No sex, no swearing, no drugs, no alcohol: Istoria Books YA line

by Libby Sternberg

During the Christmas holiday, I received a charming card from a family we know. On it, the twelve-year-old daughter had written her own message to me: "I love your books! When I'm not reading them, I'm thinking about them!"

She was referring to my first two published novels--the Edgar-nominated teen mystery Uncovering Sadie's Secrets, and its sequel, Finding the Forger. There's a third book in the series, Recovering Dad, that I will dispatch to her this week.

Not only did her comments warm my heart, they affirmed for me a commitment I, as an author, made to myself when I first wrote "young adult" fiction. That is, I would write the kind of YA books that I enjoyed reading as a preteen, books that didn't shock or startle or depress but instead invited the reader into a world worth visiting. In this world were people who set good examples, tried their best, loved their families, and didn't try too hard to be part of the cool crowd.

Notice, by the way, that I mention "YA books that I enjoyed reading as a preteen."  Many preteens read YA, while teens themselves have moved on to adult fiction. So, when I write YA, I assume my audience is more likely to be nine- to twelve-year-olds than it is older readers.

In my YA mysteries, the characters don't swear. They don't use drugs or alcohol. They don't have sex or talk about it. And I know--this doesn't reflect reality for all teens. But for a good number of kids, it does; or, at least, it's the life they aspire to. Their parents scold them if they swear. They're expected to abide by their family's rules. They're expected to try to be good, even if they sometimes fail. They're not trying so hard to be cool that they'll fall into trouble easily.

Many teen novels don't follow this pattern. Many YA novelists believe their books would betray the worlds they want to create and a sense of verisimilitude if the characters don't confront coarse situations and use coarse language. Some of these authors, I learned from participating in a YA writers email group years ago, take a perverse pride in being provocative, as if shocking parents of teen readers with dark tales is the goal, rather than telling a good story or even offering a good lesson.

The Wall Street Journal's children's book reviewer shared some thoughts on the dark state of YA fiction in a June 2011 article that generated controversy. Meghan Cox Gurdon wrote in that article:

How dark is contemporary fiction for teens? Darker than when you were a child, my dear: So dark that kidnapping and pederasty and incest and brutal beatings are now just part of the run of things in novels directed, broadly speaking, at children from the ages of 12 to 18.

Pathologies that went undescribed in print 40 years ago, that were still only sparingly outlined a generation ago, are now spelled out in stomach-clenching detail. Profanity that would get a song or movie branded with a parental warning is, in young-adult novels, so commonplace that most reviewers do not even remark upon it.

If books show us the world, teen fiction can be like a hall of fun-house mirrors, constantly reflecting back hideously distorted portrayals of what life is. There are of course exceptions, but a careless young reader—or one who seeks out depravity—will find himself surrounded by images not of joy or beauty but of damage, brutality and losses of the most horrendous kinds.

Don't get me wrong--I don't begrudge YA authors success if they happen to tell grittier tales than mine. And I'm not suggesting that YA fiction should be censored or have the real world whitewashed within its pages. (Neither was Gurdon in her article.)  But I do think there's a place--an important place--for YA fiction that does not focus on what's wrong in a teen's world, for stories that make readers feel good about themselves and perhaps even affirm the good choices they are making.

These are the kinds of YAs Istoria Books is looking for.

That kind of "clean" YA fiction doesn't have to be boring. In fact, this spring Istoria Books is proud to release a sweet and fun YA, The Body Electric by Allie Duzett, that doesn't include a single curse or reference to sex or substance abuse. It's a rollicking journey to the "end of the world," an exploration of young love and ancient curses. It's the exact opposite of boring. But it doesn't have a single element in it that would make a parent cringe.

