worry for their families. Will they ever be reunited? Lilianna, after being separated early in the pandemic from both her parents, also fears for their safety when communication between them stops.

Fear and Hope

In the most recent episode of the show ("Lockdown") one of the main themes was the balance of fear and hope. The Captain tries to manage the morale of the crew by withholding information which ultimately backfires. How is information disseminated during a disaster? Fear (and panic) can certainly play a large role. In Pandemic, Lil and other surviving neighbors must consciously decide whether or not to help other people in the community and what risks they are willing to take.

Overall, I find the crew members' relationships and their emotions to be the most interesting aspects of The Last Ship. Have you been watching the show? Are you a fan? I'd love to hear what you think about it or the ideas I mentioned.

Teen Tuesday: #AugWritingChallenge

7/29/2014

This is the part of the summer where I gasp at how fast the season is going. The good news: we still have all of August ahead of us. Is anyone interested in participating in a writing challenge with me? I have never been able to commit to NaNoWriMo for a variety of reasons, but August feels like the perfect month for an experiment. With the #AugWritingChallenge, you write 500 words a day, each day, for the whole month. There are more details here, and this is for writers of all ages.

Teens, you can participate in an August blog chain if you sign up by August 4th. Sponsored by John Hansen and Teens Can Write, Too, this month's topic is "What characters are you most like?" Sign up here.

I'm looking forward to getting lots of writing done in August. Do you have any creative plans for the rest of the summer?

Friday Five: Guest post by C. Lee McKenzie, author of Double Negative

7/25/2014

By Yvonne Ventresca

Today I'm thrilled to feature a guest post from my long time critique partner, C. Lee McKenzie. Her latest YA novel, Double Negative, launches today!

Double Negative Cover

Five Challenges I Had While Writing Double Negative By C. Lee McKenzie

Every book has its challenges, and each one I’ve written presents new ones. Here are five things that I wrestled with during the writing of Double Negative.

1. I struggled deciding how I’d handle Hutch’s language at the beginning of the book. I wanted him to use poor grammar, but I wanted to endear him to readers who I figured would find too much “warped” English annoying.

2. The second struggle was closely related to the first. I needed a way to gradually show Hutch’s language evolving, but I didn’t want to make his slow change disruptive to the story.

3. I dislike anything to do with the drug culture, especially when young people are involved. So I didn’t want to present a lot of drug scenes in my YA book, but I needed a few to put Hutch into bad situations so I could get him out of them. Choosing what kinds of scenes to use was a huge challenge for me.

4. Fat Nyla was a challenge, too. I loved her and I wanted the reader to empathize with her, but I didn’t want her size to be the only way for them to connect with her. Also, I didn’t want her arc to be a Cinderella transformation. She was interesting, but one of the harder characters to “get” right.

5. I have several adults in this story, and the challenge here was to keep the focus on my teen protagonist and let him find his own way, but with these adults as key players throughout.

One thing about being challenged is I learned a lot from writing this book, so I’m grateful it didn’t come easily to the page.

DOUBLE NEGATIVE Summary: Hutchison Mc Queen is a sixteen-year-old smart kid who screws up regularly. He’s a member of Larkston High’s loser clique, the boy who’s on his way to nowher--unless juvenile hall counts as a destination. He squeaks through classes with his talent for eavesdropping and memorizing what he hears. When that doesn’t work, he goes to Fat Nyla, the one some mean girls are out to get and a person who’s in on his secret--he can barely read. And then Maggie happens. For twenty-five years she’s saved boys from their own bad choices. But she may not have time to save Hutch. Alzheimer’s disease is steadily stealing her keen mind.

C. Lee McKenzie is a native Californian who grew up in a lot of different places; then landed in the Santa Cruz Mountains where she lives with her family and miscellaneous pets. She writes most of the time, gardens and hikes and does yoga a lot, and then travels whenever she can.

