storytelling

I can hardly believe this, but the Cherry Ames novels are back in print. Or at least some of them are.

I have to confess that when I saw this cover for the first time in many years, I had something close to a panic reaction. As if I had run into an old friend who had supposedly died years ago. Shock and a sense of disconnection and then a deep, abiding sense of joy.

Now you're thinking how really strange I am, but you have to understand what these books meant to me when I was ten years old. Things were really tough at home, and reading was my primary escape. I read my way through the school library and the public library, and then I came across this book, which was the first in a series. At the time I did't realize how old the story was -- it was first published in 1943 -- but it wouldn't have mattered anyway. Because the character and the setting struck such a chord that I was immediately drawn in.

The first novel starts with Cherry Ames going off to nursing school, aged 18. She leaves home and starts a career. She lives in a community of other nurses, she goes to classes and works in the wards at the hospital. She struggles, and succeeds.

Cherry Ames was responsible for my early -- and long lived -- intention to go into medicine. Until I was eighteen, there was no doubt in my mind that I would be a nurse. This wasn't adolescent dreaminess, either. I researched nursing schools, wrote away for catalogues, filled out applications. I looked at three year hospital nursing programs in Boston, New York, Seattle, Los Angeles. I was dead serious.

Clearly things got in the way and my plans changed, but I have always felt a strong affinity to the nursing professions. I think because somehow or another, I used Cherry Ames as a projection device. I projected myself out of a bad situation at home and into an orderly, structured community of women caring for the sick and (in my adolescent understanding) each other. Nuns, but without the god stuff. Doctors instead of priests. A perfect goal for a kid like me. Between the ages of 10 and 12 I saved every penny, and bought all of the Cherry Ames books. There were close to thirty, I believe.

I don't have to re-read them now to know that they were rife with sexism, the doctor as god, the nurse as servant. At that age, in 1967, the produce of an italian American home and a Catholic upbringing, what else was there? Then it didn't matter. Now it probably would, so I won't reread them. I'd like to keep the good memories and feelings. Cherry Ames stories were something I did for myself as a kid, something positive and uplifting. I want to hold on to that.

There's a part of me that is pretty much convinced that in a parallel universe, I am nursing somewhere. Maybe teaching in a nursing school. Maybe in midwifery. I like the idea. I'm holding on to it. If I had the time and money, maybe I'd go to nursing school at age fifty, catch up with Cherry Ames after all these years.

There's a Cherry Ames website, which has summaries of all the books, their settings and plots.

Posted by at 5:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Via Alison Kent a link to Agent Obscura, where an experiment is about to be launched to see how much impact readers really have on a novel's potential success. To be truthful, the post in question isn't clear on exactly what they'll be doing, but I'm interested enough to keep track for a while.

From Desiree these two questions:

1. Do publishers try to get an author under contract for another book? What if an author wants to work without a deadline hanging over their head (ie, no advance money)? Are the publishers receptive to that? 
2. Do publishers agree to pay an author a given amount for the next book before receiving a completed manuscript? What if they are not happy with the manuscript even after edits? Are they still obligated to pay the author or does a book contract include some clause that gives the publisher an out?

and my answers:

1. My sense and experience is that if you sell a book to a publisher, they will try to get you under contract for your next book, or at least to get a clause that gives them first chance at your next finished manuscript. Because of course every editor is hoping that this new acquisition will be the Big One, his or her Harry Potter or Gone with the Wind, the purchase that makes an editor's career. And if it does turn out that way, they want to be able to hold on to you. So yes, they try to set up a future relationship. One they can get out of, if things go belly up. Also, you can write any many novels as you like without a contract, of course. then you have (1) no deadlines and (2) no advance money.

Say you write a three novel series, historical or crime or whatever, and your agent sends all three manuscripts off to six or seven select editors. If the series is well written with good characters, the editors are going to be very enthusiastic, because in this situation marketing is much easier. With the first three manuscripts already in hand they can go to town building a reader base.

But it almost never happens like that, as far as I know.

2. If an editor gets the go ahead to make an offer on a manuscript, and there's an obvious sequel waiting in the wings, they will often contract for that second unwritten novel right away. That's what happened with Into the Wilderness. Bantam offered me a two book deal, and so I had to go off and write the second novel in the series.

If the publisher contracts for a novel that is unwritten, there will be language in the contract about what they expect. What kind of novel, and how long. There will also be an out-clause, in case it doesn't turn out to their taste -- which does happen on occasion. When it does, the author has to come to some agreement with the publisher. S/he can pay back the advance and sell the novel to a different publisher; or sometimes, if the publisher really wants to hold onto the writer, they'll say: okay, not this one, but we'll take the next one if it's more in our ballpark.

If you've got a good agent, paying back the advance has been worked out ahead of time so you don't get presented with a huge bill. You'll pay it back in chunks over a certain amount of time. It's not a great situation, but if your agent has sold the novel in question to a different publisher, things will work out for the most part.

I'm still a little virus-woozy, so if this doesn't make sense, speak up, k?

Posted by at 4:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)