Erin Young joined DG and B in 2014 as the assistant to Michael Bourret at the West Coast office in Los Angeles. Previously, she worked as an editor at two prestigious literary magazines. Erin holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and dabbles in writing. Her most recent work was on the libretto of the critically acclaimed opera, “Hopscotch,” which played throughout Los Angeles.
Before entering the publishing business, Erin worked as a zoologist, which gave her a great love for all animal-related literature. She is also interested in all forms of young adult and middle grade fiction, particularly fantasy, action adventure, and magical realism. In adult fiction, she likes weird literature (think Haruki Murakami or Kurt Vonnegut) as well as all kinds of mysteries and commercial thrillers. In nonfiction, she enjoys memoirs and biographies, sport and science narratives, and just about anything unusual. And now Erin Young faces the 7 Questions:
Question Seven: What are your top three favorite books?
The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. The Secret History by Donna Tartt. His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman (but since that’s three novels, I would say The Amber Spyglass is my favorite.)
Question Six: What are your top three favorite movies and television shows?
“Game of Thrones”
“This Is Us” (Amazing writing!)
“Stranger Things”
Movies:
I love anything Pixar. My dream is to find a book that will be made into one of their films.
Question Five: What are the qualities of your ideal client?
My ideal client is someone who’s not afraid to take a critique. I love to get into some deep editing before I submit, and sometimes it can mean big changes. I also love someone who’s patient. The publishing industry is very slow, and patience is key!
Question Four: What sort of project(s) would you most like to receive a query for?
I enjoy fantasy of any age group that’s new and original. I want to see new worlds I’ve never explored, with different rules and new creatures. I never get tired of magic and wonder. Something specific I want to see is a fantastical mystery. I think it’d be so much fun to use a mystery as a way to explore the endless limitations of an enchanted world.
Question Three: What is your favorite thing about being an agent? What is your least favorite thing?
I love editing. I’m a real editor at heart, which means I give plenty of feedback. My least favorite thing is dealing with rejection because there is unfortunately a lot of it, and I have so many projects that I love like children.
Question Two: What one bit of wisdom would you impart to an aspiring writer? (feel free to include as many other bits of wisdom as you like)
Never, ever, ever, give up on a story you love. Even if you have to revise it so many times that it resembles nothing of the way it started. Also, don’t be afraid to make drastic changes. I’ve seen wonderful stories emerge from the ashes of a previous one. Be brave!
Question One: If you could have lunch with any writer, living or dead, who would it be? Why?
I would have lunch with George R.R. Martin at Medieval Times. Mostly because I want to see George R.R. Martin at Medieval Times, but also because I’d like to ask him why he’s so cruel.
I went to a great, weird elementary school. One of the great, weird things about it was that we didn’t have assigned classrooms or teachers. Or rather we did have these things, but only briefly. We had Homeroom for a few minutes at the beginning and the end of the day. We saw our homeroom teacher at these times and at our once-a-week, one-on-one conferences. Other than that, we were mostly on our own to complete the goals we’d come up with at our conferences. There were other, even greater, even weirder things about my elementary school. For instance, we were allowed to teach our own classes. I taught a class on drawing cartoons. I called it “Drawerings” because I liked a Saturday Night Live skit starring Mike Myers in which he played a little British boy named Simon who hosted a show from his bathtub and sang, “You know my name is Simon and I like to do drawerings.” The greatest, weirdest thing about my elementary school was Cube City. Simply put, Cube City was a structure/tower/edifice/thingamajig. Standing maybe 12 feet high, this structure/tower/edifice/thingamajig was made up of hollowed-out, human-sized blocks, stacked next to and on top of each other. It was located in the corner of the school’s library. After all, that’s what it was for. Reading. And it worked. Kids would climb to the top of the structure, book in hand. Others would army crawl across the carpet to the bean bags located on the first level of the structure. They’d nestle into the bean bag at the exact same time they were nestling into the book they’d just checked out. I didn’t think about this then, but it occurs to me now that whatever mad genius architect built Cube City understood that reading—when it’s done right—is a physical experience as much as it is a mental or emotional one. All of us, I think, at