Librarian Sandy Hall is set to publish her first YA novel with Swoon, a YA imprint at Macmillan./Credit: Sandy Hall
A teen librarian for the past four years at New Jersey’s Morristown and Morris Township Library, 33-year-old Sandy Hall knows a thing or two about the YA genre and used her expertise to write her own upcoming YA novel, A Little Something Different (Macmillan, 2014), coming out this August.
Swoon Reads, a YA romance imprint under Macmillan that uses the feedback of its active romance novel online community that participates in the Swoon Reads publishing process. The community chose Hall’s book after the librarian had submitted her manuscript to Swoon Reads, and it had been posted to the Swoon Reads website for rating.
Swoon’s crowd sourced selection process originated from the imprint’s senior vice-president and publisher, Jean Feisel, who is best known for her “Babysitter Club” series (Scholastic) with the series author, Ann Martin.
SLJ caught up with Hall to ask how she came up with her story, and how she feels about her library’s young patrons being able to read her book down the road. (Hall is currently in the midst of editing her book’s second draft.)
What made you interested in writing a YA book?
SH: I always liked to write as a creative outlet, but I didn’t think of myself as a writer. I could never really finish anything. Then, last fall, I saw an article about Swoon Reads, and I thought that maybe I could write a teen romance. Basically, I wrote it for the site. Between planning, writing, and editing it took only about a month.
How do you sit down and write the story? Did you have any structure in place?
SH: It was like [my own] National Novel Writing Month. You just push through. I had a stack of index cards with all the scenes as they were in the book. So going into the writing was really smooth. They always say, just get your first draft down on paper. Once you have it down you can do whatever you need to do it. I basically posted the first draft and edited for typos and content. I also follow a lot of writing blogs. I read Stephen King’s On Writing (Scribner, 2000) last summer, which I found inspirational..
When did it occur to you that you had a good chance to win?
SH: As the deadline got closer, I saw my numbers were getting higher. I think I was in third place. I was letting my hopes get almost too high. I wanted to win so badly. I kept leaving myself notes on my phone like, ‘You can’t lose what wasn’t yours in the first place.’ I figured if I didn’t win, I could still get comfort from [notes from] my past self. Then, I got an email [from Swoon] at beginning of February asking me to send my phone number and availability. I thought, ‘This is actually happening.’ I wasn’t allowed to talk about [my win] until it was officially announced this past Valentine’s Day. I was chewing my fingernails off.
How did you pick the story?
SH: This is the second novel I finished. Prior, I had written a dystopian story, so writing in the real world was so much easier. It’s about two college students falling in love told by their friends and the characters around them─a bus driver, friends, and a barista. So the [two] main characters don’t actually tell the story. I had to get inside everyone’s heads. I knew the story wasn’t like anything I had on my library’s shelf.
What’s the next step?
SH: Right now, I am still editing this one, and I am going on a book tour. It’s super surreal that the book will be placed in the library where people can check it out to buy it.