Editing Allie Duzett's debut novel reinforced my belief in this kind of YA fiction. It's the epitome of our mission: we publish "good stories, well told."  Good stories--where you want to keep turning the pages to see what happens. Well told--where you want to keep hearing that author tell the story to you (instead of jumping ahead to the finish). And while our adult fiction does handle adult themes, sometimes explicitly and realistically, our young adult fiction will be a place of refuge for the preteen and teen reader who wants stories where they feel comfortable with the characters and don't mind inviting them into their own lives.

In The Body Electric, an eighteen-year-old Colorado girl meets and falls for an odd new fellow in town. He seems to possess heroic strength, is a gentleman of the old school, dresses as if he stepped off the pages of a menswear ad spread, is cheerful, honest and...has a family of grudge-bearing maniacs. As Lena learns more about Zach, she finds more to admire...and also fear. She learns just as much about herself in the process, about what values she holds dear, about what is most important in life.

I hope young readers will enjoy The Body Electric as much as all of us at Istoria have. Watch these blog pages for an interview with Allie Duzett in the weeks before its spring release!
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Libby Sternberg is an award-winning novelist. She is editor-in-chief of Istoria Books. If you have a young adult novel you'd like to submit to her, send a query to IstoriaBks@gmail.com

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Humor: The Best Nonexistent Books of 2012

by Hannah E. Sternberg

Nonfiction
Soft as a Petal: A History of the World, Told through Handkerchiefs
Jason Smithson

Hannah Sterberg

This elegant little history is an excellent primer for anyone fascinated with the role of textiles in law, love, and literature. Many authors of popular history have hunted for the perfect "frame story" that would inspire general readers to make sense of the long and tangled threads of world civilization. Smithson's Soft as a Petal puts it in your back pocket. From the hankie's humble beginnings as an all-purpose rag and surrender flag for meek craftsmen on ancient trade routes, to its heyday in Victorian parlors, its near-extinction after the disposable tissue revolution, and its triumphant renaissance alongside the return of the handlebar mustache in the 21st century, the common pocket handkerchief has seen virtually every major turning point of history. Smithson weaves the hankie's story in a humorous, readable style that will make this book one to reach for for years to come.

Runners-up
Eating Will Kill You: The definitive diet book of 2012. Don't miss 2013's The "Eating Will Kill You" Cookbook: 415 Recipes That Will Leave You Hungry for Less.

Guiscard's Lists: Famous People Who Aren't Dead Yet: Perhaps the most useful Guiscard list book this year, it will save you from embarrassing mishaps. Sadly, this one only made our runners-up because of our doubts about its enduring relevance.

Continue reading this humorous post at Hannah's own site here.

Justin Morrill, Land Grant Colleges, and, Oh Yes, Writing: A Rant

Justin Morrill

by Libby Sternberg

When I lived in Vermont, I provided occasional commentary for Vermont Public Radio. As part of that gig, I ended up delivering a three-minute piece on Justin Morrill during a series about Vermont contributions to the country and the world.

Morrill was a Vermont Representative and Senator who introduced legislation in the mid-1800s establishing and funding colleges that combined "liberal and practical" education. "Land grant" colleges wouldn't just be devoted to studying theory. They'd combine classic liberal education with practical instruction in agriculture and "the mechanic arts."

Today, all states have institutions that originated as land-grant colleges. They range from Rutgers in New Jersey to the University of California and include anything with an "A&M" after the name. Most are public, but two elite private institutions got their starts as recipients of land-grants -- Cornell and MIT.

Okay, what does this have to do with writing? I'm getting there.

Morrill might not have realized it, but he was starting a quiet revolution with his land-grant idea. Land grant colleges eventually became the model for virtually all American colleges and universities, combining practical with theoretical, shaking off a stuffy, elitist approach to higher learning and opening it up to people who wanted to do as well as think. What a quintessential American idea!

This doing-and-thinking approach plays out across the curriculum of most colleges, with students availing themselves of highly practical majors--everything from hotel management to engineering--while still studying the humanities. Even majors that might not be considered practical (well, to parents, at least) often include some useful component -- internships and research projects that push students to think about how to use their humanities background to earn a living.

And then there's writing...

