Made a Wordle.

I'm dusting off the blog. This is important.


According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, "more than half of the youth interviewed during shelter stays reported that their parents either told them to leave or knew they were leaving and did not care" (http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/youth.html). Among homeless youth, LGBTQ youths are disproportionately represented. It's not a great stretch to assume that these kids sexuality and their parents' inability to accept and approve is the core of the problem.

That's from the author's note in Brooklyn, Burning.

This is YouthLink. Read their "about" page, and read about their intervention services. They offer a place to hang out, help with education and career, and even a place to live.

And here's the point: beginning this Friday, and continuing on all Fridays right up till December 23, the Friday before Christmas, I'll be keeping a close eye on #FridayReads. For every #FridayReads for Brooklyn, Burning, I'll donate five dollars to YouthLink*. I'll also encourage readers to do the same, either by matching my five bucks, or by donating whatever you can.

Thanks. Please help spread the word.

*Details: Tweet must be on a Friday between 9/22/2011 and 12/23/2011, and must include the hashtag #fridayreads and my Twitter handle @sbrezenoff, and must include a photo of tweeter holding a copy of Brooklyn, Burning. It can totally be a library copy, so no purchase necessary. One donation per tweeter. Also, my limit is $500, because I am not a wealthy man.

In today's high-speed, Twittery world, this is undoubtedly old news,
but I wanted a good forum to quote from the two starred reviews
Brooklyn, Burning has received in the last couple of weeks.

From Publishers Weekly: "For readers with little use for labels, it's
an intimate yet wonderfully open rock ‘n' roll love story."

And from Kirkus: "A lyrical, understated punk-kid love song to Brooklyn
and to chosen family" and "Overall, the tone is as raw, down-to-earth
and transcendent as the music Scout and Kid ultimately make together."

The full text of the Kirkus review will be on their site in the next
few weeks, closer to the official release date.

A man whom I hardly know put a photo on the internet that depressed me
deeply.

Well, that's a little misleading. The man in question was a member of
my high school graduating class (Roslyn High School, 1992; go
Hilltoppers! Err, Bulldogs!*), and though we weren't in quite the same
social circle in our school daze, we did have some friends in common.
We were also unflichingly of the left. I remember fondly one time in
particular in Economics class that we bombarded our teacher with
leftist arguments while she tried to teach the roots of capitalism in
America. Poor lady.






The Dead at their most relevant




Anyway, the point is if there is one realm in which this boy (now
gentleman) and I didn't see eye to eye, it was music. That's because I
spent the years from 1988 till 1992 (give or take) interested almost
exclusively in music recorded between 1967 (say, Piper at the Gates of
Dawn, or the Grateful Dead's eponymous debut) and--well, as long as the
Dead recorded it, there was really no end date. I wore Pink Floyd
shirts throughout middle school. I wore Jethro Tull shirts, Led
Zeppelin, and of course tie-dye after tie-dye. There was a never-ending
stream of Dead shirts.






The Dead at their least relevant, when I saw them eleven times




This other boy (the one who recently posted a photo; try to keep up)
was what I would have called New Wave. I think that's appropriate. NIN
leather jacket. Jane's Addicition. Depeche Mode. The Cure. All that
sort of thing. It was very of the now (then), without being Top 40.
Keep in mind most of the years in question are 1991 or earlier, and as
we all know, 1991 is the year punk broke. So in 1992, when I finally
began to come around to my own generation's music, the rest of the
country was coming around too.






The Blake Babies, my favorite band (and genuinely of my own generation)
when I was 19 and 20 or so, by which time they had recently broken up.
Sad face



The late '80s and early '90s were something of a renaissance of Classic
Rock, perhaps. I think some of us were--in our deluded minds--rebelling
against an over-produced sound that seemed to dominate the contemporary
music. Turns out, that was a pretty shallow attitude, which is ironic,
because we thought we were being deep, I assure you.

So what was the picture he posted? A collage of his collected ticket
stubs from circa 1990. They were from some great bands, most of which
no longer exist. If I were to create a similar collage from that era,
it would be 90% Grateful Dead stubs, and here's where the depression
comes in. By obsessing over music from the past--some have called
it "our parent's music"; to be fair, not the case, since my parents
were jazz and Broadway fans--I ignored (and therefore forever missed)
the music of my own generation. I can listen to it now, and I do, but
I'll always know I wasn't a part of it, during its heyday, and its era
of creation and greatest relevance.

This is probably much ado about nothing. If you haven't noticed, I tend
to do that. Now I better connect it to young adult literature.
Shouldn't be a problem, because in a lot of YA lit (and teen movies,
actually), protagonists focus on nostalgia culture. In King Dork and
The House of Tomorrow**, music-obsessed characters hold the progenitors
of punk and New Wave up on high, and seem to think nothing of their
contemporary music. (You'll often find the same tendency when it comes
to film teens.)

