2010 - 08/2010 Meeting

Page Created: 09/25/10. Last Updated: 02/11/10. Last Google Group Page Update: 03/29/10.

ROBYN SCHNEIDER / VIOLET HABERDASHER

Books:

As Robyn Schneider:

BETTER THAN YESTERDAY

SOCIAL CLIMBER

Official Site: http://www.robynschneider.com/

As Violet Haberdasher:

KNIGHTLEY ACADEMY

Official Site: http://www.knightleyacademy.com/

MEETING SUMMARY:

Meeting Date: August 14, 2010.

Meeting Site: Barnes & Noble, Riverside Square Mall. Hackensack, New Jersey.

Official Attendance: 15.

Meeting Program: Talk by YA/Children's Author.

Notes:

Meeting Memories:

Newsletter Account:

The Science Fiction Association of Bergen County met at Barnes & Noble in Hackensack, New Jersey on Saturday, August 14, 2010. YA fantasy writer Violet Haberdasher, the pen name for mainstream Young Adult author Robyn Schneider, was our speaker.

Robyn Schneider spent her childhood summers vacationing in the United Kingdom, reading the books of authors like E Nesbitt, Susan Cooper and Diana Wynne Jones. She was 13 when she encountered the first Harry Potter novel. She immediately know that she wanted to write fantasies about zany boarding schools and kindly professors. Her first idea was to do a summer camp for wizards. Our guest had caught the spirit of being a writer, but had to learn the craft. She had written 5 or 6 books before she sold Better Than Yesterday.

Better than Yesterday is the story of The Catcher in the Rye as told by Holden Caulfield’s roommate. Our speaker described it as The Sound and the Fury meets Gossip Girl. Her publisher was delighted. They had a pretty, blond teenaged writer who could write for the Gossip Girl crowd and mix in a bit of Literature. This was someone they could market!

The next book was The Social Climber’s Guide to High School. This was sold on the basis of a three page proposal while the author worked for a packager (she had also worked at a literary agency). The book was on track to become an ABC Family television series when the writers’ strike intervened and the project was shelved. Her publisher was not concerned. Just keep giving us more of this they said.

The problem was that Robyn Schneider was miserable. She had nearly reached the point of being publishable without having to be good. She didn’t want to be defined as a Gossip Girl clone writer. She wanted to write fantasy–-like William Shakespeare as a vampire, not Gossip Girl knockoffs. She wanted to write books, not product. She walked away, made the decision to give up writing and enrolled at Barnard.

The author earned a degree in English from Barnard and a Masters from Columbia (she’s a Victorian scholar with a thesis on 19th Century London and Sherlock Holmes). She was preparing for her PhD when she accepted the double dare of a friend and wrote the first two chapters of the book that became Knightley Academy. Her proposal was accepted and she was told to turn in the completed manuscript in three months time.

Now although our guest was still a big J K Rowling fan who attended other Harry Potter fan gatherings, she was not able to come up with a system of magic which felt believable and not derivative. The solution was to invent a new literary genre: the dystopian historical novel. That’s what Robyn called it, although it’s really an alternate world fiction. Because she did not want to confuse or annoy either the fantasy fans or the Gossip Girls, she took the identity of Violet Haberdasher as a fantasy persona.

The Knightley Academy is an institution which grew out of the ideal of chivalry. Students are trained there to become royal guardsmen, embassy security personnel, and Scotland Yard inspectors. Their studies include forensics, language and diplomacy as well as more mundane aspects of police/security work. The work was originally conceived as a YA novel, but her publisher convinced the author to retool it as a Middle Grade book. Out went the sex references, in came allusions to poop. (“Poop is awesome for kids!”)

The book is set in the 1890s in an England which has long been at peace. Trouble is looming on the horizon, however. Internally, the British class system is creaking as a result of the changes of the Industrial Revolution. Traditionalists are scandalized that for the first time, a few slots in the Academy are being set aside for the sons of commoners. Henry Grim, our plucky hero, has won one of these slots. He soon becomes fast friends with the other two winners, Indian Rohan Mehta and Jewish Adam Beckerman. But there is more at stake than simple class struggle, for Scotland (which is not part of the U.K. in this universe) has become a Stalinist Police State and is secretly readying for war.

Knightley Academy was published in March 2010. The second volume in the trilogy is nearly done. The author referred to it as Harry Potter 5 meets Fight Club with smallpox thrown in.

Along the way Robyn Schneider became a mini celebrity, particularly in the United Kingdom. She partied with movie stars like Emma Watson, danced with British royalty, and was on the cover of British Vogue. She has become an authority on Doctor Who. Her Twitter commentary logged 6,000 hits in one hour (earning Ms Schneider a chunk of advertising change.) She was filmed on the Season 5 Doctor Who Confidential finale and has been doing uncredited movie rewrites while trying to land a writing slot for the American Torchwood. (Editor’s note: Torchwood America fell through, although there will be a Torchwood International series.)

Robyn Schneider remains a geek at heart. She live streams a Robin TV puppet show. She has written a Twilight for gnomes Choose-Your-Own-Adventure fan fiction book. The author has also written funny erotic poetry.

We are grateful that Robyn Schneider was able to make time for our group with her busy schedule and regret that deadlines forced her to cut short her talk.