Having long admired fellow mid-souther Shelli Johannes Welles’s blog, Market My Words, I am a bit agog to find myself on it.  (Well, I answered the interview questions; I can’t be that surprised.)  So if you still have a yen to hear my thoughts, you can head on over there to see what I said.   More importantly, though, you can read the other entries and pick up marketing tips! 

In other news, I went to The ALA C onference (American Library Association) this weekend in DC, and it was awesome!  I can’t wait to post pics and share tales.  Preview: teens weighing in about YALSA picks; book-cart drill team; Will Shortz.

I also look forward to telling you about how I’m seriously considering killing of one of my characters (meaning editing her out, not killing her in the book) and how great that will be if it’s the right choice.  But I must return to said manuscript and reread in its entirety today, so back to’it, missy!

Today, I am proud to have a guest post in Lindsey Leavitt’s monthlong series, “The Impact Initiative.”  Her middle-grade novel, Princess for Hire, has a theme of making an impact on people, and to integrate that into own life, Lindsey invited fellow writers onto her blog to talk about things that have made an impact on them.   She’s also giving away copies of her book, and I have kicked in a Nice and Mean as well.  So you can go and be enlightened and win free stuff.  Not bad for an internet break!

A note about Lindsey: first, she has one of the funniest writing voices on the web.  I’m sure you’ll agree when you check out her blog.  Second, at any good bookstore, you will find me and Lindsey together.  No, not in person, although if could clone ourselves and be constantly selling our books–cool.  (Or creepy?  Yeah, no, definitely creepy.)  I just meant that she is LEAvitt and I am LEAder, and our books like to hang out together, as pictured below.

I must confess that I hadn’t read many Impact Initiative entries until last night, when I sat down to write mine, but ohh!  These are seriously good pieces.  They’re diverse and true and memorable.  I encourage you to go read them all, and then pressure Lindsey to turn them into a book.  Because I know she doesn’t have a lot going on right now.  (Kidding!  Kidding!)

Thanks, Lindsey, for making an impact on me.  

Now, go read!

The Louisville press has been very generous to me with their time and affections!  Click here to read Erin Keane’s article, the cover of the Courier-Journal Sunday Arts section, “The angst of 13: Writer catches voice, reality of tweens.”

My favorite part:

“[Leader did not] set out to change the world in which [her characters] would live. Even when the story is resolved, there’s no evidence that Marina and Sachi will overcome their differences and social ranks to become best friends forever. She might not be writing about vampires, but Leader knows the difference between middle-school fantasy and reality.

‘I wasn’t trying to make it a manual for girl empowerment. I’ve seen books where the author tries to do that, and in addition to being unpleasant to read, it kind of tanks the story line,” she said. “I really wanted to write something that felt real. The characters aren’t going to start integrating their lunch tables in the end. That just wouldn’t happen.’

And the LEO (Louisville Eccentric Observer) wrote a luffly plug for my reading here Louisville on Friday:

Local author Jessica Leader is basking in the glow of the reviews for “Nice and Mean,” her recently published novel of cooperation and ambition among the middle school set. This first book by the former New Yorker and Actors Theatre teacher has landed a prominent place among recommended children’s titles for summer reading. Leader has multiple area events scheduled throughout the summer, but the Hurstbourne Borders gets first crack with a signing party Friday evening. The author gets high marks for her ability to capture the tween voice while piling on realistic conflict, and she can be expected to lead an engaging and entertaining event for an age group that should be encouraged to read at every opportunity. If you’ve got a tween, by all means, drag ’em away from the video screens and get ’em here. —T.E. Lyons

I recently got an interview request from Louisville Magazine to share my thoughts about books.  A thrill!  Anyone who hasn’t read E. Lockhart surely must, and I will tell them so.  Also the fine nature of Curtis Sittenfeld’s “American Wife” must be trumpeted. They also asked me, Which book do you think should be required for high school students?

You’d think, what with all my opinions and the fact that I taught middle-school for quite a while, I’d be able to name one, but I am having the hardest time with that question!  Part of the trouble is that I’ve been traveling since I got the interview request, so I haven’t been able to look at the bookshelf, but I can picture it pretty well and can’t seem to name anything perfect.

