Happy Monday Everyone! Today I’m excited
to have debut Lindsay Eagar here to share about her magical realism MG HOUR OF THE
BEES. It has just the right combination of magic and contemporary that makes it
sound really good.
While her friends are spending their summers having pool parties and sleepovers, twelve-year-old Carolina — Carol — is spending hers in the middle of the New Mexico desert, helping her parents move the grandfather she’s never met into a home for people with dementia. At first, Carol avoids prickly Grandpa Serge. But as the summer wears on and the heat bears down, Carol finds herself drawn to him, fascinated by the crazy stories he tells her about a healing tree, a green-glass lake, and the bees that will bring back the rain and end a hundred years of drought. As the thin line between magic and reality starts to blur, Carol must decide for herself what is possible — and what it means to be true to her roots. Readers who dream that there’s something more out there will be enchanted by this captivating novel of family, renewal, and discovering the wonder of the world.
Hi Lindsay! Thanks so much for joining us!
1. Tell us about yourself and how you
became a writer.
I am a
twenty-something (for one more year!) born and raised in Utah, and I’ve always
been a writer and a storyteller. I wrote picture books as a young kid, I wrote
plays and ballets (and directed my poor siblings in them) when I was an older
kid, I wrote short stories as a preteen, and in junior high and high school I
carried a notebook everywhere, which I filled with fairy tale retellings and
outlines for gigantic, Tolkien-scaled fantasy series.
When I became a mother at 22, it was
a huge wake-up call. Never had I felt so empowered. If I can give birth and
keep a newborn alive, I reasoned, there was nothing I couldn’t do—including
finishing a book and getting published. Within six months I had finally written
a novel all the way through to the end. It was terrible, but I had done it!
2. That was an empowering realization. Where did you get the idea for HOUR OF THE
BEES?
BEES came in a flash—ten days, to be
exact, from the time I wrote down the title (which I had no context for) to the
time when I wrote the final paragraph. It was June 4, 2013. I had just trunked
another middle grade manuscript after rewriting it seven or eight times. I was
desperate to start something new, and desperate to work on something utterly
different—so I wrote about a girl and her grandfather, about the southwestern
desert, about the relationship between life and death, and about heritage and family
and stories.
Before I really had time to consider
its influences, or even where the kernel of the idea came from, I was finished
with the first draft. It was a very magical genesis, one I have not been able
to replicate since.
3. Sounds like it was a story that was meant to be told. Carol’s relationship with Grandpa Serge
sounds so cool and transformative for Carol. Share how that developed as you
wrote the story.
I always knew theirs would be the
central relationship. My own grandfather and I were very
close—I was the oldest
grandchild, and also his piano student, and when he died, it was unexpected and
jostling. I was thirteen. I was terrified. It was the first time I’d ever
experienced death in a personal way, and it set me on a lifelong path to accept
that death is a part of the life cycle.
Of course Carol and Grandpa Serge’s
relationship was nothing like my own relationship with my grandfather—my
characters are just meeting for the first time, and they are both very unsure
of each other. Carol is unsure of how to deal with Serge’s prickliness and his
dementia; Serge isn’t certain this granddaughter of his will understand the
legacy she carries in her blood. After all, her father, Carol’s dad, never
did—and that right there is what strengthened the central relationship in
edits. I fleshed out the other characters and relationships, and the final
product is a spider’s web of anger and resentment and history and introductions
that bind an entire family together.
4. What can you share about the magical
realism aspects of your story? What tips do you have about writing in this
genre?
The magical realism aspects were the
easiest and most rewarding to write. Since I was drafting so quickly (ten
days!) I didn’t really allow myself to stop and wonder, “Is this too weird?” I
just went for it, and the result is this magnificent, strange book that really
came straight from my subconscious without judgment or constraint.
I think that might be my first tip
for writing magical realism—go with the weird. If your initial idea seems too
weird to work, that might be an indication that it is perfect and exactly what the genre needs on its shelf. Magical
realism is such a wonderful opportunity to release expectations and be as
strange as you want to be.
Another tip is to ground your
magical realism in a strong “real life” world. One of the differences between magical
realism and fantasy is this idea that the magic takes place in a feasible
setting. The stronger I made my contemporary New Mexico setting, the stronger
the magical realism aspects became in contrast. They counterbalance each other.
That’s important.
5. Those are great tips. I read that you write much of your work
longhand. Is that still true? Share a bit about your writing process and how
you squeeze it in being a single mom.
I do write longhand! I dread staring
at computer screens, and my eyes easily strain so I do as much of the work with
pen and paper as possible. I love longhand for many reasons—it’s battery-less,
for one. It’s much less fragile than a laptop—my pages are often
coffee-stained, chocolate-smudged, and water-warped, and still usable. Most
importantly, longhand forces my brain to slow down and be thoughtful with my
words. I’m a fast writer, so I can still go into word-vomit mode and
successfully unhinge for that raw material that is so important for my first
drafts. But when I type up the word-vomit and print it out, and begin scouring
the material for the story underneath the muck and pretention… That’s when my
writing magic happens. Me and my blue Cristal Bic pens. (Always blue.)
I also love my paper and pen because
they remind me about flexibility and patience. I was a single mother for the
first five years of my daughter’s life, including the days when I worked on
BEES. During those days, I walked my daughter to a park, sat under a tree with
my notebook, and just worked—no Internet access, no electric outlet, just me
and blank pages waiting to be filled. I still work this way, even though I’m
married and much of my daily life has changed—my daughter is in kindergarten
now, which allows me three blissful hours a day to devote to writing in
solitude. Writing a few sentences here and there, even on days that seem far
too busy for writing… They add up. This is how books are written, my hard
copies remind me. One page, one sentence, one word at a time.