She takes on modern issues that today's teens face in their daily lives. Her first young adult novel, Sliding on the Edge, which dealt with cutting and suicide was published in 2009. Her second, titled The Princess of Las Pulgas, dealing with a family who loses everything and must rebuild their lives came out in 2010. Her short story, Premeditated Cat, appears in the anthology, The First Time, and her Into the Sea of Dew is part of a collection, Two and Twenty Dark Tales. In 2012, her first middle grade novel, Alligators Overhead, came out.

To learn more about Lee, visit her website, her blog, and the Double Negative Facebook Page.

Teen Tuesday: YCteen Writing Contest

7/22/2014

By Yvonne Ventresca

YCteen Issue #242

YCteen Magazine is currently running a teen essay contest based on the following prompt:

If you could change someone's life, who would it be and what would you change? Why? It could be someone you know personally, a stranger you've observed, or yourself.

Writers must be between the ages of 14 and 19. The nonfiction essays (they must be true!) are due October 3, 2014, and can't be more than 800 words. First prize is $150. See the YCteen Contest website for complete rules and guidelines.

Friday Five: Hens, Horses and History--Guest Post by Bobbi Miller

7/18/2014

By Yvonne Ventresca

On today's blog, author Bobbi Miller will be revealing five things she learned while researching her upcoming historical middle grade novel, The Girls of Gettysburg, available August 1st from Holiday House.

Historical Fiction and The Girls of Gettysburg
By Bobbi Miller

David McCullough once said, “We are raising a generation of young Americans who are by-and-large historically illiterate…The textbooks are dreary, they’re done by committee, they’re often hilariously politically correct and they’re not doing any good. [But] there are wonderful books, past and present. There is literature in history.” The strategy for using historical fiction to teach history is controversial. Educators worry that historical fiction may contain information that is biased or incorrect.

Historical fiction is the coming together of two opposing elements: fact and fiction. The controversy is grounded in defining the ‘truth’ of history. Other popular genres have distinct rules that govern basic premises. Dystopian fiction, for example, features a futuristic universe in which the illusion of a perfect society is maintained through corporate, technologic, or totalitarian control. Using an exaggerate worse-case scenario, the dystopian story becomes a commentary about social norms and trends.

Historical fiction defies easy explanation and definition. For some, historical fiction is first and foremost fiction, and therefore anything goes. Others condemn the blending of invention with accepted facts. Yet, nothing about history is obvious, and facts are often open to interpretation. Once upon a time, it was considered factual that the world was flat, that blood-letting was the proper way of treating disease, that women were emotionally and physically incapable of rational thought. In 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue, but he didn’t discover America. Some would say he was less an explorer and more of a conqueror. History tends to be written by those who survived it. As such, no history is without its bias.

So when I tackled the battle of Gettysburg as the focus of my new novel, Girls of Gettysburg, I had to first get the facts right. This was a daunting task because no other battle has been studied so thoroughly. And then, there’s the emotional truth, the story behind the facts. Historical fiction makes the facts matter to the reader. If I didn’t get this right, creating characters true to their time and place, the readers won’t care about the facts. For me, the only way to discover this emotional truth was to walk the battlefield of Gettysburg, and witness that landscape where my characters lived over one hundred and fifty years ago.

In my travels across the fields and town of Gettysburg, I learned many facts about the battle. Many of my scenes are based on actual events, from the harrowing basement cave-in to the march across the bloody field. I even researched weather patterns to make sure I had the weather right. But of all the facts I researched, these were some of my favorite:

The artillery barrage during Picket’s Charge could be heard 100 miles away in Pittsburgh.

The youngest soldier serving in the Civil War was a nine-year old boy from Mississippi.

In a single day, the one million horses serving in the Civil War would have peed enough urine to fill more than 12 standard swimming pools. More than 3,000 horses were killed at Gettysburg.

Robert E. Lee had a pet chicken named Hen. Every morning, Hen laid an egg under Lee’s cot, which he then cooked for breakfast. While Hen survived the battle at Gettysburg, she did not survive the war.

