What gives?

Racing in the Rain: My Life as a Dog features the same lovable Enzo, and it’s a novel told from a dog’s POV, but this version is the same story told as a “junior version.”

It seems that lots of adults are picking it up again — either this version or the original. Honestly, in reading it three years after I read the original, it isn’t feeling so different. The writing level is probably simplified, but the heavy emotional issues are still there, making it a book that I would recommend for more mature readers (Enzo is an aging dog that knows he’s going to die soon, another character has cancer, and even the way that certain things are presented, such as Zoe’s conception and arguments between Eve and Denny don’t necessarily seem retooled for a young audience — more YA than middle grade).

But it’s not so precious that it will only appeal to dog lovers. However, as a dog lover, I loved the fictitious look into an intelligent dog’s head, but I’ve heard from many who are not who still enjoyed this. Enzo is like a wise soul, observing everything going on around him, like a good narrator of any book.

I was able to ask the author Garth Stein a few questions about this new release, which added even more interest to the story and the concept:

Why did you decide to share Enzo’s story with children? Do you think that they are more likely or less likely to trust him as a narrator?

Garth Stein: I really felt that children could identify with Enzo’s limitations. Enzo has no thumbs so he can’t open doors. His voice is limited by his floppy tongue. He depends on people for food, water, transportation, to change TV channels for him. If you look at the limitations children live with, dogs and kids are almost the same. Kids have to ask for permission to do things. They depend on their parents for food and water. They need to be driven around. They have a lot to say, but sometimes adults discount them. Actually, now that I think about it, maybe trust is the issue: children would trust Enzo long before they might trust an adult!

When I realized the dog/child similarities, I thought it would be great to get my book into the hands of young readers. I knew there were certain issues with adult language and content, so my editor, Alyson Day, and I worked these things out and now Enzo can be read by all ages!

How does telling a story from a dog’s point of view help you move the plot along? How does it hinder?

Garth Stein: For me, the important part of telling a story is making the narrator a compelling voice. Enzo has that compelling voice, partly, at least, because he is a character in a classic double-bind. Enzo has a nearly human soul, and he feels limited and trapped by his dog body. He believes he will be reincarnated as a person in his next life, and he would like to get on with it. So on the one hand, he wants to hurry up and be done with this present incarnation so he can move on. On the other hand, Enzo loves his family–Denny and Eve and Zoe–so much, he doesn’t want to leave them. Therefore, he wants two very different things, and he can’t have them both. Out of this tension grows a character and a character’s voice. That Enzo is a dog is almost irrelevant. That he is a compelling character who is terribly conflicted is really at the heart of it.

Are you curious? I have a copy of Racing in the Rain: My Life as a Dog to give away to one of you (perfect for adult readers or mature younger readers). Leave a comment if you’d like to win. We’ll announce the winner on August 31.The giveaway is closed.

More details about both Enzo books can be found on a special microsite from The Book Report Network: http://racingintherain.bookreporter.com. Features include interviews with Garth Stein and a family reading guide with ideas on how to make reading about Enzo a fun activity.

Readers can visit GoEnzo.com to sign up for Garth’s newsletter, or connect with him on Facebook and Twitter @GarthStein. Readers can also purchase Enzo-themed merchandise at the Enzo Store.

Jennifer Donovan is a proud dog-owner and is convinced that they are more observant than we’ll ever know. She blogs at Snapshot about her family, four-legged and the more human variety.

Check out our current giveaways. Subscribe to our feed. Follow us @5M4B on Twitter or on Facebook.

Big Secret #1

I was a closet screenwriter before I was a novelist.

As a girl who grew up in the Midwest and hated the cold, I moved out to Los Angeles as soon as possible. The Hollywood Sign! The stars on the sidewalk! The stars walking the sidewalks! It was all such a thrill, very similar to humming a bar of Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the USA.”

Originally, I moved out to LA with plans to be an actress. But the truth of the matter was, I was a closet writer. I secretly wanted to write movies.

It took a while, but I eventually made that leap.

Big Secret #2

The Whole Package was originally conceptualized as a movie.

