On the GLA Blog: Agent Kelly Sonnack...

Guide to Literary Agents editor Chuck Sambuchino posted an interview with agent Kelly Sonnack who recently joined Andrea Brown Literary Agency. Here's a snippet:

I’d love to see more well-written and clever middle grade fiction. There’s a need for it right now and I see a lot of potential in this market. I’d also love to see more memoir for kids – especially cultural memoir about growing up in different countries, identity, and living across cultures. We are a colorful world, and I’m not sure that’s reflected adequately in children’s lit quite yet.

Click here to read the full interview.

Blogger of the Week:
Christy Raedeke...


Oregon-based YA author Christy Raedeke is a self-proclaimed "compulsive blogger." Here she talks about starting out, why she blogs, and offers some advice to those just dipping their toes into the blogosphere. Click here to visit her blog Juvenescence (I love the name!)

Why did you start blogging?

I really started blogging about five years ago with a blog unknown to even my husband! I think blogging is a really interesting way to get your writing gears moving every morning. A year ago I started the blog Juvenescence, which gave my blogging a bit of focus. Wait, what’s less than a bit? A smidge? Okay, it’s more like a smidge of focus.

What do you blog about?

I started this blog to connect with other writers, not as a marketing tool. I try to include anecdotal information about the publishing process as I go through it and I’ve started doing interviews with debut authors, but a lot of the time I post about things that are happening in my life. Vignettes, I guess.

What advice would you offer new bloggers?

If anyone is thinking of starting a blog, I’d say go for it! It’s free and it’s incredibly easy to figure out. (It takes literally less than five minutes to set up a blog.) Blogging will quickly become a natural part of your daily writing practice. And there’s something magical about the “Publish Post” button that you click to get a new post on your blog; think of it as your daily commitment to publishing. I had no readers the first month, a handful the second, and then the growth was exponential. Stick with it. Post often, even if it’s a short one. Make friends with other bloggers—there are people I know through blogging whom I would hug like long-lost kin if I met them in person, that’s how much I love them.

Tell me about your upcoming titles with Flux.

This was my deal report from Publishers Marketplace:

Christy Raedeke’s PROPHECY OF DAYS, pitched as a YA Da Vinci Code relating to the Mayan calendar which mysteriously ends in 2012, in which a teen, with the help of a gorgeous Scottish lad, must figure out her role in a cryptic prophecy while trying to outwit a secret society that will stop at nothing to control her, to Andrew Karre at Flux, in a two-book deal, for publication in Summer 2010, by Laura Rennert at Andrea Brown Literary Agency (North America).

Check Out Chuck's Blog...

Guide to Literary Agents editor Chuck Sambuchino recently posted notes from a conference session he attended with agent Jennifer Laughran of Andrea Brown Literary and author Wendy Lichtman. They offered tips and advice for writing for tweens and teens.

Click here's to check it out.