You knew I'd get to it eventually.

I wasn't an English or writing major myself. No, I studied the highly practical field of voice performance at a music conservatory. But I've had numerous occasions to encounter writing students and programs over the past several years. And here's what my window on that world has led me to believe:

While the history professor might be helping her students learn history and learn how to apply that knowledge to future aspirations (whether they lead to becoming a historian or a lawyer), writing programs--their fiction components, at least--seem to focus almost entirely on what I will call Academic Fiction. That is, prose and poetry that is celebrated, talked about, discussed and enjoyed almost exclusively by other academics.

That's fine. There's a place for that. Huzzah for those who are successful in that field!

Literary fiction that is also commercial

But there's a world of fiction beyond the edge of the campus, and most of it is found in bookstores and on e-shelves. It's called commercial fiction. Yes, it can include literary fiction. But it also includes genre fiction--romance, mystery, sci-fi, horror, young adult, historical.

I've come across outright disdain for some of these genres among some academics. (Uh, like the professor who sneered that writing historicals was cheating because the sepia tones that permeate the work make it too easy to....well, whatever. I don't even remember the rest of it.)

But generally, there's a sort of cluelessness about commercial fiction. How many college writing workshops and series don't feature a single commercial artist?

Let me pause here to celebrate two local colleges where writing profs did see the value of introducing their students to commercial fiction. Millersville University and Elizabethtown College professors both invited yours truly to talk to writing students on their campuses, and I wasn't talking about Academic Fiction.

Those two colleges and their writing professors, sadly, are often the exception and not the rule.

So, while today's music major might graduate with an understanding of music theory and some practical knowledge of the music world--how to audition, what the market is, how to get gigs--many writing/literature students graduate appreciating and admiring Academic Fiction but with no clue as to how to get an agent, what a book contract should look like, what editors in New York are looking for, what small presses are respected and which ones don't show up on anyone's radar screen, how to get reviewed, how to promote your books (which, yes, often falls to the author).

It bugs me that commercial fiction has somehow been excluded from the gated community we know as the Ivory Tower. As I've pointed out on these pages before, it bugs people like Stephen King, too, who said (it bears repeating) in his acceptance of the National Book Award:

"I have (no) patience with or use for those who make a point of pride in saying they've never read anything by John Grisham, Tom Clancy, Mary Higgins Clark or any other popular writer.

"What do you think? You get social or academic brownie points for deliberately staying out of touch with your own culture? Never in life, as Capt. Lucky Jack Aubrey would say. And if your only point of reference for Jack Aubrey is the Australian actor, Russell Crowe, shame on you..."

As I said before, bravo to those who succeed in the world of Academic Fiction. But even if that's the world of letters that lights the fire in the belly of writing instructors, they shouldn't cut their students off from the rest of the writing world. Those students might not be interested in feeding their writer's soul by penning tomes they read aloud to college students as part of a writing series. They might be more interested in making enough money at writing to literally feed themselves and their families. They might want to take the theoretical and combine it with the practical, just as Senator Morrill envisioned with his land-grant college idea a century and a half ago.

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Libby Sternberg is an Edgar-nominated author of a bunch of books ranging from young adult to historical to humorous women's fiction. She also writes under the name Libby Malin. She is Editor-in-Chief of Istoria Books.

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The Truth Within the Lie

by Libby Sternberg

Earlier this week, I mentioned Stephen King's acceptance speech when the National Book Foundation presented him with the Distinguished Contribution to American Letters award in 2003. He talked a lot about genre fiction vs. literary fiction in that speech, passionately arguing for taking popular, or "commercial," fiction seriously.

Here are some more ruminations about his talk. In particular, about his desire to be an "honest writer."

King said:

"Frank Norris, the author of McTeague, said something like this: 'What should I care if they, i.e., the critics, single me out for sneers and laughter? I never truckled, I never lied. I told the truth.' And that's always been the bottom line for me. The story and the people in it may be make believe but I need to ask myself over and over if I've told the truth about the way real people would behave in a similar situation....