While pitching and writing spec scripts in LA, I thought a movie about three women who open a male version of Hooters would be hilarious.

The story would be about three women – no, three best friends – wronged in the way Diane Keaton, Goldie Hawn and Bette Midler were in The First Wives Club. These friends would stand up for themselves and the female population by opening a restaurant designed to exploit men. There would be dance numbers like those in The Full Monty… Fabulous!

Oddly, no one found this idea as hysterical as I did.

Big Secret #3

Visions of exotic male dancers haunted me.

But I tell you what – I just couldn’t get the vision of Full Monty-esque dancers out of my head.

Secretly, I started conceptualizing a story. It couldn’t just be about the dancers; it had to be about the women who started the restaurant. They were the centerpiece.

An opening scene started to shape in my head – I pictured a Goldie Hawn-esque character in a Paris cafe. She orders a chocolate croissant, a French girl dares to call her fat. Goldie becomes mock-outraged, adorably hurt, beautifully defiant… Yes! This story just had to be told.

Big Secret #4

The Whole Package became a book (read Jennifer’s review).

I decided that, if I couldn’t write the story as a screenplay, I would write it as a book.

The outline I wrote for The Whole Package was actually guided by a screenwriting book. Specifically, Blake Snyder’s Save The Cat! The Last Book on Screenwriting You’ll Ever Need.

Big Secret #5

The Whole Package could become a movie.

I wrote the book and am delighted to hear that it reads like a fun, heartfelt movie. Specifically, The First Wives Club meets The Full Monty.

And – in a twist of events worthy of a Hollywood movie – a top agency in Hollywood believes The Whole Package should be a movie. They now represent it for book-to-film.

Will The Whole Package become a movie? Only time will tell… but I think that would be the perfect Hollywood ending.

Stay in touch!

Cynthia Ellingsen is an author and screenwriter who lives in Lexinton, KY with her husband. Visit her website at www.cynthiaellingsen.com.

Facebook: Cynthia Ellingsen – Author Page

He’s a fan of the classics, he writes incredibly relevant contemporary fiction (check out my review of the book One Day), and he loves movies too. Since he not only wrote the novel but the screenplay as well, I couldn’t wait to ask him about the types of issues we grapple with in this Books on Screen column.

I asked David Nicholls about the difference between experiencing a book and a movie. I love reading a book page by page, and I like the fact that I can control what I know about the book. I rarely read reviews for books I’m about to read, for fear of spoilers, and though I absolutely enjoy a good movie, I hate that it’s impossible to go in spoiler-free because of the way movies have to be marketed. I also think that movie-watchers are less sensitive to protecting the beauty of a story and are more likely to give something away.

I think that he agreed with me — about the beauty of both:

Well, I love reading and I think some of the most profound and enjoyable experiences I ever had have been that very personal, very private experience of sitting by yourself and really immersing yourself in a book.

And I love film, too, but it’s much more of a kind of–well, you know, I don’t want to compare the two.

But what was really interesting to hear was how he — as both a movie-lover and the screenwriter — viewed the audience at a screening for the One Day movie (out in theaters August 19):

“My main experience watching the film with an audience was primarily a kind of relief, but also a pleasure in that sense of involvement, in that sense of the gripping of their armrests and the laughter and the sighs. And that, I think, was really thrilling for me and a great relief.”

And I think he hit the nail on the head. Watching a movie is sort of a group experience, which is perhaps why we are so tempted to share what we see in the movies. I told him that because of the way One Day unfolded, I was really really glad to have read the novel first. I had an ignorance of the story that I don’t think you can have in seeing the movie previews.

David Nicholls’ response to that again underscores his love of the story, whether on screen or in the pages:

I hope that the movie is surprising and not predictable. I think that, again, was one of our intentions was to try and avoid, to a degree, the clichés of romance on screen. And of course, there is some satisfaction in the familiarity of those emotions and the kind of devices, the big kiss, the running for the kiss, and all of that. There’s a kind of glee and a pleasure in that as well.

