Maureen Johnson

SHELTER FOR OKLAHOMA

Tue, 21 May 2013 17:07:00 -0400

In the past, I’ve done some fundraising for Shelterbox when disaster has struck. Shelterbox is going to Oklahoma to aid the people who lost their homes, so I am fundraising again, and asking for your help.

What Shelterbox does is make up these LARGE GREEN BOXES that contain high-quality tents that can house up to ten people. The boxes also contain things that help you live, like a stove, tools, water purifiers, blankets, and something for children. The boxes cost about $1000. Together, we can totally raise enough for a shelter or two? I’ve set up a donation page, and it’s really easy to give.

If you could share this, it is appreciated. We can literally put a roof over someone’s head. No amount is too small. Nothing is insignificant.

Here’s a little bit more about what they do.

THE RUNAWAY QUEEN IS ON THE LOOSE!

Tue, 21 May 2013 09:49:27 -0400

Friends, I am excited. As you may know, I have been working on a series called THE BANE CHRONICLES, based on Cassie Clare’s books—specifically, on the adventures of Magnus Bane.

My first offering in the series, THE RUNAWAY QUEEN, is NOW OUT.

It has everything a story really requires: Revolutionary Paris, a hot air balloon, great clothes, huge wigs, moving furniture, dashing counts, and a monkey. Oh, and the queen. And some vampires. And other stuff.

melissaanelli: leakycon: You guys, you guys, we’re getting a...

Mon, 20 May 2013 14:59:24 -0400

melissaanelli:

leakycon:

You guys, you guys, we’re getting a sneak peek of The Mortal Instruments at LeakyCon. We’re freaking out.

Plus Cassie’s coming to hang out!

cassandraclare: The cover of the next of the Bane Chronicles:...

Thu, 16 May 2013 20:25:37 -0400

cassandraclare:

The cover of the next of the Bane Chronicles: The Runaway Queen! Enjoy, my lovelies! Magnus, what a distinguished ring you have.

THE STORY! SHE IS COMING FOR YOU! COMES OUT ON TUESDAY!

LONDON ALERT!

Thu, 16 May 2013 11:08:04 -0400

FRIENDS!

I am doing ONE APPEARANCE in LONDON, on SATURDAY, JUNE 8th, 2:00, at the Stoke Newington Literary Festival. WITH SARAH REES BRENNAN. You can get tickets HERE. I hope you DO. I’ll die if I don’t see you!

Video

Wed, 15 May 2013 14:11:59 -0400

You can tell we’re related.

Tue, 14 May 2013 18:47:44 -0400

You can tell we’re related.

COVERFLIP: WHAT NOW?

Mon, 13 May 2013 17:15:44 -0400

Remember Coverflip? I hope so, because it just happened. But if you don’t know what I’m talking about, click the link or Google it or just make something up in your head.

It got a lot of coverage. First in the United States, the article went slightly supernova on HuffPo, becoming one of the top articles on the site. Lots of other places started sharing the link (or mentioning it). It turned up on Jezebel, and the USAToday Books page, and on The New Yorker site, The Rumpus, and on Wired.com. In the UK, people started really talking about it quite a lot. I missed two emails from the BBC that came while I was sleeping asking me to speak on Radio Scotland and the Newshour (a UK author did the piece, as I was too late for the time difference). There were two pieces in the Daily Mail, including one in which Jacqueline Wilson (the grande dame of middle grade and YA in the UK) called for an end to the genderized covers. There were two in the Guardian, and the amazing Katy Brand wrote about it for The Telegraph. Jacqueline Wilson came back swinging even harder in The Telegraph.

Plus, blogs. Lots of blogs.

Which is all very nice—it really is. This is more than you can really hope for for what was essentially an offhand tweet about something I thought everyone knew about. But here’s the thing …

When an issue like this comes up and people feel OUTRAGE and a link gets popular, the media steps in and covers it, because it is a current story. Hands are waved, and this gives the appearance that Something Is Happening and Things Are Now About To Change! Because, it’s in the news, so …

… so something is happening, right?

Usually, no.

Thing is, once an issue like this has run, the idea is that it’s been covered. It’s done. Then interest fizzles out like last week’s Diet Coke left in a hot car. It all just goes away, unless people decide not to let it go away.

In the light of all of this, I’d like to offer two things:

1. A clarification on some points

2. An ACTION PLAN to take it FURTHER.

ANSWERING THE COMMENTS

Because I’ve been on the internet before, I did not read the comments on the article. And when I say, “I did not read the comments on the article,” I mean I read some comments on the article before I remembered not to read the comments on the article. More than that, I read hundreds (a thousand?) Twitter replies, and I want to comment on the things I saw come up.

What if I like the “girly” covers? Are you saying girly covers are bad? Isn’t that just as discriminatory?

No, I wasn’t saying that. But a lot of the other articles about it came to the girly = bad conclusion, so I can see why you’d think I was saying that. I pointed out that the covers women get and the covers men get are almost universally different, without passing judgment on what covers were good or bad—because that’s subjective.

