My blog has moved

As of April 24, 2018, my blog has moved here:

Stacy DeKeyser's blog

Thanks! Hope to see you there.

--Stacy

Bibliography for THE RHINO IN RIGHT FIELD

Here's a list of the major source materials I used while researching and writing The Rhino in Right Field:

Printed material:

Veeck, Bill, and Ed Linn. Veeck—As in Wreck. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001.

Buege, Bob. Borchert Field: Stories from Milwaukee’s Legendary Ballpark. Madison, WI: The Wisconsin Historical Society, 2017.

Winter, Darlene, Elizabeth Frank, and Mary Kazmierczak. Images of America: Milwaukee County Zoo.Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2014.

Dickson, Paul. Bill Veeck: Baseball’s Greatest Maverick. New York: Bloomsbury, 2012.

Gurda, John. New World Odyssey: Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church and Frank Lloyd Wright.Milwaukee: The Milwaukee Hellenic Community, 1986.

Gurda, John. The Making of Milwaukee. Milwaukee: The Milwaukee County Historical Society, 1999.

Saloutos, Theodore. “The Greeks of Milwaukee.” Wisconsin Magazine of History, Spring 1970.

Wesley, Charles I. “Story of Milwaukee’s Zoo and its Sponsor, the Washington Park Zoological Society,” The Washington Park Zoological Society, 1947.

Online:

Michaels, Chance. Borchert Field (blog). 

Milwaukee County Historical Society website.

Milwaukee Journal historical archives.

Milwaukee Sentinel historical archives.

In person:

Milwaukee County Zoo Library and Archive
Milwaukee County Zoo
10001 W. Bluemound Rd.
Milwaukee, WI 53226

Washington Park
1859 N. 40^th Street
Milwaukee, WI 53208

Summer 2018

My next novel has a tentative publication date!


It's a middle-grade novel about a kid (who very closely resembles my dad) growing up in a city that very closely resembles Milwaukee in the late 1940s.


As part of my research, I've been collecting images over at Pinterest, if you want to take a look.


And I'll be posting details of the publication schedule over on my calendar page.


Check back occasionally to see what's new.

Handout from Wisconsin SCBWI Conference, October 2016

If you attended my conference workshop, "The Connect-the-Dots Novel Outline" (or even if you didn't), here is the link to the PowerPoint presentation and handout.


Connect-the-Dots handout


Feel free to copy it for your personal use.

Happy writing!

Turning Points

A few weeks ago, I talked about turning points at the New England SCBWI spring conference.

The main point was this: As you write (especially a first draft), you may not know everything about how your story will unfold, but you DO know some things.

For example, you may know:

Who your protagonist is

What he/she wants

Who the main antagonist is

What obstacles will get thrown in the way...

Maybe you know the initial premise, and how your story will end. (When I started my first draft of Jump the Cracks, that's all I knew.)

But the thing is, you don't have to know your whole story to start writing. You only have to know ONE thing about your story, and you can write your way to that point. Or write THAT scene: the one you KNOW will have to happen at some point in your story.

Then, fill in the blanks as you go. Because once you write SOMETHING, other things will become apparent to you, and then you can write THOSE things.

It's a lot like walking through the woods. There may be several possible paths, but once you decide you are hiking the blue trail and not the orange trail, that's a start. You walk along, watching for the next blue blaze. And when you get there, you know you have to look for the NEXT blue blaze.

Writing is so similar. Write a scene--ANY scene--that you KNOW has to happen in your book. Then think about another thing that will HAVE to happen as a result...and write that. Repeat.

Look for the blazes. You can write a whole book that way, or at least a good underlying structure.

Happy trails!

Mapping a Reader's Life

Here's a link to my post at the Nerdy Book Club on how I became a reader (and why I became a writer).
xo

Workshop Outline: "Demystifying the Editorial Process" at the Mark Twain House, April 18, 2015

Here's the whole thing, if you didn't get a handout.

It's a Google doc. If you can't open it, email me or leave a comment, and I'll send you the Word document directly.

Thanks for attending!

Workshop Outline: Demystifying the Editing Process

We love teachers! 16 Free Books for Valentine's Day!

Are you a teacher, librarian, or reading specialist? Do you want 16 signed midgrade books for your school or classroom?

Most of them are brand new or soon-to-be-published. A few are familiar favorites. (There's even a big award-winner hiding in the mix!)