I think, for me, the biggest difference is that reading can be episodic. A novel can ramble. A novel can go down all kinds of blind alleys. And a movie has to always, always, always be engaging and gripping you. And I think with a movie, I miss some of that detail. I miss that ability to tell a joke just because it’s funny, not because it moves the story on. And that is the biggest difference. A movie has to keep moving forward. And a novel, you can read three pages or read 20 pages and it’s still a great pleasure.

I look forward to seeing One Day and might post a review here when I do. If you’ve already read the book, you should watch this featurette. If you are going to see it, and don’t really mind typical preview spoilers, then watch it. After reading the novel (just last month) and watching this featurette, I’ve even more excited to see it:

Have you read the book? Have you looked forward to seeing the movie?

I have a fun giveaway for one of you (U.S. addresses only):

The winner will be announced on August 31. Please leave a comment if you’d like to win. The giveaway is closed.

Jennifer Donovan loves a good story, whether she gets lost in the pages or in a dark movie theater. She enjoys sharing her love of these things here at 5 Minutes for Books and at her Snapshot blog.

Check out our current giveaways. Subscribe to our feed or video reviews on YouTube. Follow us @5M4B on Twitter or on Facebook.

I remember sitting in the audience with my husband, waiting for the play to begin and not knowing what to expect. When I wrote it, I’d included as many real things my mother had said to me as I could recall. Mom was never one to pussyfoot around criticism, at least not with me, her only daughter. If she thought I was being stupid, she told me I was “bakatare,” slang for “idiot” (literal translation: ‘sh*thead). At various times, she also told me I looked fat, that my neck was unattractively wrinkled, and that my breasts were so large I’d soon look like my grandmother, who’d had six children and was in her 70s at the time.

Sometimes, my father would tell Mom she was being too hard on me. She denied it. “I’m her mother,” she replied. “A mother has to tell truth.” Somehow, she might have thought she was being helpful, probably more helpful than her own mother had been. I’m sure she thought I had it pretty easy compared to the life she had had; after all, I never had to live in a house with a dirt floor. Nobody ever shot at me or dropped bombs on my family.

While I wrote this play, I realized I was keeping quite a laundry list in my head of things she’d told me, things I’d replayed over and over in my head, a record that had not ended even with her death.

So there I was in the audience, her first grandchild kicking my stomach, waiting for my childhood to be purged onstage. Wondering if I’d burst into tears.

The lights came on and the actors began speaking.

“When I your age, I had 22 inch waist,” the actress playing my mother said sharply. “Not huge like you.” To my surprise, instead of crying, I laughed. Everyone laughed.

The words held no sting. Instead, it was hilarious. I did cry, but it was from laughing so much. It was like watching it happen to someone else altogether.

I was new to playwriting, and the scenes shifted too abruptly, ended before it needed to, which I could see when it was onstage. I knew I had to do more with the material, and eventually (two kids and one unsold other novel later) I decided to write, HOW TO BE AN AMERICAN HOUSEWIFE (linked to Nancy’s review).

Here I was really able to dig into the mother-daughter relationship. Not just into the words, but into the character’s inner lives. Fiction writing made everything even more distant. I took the kinds of situations that had happened to me and reworked the, exorcising those demons of my relationship. The mother and daughter in the book became representations of me and my mother, not our actual selves. In their conversations, I tried to show the messages underlying their words. I don’t think the characters say what they actually mean until the end of the book, the end of their journeys.

For the first time, I slowly and seriously considered what my mother’s life had been before she had her family. I thought of her as a person. I imagined what it would have been like to come to this country, to teach herself the language. To be alone, stuck in the deep suburbs with no car and a serious heart defect.

At last, I was able to lay all our problems to rest. To stop dwelling on all personal hurts and think about how much she really did care for me.

Margaret Dilloway was inspired by her Japanese mother’s experiences when she wrote this novel, and especially by a book her father had given to her mother called The American Way of Housekeeping. Dilloway lives in California with her husband and three young children.

I once attended a lecture at the Chicago Public Library that involved Salman Rushdie and Jonathan Lethem talking about their books and what should, would or could happen if and when film rights were sold to their books.

Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn, Fortress of Solitude and Chronic City, winner of a National Books Critics Circle Award in 1999 and a New York Times best-selling author shrugged when asked about how he viewed the prospect of his books becoming films and said, “I view it a bit like selling a house. Once you sell the house you built to a new owner, you really shouldn’t drive by and complain if they change the color of the drapes.”

In 2007, I decided that, in keeping with my Bucket List concept of “writing one of everything,” I would write a screenplay. I decided to adapt the first novel I had written (from the plot of another), Out of Time (www.OutofTimetheNovel.com). AFI film school graduate Dan Decker, founder of the Chicago Screenwriting School and the Las Vegas Players led me through the process of writing “log lines” and only being allowed 23 words for my characters. It was a rude awakening. I never wanted to repeat the process after writing just one screenplay. I ultimately had a suicidal major character jump into the Hudson River, which was more-or-less what I felt like doing myself by that point in time.

Later that year, I was placed on a screenwriting panel in Chicago with James Strauss (“House,” “Deadwood,” “John from Cincinnati”) and asked about my illustrious career (i.e., one screenplay). The conversation went something like this:

Me: “I don’t even know what I’m doing up here with this guy. I only wrote one screenplay, even if it did win a ‘Writer’s Digest’ award.”

James: “Why did you write it?”

Me: “I wanted to learn how to be brief, how to be succinct.”

James: “It didn’t work, did it?

(Laughter all around)

Jim and I are now fast friends and frequently run across one another at writing conferences, where I remind him of his remark. Screenwriting is not for the faint of heart. My own heart grows faint at the prospect of having to write another. I’m better suited to short story writing or novel writing, methinks.

Although I was the author of Out of Time, I soon learned that I had to “kill my babies” to create a good screenplay and that screenwriters frequently have to change the order and/or actions of a book in order to provide an opportunity for the onscreen characters that will help telegraph the interior state of the characters to the screen. The people onscreen have to be able to externalize internal emotions somehow. They’re always smashing things or symbolically doing something to telegraph to the audience their interior states. And they have to have “a window character.” And on and on and on. Still, my screenplay treatment of Out of Time, a sci-fi, romantic thriller with time travel and a love triangle, won an award in a “Writer’s Digest” competition that year. (2007).

For me, one of the best adaptations of a book to film was 1975′s “Jaws.” I had read the novel by Peter Benchley. To this day, I think the ending of the film (Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw and Richard Dreyfuss), where the shark is fed the explosive metal canister in the final moments of the film and blows up, is one of the best revised adaptations of a novel-to-screen that I can remember. I’m sure there are others, but that’s a seventies film and one of the best endings that did not resemble the book’s ending, but improved upon it.

Visit Connie’s blog at www.weeklywilson.com or visit her website www.ConnieCWilson.com for more information. Find out more of her favorite 70′s films in It Came from the 70s.

Now before you stop reading and say “I like “real” books,” or “We don’t even have an ereader,” listen up. Kindle apps are available for the iPad, the ipod Touch (which my daughter uses a lot to read, though I don’t like the small screen), and that opens them up to reading free or inexpensive books that are available. But what I was happy to come across on Roland Smith’s site was this essay talking about why he loves his Kindle.

He likes his ereader so much that he is running a contest where you can win a free signed ereader of your own.

You can read the essay in full HERE, but I’ve excerpted some of this essay (with permission):

Years ago I bought the first version of the Kindle. I bought it because I read 2 or 3 books a week and I had gotten tired of lugging around hardback books in my carry-on luggage. I love the feel, smell, and heft of a real book, but the convenience of the Kindle trumped those feelings pretty quickly. Then along came the iTouch, iPhone, iPad, and several other platforms with a free Kindle & Nook Apps. I’m old, and old fashioned, but I had (and have) no problem reading books on these small screens. In fact, I prefer to read this way now. I have over 250 books archived in my Kindle account, which means I’m carrying over 250 books in my pocket. If I’m stuck at an airport, flying, walking, waiting for a pizza to bake, all I have to do it pull a book out of my pocket and lose myself in the story I’m currently reading. These days, if someone offers to loan me a real book I tell them to keep it and I download it into my iPhone. If an editor wants me to read a book I ask them to send it to me as a PDF or a Word document so I can upload the content to my iPhone or iPad.

