UK cover for THE HUNT and promo material

My editor at Simon & Schuster UK sent me some promotion materials for The Hunt that will be going out soon. It includes the UK book cover, blurbs, and details about a "kick-ass" marketing and publicity campaign. It looks absolutely stunning (both the cover and promo materials) and I can't even begin to express my gratitude for the terrific job the whole S&S UK's team is doing.

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How do you like the UK cover? It's rather different from the US cover; I like the different take, how it wonderfully captures a more immediate sense of the book. Looking at the UK and US covers side by side, I feel like a father to fraternal twins, beaming with pride and joy over both.

The Hunt cover!

I'm so happy to be able to show you the cover for The Hunt. St. Martin's Press and James Porto did an amazing job, and I'm beyond ecstatic over the end product. Here it is:

I've heard horror stories of authors detesting their cover, and of being given zero input by their publisher. So not true in my case. In fact, just the opposite. I love this cover!

And, let it be known, St. Martin's Press (especially my editor, Rose Hilliard) has been incredible. Every step of the way, they were gracious to ask for my (and my awesome agent, Catherine Drayton's) input, even down to selecting the models. The cover has undergone quite a few iterations (perhaps I'll blog about it in detail in the future) and the amazing Design team kept outdoing themselves each step of the way. I think the end result is wonderful. The mood of the cover fits perfectly with the book. I think it's a very unique YA cover with definite crossover appeal.

What's especially neat is the full wraparound dust jacket design (below). The color synchrony between the front and back covers is so pleasing to the eye, and captures such a vital essence of the book. And as for the absence of people on the back? - also a key aspect of the book. My editor tells me that the back cover is going to be blinged with the very generous and kind blurbs I've received from Richelle Mead, Alyson Noel, Becca Fitzpatrick, and Andrea Cremer. Can't wait to see that.

So...what do you think?

cover, music, etc.

As is pretty clear (from the author's printed name, etc.), none of these are the cover for my The Hunt. I was just curious and checked out other The Hunt book covers on Amazon.These are some of the results (turns out The Hunt is quite a popular title!).

Anyway, as I alluded to in my previous post, I'm this close to being able to reveal the cover to my The Hunt. So to my five faithful followers (alliteration!) not in the Fukuda clan, I'll reward your loyalty to my site by allowing you to be the first in the world to view it. Honestly, I can't wait to show it since I think the St. Martin's Press team and James Porto (that's my teaser reveal) have done an amazing job. Maybe in the next fortnight?


Moving on.

Things have been going well on the first draft of The Hunt Book II. I'm going to have to do a lot of chiseling and honing because right now, it's pretty War-and-Peace lengthy. But unlike many authors, I enjoy the arduous task of revising/rewriting because that's the stage in the process for me where my novels always seem to come into their own.

Hmm... hopefully, I didn't just jinx myself.

Anyway, this got me thinking about something. More than I expected, music has been a crucial component in writing book two. The reason: I've done the bulk of my writing in cafes and coffee shops, and have needed music to drown out the ancillary noise (which is often not so ancillary). Babbling gossipers, loudmouth biz dudes, babies crying, even mah jong players are often jockeying for my ear drums. So, with much thanks to Spotify, I've been listening to great music as I write, mostly film soundtracks, Gungor and The National.

Music has helped so much, it seems almost unfair, like taking writing steroids or that drug in the movie Limitless. There are some scenes (mostly action or romantic) which have been enhanced and stimulated and heightened by the music to the nth degree. One day, perhaps readers will have the option to play author-selected music alongside certain scenes. Definitely doable on the Kindle or Nook or whatever ereader has overtaken the market by that point.

If you've seen Warrior (one of the best films of the year), you'll know how the last scene in the wrestling cage was so poignantly rendered by the song About Today by The National. The scene would simply be a whole other scene, less powerful, if this unexpected song hadn't played when it did. You can get a taste of how a song can affect the whole tone of a scene - and movie - by checking out this clip (see below). It features the same song (About Today by The National) that is played in the aforesaid final wrestling scene. Anyway, this got me wondering if one day e-books might not come with an option to play author-chosen music for certain scenes. And if they did, would that dilute/violate or enhance/improve the reading experience?

random thoughts

I'm plunged deep into writing Book 2 right now, so my thoughts are a little scattered, but . ..

