Saturday’s Reading at Destinations Booksellers in New Albany, IN!

I’m so grateful to Andy and Randy at Destinations Booksellers and to everyone who came indoors during a completely glorious summer afternoon to hear me read and answer questions about Nice and Mean.  Thanks especially to the cool mom who brought these fun kids!  (She’s taking the picture.)  They also won an author visit from me on behalf of their middle school, and I can’t wait to set it up, in part because I need to do a better job at answering one girl’s question.

The Q&A about the book veered toward the subject of meanness, and one of the girls, not pictured here, asked, “If you had a daughter this age, what would you tell her if people were being mean, the way they were in this book?”

“Ooh,” I said, “that’s a really good question.” (Apparently this is what I automatically say when I don’t have an answer ready, which is one sign of a good question.)  “It’s such a good question that I’m not even sure I can answer it well right now, but I’ll try.”

I said something to the effect that there will probably always be mean people and they’re not likely to change a ton, but if you are a nice person, people will notice.  Classmates and teachers will notice your including someone who isn’t well-liked, or going out of your way to support a friend, or having the character to engage people in interesting conversations.  And it may not pay off right now, in elementary or middle school, but as you get older, people will seek you out for friendships and positions of responsibility, and you will be a happier person than the person whose main means of pulling themselves up is putting others down.

“How’s that?” I asked the girl.  “On a scale of tiny to huge, how helpful?”

She gave what I can best describe as a look of kindness, although that’s not quite it.  “It’s okay for now,” she said.

Well, phew.  But I went home and thought about it some more, and I came up with a longer answer–so long, I created a new post.  But thank you, brave middle-school student, for asking me that question, and thanks to everyone else at Destinations Booksellers who created an environment where she felt comfortable asking.  I admire you all.

Coming soon: an 8-step plan for dealing with meanness in school.

[That is an image from the unparalleledly wonderful movie Grease 2, featuring the song “Back to School.”  In case you didn’t know.]

For the first time in several years, I had my own back-to-school on the day itself!.  I taught middle-school English and drama for quite a chunk of years, but for the last few, have worked as a teaching artist through Actors Theatre of Louisville, visiting classrooms to teach playwriting.  This year, I’m doing a more formal partnership with a high school in town, so I got to attend the first day of school yesterday, and it actually put me in the mind of some fictional kids about to start the school year–Sachi and Marina, the girls of Nice and Mean.

I haven’t written about them in a while, I know; frankly, since I took a little appearances hiatus in the middle of the summer, I haven’t thought about them much, either.  But yesterday, seeing the neighborhood girls head back to school with little dresses and blown-out hair, I thought about what Marina and Sachi’s first day of school would have been like.  Nice and Mean begins a few week after school has started, but Sachi knew as early as the summer that her goal was to get into video elective, where her video would allow her to show people that she was more than just the stereotypical Indian honor-roll student.  Marina wouldn’t yet have been pissed off at her best friend to want to seek revenge, but I could certainly see her wanting to put together le perfect outfit.

I also thought about my own first days.  Like 11th grade, my second year at that school, when I came back from the summer relieved to find that the friends I’d made during the second half of the year were actually friends for real–and one of them had also crushed on a long-haired guitar-playing Brown University student who’d studied in Ecuador!  (She is still my best friend, and we still share a startling number of things in common.)  Or 8th grade, when I was determined to wear a flowered, Indian-print t-shirt on the first day, even though our school technically had a collared-shirt dress code.

(What the heck–why did it take so many scroll-downs to find the correct image for ‘granola shirt’?  Do you mean to tell me people aren’t using the same nomenclature from the late ’80s?)

It all led to me to a new poll (and frankly, I should have retired the old one a month ago; sorry)–what’s do you consider the best  thing about going back to school?

[Arg, I couldn’t get the poll to embed, so just look over to the left there–you should see the poll.]

You can vote for more than one thing and add your own answers. I look forward to seeing the results!

Thanks to Traveling ARC Tours (I spelled ‘traveling’ right!  No, that’s not what I have to thank them for)–Nice and Mean has been getting some lovely reviews of late.  You might want to read some of these and check out the other informative reviews on the blogs:

My favorite observation from Tiffany’s Bookshelf:  “The tolerance taught in the book is more than just cultural.  It is tolerance of anyone different from you, which, let’s face it, to a middle school reader, that is everyone.”  I just think that is so pithy and hilarious.

The Bookshipper writes, “I read this book in one sitting – it was fun, deep in some spots and funny in others – a perfect blend – just like our two main characters.”

Thank you, Bookshipper!  I’m bedazzled to think of you reading the book in one sitting.  Although maybe that’s partly because I find it so hard to read some of my own writing without wanting a cheese sandwich.

I hope these reviews will translate into actual tweens getting their hands on the book!  One approach I’m going to undertake will be a giveaway to teachers or school librarians in August or September–free books and free Skype visits to the lucky winner!  If you are a teacher or school librarian, feel free to email me at jess@jessicaleader.com so I can be sure to include you when I spread the word.

Now, back to the woods!

1) Nice and Mean will be featured as New Moon Magazine’s September/October book of the month!  The issue’s theme is popularity, and I agree with the books editor that Nice and Mean could spark some useful discussions of that issue.  There will also be a video contest, since the book focuses on a video class, and if you win the contest, you win a copy of the book!  I can’t wait to see what the readers come up with here.

2) The Louisville-Courier Journal will feature a new story of mine, NOT THAT GIRL, in its August issue–in serial, no less!  The story is set in Kentucky during the back-to-school season, and I love the thought of knowing that readers will experience it during the appropriate season.  There’s just something about going back to school–or even back to work after summer–that makes you/one/me reevaluate priorities and open fresh wounds–and I like the thought of readers being in that mode when they read the story. 

(It’s also a little nerve-wracking to think of putting a story in print without the 20-month waiting period that Nice and Mean has gotten me accustomed to, but I guess I will just have to deal.)

3) My fantastic web designer, WebsyDaisy (aka Jenny Medford), reconfigured my “books” page to include reviews.  I love having all the reviews of Nice and Mean in one place, and if you want to see what people are saying, head on over and say hi.

4) The 3rd bit of good news I can’t really talk about at this moment because I haven’t made a decision about it, but I suspect it will be good news, so I throw it into the Yay pile here, too! 

Have a good weekend, everyone!  I’m writing this on Thursday, but when this reaches you, I will be stepping in that river (see yesterday’s post.)

I will post some soon!  They have been better than nice–pretty swell.  You can check out the ones on GoodReads, The Book Scout’s, or the one from Booklist once theypost it on their website (guys, it’s July 1st. Don’t you think you should maybe post the July 1st issue?)

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

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!!