Calling is great, but I know some of my introverts have a tough time with that. Sending letters is also great — and why not do both, if you can?

If you’re not up to making phone calls to reps/senators/etc, sending a paper letter in the mail is the next best thing. Still gets tracked.

— Gwenda Bond (@Gwenda) November 15, 2016

Here’s the Bannon letter I’m mailing to Sen. Rand Paul today. Feel free to crib to mail your own! Sending to party leadership too. pic.twitter.com/McH1OWpLWn

— Gwenda Bond (@Gwenda) November 15, 2016

Two tips: If you are their constituent (which is best) say so up front and add a personal touch. Both make a response more likely.

— Gwenda Bond (@Gwenda) November 15, 2016

So I’m putting this here where it’s easily copy and paste-able for your own modification:

Senator Rand Paul
1029 State Street
Bowling Green, KY 42101

Dear Senator Paul:

As a constituent from Lexington, I’m writing to ask you to oppose the appointment of Stephen Bannon to the new president’s administration. While I know this appointment does not require senate confirmation, I encourage you to voice your opposition publicly, with your own party leadership, and in any communications you may have with the president-elect’s transition team.

Why? A few reasons, courtesy of the Southern Poverty Law Center:

• Bannon presided over a news empire where he, according to former staffers, “aggressively pushed stories against immigrants, and supported linking minorities to terrorism and crime.”
• “We’re the platform for the alt-right,” Bannon said in July, using a term that is really just a rebranding of traditional white nationalism.
• Under Bannon, Breitbart published a call to “hoist [the Confederate flag] high and fly it with pride” only two weeks after the Charleston massacre when the country was still reeling from the horrors of the murders.
• Under Bannon, Breitbart published an extremist anti-Muslim tract where the author wrote that “rape culture” is “integral” to Islam.

There are plenty more reasons I could list. My grandfather, who hailed from Eastern Kentucky, did not fight in World War II so a wealthy antisemite could be installed in an important White House role. History has its eyes on you, and so does this constituent.

Regards,

Gwenda Bond
Your address

Letter #2

Senator Mitch McConnell
771 Corporate Drive, Suite 108
Lexington, KY 40503

Dear Senator McConnell:

As a constituent from Lexington, I’m writing to express my concern over recently announced appointments to the new president’s administration and proposals being floated to end the filibuster in order to push appointments and legislative measures through the Senate.

To date, the president-elect has proposed or reportedly proposed appointing: Stephen Bannon, a man with ties to neo-nazi groups and with a history of domestic violence who many feel could not even pass a White House background check without the president-elect’s override; Jeff Sessions, who could not be confirmed to a federal judgship in the 1980s because of racist rhetoric; and General Flynn, a dangerously Islamophobic choice for national security advisor.

I don’t ask you to object to these appointments on moral grounds, though I could, because if that would be effective you would already have done so. But consider the strategy here: Do you truly believe your party will have a future if it tries to regress our country to some concept of greatness that never existed? America has often struggled to live the ideals we claim to hold dear — being the great melting pot, with equality for all people, prizing justice and our first amendment rights of free speech and religion — but if we don’t continue to try, if we actively trample on these, then it won’t be Republicans winning and Democrats losing. It will be all of us losing. It will be America losing.

Do you want that to be your legacy? Your office assisted my grandfather with his VA pension for his service in World War II and I know has helped many others among your constituents. I would ask you to consider those people who fought against the exact kind of hateful views that the president-elect now proposes to invite into our government.

Unlike Bannon, most other appointees will face the confirmation process. If you won’t stand up against these appointments, as I strongly urge, please do not remove the means for those with the will to do so.

Regards,

Gwenda Bond 

YOUR ADDRESS

So the great mentoring pair-up is complete! If you wrote me and didn’t hear back in one way or another, then feel free to ping again because it’s possible I missed your message. Otherwise, I hope your pairing works out fabulously! I ended up having some writers who didn’t get paired up, mainly because I didn’t have mentors with the right experience for them or because my first priority was pairing up women of color (and that is mainly what people volunteered to do, so I didn’t feel comfortable pairing up otherwise). So I wish all of you guys the best of luck too! And, likewise, I have some writers who volunteered to be mentors that I didn’t end up matching. You are all fabulous; I did my best bewitched attempt to get people together who I felt would be best for both involved.