For your chance to win signed copies of ALL these books, just do one of two things:

1. Leave a comment below

OR

3. Tweet about the giveaway using the hashtag #MGAuthorsLoveTeachers

Your name will be entered into the virtual hat, and we’ll draw the winner at 11:59 PM on Wednesday, February 18th. If you win, you’ll receive signed copies of ALL these books–not all at once, because some of them don’t publish until March or April, but won’t it be fun to get multiple packages in your mailbox?
Good luck!

(And if you want a similar boatload of YA books, hop on over to Sarah Darer Littman's blog for another chance to win!)

Here are the titles in the giveaway:

Why'd They Wear That?
by
Sarah Albee

Random Body Parts
by
Leslie Bulion

Beetle Busters
by
Loree Griffin Burns

Walk Two Moons
by
Sharon Creech

One Witch at a Time
by
Stacy DeKeyser

Fish in a Tree
by
Lynda Mullaly Hunt

Paper Things
by
Jennifer Richard Jacobson

How to Outswim a Shark Without a Snorkel
by
Jess Keating

On the Road to Mr. Mineo's
by
Barbara O'Connor

Wish Girl
by
Nikki Lofton

Mark of the Thief
by
Jennifer A. Nielsen

The Way to Stay in Destiny
by
Augusta Scattergood

The Gossip File
by
Anna Staniszewski

Emmanuel's Dream
by
Laurie Ann Thompson

Blue Birds
by
Caroline Starr Rose

Brown Girl Dreaming
by
Jacqueline Woodson

Whew!
Good luck!

Blog Tour!

Announcing the official schedule of the One Witch at a Time blog tour! Check out a few (or all) of these fabulous blogs for author interviews, guest posts, reviews, and giveaways!

February 9
Cracking the Cover


February 10
Haunting of Orchid Forsythia


February 11
Mother-Daughter Book Club


February 12
GreenBeanTeenQueen


February 13
The Book Monsters


February 16
Word Spelunking


February 17
Read Now, Sleep Later


February 18
Small Review


February 19
KidLit Frenzy


February 20
The Flashlight Reader

I'm starting a newsletter

"Oh, joy!" I can hear you saying. "Finally, we can get news from Stacy without doing anything!"

Well, you need to do ONE thing.

You need to sign up here, if you want occasional news and interesting info sent to your inbox.

I promise to make it pertinent, and I also promise not to share your info with anyone else.

Thanks, CRA attendees!

If you attended my workshop at the Connecticut Reading Association conference on October 23, here is the PowerPoint presentation that accompanied the workshop:

Revision Tricks Any Kid Can Do

And here is a Revision Tricks Guide (based on the presentation) that your students can use as they revise their own work.

Feel free to download and use them with your students.

Have fun, and thanks!

Stacy

Amazon vs. The World: Why Amazon is Winning

Amazon.

Love 'em? Hate 'em? A little bit of both?

There is so much to hate about Amazon's bullying tactics, their dodging of sales tax, and their treatment of warehouse employees. (Do a search on any of those terms, and you'll get more background than you'll ever want.)

More than any of the above, I worry about any one entity controlling the distribution of books, because Books = Ideas. And limiting access to Ideas is a Bad Idea.

But two things happened recently that make it pretty obvious why Amazon dominates, and why they will continue to dominate if their competitors don't get up to speed.

Thing #1:

I have a new book coming out in a few months. Very exciting, right? The minute I had a jacket image and ISBN number, I was ready to tell the world. Look how pretty! You can preorder! 

But the book's information was available in only one place. Can you guess where?

And it was all there: Cover image. ISBN number. Publication date. Preorder button.* Plot summary. Links to all my other books.

It took about 3 weeks for the same information to show up at BN.com or any other online bookseller.

So, being an author who sympathizes with Hachette authors (there but for the grace of Amazon etc.), and is opposed to Amazon ruling the world, I had two choices: share my good news, via Amazon, or bite my tongue until the news was available more widely. I bit my tongue. (Which probably makes no difference for an author of my (un)fame, but it proves I'm a good sport.)

Thing #2:

This morning a message popped into my inbox, directly from Hachette, advertising a specific new book title. I suppose I'm on their mailing list, and it WAS a book that interested me, and that I hadn't known about before. I followed the links to buy it at bn.com, where it was discounted, AND with free shipping.

