Haunted at Seventeen

Nova Ren Suma’s new novel, 17 & Gone, came out last week on March 21, and to mark the release of this story about a 17-year-old girl haunted by the missing, she’s asked some authors she knows to join her in answering this question: What haunted you at seventeen? (click here to see the series.) Full disclosure--Nova Ren Suma does not know me and therefore did not ask me to write a post, but I was so inspired by this writing series that I could not resist posting my own.

So...

What haunted me at 17?

When I was seventeen I punched a girl in the face.

Even now, many many years later, I can see her expression, her wide eyes, her mouth falling open, and her hands flying up in surprise. "You hit me," she said. "I can't believe you did that."

I couldn't believe it either. We were stuck in a traffic jam, a pushing surge of bodies that had just been let out of a school assembly. Our little encounter had probably been witnessed by twenty people. Some of them called out "Whoa!" They laughed with glee or maybe it was discomfort. It's not every day that you see a girl lash out in what can only be called rage.

I managed to elbow through the crowd, my hand still stinging, my heart pounding, tears streaming down my face. I could hear the girl screeching behind me. "She hit me. Can you believe she hit me?"

It was the last month of my senior year, a year that was a majorly crappy year in a long string of majorly crappy years.

But still, I had never punched anyone in the face before.

This was me at seventeen, a bizarre blend of opposites:

• quiet, almost pathologically shy, when I wasn't manic and gushing and gossiping and flirting
• studious and conscientious and hardworking when I wasn't falling asleep in class
• a nerdy preppy Catholic school girl in my polyester uniform (green skirt, pastel color collared blouse) when I wasn't waiting tables in a different polyester uniform (brown jumper, orangey striped jersey) 
• A daydreamer who read constantly and wrote stories and locked myself in my room when I wasn't sneaking out of my house in the middle of the night to roam around with friends
• College bound and driven and ambitious when I wasn't obsessing over a boy who dropped out of high school
• A dutiful rule-follower when I wasn't writing essays for other students if they would buy my lunch 

Why did I hit the girl?

The easiest explanation is to say it had to do with a boy, but it was more than that. A she said/she said kind of thing that spiraled out of control. A former best friend who was a Queen Bee. A group of desperate insecure girls competing for her attention. It happened at the beginning of my senior year. My group of friends took sides. And I ended up on one side, alone. It turned into a cliched bullying thing. Thank God there was no social media back then. I can't imagine how unbearable it would've been to have the gossip and mockery and threats coming at me on Facebook, et al. It was hard enough to bear it in real time when I was walking down the school hallway.

But I slogged through it. What else can you do? I counted down the days to the end of the year when I could run away from all of them. It helped that they were in none of my classes. I could orchestrate my schedule to rarely bump into those girls.

Until the day we had an assembly.

They sat behind me in a row. They kicked my chair. They whispered and laughed and joked. When we spilled out of the auditorium they bunched up right behind me. One of the girls poked me in the back. I was crying and she was mimicking me. I wasn't thinking anything at all when I spun around with my fist clenched.

I could've gotten suspended for fighting. Nobody turned me in. (Again: thank you social media for not existing!) The bullying didn't stop, but there were only a few weeks left of school. I was halfway out the door and stepping into the next stage of my life.

I went to a college 1250 miles away.

It doesn't torment me anymore. Really. It happened so long ago. I don't blame the girls. They struggled with their own demons. They grappled with their own inconsistencies in their personalities. They were doing what many of us girls were doing at age seventeen, just trying to slog through it and praying the tide wouldn't turn on them.

It is still hard to make sense of it though. How cruel we can be to each other. How stupid.

But I'm glad it happened. I'm a writer who writes stories for teenagers and this kind of thing is fuel for me, even though I've never written this particular story before. It brings me back to a place of frustration and anger and humiliation. But it also reminds me what I'm made of. What my limits are. That I can defend myself if I have to. And when I can't, I can run away--not from something, but to something infinitely better and of my own making.

(Not one of my good days. Age 17)

In Which I Discover an Awesome Community of YA Book Bloggers, Learn What Kind of Writing Implement Jane Austen Used, and Share Two Books I am Looking Forward to Reading

Lately, I am getting the biggest kick out of doing research on marketing strategies for my book, something I never thought I would say. Only a few months ago it was sort of driving me crazy. There just seemed to be soooo many promotional things I should be doing. Tweeting and Facebooking and blogging, etc. Sometimes I wanted to crawl into a cave with no internet access and curl up with a notebook and a quill and pretend I was writing back in Jane Austen's time. (Note to self: find out if Jane Austen used a quill.)

It doesn't help that I have a very strong anti-technology streak at my core and it is hard for me to learn new things related to technology/social media (which seem to be changing by the minute). Examples that make my kids mock me:

I don't  know how to use the TV remote control. I'm embarrassed to admit how many times I've had to call my daughter for help in turning the TV on. And don't get me started on my cell phone. I have taken literally hundreds of pictures of my own hand because I still don't understand how the camera feature works on my phone.