some level know this. We talk about the abstract act of reading in concrete and, yes, physical terms. We think of devouring and consuming books. (People talk of being voracious readers.) Books are described as pulse-pounding or breathtaking or riveting, the last of which refers to the experience of being riveted to one spot, literally immobilized by absorption. Before we can be riveted, we often first need to escape this world and enter a different reality (the author’s, the book’s, the story’s). Cube City offered this possibility literally. It allowed kids to get away, to drop everything, to burrow into a human-sized cube just as their imaginations were burrowing into the plot of a story. That was the idea, anyway. Looking back, it’s totally possible that some kids just used Cube City to waste time or sleep or avoid doing actual work. Come to think of it, I was one of those kids—though I didn’t realize it at the time. Truth be told, I didn’t realize much of anything at the time. In fact, I didn’t realize TIME at the time. I was too busy reading—too busy, that is, losing track of time. I’d go into Cube City with a book and wouldn’t come out until I’d finished or a perturbed teacher tracked me down. If it was my third and fourth grade homeroom teacher, Ms. French, she’d want to know if I’d done any of the math or science work I’d promised to do that week. This was essentially a rhetorical question: we both knew the answer was no. As always, I’d gotten sick of, frustrated or bored by those subjects and had sought refuge in Cube City and whatever book I currently had my nose in. Our weekly one-on-one conferences were similarly unproductive. We’d go through the motions of making sure I’d achieved my academic goals, then she’d scold me for failing to do so. Don’t get me wrong—she wasn’t nagging. Her scolding was richly deserved. I dreaded those meetings because I knew exactly how they’d go and that I had no one to blame but myself. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to escape—the reality of my guilt was too much to bear. Ms. French would rightly chastise me for spending too much time in Cube City and not enough time on my schoolwork. And I’d shuffle away from the conference teary-eyed and feeling so badly that I’d make a beeline for Cube City so I didn’t have to feel like that anymore. All these years and books later, I write kids’ books myself. My primary goal—one that, unlike my weekly elementary goals, I do my best to accomplish—is to create stories that invite kids to experience reading in the same physical way I did. I want them to inhale books, to wolf them down hungrily. I want their pulses and heartbeats to quicken. I want the hairs on the backs of their necks to tingle. I want their stomachs to hurt from laughter. I want them to escape from their reality and lose track of time. I don’t think Cube City exists anymore. If memory serves, they tore it down and took it away shortly after I moved on to middle school. Too dangerous, was the rumor. A kid had fallen off, some middle schooler told me—broken a bone or two. I doubt that last rumor is true, but I hope it is. Not the part about the broken bones, of course—but I like to think there was a kid reading all the way up on the top level, so riveted by the words on the page that he or she forgot all about space and time in the real world. So riveted, was he or she, that they forgot where they were. So riveted there (wherever the narrative had taken them) that he or she became un-riveted here. He or she unconsciously leaned back, unconsciously assumed—incorrectly—that there was a wall to prevent them from falling. I like to think that kid ended up physically fine—that he or she climbed right back up to the top so they could fall again, this time less literally: plummeting, tumbling, hurtling, head over heels in love with another story.
Patrick Hueller has an MFA from the University of Minnesota. Through various pen names, he has written several YA and MG novels. Foul, a sports-horror story written under the name Paul Hoblin, was described by Booklist as “the strongest entry yet in the Night Fall collection” and “unbearably tense.” The Beast (also as Paul Hoblin) was a School Library Journal selection. His most recent titles include Wolf High and The Wish (as P.W. Hueller), both of which made SLJ’s list of “Accessible Reads for Struggling Reluctant Readers.” His work is included in several anthologies, including Fright Before Christmas and Love and Profanity: A Collection of True, Tortured, Wild, Hilarious, Concise and Intense Tales of Teenage Life.
Mr. Hueller is a writing instructor at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. Check out more of his and Stu’s thoughts on Twitter (@callmebirdbones).
Stu Sanderson is no ordinary eighth-grader. Almost seven feet tall, he vanishes into thin air, duels knights with ninja stealth, lifts the downtrodden, and woos the coolest, best-calved girl in school. Become a middle-grade legend with Stu and his sidekick, Bird Bones, on the journey of a lifetime in Stu Stories.
