Hola, everyone!

I’ve now joined Canada.com as a regular writer so my blog will be relocating. Read all of my latest updates HERE

We have a title!

The Lewton Experiment will be published by Tradewind Books in Spring 2012.

Thank you to everyone who submitted entries to our Name the Novel Contest! There were some great, creative suggestions. In the end, we didn’t select the winning submission from among the entries, but we still want to give out the prize pack of awesome Tradewind titles. So, we’ve drawn a name at random from the entries. And the winner is…

Taryn Reid!

Thanks so much, Taryn. We’ll be in touch shortly to get your address and send a box of books your way!

Have you ever wondered how writers come up with the titles for their books?

Well, sometimes we need a little help. That’s where YOU can come in.

I’m officially launching a Name the Novel Contest for my new young adult manuscript coming from Tradewind Books in spring 2012!

We need a title that will grab the attention of readers age 12 – 15. So, take your best shot. What do you think this new young adult novel should be called? Read the synopsis below and write to me with your suggestions. The contest is open to all young readers aged 15 and younger and you can submit as many suggestions as you like. Send your entries, including your full name and age, to: rachel@rachelsa.com

I’ll post some noteworthy entries on this blog. If your title is selected for publication, not only will you have bragging rights, you’ll also receive a gift pack of awesome titles from Tradewind Books, including:

The Runaway – by Governor General’s Award-winning children’s writer Glen Huser

The Circle Cast – by Alex Epstein

The Secret Keepers – by Paul Yee

Siena Summer – by Ann Chandler

The Bone Collector’s Son – by Paul Yee

Broken – by Alyxandra Harvey-Fitzhenry

SYNOPSIS

When Sherri arrives in the resort town of Lewton, she’s eager for an exciting summer as the new student reporter with the local newspaper. But the feisty 17-year-old finds that Lewton resembles a ghost town from a spaghetti western. In addition to the creepy town atmosphere, Sherri’s staying in a crumbling old bed and breakfast with a great-uncle who seems in a perpetual daze, and a wacky great-aunt who thinks making jam will make everything better. What’s more, the people of the town seem under the thrall of the new big box store, Shopwell’s.

Sherri soon learns that Lewton’s local stores are closing one by one – sometimes overnight – and their owners vanish – only to turn up as smiling, happy Shopwell’s workers.

Sherri becomes determined to find out and expose what’s going on. But at the newspaper office, her gruff and harried editor, Mac, seems oblivious and tries to keep young Sherri on the straight and narrow, covering only the most routine community events. Meanwhile the competitive and conniving municipal reporter, Krystal, is determined and to keep Sherri from asking too many questions about Shopwell’s – like the last reporter did. Even stranger, Sherri soon learns that her predecessor, Rebecca, is now working at Shopwell’s herself.

Against Mac’s orders, Sherri launches a secret investigation into the big box store. She’s rebuffed by Rebecca and soon realizes that there may be more than deep discounts and cheap goods at Shopwell’s. Are dark forces at play to keep the worker’s in a state of cult-like submission?

Along the way, Sherri tries to balance her secret investigation with a new romantic interest, Ben, a charming short order cook, and the guilt of the boyfriend she left back home in the city. She also begins to have suspicions that her Uncle, who also works at Shopwell’s, may have sinister motives himself…

We have a draft!

We edited hard for seven days and today at 3 p.m. my editor and I made it to the finish line. I can’t recall the last time I had this feeling of profound accomplishment and giddy euphoria!

HUGE thanks to my tireless editor, R. David Stephens, and my publisher, Mike Katz of Tradewind Books.

One task remains: The title. Since the book was first conceived at the Muskoka Novel Marathon way back in 2004, through its reincarnation as my UBC creative writing thesis, it’s been called The Big Box. We’re changing it. (“That’s a bad title,” my publisher Mike says with his usual gentleness ) But what to??

I have a print out of the whole edited manuscript with me now. Tomorrow, my one edit-free day in Vancouver, I’ll take it down to Wreck Beach and see if anything leaps off the page as a suitable title.

The giddy honeymoon-style encounters between publisher and writer cannot last forever – as much as we might wish it.

Today brought a few more prickles. Maybe it was the crowds on Granville Island. It may be Canada Day, but my mind remained focused on one thing, despite the insane crowds in red and white: Edit your fool face off. It was so nuts that, when I ducked out for food midday, I had to sneak through the Canada Day parade to make it back to the Tradewind offices on Maritime Mews.

Maybe it was because we were all a bit more comfortable with each other, a bit less hesitant to blurt out our issues with the manuscript. Or maybe jetlag was just playing havoc with my brain… in any case, there was a bit more writerly back and forth sniping during this second full day of editing. I.e.

“What do you mean??”

“Don’t just snort! Tell me what’s wrong with it!”