Anyhoo, I am a dutiful rule-follower, so if people tell me I must "get on Twitter," then no matter how anti-tech I am, I'm going to get on Twitter, damn it, and tweet my little heart out. And if, while on Twitter, I notice that there is this huge, very cool blogging community of avid YA readers, then I am going to follow all of those bloggers to see what they are up to. What books are they reading? What genres do they like? What issues are they talking about with each other? I started reading their blogs as "research," but quickly got addicted, and now could conceivably spend most of my day jumping around from one blog site to another.

Which is how I discovered the meme WoW. (side note: I just learned what meme means)  WoW stands for "Waiting on Wednesday." Every Wednesday book bloggers share the book that they are most looking forward to reading and everyone weighs in on the choice. I LOVE this idea and can't believe I didn't know about it until recently. I think that the official way to be a WoW participant is you've got to sign up on the Breaking the Spine blogspot and add your blog address. I may be breaking the rules here by NOT doing that, but I can see that I don't have the same level of commitment these uber readers have and I won't be able to post a WoW every week. I hope the Breaking the Spine blogger forgives me, but I'd like to share one--well, really, two books that I am eagerly awaiting.

So without further ado:

1. Insomnia by J. R. Johansson--release date June 8

Summary:

It’s been four years since I slept, and I suspect it is killing me.

Instead of sleeping, Parker Chipp enters the dream of the last person he’s had eye contact with. He spends his nights crushed by other people’s fear and pain, by their disturbing secrets—and Parker can never have dreams of his own. The severe exhaustion is crippling him. If nothing changes, Parker could soon be facing psychosis and even death.

Then he meets Mia. Her dreams, calm and beautifully uncomplicated, allow him blissful rest that is utterly addictive. Parker starts going to bizarre lengths to catch Mia’s eye every day. Everyone at school thinks he’s gone over the edge, even his best friend. And when Mia is threatened by a true stalker, everyone thinks it’s Parker.

Suffering blackouts, Parker begins to wonder if he is turning into someone dangerous. What if the monster stalking Mia is him after all?

Why I'm waiting:

• I LOVE this cover. The creepiness of it just draws me in. I don't have an artistic bone in my body, but I am the first person to admit that I judge a book by its cover. This one is a winner. 
• I'm intrigued by the premise. Sounds like Parker may be something of an unreliable narrator. The former English teacher in me loves unreliable narrators...
• And speaking of narrators, I always like hearing a teen boy's POV.

2. In the Shadow of Blackbirds by Cat Winters--release date: April 2

Summary:

In 1918, the world seems on the verge of apocalypse. Americans roam the streets in gauze masks to ward off the deadly Spanish influenza, and the government ships young men to the front lines of a brutal war, creating an atmosphere of fear and confusion. Sixteen-year-old Mary Shelley Black watches as desperate mourners flock to séances and spirit photographers for comfort, but she herself has never believed in ghosts. During her bleakest moment, however, she’s forced to rethink her entire way of looking at life and death, for her first love—a boy who died in battle—returns in spirit form. But what does he want from her?

Featuring haunting archival early-twentieth-century photographs, this is a tense, romantic story set in a past that is eerily like our own time.

Why I'm waiting:

• Okay, this cover is awesome too. I've never seen anything like it, and I've looked at a lot of covers lately. I also happened to read the story behind the cover and it is fascinating.
• I'm not a big historical fiction fan normally, but I like that this one has a paranormal twist.
• I like the inclusion of old photographs.
• How could a former English teacher NOT like a main character whose name is Mary Shelley Black? 

And now, dear readers, what books are YOU waiting on?

PS. In case anyone wants to check out some of the awesome blog sites I've been lurking around, here's a (very tiny) sample:

City of Books
Icey Books
Hobbitsies
I Like These Books
Confessions of a Readaholic
Good Books and Good Wine
Actin' Up with Books
Books, Bones & Buffy
Some Like It Paranormal
Mundie Moms
Books over Boys
Two Chicks on Books
Literary Meanderings 

PPS. Yes. Jane Austen DID write with a quill pen. Thank you, Internet! 

Interview with Jennifer R. Hubbard

When I was asked to join the awesome group writing blog YA Outside the Lines last year, the first thing I did was check out the other contributors' bios and books. At a glance this is a talented and varied group that represents every YA genre, from literary award-winners to bestselling paranormal romances (which also win awards) and everything in between. There's a wide range of writerly experience represented too. Some of the members have multiple books published. And then there's, um, me, with my one soon-to-be-released first novel.

I'm having blast getting to know these writers, both virtually and for real, and I'm reading my way through all of their novels. Last month I read the absorbing and beautifully written Try Not to Breathe by Jennifer R. Hubbard. From the very first page I was drawn into this story of a teen boy's struggle to make peace with his suicide attempt and his growing relationship with a girl who's trying make peace with her father's death.

I am still thinking about the issues raised in this book and still hearing the voice of the boy in my head, and today I am thrilled that Jennifer Hubbard has agreed to chat with me about her book and about her writing process.

Jody: I know readers must ask you this all the time, Jenn, but where do you get your ideas for your books?

Jenn: I write about things I care about, things that interest me, that whisper in my ear. I need a basic plot or situation and a character’s voice before I can start writing. The question, “What if?” helps.