"To ignore the truth inside the lie is to sin against the craft, in general, and one's own work in particular. "

The truth within the lie--that sums up what good fiction should be. Fiction is a writer's exploration of what truth is--how real people react, what those reactions say about them and about humanity, how they deal with boredom, fun, giddy happiness or Job-like grief.

And transcendent writing--the kind of writing that transports the reader to a deeper understanding of the world and themselves--is at the heart of that "truth within the lie."

Last week, Hannah talked about the importance of including fiction along with nonfiction in one's reading diet. Nonfiction purports to lay out the truth through reporting facts. Fiction lays out the truth through canny observation and character analysis.

I myself love nonfiction. Oddly enough, I often reach for nonfiction, rather than fiction, when I'm tired. Maybe because fiction actually challenges me more--to think and to feel. When I remember all the books I've read, novels stand out as those that have influenced me the most. Novels prod me to see myself and others in different ways.

What novels have influenced you and how?

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Friends of Fiction

by Hannah Sternberg

"I never read fiction anymore. The last time I read a novel, I was in school."

I hear that from a lot of my friends. I'm sure you do too. We're all busy, and with the internet enabling many of us to work from home, work increasingly encroaches on precious reading time. On top of that, many of us spend our free time reading to improve our professional position, keep up with current events, or pursue an interest in that topic we wish we'd taken a class on when we'd had the chance. I work in media and public policy, and I confess that I've devoted large amounts of my supposedly-free time to catching up on the latest news analysis on the day's hot story, or hunkering down with weighty history or philosophy books to fill in the context of situations I'm less familiar with.

Don't get me wrong. I love to learn--my heart goes pitter patter when my eyes scan Amazon's history recommendations. I have a bad habit of collecting foreign language dictionaries (so far, my most unusual is a lexicon of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics). And with the complete works of Aristotle available, free of charge and instantaneously on my Kindle--don't get me started.

But I've noticed another current in some of my friends' remarks. "I don't have time for fiction. There's too much to learn." "I just don't find fiction as interesting as stuff that actually happened." "My class discussions just ruined fiction-reading for me."

I'd counter them by saying, You just aren't reading the right fiction.

I find a lot of people get fed up with the tired offerings of so many of the major publishers that are just trying to piggyback on someone else's trendy concept. Others find too much pretension and too little insight in the current "upmarket" or literary fiction offerings. Still others were so weary of their professors' over-analysis that they forgot how simply moving a good story can be.

To these, I'd say: reading nothing but nonfiction is like reading only the news reports without touching the analysis or opinion. You'll learn a lot, but you'll be missing a critical element: the debate, the contextualization, the connections. Fiction is like an editorial on the human condition. And, like a good editorial, good fiction combines top-of-the-line reporting (observation of the world) with thought-provoking insight. Just as much can be learned from reading good fiction as can be learned from reading history, philosophy, and a truckload of self-help books combined.

Giving my Kindle a click-through now, I find, in various states of partial completion: Thomas Paine; George Eliot; Alexis de Tocqueville; Jane Austen; the Old Testament; Aristotle; a short story collection by David Foster Wallace; J. R. R. Tolkein; my mom, Libby Sternberg's mysery novel, Death is the Cool Night; and a practical guide to daily life with Asperger's Syndrome (research for a novel).

I can say earnestly that I've learned from all of these books, not just the nonfiction ones. Sure, plenty of fiction is mindless escapism. But a good yarn can--and should--be both entertaining and (brace yourself for an over-used word) enlightening. Excitement and insight don't have to be mutually exclusive.

I suppose this is part of the philosophy that inspired me and my parents to start up Istoria--to show readers once again that there's more to fiction than tired genre-mongering or pretentious wheezing. If you long for our kind of fiction too, keep your eyes on Istoria Books. And if you're just as passionate as we are about writing that kind of fiction, don't leave without taking a look at our submission guidelines.