Feeling ill as he delivered the Gettysburg Address, President Lincoln was diagnosed with a mild form of smallpox. Upon learning of his condition, Lincoln said, “For once in my life as President, I find myself in a position to give everybody something.”

Author Bobbi Miller

Bobbi Miller is the author of BIG RIVER'S DAUGHTER, MISS SALLY ANN AND THE PANTHER, DAVY CROCKETT GETS HITCHED, and ONE FINE TRADE. She lives in a log cabin, loves the outdoors and spins tall tales. For more information about Bobbi, visit her website.

Teen Tuesday: Movies Based on Teen Novels

7/15/2014

By Yvonne Ventresca

Coming September 19, 2014

A number of recent movies have been created from teen novels. I'm looking forward to seeing The Maze Runner in September based on James Dashner's book. Do you have a favorite movie that was based on a middle grade or young adult story? Were their any film adaptations you disliked? Would you ever see a movie without reading the book first?

Friday Five: 5 Helpful Posts on Being a Debut Author, #NJSCBWI14, Hurricane Prep, and Writer's Block

7/11/2014

By Yvonne Ventresca

I came across several good blog posts this week. Here are my favorite five.

An Unauthorized Guide to Being a Debut Author
By Dahlia Adler

Dahlia wrote a detailed three-part series about being a debut author. Check out part one (pre-promotion), part two (ARCs, swag, and self-promotion) and part three (in-person events).

The Art of Not Getting Published
By Susan Brody

An experienced conference-goer, Susan shares some big picture lessons she learned from this year's NJ SCBWI conference. Here’s a sample: “Becoming a published author does not change one's character. . . . an anxious prepublished author who gets a book published will become an anxious published author; only the focus of his or her anxiety will change.”

The Dirty Little Secret of the NJ SCBWI
By Taylor Vangclear

This is a thorough account of a first-timer attending the annual NJ SCBWI conference. And I’m not mentioning her blog post because she refers to me as “the nice lady in the lunch line” and she liked the workshop I taught. (Well, maybe that influenced me just a little bit.)

Hurricane Season Has Begun: Are You Ready?
By Robert Preidt

It’s officially hurricane season, and as with any potential disaster, it’s a good idea to be prepared. This article breaks down some ways to get you and your family ready.

7 Ways to Beat Writer's Block
By Andrew Lewis Conn

I love his unique suggestions, such as: pretend you have a serious injury and the surgeon has physician’s block -- absurd right? Now get back to writing!

Share your favorite posts (or links to your own blog) in the comments below.

Teen Tuesday: Teen Summer Writing Contest

7/8/2014

By Yvonne Ventresca

Summer to do list: Write!

There are about two weeks left to submit poems and short stories to the Teen Summer Writing Contest sponsored by the Barbarba Bush Branch Library and the LSC-Tomball Community Library. The deadline is July 26, 5 pm -- leave time for mailing in your entries. There are poem and short story categories for ages 12-15/grades 6-8, and also for ages 15-18/grades 9-12. Poems must be less than 800 words, and short stories between 1000 and 1500 words. Please check the detailed submission guidelines for more information. Good luck!

<<Previous

Forward>>

Friday Five: Pandemic Worries and the 1918 Spanish Flu

Teen Tuesday: Two Collingswood Book Festival Contests

Friday Five: #TheLastShip and Pandemic

Teen Tuesday: #AugWritingChallenge

Friday Five: Guest post by C. Lee McKenzie, author of Double Negative

Teen Tuesday: YCteen Writing Contest

Friday Five: Hens, Horses and History--Guest Post by Bobbi Miller

Historical Fiction and The Girls of Gettysburg
By Bobbi Miller

Teen Tuesday: Movies Based on Teen Novels

Friday Five: 5 Helpful Posts on Being a Debut Author, #NJSCBWI14, Hurricane Prep, and Writer's Block

Teen Tuesday: Teen Summer Writing Contest

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