I tried to write about suicide many times before I wrote Try Not to Breathe. I never found the right way to tell the story until I had the character of Ryan Turner, standing under a waterfall after his stay in a psychiatric hospital. And I saw that the story I needed to tell was about stepping back from that brink.

Jody: That scene was such a powerful and riveting way to begin. You're right that finding a scene like that is often the key into the story we're meant to tell. Once you have it, though, and with your other work, what's your next step? Do you just start writing? Or do you plot your narrative out in advance?

Jenn: I start with a bare-bones, sketchy “outline” that’s only a few lines long. It gives me an idea of where I want to go, and what major obstacles will crop up. But mostly, I wing it. A big part of the energy that keeps me going through a first draft comes from the power of discovery.

Jody: My process is similar--writing to figure out what the story is. I should bring up here, and I know you would agree with me, Jenn, that there are many other drafts and revisions that come after that. Something that beginning writers (me! when I was just starting out) don't realize is that some of those revised manuscripts never make it to publication. Was that your experience? How many books did you write before you got your first book deal?

Jenn: I started with short stories for the adult literary market, and I had my first one accepted for publication while I was still in high school. With short stories, you write a lot and you send out a lot, so I accumulated tons of rejections, along with occasional acceptances.

My first attempts at novel-writing were also still while I was in high school. Most of them, I only did one draft, or they were only 80 pages long, so I’m not sure they count. Once or twice during my short-story years, I produced a novel-length manuscript that I sent to one or two places and got form rejections, and then I went back to short stories.

I didn’t get really serious about novel-writing until 2003, when I decided to try writing YA because I realized I had all these YA books on my shelves that I loved and still read. I took a class in writing children’s books. I wrote a novel that came very close; some agents and editors expressed interest in it, but they all thought it wasn’t quite there yet, and they didn’t agree on what it needed. I couldn’t tell either, so I set it aside and went on to the manuscript that became my first published book, The Secret Year.

Jody: So, only one book that will remain forever in a drawer. Or maybe you will dust it off and try again with it?

Jenn: I mentioned that particular one because it was the one I gave the most serious, realistic shot. But there are plenty more draft manuscripts, half-finished manuscripts, and random chapters lying around that I never even sent out, and a couple of manuscripts I only sent to one or two places before realizing they weren't ready. Then there was a book I wrote between The Secret Year and Try Not to Breathe,  but never submitted because I never quite got it right. All of these trunk novels have served me the way a scrap bag serves a quilter: I often borrow characters, scenes or ideas from them to use in work that eventually does get published. In fact, the character of Nicki in Try Not to Breathe draws heavily on a character from one of those abandoned books.

Jody: I like that scrap bag metaphor. It's hard to let a manuscript go, especially one that you've labored over, but when you think that you might be able to recycle a snippet of dialogue or a quirky character, it makes it a little easier. Speaking of laboring, what kind of work schedule do you have?

Jenn: When I go to my day job, I write in the evenings. When I don’t go to the day job, I will often write as soon as I get up, and then try to do another session later.

Jody: That's got to be difficult, balancing writing with another job. When I was teaching, and when my kids were younger, I had the hardest time putting writing even third or fourth on my list. It seemed like something I needed to schedule--for own my sanity.

Jenn: I haven’t found a good way to fit everything I want and need to do in a single day. So I just keep juggling. I use lists, calendars, and schedules. I break everything down into mini-assignments to make things less overwhelming. I first learned to do this in junior high school, where we had so much homework that I couldn’t fit it all in unless I blocked out my time, hour by hour. I look back now and can’t believe I managed to create that schedule and stick to it. But the habit stayed with me through high school, college, and afterward. Though I no longer block out every hour of my day, I still use calendars and to-do lists.

Jody: It occurs to me that your self-discipline and organization might surprise some people. I get the sense sometimes that writers and other creative types are viewed as being kind of free-spirited and day-dreamy. But here you are blocking out your time and basically scheduling your creative sessions. And once you've got published work out in the world, there's another level of work, and that is promotion.

What are some of the things you do to market your books?

Jenn: I have the general philosophy that I like people to know about my books, but in a low-key way. If you see me at a live event, I’ll hand out bookmarks, but I’m not going to grab you by the lapels and force you to hear a sales pitch. If you come to my website or blog or Twitter bio, you’ll see the books mentioned there, but within the blog and Twitter stream itself, I only mention them occasionally—when something big happens, like a new book comes out, or there’s an award nomination or something.

On social media, I’m there to interact with people. I want to talk about all kinds of things—other people’s books, the writing life in general, hiking, chocolate, weather, whatever. I don’t like to see a constant stream of “buy my book!” on social media, so I don’t do it myself.

I have teamed up with other writers in my area to do group events. I belong to two such groups: the New Jersey Authors Network, founded by Jon Gibbs, and the Kidlit Authors’ Club, founded by Nancy Viau and Keri Mikulski. The KAC is for authors of traditionally-published children’s and teens’ books; we do events at bookstores, libraries, schools, book fairs, conferences, and so forth. The NJAN is for New Jersey-area writers in all genres, and includes self-published and traditionally-published authors; we also do group events, mostly in New Jersey. In addition, the amazing David Levithan has organized a series of wonderful YA readings and an annual teen book festival in New York. I go to those when I can.