It is true, however, that certain covers, which are slapped with the label “girly” are often equated with badness, or trashiness, or the assumption that the book behind the cover has something to do with issues traditionally associated with women, such as love (something guys also do), shopping (something guys also do), and the wearing of shoes (something guys also do). We carry certain pieces of baggage around with us because of things we’ve heard along the way, and for some people, this means that pink = bad, in sort of the same way that “Four legs good, two legs better!” became a slogan in Animal Farm. It’s not true unless you believe it to be true, and it’s important to ask why you believe it to be true, which is what coverflip is about.

So what IS a bad cover? Surely, they must exist. And this may be a question to be answered by an artist. But I would suggest the following:

Covers that are overly general and/or designed to look almost exactly like the cover of another book that sold really well that may or may not be anything like the book in question.
Covers that have absolutely nothing to do with what’s in the book, and are merely designed to look like other books (so, basically, my first point, with a little extra irrelevance for flavor).
Covers that deliberately change the race of the characters in the book. (This is a HUGE TOPIC normally called “whitewashing.”)
Blotchy mishmashes of stock art thrown together at the last minute because no one could think of a cover. (Rare, but I suppose it must happen from time to time. Covers are usually obsessed over.)

Publishers are bad for doing this! Publishers are trying to keep us down!

Publishers, to my knowledge, are not trying to subvert the cause of feminism and keep us down. They are trying to sell books, which, as it turns out, is hard. They use cover images that they think readers and buyers will like. How the covers are actually made—who designs them, why they are picked—is really a very individual matter in the case of each book. Also, it tends to be very much a committee decision. It’s not like the cover is made and the artist throws down the brush and takes off his floppy hat and says, “Eet es finished! My great werk!” First of all, no one talks like that. Second, the covers are seen by pretty much everyone in the company, and then are shown to the people who buy stock for the stores, and everyone has an opinion. Editorial, sales, marketing, everyone has a peek at the cover. And all committee decisions tend to get watered down, because it is a rare thing for large numbers of people to agree on a single point.

HOWEVER, and this is where my ACTION PLAN comes in … if publishers know you want something different, they will be DELIGHTED to oblige. They’re really only trying to please you, reader. So if you want something different, that has to be reflected in some metric they can measure. Like sales. Or letters. Or blog posts. Or Coverflips!

So …

THE ACTION PLAN

Coverflip’s ultimate goal is to show that books have no gender. Let’s stop pre-determining what’s for boys and what’s for girls. And it aims to do this by playing around with the cover image to show that covers are simply covers, and you can switch them around and change perception in a heartbeat. The media is not going to fix this. And publishers can’t really fix it. It’s up to readers. To paraphrase John and Yoko, “Gendered books are over, if you want it.”

READERS CAN DO THIS …

Go into a store and really LOOK at how the books are sorted, what labels they’re put under. Those labels are not accidental, and they’re not always that accurate (especially in big stores). What’s in fiction? What’s in “Women’s Fiction”? What’s in “Urban Fiction”? Put some covers side to side and really have a good long SQUINT to try to see what it is you’re being told and sold. Tyr out something new, something that sounds like it might be good, but has a cover you don’t feel is meant for you.

And if you don’t like the cover, take it off or make a new one! It’s YOUR BOOK.

Also, write to/tweet at publishers and TELL THEM what you think!

TEACHERS CAN DO THIS …

Do a Coverflip in your classroom! Post the results! If kids can’t do the art, have them write about it. Teachers have already started doing this, some in just 40 minute periods, and are getting some amazing results.

LIBRARIANS AND MEDIA SPECIALISTS CAN DO THIS …

Mix up those displays. Do a BLANK COVER table. Give kids something you know they’d like, but might be afraid to be seen reading. Set a coverflip challenge!

The covers change when the feedback changes. So, change the conversation, change the cover.

DO YOU HAVE MORE IDEAS? SEND THEM TO ME.

COVERFLIP IT.

syrupie: If you haven’t heard about Maureen Johnson’s Cover...

Sat, 11 May 2013 10:50:28 -0400

syrupie:

If you haven’t heard about Maureen Johnson’s Cover Flip then where have you been?

A fine FLIP!

“And the point of great writers like [Oscar] Wilde is that...

Fri, 10 May 2013 13:53:33 -0400

“And the point of great writers like [Oscar] Wilde is that they make that invitation to you; they welcome you”. - Stephen Fry

Stephen Fry is a hero

COVERFLIP RESULTS!

Tue, 07 May 2013 16:13:18 -0400

My post is now up on Huffington Post, along with the SLIDESHOW.

LET'S DO THE COVERFLIP

Mon, 06 May 2013 14:09:00 -0400

I had this little idea on Twitter today. I have lots of little ideas on Twitter. And I have no doubt that this idea has been had before, because it’s that kind of idea. But it’s also the kind of idea worth repeating.

