Floating around the interwebs…
I try not to do a whole lot of random web surfing because the internet is a singularity that sucks in time like black holes suck in, well, everything. (Vshump. There went the afternoon. Vshump. Oops, it’s 1.12 in the morning. Vshump. What? The kids are home already?!)
However, poking around the virtual world of children’s writers, editors and agents isn’t random. It’s work! And I’ve stumbled across a few interesting things recently which I will list here, just in case you’re part of that world:
Elana Roth and Caren Johnson are running a one-day pitch fest where you post a 100 word pitch on their forums and they will read them and will request materials as a result. Instructions are here: http://www.johnsonliterary.com/forum/post/982144
Mary Kole, an agent with Andrea Brown, who writes a wonderful blog about children’s books, writing for children and the world of agenting and publishing those books, is running a Novel Beginning contest for MG and YA.
I’m still a devote of www.misssnarksfirstvictim.blogspot.com, which, although I’m sure you know this, is the blog of (you guessed it) Miss Snark’s first victim. She runs monthly Secret Agent contests which are often kidlit in focus because she herself writes YA and they’re always useful and interesting. I did one late last year and found it terribly exciting.
The YARebels are a group of seven new YA writers who are doing weekly vlogs. They are quite entertaining and I have learned some neat stuff from them. You can catch them here on YouTube.
Casey McCormick’s blog has an Agent Spotlight feature with lots of very interesting, up-to-date agent bios, with a focus on children’s literature agents.
I’ll come back with more next week. Right now, though, I have to go polish an entry or two. Enjoy the NYC SCBWI conference if you’re going and if, like me, you’re not (alas) tune into the SCBWI team blog.