Maybe it's a symptom of writing for people twenty years younger, but is
it a problem? Does the story lose verisimilitude if the main characters
don't adhere to their own generation's art? Of course not. Though most
of my friends didn't share my extreme Deadication, we all had
our "thing": one of us was big into be-bop and Kerouac; another stuck
with Tull; another Led Zep; and another adored Ronald Reagan. Don't ask.

The point is, do teens really look in the way-back machine for cultural
icons? Of course, and teen lit doesn't lose any believability by doing
the same. But that doesn't stop me from wanting to shake the
protagonist who wants to join the Rat Pack (or nowadays, even the Brat
Pack), or form the next Ramones, or talk like Clark Gable, or dance
like Betty Hutton, and shouting, "Live in the now, dammit! It won't be
now very long!" Then I'd walk off grumbling, "Youth is wasted on the
young."

I must be getting old.

*Some teams were the Hilltoppers (like track), and some were the
Bulldogs (like football). Who knows.

**The House of Tomorrow was not marketed as a YA novel, but it is one.
If you like realistic YA, go read it. Right now. Go. Why are you still
sitting there?

Attacks on YA literature don't generally faze me. I can take it. The
recent kerfuffle, for example, about how dark the literature is and
presumably how damaging, while slightly irritating, is a normal
reaction to teen culture. Similar diatribes have been spewed from
similarly puritan mouths for decades. (See "hips, Elvis," "haircuts,
Beatles," and "Manson, Marilyn.") The teens think it's hilarious, I
assure you, and as the creators and reviewers of YA literature, we
should take it in stride. No one of worth is taking such ideas
seriously, and it probably helps sell books.

But an article from Slate and making the Twitter rounds right now is
pissing me off.

That's because this article doesn't just attack the literature and the
authors thereof. (The article's authors are new authors of YA
literature themselves, and are probably leaning on the old "Jewish
Joke" law: humor that deprecates an entire group is okay as long as the
tellers are members of that group.) If it did, I'd roll my eyes, and
then roll over and go back to sleep.

But this article implies quite a little bit about the readers of young
adult fiction, giving them perhaps even less credit than Cox Gurdon
even did. While her article suggested that teens are impressionable (I
suppose they are) and should be protected from art (go eat a bag of
dicks), this article suggests that teens are something worse than
impressionable and weak children: they are vapid.

But readers in Y.A. don't care about rumination. They don't want you to
pore over your sentences trying to find the perfect turn of phrase that
evokes the exact color of the shag carpeting in your living room when
your dad walked out on your mom one autumn afternoon in 1973.

Clearly I have been wasting my time, torturing myself over tiny
portions of prose. Perhaps I do struggle a little to valiantly when I
describe the tone of a guitar, or the grittiness in a singer's voice,
or how good the Coke is at a bar in Greenpoint. But I don't think so.
And many teen readers hopefully won't think so either.

And here's another hot tip: YA fiction includes literary fiction,
despite what the authors might have you believe. YA fiction includes
work-for-hire series (like yours, authors of that article), and it
includes mysteries and romances and paranormal and novels that have
been the blood and soul and very breath of the author for a decade or
more, just like real grown-up books.

And you know what else? Adult fiction includes a tremendous amount of
crap, the authors of which very definitely did not struggle to create,
and did not spend hours on a single paragraph, and did not write draft
upon draft of each chapter. They wrote it "fast and loose," to use the
article authors' expression, and this reader, for one, can tell.

So please. In the future remember that if you write fast and loose, and
if you have no respect for your audience, it doesn't mean everyone
writing in your genre, in your demographic, in your coffee shop, is
harboring the same nasty ideas about fiction.

Now if, on the other hand, you wrote that article trying to sell your
book and knowing that the YA blogosphere and Twittersphere likes to
rail against stuff like this, and so will probably link your article
all over the place, well . . . kudos. Good thinking. But your series
sounds terrible.

There's a certain aspect of Brooklyn, Burning that I don't often talk
about--at least not in public circles--because I'd rather readers not
know about it when they pick up the book. I'm not going to talk about
it now, but I will talk around it a little.

It boils down to this: I have a big box of Brooklyn, Burning finals at
my feet right now, and I have an almost-finished trailer on my hard
drive. What I'd very much like is to give away some of those finals,
and finish the trailer.

The trailer needs voice-overs. Most of you reading this have voices. If
you give them to me, I will give you a final. It's as simple as that: I
have seven lines, and they need seven voices.

To get a final of Brooklyn, Burning, all you have to do is record one
of those lines in your voice (on something like Audacity, which is
free), and get the file to me. BAM! Free signed book.

Plus, you know . . . you'll be part of the voice-over for the Brooklyn,
Burning trailer.

I'm going to take the first seven people I get, with one caveat: I need
at least three boy voices, and at least three girl voices. The
seventh . . . that can be a wild card. If it comes down to a tie, I
suppose I'll have to make a judgment call based on your acting skills!
Pray it doesn't come to that. Oh, and please be thirteen or older.

So, to volunteer, please comment on this post, or @ me on Twitter, or
drop a comment on the Brooklyn, Burning Facebook page. Then I'll
contact you with the line I'd like you to record.