• I'm really excited that my short story, lost, will be included in the Tomo Anthology, a forthcoming benefit anthology of short fiction set in or related to Japan for readers ages 12 and up. Proceeds from the sale of Tomo will support teens affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011. It's such an honor to be included in this anthology, and a real blessing to be able to use my talents to help, if even in the smallest of ways.
• It's been a really terrific two weeks, book cover-wise. Both my US publisher (St. Martin's Press) and my UK publisher (Simon & Schuster) have sent me their respective covers for The Hunt. They're both very different, but incredible and awesome in their own ways. Both covers still need to be tweaked, and last-minute brush-ups are still being undertaken, but I can't wait to be able to show you in the near future. I've read so many horror stories of authors hating their covers, so I was a little worried. I shouldn't have been; I think both are terrific.
• I saw the film Warrior this past Friday. I was really blown away by the intelligent filmmaking and acting. Although sometimes almost slipping into the maudlin, it stayed true to its vision. The last few minutes of the film, including that tap, were heart-wrenching.

And that's it for now. More later . . .

The decline in boy readers and boy protagonists. Relationship?

The decline in boy readership is well-documented. In a recent New York Times article by Robert Lipsyte, a number of reasons are suggested for this disturbing trend.

• Boys gravitate toward nonfiction;
• Books with story lines about disease, divorce, death and dysfunction sell better for girls than do similar books for boys;
• While teenage girls will read books about boys, teenage boys will rarely read books with predominately female characters;
• Today’s books for boys are simply inferior: supernatural space-and-sword epics that read like video game manuals and sports novels with preachy moral messages, and which often seem like cynical appeals to the lowest common denominator.

Whatever might be the actual root cause – and there is some debate – there is little debate that the YA market today largely caters to the female reader demographic. To quote Lipsyte: “At the 2007 A.L.A. conference, a Harper executive said at least three-­quarters of her target audience were girls, and they wanted to read about mean girls, gossip girls, frenemies and vampires.” 

In other words, acquisition and marketing decisions by publishers are being made with this female readership in mind, and this indubitably affects other considerations down the road such as cover design and promotion strategies. The end product is leaving the teenage boys cold. And so the downward trend continues. Or so the theory goes.

Anyway, without entering too deeply into the current debate, I thought it might be interesting to see what percentage of YA books being released in the remainder of 2011 features a male protagonist. If the theory is true that teenage boys will rarely read books with a female protagonist (Hunger Games excepting), and if the Harper executive is correct (boys are only 25% of target audience), then you’d expect to see about 25% of the YA books featuring a male protagonist.

My analysis is by no means an exact science, and I certainly don’t hold it out to be one. Using the list of upcoming YA titles through 2011 from www.YALit.com, I took a tally of the number of books with male (and female) protagonists. I did not include MG books or anthologies. To aid me in deciding the gender of the protagonist, I used the book’s description on Amazon; where that was inconclusive, I looked at the book cover to further guide me: did it predominantly feature a male or female? On occasion, where even that proved to be insufficient, I would check out the author’s website for more information. You can look at my full results here (and of course, let me know where I made a mistake! Again, this was just a rough-shod tally. Give me an intern and 5 hours, and I’ll give you an error-free analysis!).

There were times when I simply could not discern the gender of the protagonist. Sometimes, the book’s description gave inadequate information. Other times, the book’s synopsis suggested male and female main characters, and the cover featured both a male and female model. Paul Griffin’s Stay With Me is a good example of this. A few books, like Marie Lu’s Legend, feature alternating perspectives of a male and female protagonist. For books such as these, I decided not designate a male or female protagonist, and did not include that book in my final tally.

The result: Out of 104 YA titles coming out in the remainder of 2011, 27 of them feature male protagonists. That is 26%.