I highly recommend working with groups if you do live events. I rarely do solo events anymore, and I do those mostly if a school or library has specifically asked me to talk about my books. For fairs, festivals, readings, and bookstore events, I much prefer to have multiple authors there. Not only is it more fun, but you can have cross-over among your readers, and you have a wider variety of books there to offer. When I was a debut author (initially scheduled for 2009 but bumped to 2010), I joined groups of other debut authors (Debut2009, Tenners, Classes of 2k9 and 2k10), and the mutual support of those groups was invaluable.

Jody: I like your philosophy about social media. I still feel like a newby on Twitter, et al., but I think you're right that the best way to use it is to approach it in terms of a community rather than as a marketplace.

Thanks, Jenn, so much for chatting with me. I'm looking forward to reading The Secret Year and all of your future books. And, readers, if you'd like to check out Jenn and her books (I hope you do!) here are some of the places you can find her:

her website
her blog on LiveJournal
her blog on blogspot 
on Twitter @JennRHubbard
on Goodreads
on Amazon

Talking Good Girls and Bad Boys in YA Fiction

The first Spring-y-like day in Columbus, Ohio, and instead of basking in the much longed for sun, shameless author groupie that I am, I headed over to one of my favorite places in the world, the children's bookstore Cover to Cover to meet a group of YA authors: Colleen Clayton, Kristina McBride, Tiffany Schmidt, and Katie McGarry. I wasn't the only fan there, but in case you missed it, here's a rundown of the fascinating, funny, and sometimes sorta heartbreaking discussion on books and boys and pretty much everything else in contemporary realistic YA fiction.

The big question was why these writers wrote about "bad" boys in their books. Katie McGarry weighed in first to talk about how she'd grown up around guys that some people viewed as being from the wrong side of the tracks. These boys were her friends, and it bugged her that they were judged unfairly. Her novel Pushing the Limits portrays a boy in foster care and his relationship with a "good" girl who's struggling with her own issues. There's a negative perception people sometimes have of poor kids, McGarry said, and she hopes her readers will see beyond the stereotype.

Colleen Clayton, author of What Happens Next, agreed. It's her sense that working class kids aren't represented in YA lit or else are treated one-dimensionally. "Why don't we see more of these boys who aren't college bound?" she asked. "We need to dig deeper, perceive the real person at the core."

The authors didn't want to give too much away about their books--whether the bad boy at the center of the plot was truly a bad boy or not, but Tiffany Schmidt and Kristina McBride wondered why girls are drawn to the stereotypical bad boy in the first place.

Tiffany said it may come down to the belief that only you can see the good guy underneath, the guy that no one else can see, and that's a heady feeling for a teen girl.

Kristina added, "Let's face it. Sometimes girls think they can fix a bad boy." She mentioned that as a teen this was the case for her. Her novel One Moment is the story of a girl's growing realization that her dead boyfriend might not have been the person she thought he was. The book is edgy, she explained, but she believes that it's a good thing for girl readers to live vicariously through characters, to see the bad choices made (and the consequences) and possibly make different decisions in their own lives.

The writers were asked what inspired them, which led to another interesting discussion. Katie McGarry told a story about going back to visit her old high school and wanting to give the kids there hope. "Kids need hope," she said, "that they can make it past today. Not that things will be perfect, but that they can survive their circumstances."

Colleen Clayton talked about having negative experiences in school and reliving that anxiety when her own kids started school. Writing about those experiences freed her and helped her find her writing voice.

Tiffany Schmidt's novel Send Me a Sign is about a smart, hardworking girl starting her senior year. She's looking forward to what she assumes will be a bright future, but then she finds out she has cancer. Tiffany, a former sixth grade teacher, had a student in her class that faced this situation. The student didn't want to be labeled the girl with cancer. She was so much more than her illness, Tiffany said. A big issue for teens is struggling with identity. "Who are we really?" she asked. Which turned the discussion back to the need to transcend stereotypes and labels.

And this turned into a conversation about transcending genres in YA literature. Readers of YA know what's trendy--what's out (sparkly vampires) and what's probably on its way out (the end of the world). But where does contemporary realistic fiction fit into the market?

The panel felt that the demand for this genre is growing. Each of the writers is having success with their novels and they don't feel pressure to write other kinds of books. They agreed that it's pointless to write what you think is trendy anyway, given the lengthy submitting and publishing process. Better to write what feels right for you and hope the market catches up. Sometimes this has been frustrating.

Colleen's novel What Happens Next begins with a girl being raped, but the story cannot be distilled down to a "rape book." The main character is wise-cracking and funny. She's coping with the aftereffects of the trauma but she's also dealing with typical high school friendship dramas and family conflicts and a romance. Colleen has had some people question the need for another novel on the subject of rape. They point to the classic Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson as being the definitive book and imply that this might be enough.