“Stu and Bird Bones’ adventures are hilarious, sometimes horrifying, and definitely legendary. This book hits on pretty much every topic I cared about when I was a kid (love, Jedis, severed legs, etc.).” —Geoff Herbach, author ofFat Boy vs. the Cheerleaders
“Really fun . . . has tones ofWayside SchoolandManiac MageeandHow Angel Peterson Got His Name.” —Kurtis Scaletta, author of Mudville
“Stu Storiescaptures eighth grade life in its finest and wackiest form. A fun-filled zany ride!” —Frank Cole, author ofThe Afterlife Academy
Esteemed Reader, you know I love podcasts and audio books and I firmly believe that if you're doing dishes or working out or any number of other activities that prevent you from actually sitting down and reading a thing, you can still be taking in useful information to improve you as both a writer and a human being. The Kurt Vonneguys Podcast is my new favorite and I would definitely classify it as "useful." Here's an official description: Join reader-comedians Alex Schmidt and Michael Swaim for a fun, digressive trip through the Kurt Vonnegut canon. It’s a book club, a comedy show, and a cavalcade of smart, entertaining segments. Discover Vonnegut works you’ve never read! Rediscover your Kurt favorites! And cure the terrible disease of loneliness by going on a K.V. appreciation deep dive with a friendly karass of your fellow listeners. Here's a link where you can listen to it now, right now. Come back for the interview later:) Today, in honor of Valentines Day, I guess, The Slaughterhouse-Five episode goes live and that's probably a book you've read, so this is a good time to get in on this:) I've been reading Cracked for years. I've laughed until I cried at times and learned things about the world I wouldn't know if I weren't reading for the jokes.The brilliant Daniel O'Brien was one of the first writers ever to face the 7 Questions and reading his stuff led me naturally enough to Michael Swaim and Alex Schmidt and the rest of the incredibly talented Cracked writing staff. I'm a Hoosier and I once attended a reading and talk by Kurt Vonnegut. Despite this, I've always suspected he was a tad overrated. That's right, I said it, and while I'm at it, James Joyce is dry and intended for people who wish they were doing a crossword puzzle instead of reading a story! As a consequence of my prejudice, I had only read four Vonnegut novels (the big ones) prior to this year. The Kurt Vonneguys have convinced me to reconsider the man and his work. Their show is very funny, naturally, but also extremely insightful. I'm learning more about this particular writer and his work than I did sitting through entire college courses on literature. I recently read God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater for the first time to keep up with the show and I honestly enjoyed the book more because I was anticipating what sorts of things Alex Schmidt and Michael Swaim were going to say about it. They're discussing Vonnegut's books in order, so there's still time for you to not only enjoy past episodes, but reread Vonnegut's later works in anticipation of future episodes. I hope the Kurt Vonneguys will keep going even after they've completed Vonnegut's catalog (plenty of great writers to choose from). I wish there were more podcasts devoted to book club type discussions of writers. If you're thinking of starting your own podcast, please, follow the lead of the Kurt Vonneguys. Alex Schmidt and Michael Swaim are doing good in the world and I'm thrilled they made time for us today. And now the Kurt Vonneguys face the 7 Questions:
Question Seven: What are your top three favorite Kurt
Vonnegut novels (ranked in order of your love) and your top three favorite non-Vonnegut novels (ranked however you prefer)?
Alex: 1. Cat's Cradle 2. The Sirens Of Titan 3. Slaughterhouse-Five 1. East Of Eden (Steinbeck) 2 & 3. Right now it's some combo of: The Handmaid's Tale (Atwood), The Book Of Dave (Self), The Brief & Frightening Reign Of Phil (Saunders), The Killer Angels (Shaara), Speaker For The Dead (Card), The Subtle Knife (Pullman). That varies year to year though. Michael: 1. The Sirens of Titan 2. Cat's Cradle 3. Slaughterhouse-Five Then, in alphabetical order (by Title)... 1. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer 2. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry 3. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
Question Six: What attracts you to writing comedy and producing online videos, podcast, and other forms of media? Michael: Absurd piles of cash for little to no work at all. I seriously just sit around making model airplanes and jerking off, and they pay me enough to feed a family of four for a decade. I don't feel guilty about it either, because laughter is so important and uplifting to the human animal.* *In case you are very stupid, this was not written in seriousness, but in jest.
Alex: It's a blessing to get to make stuff you're passionate about, with exciting collaborators, in an environment where you can fail fast & fail often till the good things happen. The Internet is the sandbox for that.
Question Five: If you were to pick another author's work to discuss in depth on your podcast after you finish with the fiction of Kurt Vonnegut, what author would it be and why? Alex: I talk about Ray Bradbury on our current show a lot. He did heaps of grounded, fantastical fiction in a way few people have before or since. And unlike Kurt's line about SF writers, Bradbury could write for sour apples. Also I'd love to do Stephen King, because Michael would want to do that, and I want to talk about stuff with Michael. Also everything but 'On Writing' and Dark Tower Book 1 would be new to me.
Michael: Ray Bradbury, because Alex loves him so much and I like to talk with Alex. I would say Harlan Ellison--as fans of the show would no doubt guess--but I'm worried doing that show might reveal too much of my dark weirdness to the public. Ellison gets me, and I'm not sure that's a good thing.
