Internship!

[stacer]

Today is a day of good news. It would have been good news at 10:30 this morning, had I checked the voicemail earlier. Perhaps that was what the unidentified call was the other day, but you don't usually get business calls at 6pm.

Anyway, I got the internship I interviewed for at the Horn Book Magazine. Actually, half will be at the magazine, and half at the guide. I'll be doing grunt work for no pay, but it'll be a chance to make some amazing contacts, so... yippee! (And the grunt work involves shelving children's books, and one of the benefits of working there is that I can borrow any book I want, and I can take any of the books in the "up for grabs" pile--books that are too old or that they decided not to review.)

[fuzzyoctopus]

Free books, yay!


Seriously, congrats, and I'm glad you're so excited about it.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

yay! yay!

We expect lots of reviews from you!

[Brenna]

Yay!  Congratulations.

[EUOL]

Well, congrats to you.  

Isn't it funny how people in our society can be so excited, and so competitive, regarding jobs where they work for free?

[stacer]

All to make connections for jobs that pay little more than nothing.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

well, if it's going to be upward mobility, than the job you take so you can get the low-paying job needs to be free, right?

[Tekiel]

Huzzah and congrats!  Sounds like a fun job with all the reading you can do now!

[stacer]

So it's pretty cool. Today was my first day, and they let me sit in on the Star Meeting, which is the meeting in which they decide which books get starred reviews. Very cool. I even got to tell them how to pronounce Neil Gaiman's name. (That's the only time I spoke in the meeting.) I felt like such an expert. (And here Ookla will tell me that I just learned how to say it 3 weeks ago. )

But I'm sworn to secrecy on which books got stars.  

[EUOL]

Oooo....

So now I have an in with a reviewer.

Eeeexcellent....

[stacer]

Only if you start writing them for the YA and under crowd, remember.

[EUOL]

Does it have to be a YA imprint, or a YA interest book?  I remember that most of my favorite 'adult' authors were catalogued in the YA section of my local library.  Ann McCaffery, David Eddings, Terry Brooks.  

(Of course, they also had copies of the same books in the adult general fiction section.  Note--libraries are screwy.)

[Entsuropi]

I've heard that during the original Cthulhu popularity thing, back during lovecrafts time and shortly after, Libraries would often have phantom copies of 'The Necromicon' that were always out on loan to a 'Mr A. Alhazared'.

And Lo, the faithful were not only everywhere, but exceptionally bored in their jobs.

[stacer]

Nope, has to be published for YA or under. Subtitle of the magazine is "About Books for Children and Young Adults." Thus, in this case, your definition of genre as defined by publishers or by what's in the children's or YA section would be pretty accurate.

[stacer]

So they may not be paying me in money, but there is a very cool form of compensation. Today I came home with 13 books--one picture book, but most SF/F middle grade and YA novels. I have about 20-25 more sitting in a pile waiting for me to bring home next time I go in. They were getting rid of the fall books to have room on the shelves for the spring books, and let everyone take their pick before they box them up to send off to a used bookstore. (They don't donate them because they keep all the best books for 7 years, so they'd be donating mediocre books and the library's budgets would be slashed, leaving them with no money to buy the good books.)

So none of them are the best books, but I got several midlist books I've been meaning to read but didn't want to buy and hadn't taken the time to get from the library, and I got a Cornelia Funke picture book--she's going to be at my school on Thursday, so that's 3 books for her to sign--and a few random things. I think I might give a few of the picture books as Christmas presents to nieces and nephews. Oh, some of the books are advance galleys, but that's okay. I probably wouldn't have bought the book anyway.

Also, since quite a few of them may be of interest here (especially a YA anthology published by Tor and edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden, New Magics, which looks interesting), I will try to review them as I read. These are fun reads, though, and will take back seat to school work, I'm afraid. So unless everyone wants a review of Water-babies...? Well, perhaps you might. And perhaps I may be able to work one up, because I'm preparing a presentation on it anyway.

EDIT: just realized I already mentioned free books. But... it's free books! And now they're here in my hands. Yay!