Melanie Coon: Tips from Author Andrea Alban from the New World of Publishing

Andrea Alban is very funny. Her presentation at the New World of Publishing Conference in Santa Cruz on May 21, 2011 sounded like a lively conversation with a favorite friend. Andrea’s latest book is a scrumptiously-designed young adult novel, Anya’s War. The cover is an irresistible Chinese red with a gold Star of David ringed by delicate gold scroll work. The jacket design combines symbols of Jewish history and Chinese culture. You can’t resist picking up this inviting book, lured by wondering what these two cultures could possibly have in common.

The author experienced the same wonder as an eight-year-old daydreaming about her relatives who fled pre-World War II Odessa for the safety of a protected colony in Shanghai. Alban says that their stories, told and re-told by her grandfather and her father, looped through her memory and panned across her mind’s eye for twenty years.

She began writing the novel when her son, then age three, was attending Jewish Community Center pre-school. Alban chose to exercise “truth in fiction” as Amy Tan has done with her novels, rather than creative non-fiction. She wanted to embellish the truth with a captivating story line and fresh characters. Anya’s War was published just before her son’s twenty-first birthday. It is a labor of love eighteen years in the making.

Anya’s War features a spirited main character, Anya, age twelve, whose life is carefree and privileged; whose heroine is Amelia Earheart. The story becomes complicated when Anya finds an abandoned Chinese baby girl in the marketplace. She brings the baby home and tries to hide her from her family. An interesting knot of cultural attitudes and values gets pulled tighter when the baby is discovered. At the end of the book, Anya emerges a strong young woman who forges her own identity in a world that is rapidly changing.

At the conference, Andrea Alban gave One Big Tip for aspiring writers: get yourself into a writing conference where you have to submit a piece of writing. Research the speakers to find ones you are interested in, give them your proposal, and ask if you can send them something. Use email, and title your submission with the conference name followed by “Requested Material” so that yours will make it to the top of the pile. Unsolicited submissions are rarely read, so if yours in requested, it has a better chance of getting a glance from someone who can help you.

On the subject of agents, Andrea added another tip for finding one who you can work with. She suggested reading the Acknowledgements page of books you love. There you will find profuse thanks expressed to the author’s agent. Use Publishers’ Marketplace to get the contact information for that particular agent. Andrea’s own agent, Barbara Moulton, was also on the panel. Barbara says she feels like a “nattering nabob of negativity” when she has to rein in Andrea’s creativity. The balance between a fabulous idea and what is realistic is the function of a partnership between writer and agent.

Andrea Alban is the epitome of creativity and relish for life, qualities that are reflected in her presentation as well as her writing. Anya’s War took eighteen years to come to fruition, so take heart from the story of this book and keep writing.

Melanie Coon is a high school Special Education teacher and memoirist who lives near the beach in Santa Cruz. She has two adult daughters who live in the San Francisco Bay area. When her oldest daughter left home to attend college in 1996, Melanie joined the Central California Writing Project. There she found her voice. Stories from her childhood visited her in dreams and haunted her during the day until she met Laura Davis in 2010. In Laura's Memory to Memoir yearlong Intensive, Melanie learned that those stories are worth drafting, polishing and sharing.

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