I need to tell you about some things I did this year.
1. This year, in 2011, I wrote three complete, new novels. I will tell you a little bit about them.
I figure I am good for about three new novels per year. I know that is a lot to write, but that's what I do. I have a lot of shit to get off my chest.
In total, these three novels add up to 1400 pages. They contain 303,000 words combined. The shortest of the three is 82,000 words in length.
Two of them are already in the queue for publication: Passenger, which will be published by Feiwel and Friends, an imprint of Macmillan, in fall 2012; and Once There Were Birds, which will be published by Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers, in spring 2013.
Once There Were Birds is the shorty, coming in at 82,000 words. That really is not very short for a novel, especially when you consider that (like Stick, which came out in October) Once There Were Birds uses an experimental approach to the structure of the prose which requires the stripping away of an awful lot of unnecessary words. That's all I will say.
It was very difficult to write.
The third novel I wrote this year is quite the treatise on my insanity. Only a few people know anything about it, and it is far too late for them at this point. I will tell you what it is called, and little else. The novel is called Grasshopper Jungle.
It is about a love triangle in Iowa at the end of the world.
Oh yeah... I forgot. There are already too many books about love triangles in Iowa at the end of the world.
I think people may start to get a look at Grasshopper Jungle in early 2012.
I thought the novel was so different that I wanted to get a new agent to handle it. So I did that.
2. My new agent is a guy.
My editor at Simon and Schuster is a guy.
My friend Kelly told me she believes it is a good thing that I am surrounding myself with "male energy."
Um.
Does that sound weird?
It sounds weird to me.
My new agent is Michael Bourret. I like everything about Michael. I have this checklist of what agents should be, and Michael Bourret matches the requirements. I am not going to post this checklist.
It is not the kind of shit they tell you about at "Writers' Conferences."
I have more stuff to tell you about this year coming up.