"Ha!" I said to myself, "Good move, B&N! Way to capitalize on Amazon's feud with Hachette, swoop in and steal sales from your biggest competitor!"

I set about placing my order. 

Half an hour later, after many clicks, blank screens, kick-outs, and general frustration, I still hadn't bought the book.

I gave up. I will try from another retailer, but I won't get a discount, and it's a $35 book, so a discount would have been nice.

If I had shopped at Amazon (except of course the book was "backordered" for 3 weeks and not discounted either**), I would have been able to part with my money in under two minutes.

So here is the conclusion: Love Amazon or hate Amazon, or somewhere in between, Amazon has its sh$t together. They know what they're doing, and they do it very, very well.

Until other booksellers--online and real-world--get up to speed, Amazon will continue to rule the world.

* because not a Hachette book

** because Hachette book

A peek into the process: ARCs and uncorrected proofs

I'm always fascinated to learn about what goes on behind the scenes when a book is published. Here's how it's working for One Witch at a Time:


Within a few days of each other, I got these in the mail:

Advance Reader Copies (ARCs)

And these:

Uncorrected page proofs

Outwardly, they look very different, but inside, they are exactly the same. Most importantly: They both have errors. (Which is why ARCs tend to have a big UNCORRECTED disclaimer somewhere on them.) This is where editing and production and promotion all overlap. Because while I'm reading the page proofs, and marking corrections and small changes (I'm STILL deleting extraneous, cringe-inducing words like just!), the bound version is going out to reviewers and booksellers.

And that's very exciting!

I just hope they don't just see the extraneous justs. I'd be just horrified!

Book trailer!

Cover reveal!

The cover of One Witch at a Time is out, and I love it so much!

It was designed by a brilliant person at Simon & Schuster named Sonia Chaghatzbanian. I love her too, and I haven't even met her.

One Witch at a Time takes readers back to Brixen, where trouble is brewing once more. Can our hero Rudi undo the disaster caused when an unsuspecting stranger brings a foreign witch’s magic to Brixen?

Oma is back, and so is Susanna Louisa, and (of course) the Brixen Witch. And there are some new characters too, including a mysterious girl who Rudi can't seem to resist...

There are cats, too. And chickens. I hope that makes up for the conspicuous absence of rats this time around. ;)

The book is coming in February, so stay tuned for more news! There is a trailer in the works...

Who doesn't love a free book?

In honor of National Library Week and School Library Month, I'm giving away free signed copies of The Brixen Witch in paperback.

Hop on over to Goodreads to enter. Good luck!!

Adventures in Copyediting

Last week I got the copyedited manuscript for One Witch at a Time, which will be published in February 2015. (Ten months and counting!)

My editor still works on paper, which is very comforting if you don't take all the little stickies and margin-notes too personally.  Here is what it looked like:

But of course you DO take it personally. In fact it feels like a small stab with a heart-fork* because I've revised and revised and revised already, and my editor said she was happy with my revisions. So why is my ms. marked up AGAIN?

Here is where I explain what copyediting is:

Actually, it's a few things:

1. It's marking up the ms. for the typesetter and designer. Stuff like where to include chapter openers, nonbreaking spaces, dashes, ellipses, etc. Probably half of the red marks on the pages are stuff the author can ignore.

2. Nuts and bolts I might have missed: a repeated word, misspellings, incorrect use of commas or semicolons, etc.

I try to clean this up as much as possible before I turn in my ms, but I do miss a few things. Mostly this step consists of writing a line of dots under the deleted commas marked by the copyeditor. (A line of dots means to "stet" or "let stand" the original text, and ignore the copyeditor's mark.) I do a LOT of stetting of commas. I like my commas where they are, and I like an occasional run-on sentence, even if it breaks the rules of commas. But I suppose the copyeditor can't assume that, so she points out the rules and leaves it up to me to decide I actually DO want to break the rules sometimes. Easy enough, dot dot dot.

3. Consistency and logic. This is where a good copyeditor saves an author's bacon. She notices that you wrote "the dairy has only three cows" on page 14 but "the dairy's last two cows" on page 58. She will also tell you where she had trouble picturing what you described, and do you want to reword some passages? Sometimes she might even draw a picture:

This is where the heart-fork twists a bit, because the description seems clear enough to YOU (because you're the one who wrote it!), and rewording might cause that riveting scene to suddenly go CLUNK. But sometimes the copyeditor is right, and it needs to be done.

