Author in Residence Beth Kephart: Then and Now Challenge

Our very first Author in Residence, Beth Kephart, is a critically acclaimed, gracious writer who will be on the rgz team through December. Check out her mini-issue at the rgz website. Welcome this author of HOUSE OF DANCE, UNDERCOVER, and NOTHING BUT GHOSTS!

Last month's winning entry has been published on Beth's blog, so go read the lovely words of Q's "Tinged with Regret."

Here is the third of Beth’s monthly entries about writing, Then and Now:

"In this readergirlz challenge, the premise is simple (and does not involve a video). Find a photograph of yourself as a young child on the verge of some new knowledge or turning point. Write a paragraph about that photograph/that moment in present tense, as if you are experiencing that moment for the first time. Then write about that photograph/that moment in past tense, with the gift of retrospection. Ask yourself what you gain from working in the present tense, and what is gained by reflection; include your thoughts on this with your submission.

"Send your entry to me at kephartblogATcomcastDOTnet by November 25, 2009. The author of the winning entry will receive a signed copy of NOTHING BUT GHOSTS, a novel about a young girl who, in learning to live past her mother’s unexpected passing, involves herself in decoding the mystery that envelops the recluse down the road. The past and the present collide in GHOSTS."

Thanks, Beth, and good luck, readergirlz!

Cover Stories: Nothing But Ghosts by Beth Kephart

Our lovely Author-in-Residence, Beth Kephart, shared this story on my blog, and I'm happy to bring it to readergirlz! (Don't forget to enter Beth's latest writing challenge by Monday.)

Here's Beth:

"Since Nothing but Ghosts is rooted not just in my imagination, but within Chanticleer, a very specific pleasure garden that I have now visited for years, this book was always visually alive to me. I could see each scene--place it atop the ambling hill, or beside the watercress stream, or within the shadows of a tree at night. I could see it. I hoped that others would.

"I sent photographs of the garden to my editor, Jill Santopolo, and to Carla Weise, art director, at HarperTeen. I sent images, too, of young women standing by windows, since

this is one of the book's prevalent themes. And then I waited, as Jill, Carla, and the

HarperTeen worked through what sounds like dozens of possibilities. One of the pivotal scenes in the book

involves the sun streaming through a window and catching the light of tinted bottles; a related image was

apparently tried. There are horses and old photographs in this book; these, too, were considered. In the end, there was but one day left before the book would have to be sent out for binding into ARCs, and that is the day that I first saw, on my husband's tiny phone, the image that became the Nothing but Ghosts cover.

"I loved it--every single thing about it--and felt the great happiness that arises when one feels as if an editor, an art director, and a marketing team have entered into your world and seen just what it was you were hoping to leave behind. That mood. That manner of maturity. That character waiting for a breeze. I seek, with my YA novels, to write beyond

genre or category--simply to tell a story that has a teen protagonist at its heart, in a way that engages any reader, of any age. This particular cover is timeless and ageless, too. Oh, how I had hoped for that.

"It is rare when an author feels as at peace as I have felt about this particular cover. I know how lucky I got, this time around, and I am grateful."

I love this cover! I think it has a softness and a sense of nostalgia--and whoa, those grounds that Beth knows, how gorgeous are they? Everyone should read this book--it's fantastic. Beth Kephart is a wonderful writer (just check out her blog, filled with photos and poetry daily--a bouquet of posts to enjoy!). I mean, Beth even writes poetry when she's telling me her Cover Story!