I offered The Passion, by Jeanette Winterson, since, as Queen says (although not about this book), it is “guaranteed to blow your mind” if you are in high school.  A story about Napoleon’s chicken-cook and a girl with webbed feet, set in Venice, The Passion has history, love, world-melting, and beautiful language.  But does it expose the reader to new insights about the actual world?  Does it help develop empathy?  (It may, and maybe I just can’t remember, but that doesn’t seem to be one of its salient features, and high-school students can be so grounded in their own worldview that I’d want to recommend a book that forces discussion of differences.

For that, I might recommend The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver, about four sisters stuck on their parents’ mad mission trip to the Congo.  Kingsolver alternates perspectives and each girl’s voice is amazingly distinct; we learn about history and geography, we’re moved by the stories, and the problems of Colonialism would spark a meaty discussion.  But the book is pretty accessible, and if I get to make students read something, shouldn’t it be something they might not finish on their own?

Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex might strike a good balance between The Poisonwood Bible and The Passion.  A story about an intersex kid growing up in Michigan, the granddaughter of Greek immigrants, this book won a Pulitzer Prize and is both world-broadening and stylistically cool.  But is the book a little cold?  Would high-school students want to keep going with it?

Oh, maybe Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison.  Everyone in my sophomore-year English class loved this story, about four generations of African-Americans in the south, for the rich language, aforementioned world-melting nature, and the fact that it recounted an experience outside of our own.  Hmm, that is definitely seeming like the most likely contender so far, maybe because I have firsthand experience of what it felt like to read it.  It was like hiking through the woods only to come upon a glacier field–gorgeous, unique, and totally unexpected.  On the other hand, this is already on lots of lists.  I want to make a splash in my fictional curriculum!

Any thoughts, reader friends?  What do you think all high-school students should read, and why?

I did an interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal that’s going to run tomorrow (Sunday.)  Since so many newspapers put their content online in advance, I ventured to the internets to see if I could get a preview.

A preview was indeed what I got, as in a teaser that did not give the full story, so now I am very curious!  I get the sense it will be positive (features usually are), but there’s still that lingering wonder of, “What did I say that they will and won’t use?  Will they emphasize something I said that was totally uninformed/dorky/not really representative of me, even though I said it?”  What direction do you think this will go in?

In Arts

Author Jessica Leader has gone where few adults dare: back to seventh grade. If diving into the emotional lives of 13-year-old girls sounds as dangerous as swimming with sharks, Leader is living proof that you can go home again and emerge unscathed.

I’m wondering if it will show that even if the characters in Nice and Mean are, by turns, catty, manipulative, insecure and over-dramatic (and creative and resourceful and resilient, of course)–their creator, moi, is mature, thoughtful, poised, the possessor of excellently polished toenails, &c &c.  So I can’t wait to read it.

I am sure it will mention my toenails.

Wellesley Booksmith Party.  More friends!  More strangers!  More ways to share Nice and Mean!

For this event, I actually read, and it was so fun!  Once again, I was thrilled by the people who came.  Grad school friends who drove in from Cape Cod and Massachusetts!  Friends of friends—one of whom I’d co-bridesmaided with back in 2001!  My very first boss from when I was a camp counselor and her 9-year-old daughter!  Writers I’d met on the internets, one of whom blogged about the event in such vivid detail that I’m gobsmacked to have this record of it.  All this in addition to friends I see frequently and, once again, some people I’d never met who just thought the book sounded good.

Probably the best thing about giving the reading was hearing people laugh.  I shared Sachi’s chapter three, in which she picks her little sister up from school. (This is the second time I’ve mentioned that chapter here.  I’m obviously attached to it.)  Everybody is saying, “Pallavi is the princess!”  Sachi asks, “Wow, how’d that happen?” and Pallavi says something to the effect of, “I don’t know!  I just asked everybody, ‘Who wants me to be the princess?’ and they all said, ‘I do!’ and so I was!”  I hardly base anything in my books on real life—whenever something does slip in, it’s usually the first to get cut—but this incident was actually inspired by the daughter of a friend of mine, and apparently everybody else thought it was just as funny as I did.  Hooray for laughter!

I had a few special effects that I was proud of, too.  One was the Nice and Mean Memories Clothesline—ribbons I’d strung up along with slips of paper to share their Nice or Mean memories.  I did this in New York, too, and some fun ones have emerged, such as, “I drove my 8^th-grade teacher, who was a nun, crazy.”  I actually know who wrote this and the story involves writing fake diary entries about time spent as a Satanist.  I feel bad for the nun, but this story always makes me laugh, and I like having it preserved on the Mean Clothesline.