A few people wanted to know if I had any advice and so I thought I’d just type up some basic guidelines here. I probably should have done this in advance, but oh well. 😉

For Mentors: 

Hey, it’s pretty awesome that you want to pay things forward and help somebody else. I don’t know a single professional writer who hasn’t been mentored along the way, and so thank you for stepping up and volunteering to help out with this project. Don’t underestimate your own experience — if you’ve finished a novel (or a bunch) and gotten an agent, sold a book or published one (or a bunch), edited books, written articles and proposals, or some combination thereof and are comfortable giving feedback and advice, well, you are 100 percent qualified to help this writer I’ve paired you with level up. Most of you writers I know doubt your own accomplishments: stop that.

Most important things: be encouraging and supportive, but honest and firm.

For Those Being Mentored: 

Be open to suggestions, and be honest with your mentor if you feel they’re suggesting something that’s not right for your ms. (Play this card wisely, though, and not just because suggestions feel extreme!)

Don’t waste their time; if you agree on deadlines, let them know if you’re going to miss one early. They’re making space in their schedules to help with your work. You missing a deadline you’ve set together screws up things for you both. Also, this is a good habit to pick up now — you will need it for the rest of your career.

If you feel overwhelmed or don’t know how to attack a project, ask your mentor! That’s what they’re here for.

For both of you, ideas on how this might look, which you can absolutely tailor to meet your needs and available time!

If you’re not sure how to structure things, here are some ideas:

• Get to know each other a little — exchange info on your backgrounds.
• Assess where the mentored writer is in the process; do they have a ms. they need to revise? Has it been through edits before? Do they have a feel for their strengths and weaknesses, what they want your help with? Etc.
• Mentors have writers send you some work, and set a timeline to get back to them with notes.
• Build in some time to process the notes, and then regroup on next steps: Is this planning a revision and setting some deadlines along the way? Maybe for each 50 pages, maybe helping to plan what the revision will look like and then setting deadlines? Maybe the book is ready or close to ready, in which case, maybe it’s time to put together a query and a list of agents to send it to?
• Career advice and goal setting: Is it time to start a new project? When will you have your book ready to go out and query agents with by? Accountability and structure is a great thing for new writers to learn.
• Celebrate and commiserate: Two of the most valuable things writers can offer each other; did your writer NAIL the revision of her first ten pages, did she get a ms. request? YAY. Did she get rejected by an agent? HEY, we’ve all been there. Maybe share a story about a similar setback. Rejection, it comes for us all. 😉

So, when I went full-time earlier this year, I realized I might have a little more time to pay it forward and mentor younger/newer writers. I knew immediately I wanted to focus my efforts on writers of color, because I say I’m committed to increasing diversity, so I should put my extra time there, right? Right. Put your time where your mouth is, as it were. And we all know that young writers of color often have a harder time breaking in; I can help with manuscripts, I can help with business advice, I can be a person in someone’s corner.

An opportunity to help out a guy who was having trouble tackling a revision presented itself almost as soon as I came to this realization. Unfortunately, on Friday I learned that the person I’d been helping has been behaving very badly and hurting many women writers and that until the talking started people had been too afraid to speak up, now there was a flood. I believe them. To say I am livid and dismayed is to understate things. But I still believe in my realization earlier this year too. So I tweeted this on Friday night, almost as soon as I learned about the situation:

So I’m going to need a new writer to mentor. I’m especially interested in helping WoC with novel manuscripts in need of revision. Write me!

— Gwenda BOOnd ☠️🕸🗝 (@Gwenda) October 15, 2016

As you can see, it took on a life of its own. I have, at last count, about 35 or so emails from women of color looking for mentors. I’m on deadline this week, so it will probably be next week before I can sit and truly go through them. I don’t want to turn anyone away. But I can only take on one or two of these writers at most. Do I have time to coordinate this project? Well, I’m going to make time. Because this is important. This was a tweet on a weekend; this is a need.