I guess you could say I’m an eBook convert, which brings me to my new novel Legwork, which is only available as an eBook.

In 1996 I wrote a novel called Amy’s Missing. My idea at the time was to have it published as a paperback original. I was visiting a lot of schools and all of my books were expensive hardbacks. I wanted to give my readers and their parents a chance to walk away with a book that wouldn’t break the bank. Publishers were interested, but none of them were interested enough to publish the book.

(My wife) Marie suggested we convert Amy’s Missing into an eBook. I was happy to do this as long as she did all the work (some things never change). My other condition was I would only put it out again if I still liked the book. I sat down and read it in one sitting and thought: “Wow, this is a great book.” A little arrogant I know, but the story actually stood up to my critical eye and to the test of time. I made a few changes here and there (not many) to update the story, and I decided to change the title to Legwork (when you read it you’ll know why). I should also mention that this new title came from my grandsons JR and Will. I downloaded the book to them. They immediately read it and texted me back: “Call it Legwork, Gramps.” (Thanks JR & Will. Great title).

Please help me spread the word. One of the problems with an eBook is letting people know that the book exists. If you know someone who likes my books, or likes to read, or appreciates a good story, pass this newsletter on to them. Let’s test this wide-open frontier and see how it works.

I will be running a couple of contests this summer to celebrate Legwork beginning July 1st. The prize for the first contest will be…what else? A brand new Kindle. I’ll even sign it. You can participate by visiting my Webpage or joining my FaceBook Fan Page on July 1st.

*****

So I’ve (Jennifer) done my part in spreading the word. I downloaded the book myself and read it and even posted the very first amazon review, and Amanda can’t wait to read it herself.

I love that authors are offering original works as ebooks at low prices. It seems like a win/win to me, and I hope other authors follow suit.

Keep up with us this summer: Check out our current giveaways. Subscribe to our feed. Follow us @5M4B on Twitter or on Facebook.

Jennifer Donovan thinks that people who say they “like the feel of a book” haven’t tried ereaders. She loves the one-handed operation of her Kindle, though she still maintains a small love affair with the look of a beautiful new paper book. She blogs at Snapshot.

As part of the brand’s ongoing commitment to nurturing the whole child and connecting families by fostering a shared love of reading, Cheerios invites aspiring authors to enter its New Author Contest now through July 15, 2011. Entrants must write and submit an original story, in either English or Spanish, suitable for children ages three to eight. Those who think they have the “write” stuff can visit www.spoonfulsofstoriescontest.com for more information and to enter.

The 2009 winner of the New Author Contest was Laurie Isop, for her adorable book, How Do you Hug a Porcupine? Simple yet expressive images of children hugging different animals are accompanied by rhyming text, each stanza ending with the titular question. As with all winners the book includes Spanish translations on each page. How Do You Hug a Porcupine is available now in specially marked boxes of Cheerios, and will be in book stores July 26.

Laurie was happy to answer some questions about her book idea:

How did you come up with the idea for How Do You Hug a Porcupine?
We were sitting around the dinner table one evening talking about how some people are harder to get close to than others (the “warm fuzzy” types vs. the “cold prickly” types). I thought that would be a good concept for the story, but changed it to animals instead of people to make it more age-appropriate. We had so much fun making a list of all the easy animals to hug, and all the challenging ones. We all agreed the porcupine would be the toughest.

How did you hear about the Cheerios contest? Did you already have the book planned when you heard about the contest, or did you write it just for the contest?
My sister, who owns The Book Oasis in Stoneham, MA heard about the contest and encouraged me to enter. I wrote the book just for the contest and loved it so much I thought I would self-publish it. I was well on my way when the call came in that I had won.

