| |
| Worth Reading |
| |
| |
A Whole Harvest of Iowa Authors-Wendy Delsol
Your debut book, Stork, is a young adult novel, as is its sequel, Frost; The McCloud Home for Wayward Girls, is contemporary women’s fiction. Why change genres?
I have always loved the family-saga genre. Thus, my first three novel attempts were women’s fiction with a multigenerational cast.
While writing the third, I noticed a pattern-an adolescent daughter who was, well, a page hog. I truly enjoyed writing from the teen
perspective. At the time, Twilight was a bestseller. While agent shopping, I noticed that virtually every agent had young adult on
the list of what they were looking for. So I gave both the young adult and paranormal genre a try; Stork landed me both an agent and
a publishing contract. Following that sale, my agent read and suggested a few changes to the third of my adult novels; the result was
The McCloud Home for Wayward Girls.
Is there a third genre lurking in there somewhere?
Not any time soon, anyway. I have so many ideas for both adult and young adult projects clamoring for page time that I wouldn’t want to
introduce another distraction.
Stork was published by Candlewick Press in 2010, Frost comes out in October, and The McCloud Home for Wayward Girls
will be released by Berkley Books, an imprint of Penguin, in August. Did you envision such success?
I compare my writing experience to digging a tunnel. There were many days-years, in fact-without so much as a glimpse of light.
Of course, you hear about the instant successes, but you also know of the long-haulers who are on a tenth, eleventh or twelfth
manuscript without a sale. Since there’s no guarantee in this business, I wrote because I loved the process. I continued to pursue
an agent and publishing contract because I am goal-oriented-a euphemism for bullheaded.
Tell us about PAL, the unique organization you’ve launched.
I was fairly new to the Des Moines area when I received my contract for Stork. Though I had two published writers
(Kimberly Stuart and Kali VanBaale) in my critique group, I did not know anyone writing in the YA genre. I had so many questions
and was curious to hear about other writers’ journeys. I saw in the paper that Jan Blazanin was launching her YA novel,
Fairest of Them All, and asked her to join an authors’ group. Kim, Kali, and Jan then invited other local writers with whom
they had contacts. PAL (Published Authors Liaison) is an alliance of traditionally published authors in the Des Moines area.
We represent a variety of genres and meet every few months to discuss various topics: sales, marketing, networking, author events, etc.
www.palofcentraliowa.wordpress.com
Advice for wanna-be authors?
Work on craft. Take writing courses, attend weekend conferences and writing workshops. Join or start a critique group, and view
your early work as practice. Don’t get too attached.
|
| |
|
Wendy Del Sol
|