Tiffany Schmidt echoed the frustration that this kind of question only seems to come up when discussing contemporary fiction. "Why is it okay to have multiple books on vampires or werewolves or zombies?" This was asked with a sigh and the acknowledgment that her novel was released the same year as John Green's The Fault in our Stars. "Shouldn't there always be room for another good book, regardless of the subject?" she asked. In other words, is John Green the only author who can write about teens with cancer?

The group also talked shop, specifically, how to get published (the consensus being that you will have to write and revise and research the business. Also, prepare for the inevitable rejections), and gushed about how much they loved to read, and shared some funny stories about how they're treated by family members and close friends now that they are published authors.

"When are you going to write a real book?" someone once asked Katie McGarry, and she responded, "Aren't teens real people?"

Nice comeback, Kristina McBride said. And then it was time for picture taking and book signings and a raffling off of several cool, soon-to-be-published books. Should I mention here that one of these was mine? Um. Nah. I'll leave that for another day...

Want to find out more about these authors and their books? Check out the links below:
Colleen Clayton
Kristina McBride
Tiffany Schmidt
Katie McGarry

From left to right: Kristina McBride, Colleen Clayton, Katie McGarry, and Tiffany Schmidt. And there's Sally Oddi, owner of Cover to Cover in the background.

It's Not You. It's Me. (My Quest to Find a Book I Like)

Lately, I've had a rocky relationship with reading. For several months nearly every book I picked up was a big miss for me. I felt like I was on a string of bad blind dates (not that I've ever been a blind date. But I can imagine the feeling.) You hear about the person from a friend. Or maybe you meet him online. You have high hopes that you'll hit it off. You really really want to like him. And then you meet, and for whatever reason, you just don't click.

I am not a picky reader! I've read and enjoyed all kinds of books. Classics. Literary fiction. Lots of young adult stuff because I write YA books and I like to know what my fellow YA writers are writing. I also read non-fiction. Memoirs. Mysteries. Romances. Whatever. As long as there's a decent story at the core, I'll give it a chance. Confession: I read the Fifty Shades of Grey Trilogy. I'm not particularly proud of this fact, but I'm telling you to prove that I have never been hard to please.

And yet, I was starting to reconsider everything I believed about myself as a reader. Books had become a struggle. I felt like I'd read them before. I knew where they were going. The characters didn't seem like real people. I didn't care what happened to them. The writing wasn't great or it was downright bad. I found myself revising passages in my head. Why did the author use the word "murmur" 13 times in the last five pages? Did she really need to include a particular scene? And why was there another teen boy love interest described as having "piercing green eyes"? Do I know ANY guys with piercing green eyes?

Book after book after book had me feeling the same thing: a flash of hope and then the inevitable letdown when it didn't live up to the potentially promising premise.

OMG, I thought. Was I losing my ability to enjoy a book? Had I read too many books over the course of my lifetime and therefore read every possible scenario? Or was this condition a result of my work as a writer? I know how books are put together now. I've seen the man behind the curtain. Questioning every authorial decision and editing paragraphs as you read, let me tell you, tends to pull a reader out of the story.

Or what if my problem was a change in my brain chemistry? My computer science-y son had shared a study with me about the impact of internet surfing on the human brain. Apparently, we're losing our ability to focus, to read larger chunks of material. It's all that jumping around we do from website to website. All that tweeting. I confided my fears to my husband and he laughed. "Your brain chemistry has changed in the last two months?" he said. Okay. Maybe that was a stretch.

All I knew was that I didn't like books anymore, that I couldn't seem to read without pausing after every other sentence. Maybe I needed to stop reading. Or at least take a break from it. Give my twitchy tweeting brain a rest.

And then I happened to pick up a book. This was one from my stack, a book I'd been meaning to read for months, the popular and critically acclaimed dystopian novel Divergent by Veronica Roth. I read it in one sitting on plane trip. Huh. It was good. From the very first page I was hooked. On the plane trip home I read another book, Ask the Passengers by A. S. King, which also turned out to be absorbing and thought provoking. At home I picked up other books. They were good too. More than good. I practically cried in relief. I hadn't lost my ability to read books. I had lost my ability to read bad ones.

It wasn't me. It was them.

Which sounds snotty, I know. So I'll say it a different way: It's not them. It's me. Apparently, I AM a picky reader. What I've realized the past few months is that some books do it for me, and some don't.

Here's a rundown of the ones that clicked:

Divergent, Veronica Roth. It's no accident that this book and the sequel Insurgent are on YA best seller lists. I've grown weary of dystopian lit, but this book reeled me back into the genre. Main character Tris has grown up in an orderly world where people are divided into groups based on the personality traits they value. There's an honest group, risk-takers, scholars, and Tris's group--which promotes selfless behavior. At sixteen you take a test and choose which faction you'd like to join. But what happens if you don't quite fit into any of these? Weeks later, I'm still thinking about the societal questions this novel raises.

Ask the Passengers, A. S. King. Still wrapping my mind around this one. Brilliant. Should've won an award this year. I don't know why it didn't.

The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things, Carolyn Mackler. Not sure how I missed this one along the way. It won a Printz Honor in 2003. It features a self conscious and self deprecating teen girl's attempt to assert herself and figure out her place in a dysfunctional family. Funny and sad and ultimately inspiring.