Do you have any advice for someone who is entering a book in the contest?
Read your story to anyone who will listen, especially children. Watch their reaction and gauge the succes of your story by their actions: are they engaged, interested, waiting for the next page, or are they looking around the room and picking at their toes. Also, study the judging criteria carefully. I printed out the 5 judging categories and taped it to my monitor and referred to it constantly, to be sure I was hitting all the categories.

Why do you write for children? What’s the hardest part about writing a children’s book? Do you have a specific age you like to target?
I write for children because I can finish a story in a relatively short period of time, and that is so satisfying to me. I love to see their eyes light up, or make them laugh, and use inflection when I read to them. The biggest challenge is finding a story line they will love, and keeping the word count in line. Picture books are tough because every word has to be tight and necessary – nothing extra allowed. I really enjoy the 3-to-5-year-old range, so I target that group a lot.

Have you ever really tried to hug a porcupine?
Not a live one, unless you count my cranky old neighbor, but I do have a stuffed porcupine hand-puppet that I hug all the time.

There’s still plenty of time to enter the Cheerios® New Author Contest. If you have a story for children just waiting to be told, click on over and get started.

Nancy likes to hug her husband, children and dog. She writes about books, her boys and life in Colorado at Life With My Boys and Books.

But can I be honest? The thing that really excites me is to be able to share this fun video review of Abandon that my 12-year-old daughter I did together, since we both read the book. She enjoyed it so much that she wants to do more, and I like that having a partner helped me to loosen up, so we’ll have to keep our eyes open for that, right?

We also have a fantastic giveaway to offer at the end, so stick with us.

You can also check out the cool video trailer, where you will also find several interviews with Meg Cabot about the novel.

And now — our exclusive Q&A with Meg Cabot:

What do you like about writing for teens?

My favorite thing writing about teens is that they’re in a time of their lives when it is okay for them to still be undecided about who they are or where they’re going in life. When you’re an adult, this isn’t such an OK thing (although secretly many of us feel this way).

Plus, there’s often a dance in YA books, and then the characters get a chance to dress up, and it’s always nice to give your characters a chance to shine. Adults never get to go to dances (except weddings), and so hardly ever get a chance to dress up. We lead such boring lives. Except those of us who are professional wedding planners, or spies.

Is it different from writing for adults?

Any writer who says writing for teens is “different” than writing for adults is probably writing “down” to the audience. I don’t make any adjustment to my writing style when I’m writing for non-adult readers . . . except that I usually leave out the swear words. But in reality, teens swear. A LOT.

How do you hope your readers will respond to your stories?

I hope my books offer an escape for them from their problems, as my favorite authors’ books do for me when I’m looking for something “good to read.” It seems like there are more pressures in life than ever before (for instance, when I was teen, girls wrote nasty things about other girls on the bathroom wall; now they write them on Facebook), making it harder than ever to escape from them! So stories have to be really engrossing to help us get away from our problems. That’s what I’m always looking for in a book.

What books were you reading in middle school and high school?

I loved the “classics”—Jane Eyre, and Pride and Prejudice, and all of those.

But I loved what some people consider “trashy” fiction too . . . comic books, sci fi, horror novels, romance, mysteries. I’d read pretty much anything as long as it had a strong female character and suspense mingled with romance in it!

Wasn’t that fun?

One of you will win a copy of Abandon and this limited edition silver bracelet, giving you a hint of heroine Pierce Oliveria’s new life lesson (after cheating death once and sort of fleeing from him ever since). It’s nothing new to those of us who have experienced such things in our many years, but it’s such a teenage revelation — after living a safe and simple life to find out that things are really quite unexpected and out of our control.

Leave a comment if you’d like to win (U.S. shipping addresses only). We’ll announce the winner on Wednesday, May 18. The giveaway is closed.

Check out our current giveaways. Subscribe to our feed. Follow us @5M4B on Twitter or on Facebook.

Jennifer Donovan and her daughter Amanda share a love of reading, and both enjoy reading some of the same books, though they might differ in opinion on what makes a truly great book. She blogs at Snapshot, which gives her yet another forum to share her opinions.