Sometimes, though, the copyeditor is wrong, and it's important to take a deep breath and remember that. The copyeditor is not marking your ms. to show you all the places where she is right and you are wrong. She is only asking questions, knowing that sometimes the answer to the question will be NOPE, or STET. But if she doesn't ask, how can you be sure of your writing? And how can you catch the two cow/three cow problem? And so she asks, and it's up to you to not take it personally.

And so I extracted the fork from my heart and forged through the ms-that-was-not-quite-perfect, and sent it back, pretty confident that now it's as perfect as I can make it.



*Heart-fork: Perfect, pithy term stolen from sports columnist Jason Gay.

A good non-writing day

Take a walk!
It's good for you.
Your dog will be grateful.
You might see a bluebird, even though it's really cold.

What? Can't you tell that's a bluebird?

On our walk yesterday, I learned these things about my new book:

- A bit of backstory
- A bit of my protagonist's internal conflict

and, most importantly:

- What the story's antagonist wants, and why he wants it.

This is big, because it will drive so much of the story. I read somewhere once that everyone is the hero of their own story. I think that's especially true of villains in novels.

It's also true that when you have epiphanies like this, you should get it all down on paper as soon as you get home, so you don't forget your brilliance.

Ya, yesterday was a good non-writing writing day. 

Novel Writing Made Easy: Your Characters

OK, so I have my SOP outline and a rough idea of what my story is going to be about.

Before I start writing, I need to know WHO I'm writing about. Because a plot outline is all well and good, and a helpful roadmap, but I want to write a story that is character-driven rather than plot-driven.

This just means that I want the twists and turns of the plot to grow out of the kind of people my characters are, rather than making my characters do things that fit into my plot. You can probably think of a TV show or movie where you like the characters, and you think you know them, and then they do something that seems really forced, and you say, "Yeah, right," and shake your head and go off to make popcorn.

For example, everybody watches Downton Abbey, right? The romance between Anna and Bates is so sweet! And it's believable, because those characters really do seem compatible. And the things they do (their PLOT) feel natural because those actions fit with their characters: I believed it when Anna traveled to London to visit Bates' first wife, but stopped short of doing anything nefarious. Because Anna cares that much about Bates, but she's also upstanding and honest and kind.

And then there is Lord Grantham and his romance (such as it was) with a housemaid a couple of seasons back.

Popcorn time! That little sub-plot was hard to believe.

Why? First of all, we hardly knew the maid at all. We really didn't know WHAT her character was, so we couldn't judge her behavior as fitting with her character or not.

But mostly, it was hard to believe because we'd never seen that kind of behavior in Lord Grantham before. He'd displayed poor judgment from time to time, but mostly in financial matters. He'd always been a devoted and loving husband, though, and so the dalliance felt forced.

That's the difference between character-driven story and plot-driven story. The first is organic, and believable, and much more satisfying. The second is OK, and can be entertaining, but it feels kinda hollow, and doesn't hold our attention for long. (Notice how that Lord Grantham/housemaid subplot didn't last very long either.)

Plot-driven novels can be fun. They're the books that make good beach reads or airplane reads. Books you don't mind leaving behind in the hotel room or the seat-back pocket.

I'm hoping to write a character-driven story, though. And I can't know what kinds of things my characters will do, or how they'll react to things that happen, if I don't know WHO they are.

And so, my characters. Most importantly, my protagonist, or main character.

(I'm going to cheat here a little and use The Brixen Witch in my examples. That way, I won't be sharing spoilers for a new book.)

Rudi is a 12-year-old dairyman's son living in an Alpine mountain village a long time ago. He's an only child. He's smart, but quiet and contemplative. He's good with a slingshot. He could find his way around the slopes of the local mountain with his eyes closed. He's loyal. He's brave. He has a strong sense of responsibility. He's generous.

I have an image in my head of what he looks like, but his physical appearance doesn't matter to me too much, because it's not how he looks, but what he DOES and what he THINKS that will be important. It will drive his actions, and his decisions, and those things will drive the plot.

Next: Point of view and voice. Stay tuned!

Novel Writing Made Easy, Step One: Seat-of-the-Pants Outline

OK, here we go!

