Timewaster's Guide Archive

One class now finished! Turned in the final paper today and we had our last day of class. Now, just have to finish this other paper and turn it in by Thursday afternoon, then I'm free!

I'm so not in the mood to work on it. I've kind of already checked out mentally. But it has never gone beyond that first draft I finished before Thanksgiving, so here I go again.

Every now and then I browse job listings just to see what's out there. I found this--thought Ookla and Brenna, at least, would have an interest:

Editor - Del Rey Books
Publication or Company  Random House U.S.A
Industry  Book Publishing
Salary  
Benefits Health
Job Duration Full Time
Job Location NEW YORK, NY USA
Job Requirements
About our company
Random House, Inc. is the world's largest general trade book publisher. It is a division of Bertelsmann AG, one of the foremost media companies in the world.

Your tasks
Del Rey Books seeks an Editor to join its team. Reporting to the VP & Editor in Chief, you will acquire, evaluate, develop and edit manuscripts and proposals. Responsibilities include: negotiating purchase of manuscripts with authors/agents, attending weekly meetings to discuss acquisitions, consulting with authors on content, style and format of publication and preparing/writing copy for books, catalogs and title information sheets. You will also establish and coordinate the editorial production and publication schedules as well as track through all stages until completion.

Our requirements
Candidates must have a minimum of 5 years book experience with a concentration in the sci-fi/fantasy genre as well as a solid track record of spearheading successful acquisitions. Correspondingly, you must also have proven agent relationships. Strong negotiation and conceptual editing skills are necessary.

Thank you for your interest in Random House. Random House is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

Submit application to
Please apply using our online application process.

Contact Human Resources

I found it here. You have to register, but it's free, and you really should know about this site anyway if you don't already. Their job board is centered around New York, but there are often other locations listed, too, and some freelance.

There's a conference on the fantastic in the arts coming up that I just found out today has extended their paper deadline, if anyone's interested. Deadline is tomorrow, so you'll want to contact the coordinator right away if you're interested. It's not just children's and YA; there are about seven different tracks including fantastic literature in English, the fantastic in film and media, etc. It sounds more academic than publishing-related, but it still sounds fascinating.

I gave them the info on my paper on George MacDonald (the Princess books), and they snapped it up. There's someone else doing a paper on MacDonald and she said it would be great to juxtapose them against each other. So it looks like I'm going! (So it doesn't necessarily have to be on blurring the boundaries.) This is the organization that publishes the academic journal The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. Never looked at it, but it sounds interesting.

http://www.iafa.org/

26th Annual International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts Children's and YA Literature Division

Blurring the Boundaries: Transrealism and Other Movements
March 16-20, 2005
Wyndham Fort Lauderdale Airport Hotel

The focus of ICFA-26 is on the the breaking and blurring of the boundaries between between reality and illusion, between the 'real'world and the possible worlds of the imagination.

Of special interest in Children's and YA fantastic  literature are "metatexts", books where books are part of the story, as in the works of Garth Nix, Cornelia Funke, Michael Ende. Other authors of interest include Phillip Pullman, J. K. Rowling, Joan Aiken, Madeleine L'Engle, and any author who uses elements of the fantastic, including science fiction and horror, to tell stories for children and young adults.

As always, we also welcome proposals for individual papers and for academic sessions and panels on any aspect of the fantastic in any media.

The updated deadline for submissions is November 30, 2004. Please contact the Division Head, Mary Harris Russell, at [email protected].

I've officially been recruited (roped in?) for the annual stake Messiah singalong as a trumpet player. I play my trumpet, for fun, about twice a year, if that, mainly for fun, because my lip is about gone. But I'm going to be practicing a lot in the next week or so, because who wants to play really badly in front of all those people? I'll go for mediocre.

So I was thinking that until recently many of you didn't know that I played trumpet. What other lights are we hiding under bushels? Anybody else have a talent we don't know about?

Just went to see Katherine Paterson speak last night. She wrote Bridge to Terabithia and The Great Gillie Hopkins and Jacob Have I Loved, if you've read any of those. I think you'd really like what she had to say. She talked about how she includes religion and belief in her books because she is a person of faith--that she can't help but include it, even if it's just in the background. She quoted C.S. Lewis: "The book cannot be what the writer is not."

One thing I remember her saying is that it's useless to pretend that all is well, but cynicism is the easy way out. She prefers to seek for meaning instead, "healing and illumination." She also talked about hope. All in all, it was a thoughtful talk about integrating faith with art. If you ever wanted to hear it, they said they were going to put it on the web. It's the public station here, WGBH. I'll have to find the site. If you've ever read her books, they're very thoughtful, and all of them are realistic fiction. A few are historical fiction, though.

She also talked a bit about her writing process, which was great. She's a mother of four, and now a grandmother. She says that everyone expects her to be organized, to write every day, etc. She said, "I had four kids in four years. I wrote in 5 minute snatches whenever I could. I just got it out." She said one time someone told her, "Yeah, I know what it's like to be a writer, that kind of life. One of my friend's dads when I was growing up was a writer. Man, did we have to tiptoe around!" To which she answered, "Yes, but you said he was a *dad*?"   I can just imagine all the things she was juggling as a mom, and it just couldn't be her full time job. It sounds to me like she just did it when she could, but she made time for it all the same. It's fun to hear about different writers and how all their processes are so different.

I just woke up from a nap. A really long one. I wasn't feeling well this afternoon, so I laid down. Now I have to get working on this paper, but I just can't think straight. Yelp.

I just got a flyer in the mail for Boskone. Orson Scott Card is the Guest of Honor, and it only costs $42. But it's the exact same days as LTUE.   I would have paid $42 to hear him speak and go to a few interesting panels. But I've already gotten the ticket for LTUE (it was a good sale I didn't want to miss).

Oh well. It will be good professional development to be on a panel, rather than just listening.

It was a fun little cruise, but the hair got a little out of control. (And in case you're wondering, NO, that is not a side ponytail. Side ponytails are simply a strange Napoleon Dynamite-related Utah phenomenon.)

A couple more pictures from that outing are here and here (this last one is me and my roommates, for those of you who didn't meet them at WorldCon).

Also, a lighthouse rather reminiscent of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.