The other important part of my
process is layering through revision. My editor recently told me she loved
looking back at all my drafts on our projects, because she can see how well I
can add details, expand emotionally, and find new connective tissue between
characters with every new round of edits I do. If only there were an easier way
for me to revise!
6. Glad you like writing like that. I can't imagine not doing everything on the computer. Sarah Davies is your agent. How did she
became your agent and what was your road to publication like?
The story of how Sarah became my
agent goes like this.
Once upon a time, when I had first
finished a book and was researching how this whole publishing thing worked,
anyway, I googled children’s literary agents. Sarah Davies’ blog was one of the
first things that popped up, and I stayed up all night reading her entire
archive. Sarah is a special agent. She’s highly editorial, and her guidance
helped me not only polish BEES for submission to publishers, but also ponder my
own connection with the book and my writing process. She knows what makes a
good story. She works hard to ensure her titles are the kind of timeless,
quality work that will still be on shelves for years to come. Plus, she’s
killer at the business side of agenting—one of the top sellers in both YA and
MG fiction.
Suffice it to say, when I was ready
to query BEES, she was the dream agent at the top of the list. I became her
client the old-fashioned way—the query trenches. We edited BEES for a good six
months before submitting it to publishers, and in a real Pinch Me! moment of my
life, several editors were interested in buying my book. Kaylan Adair at
Candlewick Press won BEES in auction, and I am so grateful, because my editor
is my better half. She and I work so well together. I am very lucky.
7. How awesome you went to auction! What was something that has surprised you
about the time from signing your contract with your publisher to your book
being published?
The emotional whiplash of debuting
was a huge surprise. I feel like I entered the publishing arena with gratitude
and low expectations, and yet the ups and downs of debuting still got to me. I
don’t think anyone is immune, and I don’t think there’s any way around it.
There will be highlights, and great news, and terrible news, and stretches of
radio silence where you wonder if you made this whole I-sold-a-book thing up in
your head. There will be jealousies and friendships and lists you make and
lists you don’t make, and tweets about you and lukewarm reviews. No emotion is
off-limits and none of them make you a black-hearted ingrate—but some of them
can really wrench you inside-out. Above all this noise, a debut author has to find
her center, tune out the world, and get back to writing. This is the answer, no
matter the question—if your debut book soars and succeeds, you still have to
get back to writing. If your debut book tanks, you still have to get back to
writing.
BEES has been out for a month, and
some days it is still a struggle to remember why I wanted to do any of this:
because I am a storyteller, and I have still so many stories to tell.
8. Yes, I think all authors experience similar highs and lows. How are you promoting your book? Are
you networking with other authors?
I joined the Sweet Sixteeners right
after I sold my book, and it was honestly one of the best things for my book’s
promotion and also for my mental health! As much as I liked to scour the Internet
for advice from well-seasoned authors, it was so beneficial to learn with a
group of other newbies—we share together, we soar together, we fall together,
we comfort one another, we rant to one another, and we cheer each other on.
9. What are you working on now?
Right now I am wrapping up
developmental edits on my second middle grade with Candlewick Press. I’ve
spoken about it many times online already, so I won’t rehash old material, but
it is the book I trunked the night before I started BEES. It’s called RACE TO
THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA, and it is the culmination of all things ten-year-old
Lindsay would have wanted to read. It has sharks, pirates, marine biology,
death, star-crossed love, and candy. If HOUR OF THE BEES was the book of my
soul, RACE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA is the book of my heart. Working on this
book has been the exact opposite experience as BEES was—I have rewritten this
book so many times, I could wallpaper Vatican City with all the drafts. But I
am so excited to finally get it right and see this book on shelves. It is also
weird, but in an entirely different way.
After that, I begin edits on my
third middle grade with Candlewick Press. It is currently untitled, but it is a
mother/daughter story and it is also about Bigfoot. That’s all I can say about
it right now!
I’m also due to have a baby in the
summer, so I’ll be fast-drafting a YA project that has been plaguing me for
years, gearing up for another boost of empowerment after I squeeze a human
being out of my body! It’s amazing how motherhood can put so many things into
perspective, isn’t it?
Thanks for sharing all your advice,
Lindsay. Enjoy your new baby this summer! You can find Lindsay at: Twitter:
@lindsaymccall
Marvelous Middle Grade Monday was started by Shannon Messenger. You can find the participating blogs on her
blog.
Lindsay has generously offered an ARC of HOUR OF THE BEES for a giveaway. To enter, all you need to do is be a follower (just click the follow button if you’re not a follower) and leave a comment through April 23rd. If your e-mail is not on your Google Profile, you must leave it in the comments to enter the contest.
If you mention this contest on Twitter, Facebook, or your blog, mention this in the comments and I'll give you an extra entry. This giveaway is for U.S.
Here's what's coming up:
On Friday I'll be participating in the Showers of Books Giveaway Hop!
Next Monday I have a guest post by debut author Dee Romito and a giveaway of her MG contemporary THE BFF BUCKET LIST.
Wednesday next week I'm participating in NY Times bestseller author Lauren Oliver's blog tour and interviewing her (Pinch me! I'm so excited!) for her new MG THE SCREAMING STATUE with a giveaway of the first book in this series.
The following Monday I have a guest post with debut author Tobie Easton and her agent Jennifer Unter and a critique giveaway by Jennifer and a giveaway of EMERGE, Tobie's YA contemporary fantasy.
Monday the next week I have a guest post by debut author Janet Taylor and a giveaway of her YA magical realism WANDERING WILD
Wednesday that week editor L. Diane Wolfe from Lemur Press and Freedom Fox Press will be doing a guest post with a five page critique
Hope to see you on Friday!