“Seriously, do we have to arm wrestle over this point?”

Still, after the morning crabiness we hit our stride and, by the time 5:30 rolled around (right about when my brain was set to turn to a fine paste and ooze out my ears) I was back to being massively delighted with the whole process.

It didn’t hurt that I capped off the day with a fab catch-up dinner with my idol of YA writing, Governor General’s Award-Winning author Glen Huser. Pick up his new novel, The Runaway. It will grab your from the first page. Glen is immensely talented AND his manuscript went through the same line-by-line edit that I’m enduring now. How can you go wrong? www.glenhuser.com

You know that feeling you get after an amazingly brutal workout? Your muscles ache and you could drop because you’re so exhausted but, damn, you feel good?  Finishing a solid day of editing has left me with the same feelings. Just add in a mushy brain barely able to distinguish one work from another and you’re totally there.

I met with Mike and David at the Tradewind Books offices on Granville Island this morning at 10. For the next six hours, we sat at the computer and read the manuscript, sentence-by-sentence, debating, re-working, re-ordering, and re-editing as we went along. That may sound deadly dull but, in truth, there is nothing so exhilarating as watching the rough, ill-fitted edges of your writing slide together into polished perfection.

The going may be slow, but the work is so satisfying. This will be a book I can be proud of.

Now, while jet lag and brain mushiness are urging me sleep, I’m going to pull out a few of the Tradewind titles I came away with today – including Glen Huser’s new novel, The Runaway – and get a taste of how good the end product can be. More tomorrow…

Goal for tomorrow: 30 pages.

On the ground in Vancouver for all of one hour and I was easy to find – holed up at One More Sushi on the UBC campus, sipping sake and nom nom noming on nigiri. This is always the easy part of the writing, isn’t it? The setting. I’ve got the lush BC trees, the familiar, spare dorm rooms, the campus that doubled as Cloud 9 on Battlestar Galactica (google it. If you’re a nerd, it’s cool) and the sense that you have to do absolutely ZERO work to actually feel like a writer…

That ends tomorrow at 10 a.m. when I waltz into Tradewind books for the first time. I’ve work with Editor R. David Stephens and publisher Michael Katz since last August but, while I’ve spoken to both on the phone and edited the pants off of my manuscript (my manuscripts are always stylishly dressed) based on our e-encounters, we’ve not yet met face-to-face.

A welcome email from David tonight has me both excited and tres nervous: “I AM FOCUSED AND RELENTLESS,” David writes. “You will have to ask for a break (no problem).”

Eep.

“WE WILL HAVE FUN!”

I sure hope so! If it gets too intense, hey, we’re on Granville Island! The Granville Island Brewery is a step away and the craft sake brewery is two steps the other way I’ll survive. Probably. I’ll let you know what an intense day of editing is like tomorrow… Perhaps with a glass of Granville Island brew in my hand…

Cheers,

Rachel

Sitting at YYZ en route to YVR (neck muscles JUST beginning to loosen after the usual insanity that is Air Canada check-in and security clearance.)

With the manuscript already in my publisher’s hands, all ready for us to rip apart tomorrow, I realize this is the first flight I’ve taken in a LONG without a writing deadline looming when I land. What do the non-writerly folk do to pass the time on a plane??? Entering foreign territory here…

I’ll be staying back on campus at UBC, where I completed my MFA in creative writing in 2009. Here’s hoping the nostalgia inspires some hardcore writerly vibes…

Calling my flight – huzzah!

Your lowly scribe has a VERY good reason for dropping below radar range for the last little bit: I’ve been writing! Not only writing – which can sometimes lead only to teeth gnashing and trashed drafts – but making progress at writing. Bonus.

I completed a complete draft of the manuscript, The Big Box, on Sunday evening, June 26th. Huzzah!

Tomorrow I’m off to Vancouver to the offices of Tradewind books on Granville Island where I will be working with editor R. David Stephens and publisher Michael Katz to polish the text until in gleams. Or perhaps just smashing my face into a keyboard and staring longingly at the Granville Island Brewery across the way as we perform major surgery. We shall see…

I’ll try to provide some sneak peeks into the mysterious professional editing process…

March 7 and I’m at 35, 225 words as of this afternoon.

I’ve found the daily word count an essential component of this writer’s toolbox. Without a daily deadline, it’s too easy to let one, two (eep!) THREE days slide by without showing up at the page. With a word count, there is a definite goal each day – and a definite consequence for not meeting that goal. Only wrote 500 words today? Well, tomorrow you’ve got 1,500.

There is no escape. Kind of essential for a craft that thrives on escapism.

If all of this sounds like a heck of a lot of mental energy, it is. Can’t sum it up any better than the following quote:

“I’m not happy when I’m writing, but I’m more unhappy when I’m not.” Fannie Hurst