Ticket to anywhere blogged about the Q&A session, so if you’re curious about what people wanted to know after the reading, head on over.  You can also win the copy that I signed for her!

I’m so grateful to the bookstore for hosting me.  When I asked New Englanders where I should have my Boston party, I heard almost unanimously, “The Wellesley Booksmith.”  It’s not hard to see why: they have fantastic write-ups of books classic and new; they have a vast collection of gently used books in the basement; their toys and favors don’t seem too commercial; and their staff is helpful and fun.  I hope to return there soon, possibly as an author, but most likely as a customer!

Me and lovely Vermont College grad school peeps! (Sorry they are so small…I have had it up to Here with WordPress, though!)

School Visit in Providence! One of the great highlights of the month.

As you may know, I used to teach middle-school English, so the chance to be back in a middle-school English classroom was like a little slice of heaven with the smell of grape gum.

The teacher suggested that before I start my presentation, I do a quick go-around with the students.  I was a little hesitant, since there were 30 of them and I worried that they might get bored of listening to each other, but it ended up breaking the ice and giving me a great sense of the kids.  Since the presentation was called The Journey of a Book, I had already planned to ask who in the class considered themselves artists of any kind, so I did that in the go-around, and I loved hearing how kids identified themselves—writer, drawer, comic-book illustrator, rapper.  A couple of them asked, “Is playing soccer an art?” or “is reading an art?” and I said, “If you think it is, it is.”  I also gave props to the kids who said, “I’m not an artist,” because hey, not everyone has to be an artist, but it takes courage to say that when everyone else is declaring their major.

One of my favorite parts of the presentation, and I hope to integrate more elements like this, came when I talked about revising.  This school, like the ones I taught at, heartily emphasizes revising, but as I discussed with some teachers recently, kids often have trouble getting enough perspective on their work to understand how to change it.  (And why do I say “kids”?  Adults have this problem all the time!  I am one of them!)

(pic of me sharing my writer’s notebook. It’s not just for kids!)

To bring them into the world of revision, I told them about two different chapters I’d initially thought were so great but came to see as greatly in need of change.  One scene in which Sachi watched a movie with her sister became Sachi picking her up from after-school; the scene where Marina confesses to Sachi that she accidentally dislocated her sister’s arm the summer before was eliminated completely, in favor of a new emotional moment between the two girls.

When I asked the class, “Do you know why I made those changes?” their answers were spot-on.  They really got how a scene with a movie could render interactions lifeless, and that a confession about the summer before wasn’t as relevant as progress in the current activity.  I loved that I could draw them into the process of seeing something that I once hadn’t been able to see myself.

Both groups asked thought-provoking questions, too, and I’m sorry I don’t remember them better, but I know I liked them, because my host teacher gently teased me for saying, “That’s a good question” over and over.  I do remember, though, when I got to ask them questions, and learned that one of them was writing a play based on his group of friends, about a group of heroes who fights to save the US from people who want to turn it back into a monarchy.  How creative is that?  Another girl won an award for a fairy tale about…shoot!  I can’t remember.  But it was great.

I continue to feel at sea over the fact that my writing career has nudged aside my career as a full-time teacher.  I’m still not sure how that one’s going to end.  However, I’m so glad that the one is able to feed the other, because I felt very full after my day at that Providence school.

As I sit down in my mom’s apartment to write about my very first book party ever in this world, planet and universe, major construction is taking place above my head.  I cannot for the life of me imagine what kind of remodeling they are doing up there, but it sounds like they are thumping down huge Grecian pillars that will burst through the ceiling at any moment.  After the events of this past week, I can pretty much die happy, but I’m also going to put in a vote that I get to keep living.  Now that I know how much fun there is to be had when your book comes out, I want to get in as much as possible.

The first book party event took place at The Bank Street Bookstore.  Because the bookstore is somehow affiliated with the K-8 school and the teachers’ college of the same name, it doesn’t just have excellent books—it has kits for science experiments and homemade soap!  I felt right at home and got to work setting up.

We had mad food, man.  My mom had volunteered/been deputized/kind of been forced since I was getting in so late to shop, and there was a lot to lay out—including the book-cover cake that my partner commissioned from the Food Emporium and the mom-designed napkins!  I’m sure there is some teenage version of myself that thinks these are a little, I don’t know, hinky, but the adult me is like, “This is great!”