Wintergirls, Laurie Halse Anderson. I love all of Anderson's realistic contemporary YA novels, so it shouldn't have been a surprise to me that I'd love this one too. I think I'd put it off because I knew it was about anorexia and it might be painful to read. It sort of was. But so beautifully written and heartbreaking and somehow hopeful too.

Try Not to Breathe, Jennifer R. Hubbard. Absorbing story about a teen boy dealing with the ramifications of a suicide attempt and his relationship with a cool quirky girl who's looking for her own answers.

Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn. I read this one for my book club and it was a total page turner. Told from two points of view. A man's wife goes missing and he's the main suspect. You get the feeling he's keeping secrets as he tells his side, but his wife has secrets too. The reader gets HER point of view from the pages of her diary. Brilliantly plotted with shocking twists and unlikeable characters that you somehow root for anyway.

Honey, Baby, Sweetheart by Deb Caletti. A spot-on description of toxic love. Ruby's mom struggles to let go of charming but irresponsible dad. Ruby struggles to let go of Travis, a charming rich boy who draws her into his reckless and dangerous world. All the characters are complex and realistic, including the dog, Poe, who has got to be one of the most adorably destructive dogs in YA fiction.

The Arrival by Shaun Tan. If you're having trouble, too, connecting with books, this might be the perfect antidote. It is a book with no words. It's shelved as a children's picture book or graphic novel, but it transcends any genre. It's the story of a man who leaves his family behind to start life in a new country, a country that sort of looks like America at the turn of the century. Except it's not. A few pages in, you will forget there are no words and fall under its spell.

Which--and I don't care how picky this makes me--is the only thing I ask for in a book.

Please Buy My Mulch, Er, I Mean, Please Read My Book

A few years ago when we moved to our lovely little Ohio town, my son, then in 8th grade, went out for the lacrosse team. The sport is a big deal around here, and although my son had never seen a game played before, he borrowed a stick and a ball and a big net, and started practicing in the backyard. It's a hard sport, apparently, to pick up in a couple of months, and he didn't make the team.

In ninth grade he tried out again. No cuts for freshmen, the coaches assured the kids, but they would have to participate in a team bonding activity before the try-outs: sell 200 bags of mulch at 4 bucks a pop within one week. This directive came down in January when it happened to be 10 degrees outside.

Let me say here that I HATE fundraisers. Wrapping paper, cookie dough, candy bars, magazines, whatever. I sympathize with schools and clubs having to raise money, but I hate that kids (and parents) get roped into being salespeople for overpriced products. I was never the mom pushing my kid out the door to hawk that stuff to the neighbors, and my husband never schlepped the packets to his office to hit up his co-workers. We either wrote a check and ate the freaking candy bars ourselves or donated the money they expected our kid to raise.

But that day in January, I could see there was no way we could afford 800+ dollars worth of mulch. Never mind that we had nowhere to put 200 bags of the stuff. I pushed my son out the door.

Most of the neighbors turned out to be pretty cool about it. The lacrosse mulch sale is a known tradition around here, and they must've felt bad for the lanky kid shivering on their doorstop. He sold his quota and my husband and I resolved to buy every kid on the street's candy bars until the end of time.

The next year when he tried out for the team, I shoved him out the door again. He sold his quota, and then he got cut. That was pretty devastating for him and it wasn't much consolation when the kids who made the team delivered the over-priced mulch to all our neighbors.

Year three, I was proud of my son for trying out again and sympathetic when he brought home that damn mulch packet for a third time, but geez! How much mulch did our poor neighbors need? And what kind of team bonding activity is it when you're not actually on the team?  

He got cut again. Which was really cruddy but a good learning experience--blah blah resiliency and hard work and pursuing a dream and living through rejection, yadda yadda, but I must admit that every spring when I see those mulch trucks zooming around town, I feel a surge of yucky feelings.

It's hard to put yourself out there and ask for something--something that's kind of a big deal--something that makes another person feel obligated to say yes, or worse, no to you.

I didn't mean to spend so much time writing about mulch. What I really want to talk about is how I felt asking authors I respect and admire if they would read my forthcoming book Thin Space and possibly write a blurb about it.

My publisher suggested I do this many months ago but it took me a long while to gear myself up to ask anyone. I didn't want to put people on the spot. Asking someone to take the time to read my book is a big enough imposition but then asking them to put their name on an endorsement is even bigger. And what if they didn't like my book? Would they feel weird telling me?

When I finally pushed myself out that metaphorical door, I was shivering and clinging to my mulch packet--I mean, my book. But like my kind neighbors, the writers I asked were cool. More than cool. They seemed flattered that I asked them. They were prompt in their responses. Only one person said no, and he was sweet and apologetic about it. The others said yes. They promised to be honest. One told me, "Hey, if I love it, I'll blurb it, and if I don't, I'll keep my mouth shut!"

There's a lesson in here. Sometimes you've got to swallow your pride and put yourself out there. People are kind. They like to help when asked. And things have a way of working out well in the end.

