Now that it has its own website and Twitter feed (Books these days, she says, in grandmotherly wonder), I can officially spread the word here:

This is STARRY-EYED, a forthcoming anthology from Running Press Kids, and I’ve got a short story in it.

The book is all about the performing arts; essays from performers like Clay Aiken and Lea Salonga and Jesse Tyler Ferguson are intermixed with short stories by the likes of Alex Flinn (Beastly), Kiersten White (Paranormalcy), Claudia Hand (Unearthly)…and me.  Mine’s called “A Midwinter Night’s Dream,” and it’s a twisted little YA piece that I’m actually rather excited about–so if you know any young readers with a love of music and theatre, please point them in our direction.

STARRY-EYED will be released on October 8, but you can already pre-order it from IndieBound here or from Amazon here.  You can add it to your lists on Goodreads and read the first (glowing!) reviews too.

And now, on to the slightly less happy news.

My agent, the utterly fabulous Chris Richman, has decided to leave the agenting world.  He’s setting off on new adventures in PR and Philadelphia, and I’m sure he’ll be just as utterly fabulous at whatever he does next.  (You can read Upstart Crow’s announcement about Chris’s departure here.)  And I’m going to miss him.

Back in 2008, I had been sending out query letters one at a time (exactly what you’re not supposed to do) to literary agents, waiting for months for their it’s-just-not-quite-right-for-us responses, and growing ever more certain that no one was ever going to say yes anyway, when I got an email from Chris.  He was a junior agent at Firebrand Literary, and he had found my submission — the first few chapters of The Shadows — in the slush pile.  And he loved it.

I sent him the rest of the book.  He loved that, too.

I remember his very first phone call, when he offered to represent me and my book.  I paced around and around the kitchen of our old rented farmhouse, clutching the receiver, absolutely overwhelmed with disbelief and terror.  Of course, this was before I learned that Chris was a total Salinger/Vonnegut/Dahl nerd with an encyclopedic knowledge of The Simpsons, just like me.   But I could already tell that my book was in the right hands.

I was Chris’s very first client.  Within a few months, he had five major publishers interested in The Shadows… And that’s how my life changed completely.    I’ll never stop being grateful to him for being one of the very first people to believe in me.

Upstart Crow Literary, the agency where Chris (and I) eventually moved, has been extremely good to me.  This summer I signed on with another Upstart agent, the marvelous Danielle Chiotti.  I know that I’m in good hands once again.

I like to record things.  I write.  Preserving events and impressions and experiences in words is just what I feel compelled to do.  So I get the compulsion to record things in other ways–with phones, with cameras, with all those fancy and increasingly tiny gadgets.  But for the last few days, I’ve been thinking about the times when maybe recording isn’t quite enough.

Last week, we went to First Avenue for the final show of Amanda Palmer’s Theatre is Evil tour, which was packed with one amazing act on top of another.  And one of those amazing acts was Neil Gaiman, in person, telling a story. He’d just finished a storytelling tour, and that’s what this was: Not a reading, not a recital, but a meant-to-be-told-aloud-by-the-person-it-happened-to STORY.   In the car on the way home, we talked about the story–about how it was very, very different in style and structure from Neil’s written work, and about how dependent it was on the voice and inflection and charm of the teller, and the audience’s reaction, and Neil’s timing and facial expressions, and about how if you put those spoken words on paper they wouldn’t have quite the same life.   They might not work at all.

The funny thing was: All around us, people who were hearing this meant-to-be-told-aloud story were recording it.  They were watching it through screens, even though the real thing was happening ten feet in front of them.  They couldn’t clap, because their hands were busy.  After the storytelling was over, they compared the clarity of their shots and the timing of their starting points.

I wonder how many of them have gone home and watched that little video again.  I wonder if it has the same life.  I wonder if it works.

(WARNING: NORTHERN EXPOSURE DIGRESSION.) In one of my favorite episodes of Northern Exposure, “Things Become Extinct,” would-be filmmaker Ed starts to make a documentary about Ira Wingfeather, the only person around who remembers how to carve traditional wooden courting flutes.  But after filming, Ed realizes he doesn’t just want the living picture of the thing; he wants to preserve the thing itself.  He goes back to the old man and asks to learn how to carve the flutes.  When Ira wonders why, Ed asks him, “Would you rather see a picture of a condor, or a condor?”  and the old man answers, “A condor, no question.”

I don’t want condors to become extinct.  I don’t want photographers of condors to become extinct, either.  I’m not sure the real version of a thing is necessarily better than the recorded version of a thing.  My life revolves around recorded versions of things.  But I try to remind myself that sometimes it’s good to stop recording. It’s good to simply listen, and watch, and participate with your full consciousness, and let the moment end without attempting to preserve it.

Then again, here I am, recording all of this.