The next stage of the game was the advent of people who made me want to cry with happiness.  Which was pretty much all of them.  The first guests were high-school students I’d met doing research for the novel.  One of them had randomly contacted me a few days before the launch (quote from email: “i hope you’re not a weird old person who doesn’t get crazy teen abbreviations”)—and I’d invited him to the party, so I was thrilled when he came (from Long Island!) and brought one of the girls who was on the trip as well (from Connecticut!)

Let’s see, who made me cry next?  DP, one of my incredibly talented classmates from the Vermont College MFA, up all the way from Brooklyn where she teaches.  So great to see her, although I didn’t get to snap a pic.  My 9th-grade English teacher, who for years read drafts of my novels.  Family friend Suzy, who inspired me to write for kids in the first place.  The principal of the school where I taught, who every year makes that school even cooler.  Old friends.  Parents of old friends.  My sister’s friends.  My partner’s friends.  My partner’s mom, down from Syracuse.  My agent, and her three adorable children.  Amazing grad school writers.  Lots and lots and lots of people.  I was really moved.

One notable moment: Seeing my mom, my 9th-grade English teacher and my agent talking and thinking, “Collectively, they all know way too much about me!  I’m not going anywhere near that conversation!”

Another notable experience: after hearing many Tenners advise on the subject, I’d decided not to read from Nice and Mean.  I’d been advised, “Socialize!” and had set it up more like a party than a reading, although my display did draw in a 5th-grader, who asked her mom to buy a copy.  Partly I was following the Tenners’ advice in my set-up, but frankly, there were so many amazing writers at the party (see below), and the thought of reading in front of them reminded me of little girls who pull their dresses over their heads in public.  You’re like, “Yeah, that’s kind of cute—but not here.”

But you know what?  After the party, even though everybody was so nice and congratulatory, I had a strange little feeling like something was missing.  (Ogads—they’ve started dismantling the temple again upstairs!  They are seriously going to kill us all!  Hold on, must change rooms.)  All right, what was I saying?  Yes—something was missing.  It was like going to a wedding shower and not having someone open the presents—a piece of theatre that didn’t have the catharsis.  When I read in Boston on Monday (and I will post about that in a moment), I thought, Ahh!  This is what the book release occasion needs!

I honestly don’t know if I would do things differently if I had the chance again; I still shudder a little to think of reading in front of some of those guys, which is idiotic, since most of them are from grad school and we’ve all done the writerly equivalent of seeing each other in our underwear anyway.  (That is a metaphor.  Vermont College is not a hook-up scene, believe me.)  I guess I’ll just file those observations under “things to remember next time you are nervous,” but mostly, I file this night under E for Excellent.  Thanks again for coming, everyone.

Congratulations to Miss Kallie, the winner of the Nice and Mean Giveaway contest! Miss Kallie will win a signed copy of Nice and Mean, her first choice of the books in the giveaway, and lots of fun swag.

Send me an email (jess@jessicaleader.com) and let me know which book you would like as well as your mailing address. I will mail it sometime early next week.

Thanks to everyone who voted in the polls, shared comments about nice and mean characters, etc.! You made my launch week fun. And if you need anything further from me, well, you know where to find me.

Coming soon: reports from the book parties. Nice friends and pretty pictures!!

Hey, everyone!  Thank you so much for taking part in the Nice and Mean blog tour! 

Don’t forget–to win the Grand Prize that includes your very own copy of Nice and Mean, you have to leave a comment on this blog tallying up your points.  I will announce the winner by Wednesday, June 16th.  Get out your calculators, my friends!

It’s been so fun to read your thoughts throughout the week, especially your own favorite Nice or Mean characters (thank you, Page Flipper!) and your thoughts on whether you are nice or mean (GreenBeanTeenQueen.)  

Thanks, too, to my wonderful hosts, who went along for the ride and occasionally had to battle Blogger.  The Story Siren, Green Bean Teen Queen, The Page Flipper, Reading in Color and Laurens Crammed Bookshelf are great!

This whole week, in fact, has been great.  The NYC book launch party brought friends from all walks of life, including two kids I met on a research trip last year who journeyed into the city just for this!  I’m looking forward to uploading pictures etc.

Now, though, I’m off to throw a wedding shower for my best friend.  She has been so wonderfully supportive throughout the whole book-launch process, and I can’t wait to shower her with a very cool game I’ve devised. 

Have a good Sunday, everyone!

ps We have one winner so far from the blog tour stops–Caitlin  Can’t wait to connect with the other winners!