Question Four: What is your favorite Kurt Blurt? For the uninitiated, Kurt Blurts are striking passages of Vonnegut's prose worthy of deeper consideration. Michael: "I was a victim of a series of accidents, as are we all." -- The Sirens of Titan Alex: “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” -- Mother Night
Question Three:What is your favorite thing about hosting the Vonneguys
podcast? What is your least favorite thing? Alex: My favorite thing is when Michael, or a Vonnefriend reaching out to us, surprises me with a line of thinking that's so interesting it discombobulates my brain. My least favorite thing is feeling like I dropped the ball on a part of the book worth diving into further, or better.
Michael: My favorite thing is having an iron-clad obligation to read for pleasure (and spiritual development) regularly. My least favorite thing is that I am only capable of talking about each book for a few hours, when in reality just the "Kurt Blurts" segment could be four to five hours long if we wanted it to.
Question Two:What advice would you give to anyone looking to start their own podcast or otherwise build an online following for their creative work? Michael: Do it, do it now! Faster Pussycat, Make! Make! Make! My point being, podcasting is an easy medium within which to execute, and if you're interested in doing one, there shouldn't be much stopping you. Think of a concept for a podcast you would want to listen to, make a LOT of episodes, learn from your mistakes, release the episodes, and if the podcast isn't a hit or runs its course, think of a new idea and make another one. In my experience, too often people think the idea of working in the creative arts is to find "the right idea," when really it's just to keep working on things that interest you. The audience will come or they won't. The sad truth is you have less control over that than you'd like. Keep your head down and keep at it until it's no longer something that fits well into your life for its own sake; then quit.
Alex: Do a lot of your thing. Keep doing it. Self-examine often, and kindly.
Question One: If you were to have lunch with Kurt Vonnegut, but could
only ask him one question each, what would you ask? Alex:"Can I buy your lunch?" Then if he says no, I insist on it till I wear him down. Michael:MUST you fart every three to five minutes? Do you have some kind of medical issue; what's going on? BUT SERIOUSLY: What were your real beliefs--and how devoutly did you hold them--when you introduced the concepts of predetermination and handicapping for the sake of equality to so many of your fictional worlds? In other words...do you believe Free Will exists? Show your work.
Michael Swaim is head writer for Those Aren't Muskets, and performs in sketches regularly. He's a graduate of the UC San Diego department of theatre, a degree he is maliciously squandering by making stupid internet videos. He also contributes regularly to Cracked (the humor site, not the crack site) as a member of their group blog. He dreams of one day becoming a real boy.
Alex Schmidt is a Staff Video Writer for Cracked, where he makes sketch comedy, original YouTube shows, and guest appearances on Earwolf’s The Cracked Podcast. Before that he wrote comedy for BBC America, The Onion, Funny Or Die, CollegeHumor, My Damn Channel, McSweeney's, and more fun places. He does stand-up comedy every week, in LA or on the road. He also does live sketch comedy every month, with his Pack Theater house team Gunslinger.
Let me start off by telling you about my novel: THE UGLY TEAPOT is the story of
a fourteen-year-old girl who loved her father so
much that she worried about him constantly. After all, he was a photographer
who traveled to the most dangerous places in the world.
To allay her fears, each time he came home he brought her
silly gifts, each one with supposed magical powers: the Seal of Solomon, the
Ring of Gyges, even Aladdin’s Lamp. It was that lamp that the girl found most
unbelievable, for it looked like an ugly teapot. Nevertheless, her father
assured her it was real, and made her promise to save her three wishes for
something very special.
Then . . . six months later . . . the unthinkable
happened. Her father was killed while on assignment to Baghdad. And so on the
day of his funeral the girl did something she never thought she would ever do.
She took out that teapot and gave it a rub . . .
Okay, that’s the story blurb, and now I have a confession to
make. I didn’t start out to write novels. I started out to make films. I
directed two feature films starring Lou Diamond Phillips, one for Miramax and
one for Lionsgate; then I directed a Bollywood feature film shot on location in
India that starred two huge Bollywood stars, one of whom had won the Indian
version of an Academy Award.
I also wrote and directed a lot—and I do mean a LOT! —of
television. Some of these were documentaries shot all over the world, but
mostly I worked in series television—and most of these shows were in the area
of children’s television. According to IMDB, I’ve directed north of 250
episodes of TV, and along the way I’ve won quite a few awards, including two
Emmys.
Why am I telling you all of this? Because none of it
matters. Seriously, when I started writing novels I discovered that all of my
work in television and film was irrelevant. It didn’t matter one bit. Okay, maybe
it did matter one bit—writing so much television had taught me what a good
story looked like, sounded like, tasted like (they taste like chicken and go
really well with some fava beans and a nice Chianti), but I still had to learn
how to translate that knowledge into writing prose. And there is a difference
between writing prose and writing screenplays. Oh yeah, trust me on this. There’s
a huge difference.