My son never made the lacrosse team after ninth grade, but he did parlay that experience into a kick-butt college essay that caught the eye of the admission counselors at the college of his dreams. Our neighbors have stunning flower beds filled with the highest quality mulch. And I got three endorsements for my book from writers I love. Please check out their books:

Jennifer Castle's moving and beautifully written The Beginning of After and her soon-to-be released You Look Different in Real Life.

The absorbing and heartbreaking debut What Happens Next by Colleen Clayton.

Mike Mullin's edge-of-your-seat page turner Ashfall and the riveting sequel Ashen Winter.

And if you want to see these awesome writers' blurbs of Thin Space, click here.

Interview with Holly Schindler

Last summer I got the coolest email out of the blue, an invitation to join the Young Adult group author blog YA Outside the Lines. The administrator is YA and Middle Grade writer Holly Schindler. At that point, I hadn't yet stumbled onto this blog  (although I was familiar with Holly's other blog Smack Dab in the Middle). YAOTL operates the same way: each month members contribute a post on a particular theme. I have no idea why Holly thought to ask ME to join, but I am eternally grateful.

What an awesome, eclectic, brilliant, creative, supportive group of writers! Some I had heard of before joining--Catherine Ryan Hyde (Pay it Forward), Rosemary Clement-Moore (The Splendor Falls), and Cheryl Renee Herbsman (Breathing). Now I'm reading my way through the others and feeling like a gushy fan. My faves so far: Patty Blount (Send), Kimberly Sabatini (Touching the Surface), Jennifer L. Armentrout (Obsidian), and Holly Schindler, our hardworking administrator. I picked up her book first, A Blue So Dark and was blown away.

The main character, 15-year-old Aura, is an artist struggling to take care of her mom, (also an artist) who's schizophrenic and spinning out of control. There's a core story here about mother/daughter relationships and the desire to break away from home while at the same time longing to fix a suffering loved one's problems. The book raises thought-provoking questions about the interplay of creativity and madness and the healing power of art.

I'm thrilled that Holly's agreed to let me interview her. It's not every day that you get to chat with the author of a book you love!

Jody: Holly, I'm going to start with the question I ask every visiting writer: Where do you get your ideas?

Holly: I’m a complete idea junkie.  I get more ideas than I know what to do with.  That sounds like a real luxury, I know—but in the beginning, it was tough.  I’d get about a quarter of the way through a book, and I’d be struck by one of those ah-ha! moments… combine that with the fact that I love writing beginnings and find middles a little torturous, and I was having problems staying focused on one project.  I tried all sorts of methods to deal with my ideas, even drafting multiple projects, but that proved to be more trouble than it was worth.

In the end, I figured out that I needed to keep a notebook.  While I’m drafting (or revising) one book, I write any new ideas down in my notebook.  Then I get right back to work on my current WIP.  A simple fix, I know—but it’s truly the best way to stay focused on my current idea and let me rest assured that I won’t lose any new ideas!

Jody: Once you've chosen an idea to play around with, what's your next step? Do you outline? Or just start writing and see where the story goes?

Holly: I always work from pretty extensive plot outlines… but I think you have to be aware, as a writer, when your characters are shaking their heads at you, telling you that your plan is a bunch of bunk.  You have to be willing to let your characters guide you, take you on a detour—you have to be open-minded about revising your outline along the way.

Jody: Very true. That's one of the weirder things about the writing process--when those characters take on lives of their own. Beginning writers (at least ME, when I was a beginning writer) tried to rein that part in. You have this plan where you think things should go, and you try to force the characters to do it. Never works. Letting them go was a breakthrough for me, and eventually put me on the road to my first sale. Not that the road was a straight shot to publication...

Was it a long learning process for you too? How many books did you write before you got your first book deal?  How many rejections did you get along the way?

Holly: I honestly lost count of how many books I wrote.  And I know that I was rejected well over 1,000 times before I got my first yes—my first published book, A Blue So Dark, was actually rejected over 80 times.

I received my master’s degree in the spring of ’01.  Writing was always my lifelong dream; Mom invited me to stay home and devote full-time attention to getting my writing career off the ground.  I jumped at the chance, thinking it would take a year or so to get a book down, it’d sell (I’d actually placed short fiction, poetry, and literary critique in journals when I was still in college and honestly thought publication would be fairly easy), and then I’d have money in the bank and I’d be off and running.

…It actually took seven and a half years to get that first yes.  It was the time that bothered me, really, more than the number of rejections I received.  Each spring, another graduation season would roll around, and my friends from college would be closer to their own dreams—they wrapped up PhDs; they snagged full-time jobs.  And I felt like all I had to show for my time was a giant hole in the wall where I’d been slamming my head.

I had a few down-times in the pursuit of that first “yes.”  But I always pushed through it—mostly because I could feel I was getting closer with each rejection.  Over time, form rejections became personalized rejections became invitations to revise and resubmit…

The thing is, every author gets there eventually.  The only ones who don’t are the ones who give up.