I hope this works, because I really want to finish this trailer, and I
really want to give you a book!

I told you I was a total zombie mess the other day. It stands to reason
I would have forgotten some BEA-related things I meant to mention. Here
they are, in no particular order.

I got this sweet watch. It's a G train watch, so it represents my time
in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, but more importantly it represents Brooklyn,
Burning, in which Greenpoint is essentially a freaking character.
Here's the designer site, and if you like it and want one, you can
totally get one too!

Also, I met Jamie, who came in second in the recent
Twitter/blog/Facebook three-words hometown contest. She won a signed
copy of The Absolute Value of -1, and through hell and highwater (and
my own forgetfulness), I eventually managed to get it to her! Here's a
photo of us, after she had forgiven me for forgetting the book a couple
of times.

Also, I met David, the Largehearted Boy, which was excellent for a
couple of reasons. First, heck of a guy, with a great blog--music and
books, people. What else is there? Nothing, that's what. Second, he
told me an event he planned for September in Brooklyn for myself and
another author is confirmed! I'll have the details for you soon. Here's
a hint: it's in Greenpoint. Also, since this is a Largehearted Boy
event, there will be live music.

Finally, Beth and I had lunch with the inimitable ENIV, and he let me
pitch all four of my WIPs at him in rapid succession, and one of them
got him all excited, so I know where to direct my energies now! It's a
good feeling. Over the next couple of months, I have my work cut out
for me, but I know it will be worth it, and that's nice.

Bye!

I'm exhausted. I'm beyond exhausted. Zombies are productive, coherent,
and fine company compared to me right now. They also probably smell
better. To the right is an actual photo from the Javits Center, taken
at 8 this morning. I totally swear.

BEA is over. Some awesomeness that occurred for me:

My (more exhausted than me, I've no doubt, since she was at the expo
three days in a row and probably needs new feet) wife scored me an ARC
of Sara Zarr's new one, How to Save a Life, and I've already started it
and it's excellent, and I wonder if maybe it's her best work! Honestly,
Mandy is a character you will not soon forget.

I also had the distinct pleasure of meeting (and briefly discussing
beer with) Lisa McMann. Bonus: scored an ARC of the The Unwanteds, too.

And finally, right time/right place, I was the first lucky stiff to
grab Micol Ostow's autograph on my hardcover of Family. Score.

For me and my book, the crux of it was an hour this morning. That's
when I signed the first shipment of Brooklyn, Burning finals. The cover
is shiny!


So the signing went well. I was super happy and shocked to see people
lining up even a little in advance of the scheduled signing time.

Speaking of shiny finals, my author copies should be arriving soon.
When they do, more giveaways are totally in the stars, I think. Don't
you?

I have some exciting event news as well, but I'm not telling you yet,
because I want it to get its own freaking blog entry. Or else I'll just
shout it on Twitter. I don't know.

My trip to New York for BEA and more begins tomorrow, at the crack of
holy crap it's early.

I announced the winners of the ARC giveaway. I did so on Twitter, since
both winners Twittered their entries. For your enjoyment, here they are:



So anyway. BEA. I'll be at the tail end of the SLJ Day of Dialogue. I'm
not sure what I'll be doing there. Signing books? Meeting librarians?
Both seem fun! I'll also be at the expo itself, signing copies of
Brooklyn, Burning on Thursday at 9:30 in the autographing area. I hope
to see some of you there!

In other news, I've started yet another project, with three unfinished
WIPs already up to my knees. I hope my agent won't murder me when I see
him in New York.

It's almost one now, so the morning is officially over, and it couldn't
end soon enough. It sucked. The upshot is that I need a new right-side
mirror for my car and I might have a stomach bug.

My wife has a photography blog. Its theme, as the name says, is "one
great thing" from the day. It's an exercise, if you like, that forces
her to focus on the positive. So this afternoon, I'm taking a cue from
her. Here are some things I saw today that I enjoyed:


- A man of about 70 with a proud Elvis Presley hairstyle. Bonus because
he was in a work shirt with a name patch: Steve.
- A woman, probably 50 or so years old and heavyset, wearing a gleaming
white cloak and a leather satchel around her mid-section, hanging from
shoulder to hip such that the pockets sat on her belly and chest. A
Celtic-looking medallion hung from her neck.
- "Walk with Prehistoric Beasts" is on Netflix Watch Instantly. I like
the bear dogs.
I suppose that'll do for now. In other news, Brooklyn, Burning is now
at 100+ adds on Goodreads, so the ARC contest has begun. To enter,
comment here, on the Brooklyn, Burning Facebook page, or on Twitter (be
sure to @ me: sbrezenoff) with three words that sum up why you love
your hometown/city/neighborhood. For example, in Brooklyn, Burning, Kid
sums up Brooklyn like this: "blocks and bridges and bottles." Three
words! One winner will receive an ARC of Brooklyn, Burning. Second
place gets a copy of |-1|. The contest ends at midnight on Saturday,
May 14.