It started like this. I made a comment along the lines of, “Okay, Publishing. I get it. You want me to be a dude. That’s the message you’ve been sending me.” Why would I say something like this? Oh, for a MYRIAD of reasons. I got reasons out the wazoo.

I also know the grass is always greener, etc., and lots of guy writers are thinking, ‘Things are not so great for us, you know.’ This is because things are usually easy or constantly fantastic for most writers. Most of you reading this like books, but lots of people don’t read much. Sometimes, trying to sell a book is about as easy as trying to sell a dead snake. So the casual reader goes by the package, the overall PRESENTATION of the thing. What’s the cover like? Where is it in the store? Is this book supposed to be for me? What’s a book? Do I eat it?

Etc.

We could (and have) discussed many issues in this male/female book issue, but today, let’s just think about covers. And let’s have a CONTEST! It’s called COVERFLIP. It works like this.

1. Take a well-known book. (It’s up to you to define well-known.)

2. Imagine that book was written by an author of the OPPOSITE GENDER. Or a genderqueer author. Imagine all the things you think of when you think GIRL book or BOY book or GENDERLESS book (do they EXIST?). And I’m not saying that these categorizations are RIGHT—but make no mistake, they’re there.

I’ll put up one of my own covers as an example (because it doesn’t feel right to use someone else’s, in case they want no part of this discussion).* This is The Key to the Golden Firebird. It’s about three sisters who are dealing with the sudden death of their father. May, the middle sister, is trying to hold her family together and learn how to drive. This is the cover.

Now, as a mental exercise, imagine I’m Maurice Johnson. The book has the same exact topic. Does the cover look like this?

You get the point, I think.

3. Now, COVERFLIP! Make the new cover and put it online. Tweet or Tumbl it with the tag #coverflip.

4. I’ll be looking at them all, along with Huffington Post Books. They will put up a GALLERY of the best ones, and I’ll pick one winner to get a PRIZE PACK of signed books by me, along with whatever else I find in my house and shove in the envelope.

DEADLINE: TOMORROW, TUESDAY, MAY 7th, NOON E.S.T.

Remember to POST with #coverflip. That’s how we’ll find it.

* CRITICAL NOTE: 98% of authors don’t make or choose their covers. (Self-publishing, I know you do. I mean published with publishers.)

coshadowhunters: George Blagden To Narrate ‘TBC: The Runaway...

Fri, 03 May 2013 15:56:48 -0400

coshadowhunters:

George Blagden To Narrate ‘TBC: The Runaway Queen’!

Hi Shadowhunters!

By the Angel, do we have exciting ‘Bane Chronicle’ news! Thanks to Hollywood Crush

View Post

HOT DIGGITY.

sparklyunicornturds: Quotes from my favourite book- Name Of The...

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 19:47:00 -0400

sparklyunicornturds:

Quotes from my favourite book- Name Of The Star by Maureen Johnson

Cassandra Clare: On writers getting paid to write

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 11:48:12 -0400

Cassandra Clare: On writers getting paid to write:

cassandraclare:

Hey Cassie, I love your books so much and I was looking forward to the Bane Chronicles. I was under the impression when you first posted about them that they would be a series of free e-books, however when I looked at them on Amazon today they were $2.99. I can’t afford that. Especially if there…

the ol’ razzle dazzle

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 08:37:21 -0400

the ol’ razzle dazzle

MAUREEN JOHNSON

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 19:24:15 -0400

imshouting:

YOU ARE AN EVIL BEAUTIFUL WOMAN

ASFDKLFAJSDF

the thing THE THING ~~THE THING~~

This is like a beautiful poem.

mundiemoms: ONE MORE DAY till we find out WHAT REALLY HAPPENED...

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 19:08:07 -0400

mundiemoms:

ONE MORE DAY till we find out WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN PERU!!! #TheBaneChronicles #TheMortalInstrumentsSeries #CassandraClare @cassieclare1 @simonteen

Hey, want to read an article about The Bane Chronicles in Entertainment Weekly?

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 12:04:40 -0400

Want to see the first cover? Want to know all the release dates? Do you want any of these things? Well, I GIVE THEM TO YOU NO MATTER WHAT. They are HERE.

Oh, here’s the first cover. I’ll just put it here as well. WHY NOT?

The Key To The Golden Firebird by Maureen Johnson

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 11:19:42 -0400

The Key To The Golden Firebird by Maureen Johnson :

ktliterary:

Letter from the editor

It is so exciting to be able to bring Maureen’s first published title to the UK - especially while she is celebrating her reign as Queen of Teen. We’ve been cooking up some crazy stunts and can’t wait to unleash them on the unsuspecting British public.

THE KEY TO THE GOLDEN FIREBIRD is classic Maureen Johnson - funny, honest and poignant, featuring characters that you can’t help but root for, especially poor Pete who starts the first chapter missing his pants (the British kind of pants, as well as the American kind of pants).

Sara O’Connor, Editorial Director

We’re so excited to be working with Hot Key on this, and many other MJ titles in the near future!