Jody: I'm stunned that A Blue So Dark was rejected that many times. I'm so glad that you didn't quit submitting it. I guess it's easy to look back now and sort of gloss over the struggle, but as every writer knows, each one of those rejections is painful and has the potential to shoot you into a spiral of despair. You can't let it! You've got to keep writing and try to remember that each day it's just you and the blank page (or glaring computer screen)--whether you're the published author of multiple books or a collector of rejection slips. At least this is my mantra...

What's your writing day like? Do you have a schedule?

Holly: I do some work every single day.  “Work” never really does seem like the right word, though, does it?  I’ve been obsessed with books and literature ever since I was a little girl and had to have a new Little Golden Book each time I went to the supermarket with my mom!  Being a writer is my absolute dream job, and I have the Ultimate Luxury: I’m a full-time author.  Have been ever since ’01.  When I first started writing, though, I really hated the fact that I wasn’t contributing to the household.  So I started teaching music.  I figured it was the perfect balance: I could write all day, then start lessons late in the afternoon, when kids got out of school.

I was writing adult-level books when I first started out, back in ’01.  As soon as I started teaching music lessons, I was really struck by how similar my students were to the kids I’d gone to school with.  They were so familiar, in fact, that I was suddenly inspired to try my hand at writing for kids and teens.  It’s funny—I had no idea that teaching music lessons would give me a career direction.  But that just goes to show you that getting out there and trying new things, living your life, is just as important as putting words on the page!

These days, I average about eight hours a day writing. I also spend a significant amount of time on social networking and blogging—the hours I spend online actually outnumber the amount of time I spend writing each day when I’m actively promoting a new release.

Jody: I'm glad you brought up social media. I'm just dipping my toe into the marketing/self-promotion part of this business, and it's a little overwhelming. What's your experience?

Holly: Like all writers starting out, I had a miniscule promotional budget for my debut novel.  But I also drafted my first books on a real dinosaur of a computer—it was pre-Internet, didn’t even have a modem.  I didn’t get Internet in my home until ’07, believe it or not…and then I only used it for research and to submit work.  I had never, ever, ever done anything with social media when I signed my first book contract.

When my editor at Flux first suggested blogging, I cringed.  I wasn’t sure how I felt about putting myself online.  But that was when I discovered the book blogging community.  And I fell in love.  Since discovering the blogosphere, I’ve gone on extensive blog tours, and now administrate two group author blogs: YA Outside the Lines, for YA authors, and Smack Dab in the Middle, for MG authors.

I also feel really lucky to be writing at a time when I get to read not only trade reviews, but blog reviews as well.  I have Google Alerts out on my name and titles, and read everything that comes in.  I think that’s part of my job.  I feel so lucky that I get to be a fly on the wall, hearing online discussions of my books…and I feel ESPECIALLY lucky that I get a chance to meet and interact with my fabulous readers online.

Jody: That is the plus side of social media--creating a community of readers and writers. It did bring US together after all. Thanks, Holly, so much, for chatting with me today. Before I let you go, give me a rundown of where fans can find you.

Holly: Readers can get in touch through my website: hollyschindler.com, become a fan on Facebook: facebook.com/HollySchindlerAuthor, follow me on Twitter: @holly_schindler, or email me directly: writehollyschindler (at) yahoo (dot) com.  You can follow my author blog at hollyschindler.blogspot.com or my group blogs at yaoutsidethelines.blogspot.com and smack-dab-in-the-middle.blogspot.com. If you'd like updates on me (or my books) please sign up for my newsletter!

A BLUE SO DARK
Fifteen-year-old Aura Ambrose has been hiding a secret. Her mother, a talented artist and art teacher, is slowly being consumed by schizophrenia, and Aura has been her sole caretaker ever since Aura's dad left them. Convinced that "creative" equals crazy, Aura shuns her own artistic talent. But as her mother sinks deeper into the darkness of mental illness, the hunger for a creative outlet draws Aura toward the depths of her imagination. Just as desperation threatens to swallow her whole, Aura discovers that art, love, and family are profoundly linked—and together may offer an escape from her fears.

Praise: “Breathtakingly, gut-wrenchingly authentic… A haunting, realistic view of the melding of art, creativity, and mental illness and their collective impact on a young person’s life.
—Booklist starred review

PLAYING HURT
Star basketball player Chelsea "Nitro" Keyes had the promise of a full ride to college—and everyone's admiration in her hometown. But everything changed senior year, when she took a horrible fall during a game. Now a metal plate holds her together and she feels like a stranger in her own family.

As a graduation present, Chelsea's dad springs for a three-week summer "boot camp" program at a northern Minnesota lake resort. There, she's immediately drawn to her trainer, Clint, a nineteen-year-old ex-hockey player who's haunted by his own traumatic past. As they grow close, Chelsea is torn between her feelings for Clint and her loyalty to her devoted boyfriend back home. Will an unexpected romance just end up causing Chelsea and Clint more pain—or finally heal their heartbreak?

Praise: “Loved Playing Hurt. You find yourself rooting for Chelsea and Clint from the moment they meet. And the writing? Wow. The writing was exceptional, and I must say, I've developed quite the writerly crush on Holly.”
—Jennifer L. Armentrout, Author of Young Adult and Adult Urban Fantasy and Romance