Bookseller Turns the Tables to Pen A Crooked Kind of Perfect

September 18, 2007

After a decade of hosting hundreds of author visits as the marketing director for Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena, California, Linda Urban will now be the one signing the books. The former bookseller, who currently lives in Montpelier, Vermont, had her first novel, A Crooked Kind of Perfect, published by Harcourt this month.

The witty middle-grade story chronicles the difficulties of Zoe Elias, a Vladimir Horowitz wannabe, with a Perfectone D-60, "a wood-grained, vinyl-seated, wheeze-bag organ," instead of an elegant baby grand. Nevertheless, on the threshold of her 11th birthday, Zoe is tapped by her organ teacher to compete in the local Perfectone Perform-O-Rama, where she'll play Neil Diamond's "Forever in Blue Jeans."

In what School Library Journal called "an impressive and poignant debut novel," Urban treads gently on Zoe's familial and social difficulties and provides subtle life lessons about trying one's hardest and believing in oneself.

Linda Urban

Urban credits many of the strengths of her first book to knowledge gained during her years of bookselling. "At Vroman's, I had access to all kinds of books from all types of publishers. I learned how to talk about books, how the essence is story and character," she said. Urban also gained a lot of valuable insights from visiting authors and from a summer writer's workshop that she ran at Vroman's. "Every Saturday, a writer, illustrator, or editor would come talk to aspiring writers about writing," she explained. "At some point, I began taking notes for myself."

Urban began working at Vroman's in 1992, while she was attempting to finish her Ph.D. "I thought I could work in the bookstore for a while and have access to all of the books I needed for my dissertation," she said. After two years, she became Vroman's marketing director and remained in that position until she and her family moved to Vermont in 2004. Her husband, an attorney, now works in the Vermont Attorney General's Office, and Urban rears her two young children, and writes. She never returned to her dissertation, however. "Bookselling was so much more fun, [and my dissertation] was far too theoretical," she said. "My mind doesn't work that way."

To test the waters, Urban sent publishers a few manuscripts for picture books, but received no offers. Originally, she conceived of A Crooked Kind of Perfect as a picture book, with a much more straightforward plot. Harcourt accepted the story idea, but worked with Urban to reshape the book into its current form. Mouse Was Mad, Urban's first picture book, illustrated by Henry Cole, will be published by Harcourt in 2009.

Urban's extensive academic and practical marketing background proved to be extremely useful as the book was prepared for publication. Her comments to the book's editor about the original cover were acknowledged, and changes were made. "[The first cover] looked mass market and skewed younger than appropriate," she explained. "I knew that an eight-year-old would open the book and be disappointed because it wasn't really for her."

Urban's preference for an effective cover and title are ones that appeal to middle-grade girls and "nostalgic moms, but wouldn't scare grandmothers." The result is a book she believes any bookseller can handsell.

For her book tour, Urban is rejecting the neophyte's impulse to stop in every bookstore in towns all across America. Instead, she said, she is following advice for new novelists that she learned long ago: "Do a signing in your hometown and in the town where your mother lives."

On October 6, Urban will appear at her local bookstore, Bear Pond Books, along with some of the community's organ-playing children. Later in the month, she will appear in her mother's town of Rochester, Michigan, at Halfway Down the Stairs, at Vroman's, and at a number of carefully selected venues on the West coast.

Asked how she would handsell A Crooked Kind of Perfect, she offered: "For all fifth grade girls who felt left outside and for anyone who dreamed of being great." Perhaps that's overly inclusive. She laughed, "How about 'funny, sounds like a kid, and nobody dies'?" -- Nomi Schwartz

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