Which is pretty darn close to the aforementioned 25%.

Some other interesting tidbits of info:

Number of female authors who wrote books with a male protagonist: 10

Number of male authors who wrote books with a female protagonist: 1 (Clive Barker’s Abarat 3:Absolute Midnight).

Who knew? 50 Cent is a YA author!

writerly inspirations

July was not a good blogging month for me! But August will be different. See, it's only August 1st and I already have a blog up.

One of the questions I often get is how I get my ideas. I'm never really sure how to answer because inspiration hits me in varied ways and places, and they often evolve so gradually before crystallizing into the final form that I can't really articulate where or how I got the "idea."

But there are two activities that - for me, at least - really seem to let loose the creative juices. One of them is running. I love to put on my running shoes, snap on my Garmin watch, plug in my earphones, and just take off. By the time I've hit mile two or three and my body is warmed up, my brain unlocks. The dam breaks, and creative waters start flowing. Plot holes, character issues, etc. etc., all seem to find obvious solutions.

The second activity is taking a shower. Something about the white noise of water splashing, the soothing impact of hot water spraying off me, has a calming impact on me, and in that zen mode, ideas really seem to rain down on me. I read a blog somewhere about one author who kept a diver's board in his shower to jot down his ideas so I guess I'm not the only one.

And sometimes, inspiration can come in the weirdest form. Last week, I was really stuck plot-wise with something in Book II, and neither running nor showering seemed to help. I was getting pretty frustrated when I read a retweet from someone in Simon and Schuster (UK) who had read The Hunt. That person (@kat99999) mentioned that listening to The National's High Violet had invoked thoughts about The Hunt because both were "haunting and creepy." That piqued my curiosity so I listened to the album. And wouldn't you know it, ten minutes later, as I listened to the album, my fingers started to dance across the keyboard. Writer's block, unblocked. Thanks, @kat9999.

On writing the sequel

A few months ago, my trilogy was picked up by St. Martin’s Press. The first book, titled The Hunt, is due to be published in Spring of 2012.

I’m now working on the second book in the trilogy. 

It’s a strange place to be in.

You’re writing full-time but, with the publication date for Book One almost a year away, it somehow doesn’t feel quite real. There’s no tangible proof that you’re an author: you can’t go into a bookstore and hold your book aloft, you don’t have readers emailing you, you don’t have a book cover or even design mock-ups to show yet. Your blog has one consistent reader (and he doesn’t count, because he’s your brother).

But it’s also a really neat place to be in. Because it’s given me the necessary space and time I need to plunge myself into the sequel without the distraction of marketing/promotional work. I know that time is coming (in about only a year!) when I’ll be promoting Book 1, editing Book 2, and writing Book 3, when I’ll wistfully look back to these quieter, more spacious days. 

The internet is rife with blogs about just how much work it takes to write a good Book 2 of a trilogy. Let me tell you: they’re right. Writing the second book is challenging. It has to advance story arcs, develop character relationships, deepen mystery threads, all the while without bringing final resolution. Yet it has to stand on its own, provide in its own way some level of resolution and plot climax. Pictorially, I liken Book 2 to an enticing bridge that people can’t wait to get on, provides enjoyment for those crossing it, but which also leaves them hungry for more, eager to embark on the next leg of the journey. A tall task! 

Which leads me back to why I love the quiet and space the next few months will afford me. Every day I wake up, knowing that I’ll have a chunk of time to dive into the world of Gene and the hepers, and the joy that brings me is at times intoxicating. That’s not to suggest there aren’t difficult (and sometimes %@#! frustrating) days; I’ve had many, and there’ll be plenty more ahead. But I love the feeling of turning on my computer, setting my ice coffee down next to me, and having the next few hours to make real the imaginary world in my head. It's a pure time, when all I have to measure my day's success is whether the pages I write are internally true to my own vision. When I won't be affected by reader's expectations (I read somewhere that it's the expectations of the glowing reviewers - and not the bad ones - who can most affect your vision) but only by my inner compass of uncompromised rightness.