As I said in the last post, I'm not a huge planner, but I DO plan a bit at the beginning of novel-writing, for a few reasons:

1. It helps keep me focused once I do start writing. If I feel writer's block coming on, I can take a look at my S.O.P. outline and remind myself where I should be going next.

2. It breaks down the HUGE project of writing a novel into bite-sized (less intimidating) pieces.

3. I can feel accomplished when I fill in a few blanks on my outline.

I speak from experience: I wrote my first novel, Jump the Cracks, almost completely by the seat of my pants. If I'd had to write an outline, it would have looked like this:

Beginning:
Girl impulsively runs away with little boy she fears is abused.
End:
Girl brings little boy home again.

That's it.

It was a painful experience. That novel took a REALLY long time to write, with lots and lots of rewriting and dead ends, and staring out the window wondering what comes next.

It all turned out OK. I learned a lot about writing from writing that book. Mostly, I learned that I never want to write a novel that way again.

Thus I give you the Seat of the Pants Outline.

I call it that because it's really very basic. Here's what it looks like, before I've started any actual writing:

This is an Excel spreadsheet. I could hand-write it, but Excel makes it easy to add new columns and rows as I go along. You could probably build a table in Word that does the same thing. But Excel will add up the word count column for you, which is nice.

I've made a few assumptions, namely:

A finished length of about 40,000 words, broken into approximately 27 chapters of approximately 1500 words each.

I know from having written my other novels that this is a comfortable length and format for me. And I really can't fully outline without knowing this number, or at least taking an educated stab, because I wouldn't know where the percentages would fall. If you've never written a novel before, it can be hard to predict how long your book will be. You might try choosing an average length, based on the age level and genre you want to write for. Nothing is etched in stone; you can expand or contract as you go along. But I think it helps to have someplace to start; to have some sort of roadmap, even if you end up taking detours.

A few words about the columns:

Chapter numbers

Pretty obvious, but you have to start somewhere. I feel so accomplished because ta-DA! I have officially started my book! As I start writing, it will show me at a glance how I’m progressing toward the story markers in the "Turning Points" column. (More on that below.)

Running Word Count

I keep track of the word count chapter by chapter, because:

a. I want to be somewhat consistent. I think consistent chapter lengths help the story’s rhythm.

b. It keeps me honest. My goal is an average of 1500 words per chapter, with a min/max of around 1000/2000 words. If a chapter is skewing short, I know I need to beef it up, or blend it into the next or previous chapter. If it’s skewing too long, I need to cut some fat, or break it into two chapters.

c. Another chance to feel accomplished, as the running total grows!

Chapter summaries

Here is where I’ll jot down the most crucial plot points of each chapter. Once they’re all filled in, it will be a sort of synopsis of the whole book. Right now, I don’t even know what to enter for Chapter 1. I have to actually, you know, start writing.

Turning Points/Story Markers

THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THE OUTLINE.

I use the percentages as pretty strict story markers: 1-15% means that the inciting incident (or story problem) had better be introduced quickly; somewhere in the first 6,000 words, or first 4 chapters. (15% of 40,000 = 6,000 and 6,000/1,500 = 4 chapters)  Ideally, it will happen in the first or second chapter. If it hasn't happened by chapter 4, I'll know I'm taking too long to set things up, OR my book might need to be longer after all. (Chances are it'll be the first thing, though.)

In the same way, the first turning point, where we move from Act 1 to Act 2, as the protagonist chooses to commit to a task or journey, needs to happen about 25-30% into the novel. (All these numbers can slide around a little, but ONLY a little.) That means I'd better have my protagonist launched on her adventure by around 12,000 words, or by chapter 8 or so.

(And when you think about it, 8 chapters is plenty of time to launch my protagonist on her adventure.)

By the way, these percentages are taken directly from Making a Good Script Great. I'm writing a novel and not a screenplay, but they are both vehicles for telling stories, and good story structure is good story structure. It works for me.

Notes

Anything else I want to remember that doesn’t fit in the other columns. For now, I’ve listed other terms for the turning points. They remind me what I’m aiming for in each section.

Additional columns

I might add another column for my timeline, or to list the characters and/or setting for each chapter, or whether each chapter ends on an emotional high or low note. Whatever helps me visualize what’s going on. Add and subtract as needed.

OK, enough procrastinating, I guess. Time to start writing. Wish me luck, and I’ll report back here with my progress, filling in the chapter chart as I go. In the meantime, let me know if you have any questions or comments.