When I started writing THE UGLY TEAPOT I was like a deer in
the headlights. I had no clue what I was doing and went through a bunch of
drafts. I tried to educate myself by reading a lot of books on writing and by
speaking with my friends who were novelists. Mostly, however, I read a lot of
children’s fiction. I’ve always loved reading, and I’ve always loved children’s
literature; plus I’ve been fortunate to work on television shows with children who
fit my target age range. This all helped. It also helped that screenplays and
novels have something in common. They both have the same “show not tell rule”. Unfortunately,
they also have a major difference. Novels are meant to be read and screenplays
are meant to be filmed. Yeah, I know, duh! But what this means is that you only
put down in a screenplay what the audience will see and/or hear. You do not dig
deep into the characters’ psyche—that’s for the actors to portray, and the
director to cover visually—and they both get really upset with you if you mess
with their territory!
So in order to write THE UGLY TEAPOT, I had to learn how to write
fiction. This was a challenge for someone who had never taken a writing course.
What I did have, fortunately, was a lot of experience telling stories. I also
had a good story to tell. THE UGLY TEAPOT began life as a screenplay called
FIREFLIES, and everyone who had read it, loved it. It had been optioned numerous
times by some powerful producers (including Gerald R. Molen who had won the
Academy Award for producing Schindler’s
List). Jerry tried to get FIREFLIES made into a movie for a number of
years, but he was known for producing big-budgeted films (HOOK, JURASSIC PARK,
MINORITY REPORT, etc.), and FIREFLIES was a sweet, small-budgeted film, so he
was never able to get it made. Then a friend of mine at Disney read it, loved
it, and told me, “This is really good. You should adapt it into a novel.”
This struck a chord with me. First, I really appreciated the
praise; and second, I’d always wanted to write novels, I just never thought I
could. Why? Well, the best analogy I can give you comes from some of my actor
friends in Hollywood. A lot of them will tell you, “I’m only acting in
television and films to make money. My goal is to be a star on Broadway. That’s
where the real actors are.” And that,
in a convoluted way, was my attitude about writing for television—the “real”
writers were writing novels—and I wasn’t a real writer. At the time, however, I
was working in South Africa a lot and those seventeen hour plane rides to Cape
Town gave me ample time to fuss around with the idea of writing a novel, and
what came out of that fussing was THE UGLY TEAPOT.
The story itself had an earlier germination. My brother had died
of cancer at a very young age and his death had a devastating impact on me.
FIREFLIES was my way of dealing with my grief, and I wanted to use the story to
help others. However, I didn’t want to write a sad, depressing ode to my
brother. He wouldn’t have liked that. So what did I write instead? I wrote an
action/adventure film filled with magic and humor.
Then when FIREFLIES the screenplay metamorphosed into THE
UGLY TEAPOT the novel, I stayed true to my original story, but tried to make
TEAPOT more “novel-like”. This required, for one thing, expanding my story. FIREFLIES
was 110 pages long (normal for most screenplays, but too short for a middle-grade
novel), so expanding it allowed me to flesh out my characters and situations.
This was fun, but intimidating. I was helped along by the fact that I had kept
most of my notes on character and plot from the original screenplay, and I had tons
of material I’d been forced to cut from the screenplay in order to get it down
to length.
Bottom line: I really enjoyed the process. So much so that
I’m doing it again. I’m currently writing the sequel to THE UGLY TEAPOT. What’s
it about? Well, I can’t tell you very much without a spoiler alert, but I can
tell you this: Aladdin’s Lamp has appeared in a tiny village in the foothills
of the Great Smoky Mountains, and the people living there will never be the
same. Fathers will rise from the dead, dogs will start talking, and people will
die. And that’s just on the first day.
If you would like to know more about THE UGLY TEAPOT:
HANNAH’S STORY, here are some links:
The
sequel will be out at the end of this year, and I hope you’ll check them both out.
Thanks for listening!
THE UGLY TEAPOT is Fred Holmes’s first fiction novel, having previously ghost written a nonfiction book, LETTERS FROM DAD. He is known primarily as a writer and director of films and television, working primarily in family films and children’s television. His work can be seen on Mary Lou Retton’s FLIP FLOP SHOP, BARNEY & FRIENDS, WISHBONE, HORSELAND, IN SEARCH OF THE HEROES, and many other shows, for which he has won two Emmys and three CINE Golden Eagles, among numerous other awards. He has also directed three feature films, including DAKOTA, starring Lou Diamond Phillips, distributed by Miramax, and HEART LAND, a Bollywood feature film shot on location in India. He lives with his wife and son in the southwest United States, and can be found online at www.flholmes.com