So this is where you come in, writer friends. Are you a writer who’s further along? Who feels like you could mentor someone? Let me know (comments or email). If I’ve already heard from you–and bless you, six or so volunteers I already have–you don’t need to contact again. I’ve got you. You may wonder, what kind of time commitment are we talking about–I think that’s up to you and the writer you work with. I’ll sort through emails in an attempt to identify who will be a good fit, then work with you to pick who you want to work with out of a few people. Everyone is going to need something slightly different. I look for people who at least have a manuscript complete (and I assume that’s mostly who I’ve heard from), because those are people who are serious enough to have finished a project and who I can help push forward.

For me, mentoring is about providing manuscript feedback and career advice, it can be about helping a person wrap their head around a revision and set deadlines for themselves with outside accountability (aka me). That sort of thing. Your strengths may vary a little, so you may focus on different things. There’s no one way to mentor someone.

I would be remiss if I didn’t also plug a program several people have let me know about: Writing in the Margins. I don’t know all the details, but it’s certainly something I’ll be sharing with these writers (and I know one at least I’ve heard from has been through it already).

I’m so excited to share the cover for the very first middle grade novel from Christopher Rowe and yours truly. Behold! Here’s the cover for The Supernormal Sleuthing Service #1: The Lost Legacy, out next spring from Greenwillow Books!

I hope you guys love it as much as we do! The artist is Glenn Thomas and he’s also doing black and white interior art.

Here’s the about the book that’ll be on the back of the ARCs:

Three kids. A hotel full of monsters. And a stolen magical artifact that could disrupt the balance between the humans and the supernatural. Welcome to life at Hotel Monster! The first book in the hilarious and spooky series that is Hotel Transylvania meets Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library.

Stephen’s dad decided to move them across the country to New York City, where his dad is taking over as head chef in an exclusive hotel. A hotel that has the most elite of clientele: monsters! Surprise! Or as they prefer to be called, supernormals. And an even bigger surprise? Stephen is part supernormal himself. When a magical artifact goes missing and Stephen is framed, he must work with two new friends to navigate this whole new world to clear his name. Consequences can be dire in the world of monsters. Spooky, funny, and full of monstrous hijinks, The Lost Legacy is an inventive and accessible mystery-adventure full of friendship, humor, and a monstrous cast of characters—perfect for fans of Pseudonymous Bosch and R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps series.

We’ve had so much fun working with each other and our fabulous editor Martha Mihalick on this book/series and we can’t wait for you guys to step into this world. You can preorder if you like: Indiebound – Amazon – B&N.

Hey everyone! Here’s my schedule for next week at SLC ComicCon (come say hi!):

Thursday, September 1, 2016

1:00 pm to 2:00 pm
Writing for Teens :: 255F

4 to 5 p.m.
Signing – Shadow Mountain – Booth 1807

Friday, September 2, 2016

12:00 pm to 1:00 pm
Behind the Glasses – Why Superheroes Need Secret Identities :: 150G

6:00 pm to 7:00 pm
Romance in Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Horror :: 251A

Saturday, September 3, 2016

10:00 am to 11:00 am
Teen Author Boot Camp: Girl Power: Writing Strong Female Characters :: 255B

11 a.m. – 12 p.m.
I’m With HER-O — I’m not sure where this will yet, but it’ll be me and Margaret Stohl and Sarah Kuhn and Cecil Castellucci so get there!

12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.
Signing – Shadow Mountain – Booth 1807

I’ll post here if anything changes, but hope to see some of you there.

p.s. I started a Patreon, which I’ll post more about soon. I’m still figuring out how to make it useful!

• Lois Lane Becomes a “Triple Threat” in 2017 with New YA Novel, Hollywood Reporter (Thanks, Graeme!)
• Other nice pieces at Comic Book Resources and Comics Alliance and I won’t belabor with others!
• A review of Double Down at Black Girl Nerds that totally made me weepy (I have the best readers <3 <3 <3)

Also thanks to our host bookstores and everyone who came out to the Dangerous Ladies Tour and made it such an amazing time! You rock.