Review: The V-Word edited by Amber J. Keyser

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The V-Word book coverThe V-Word is a collection of writing about real first-time sexual experiences. It’s not even specifically YA, though it will definitely be of interest to a lot teenagers. Everyone wants to know what it’s like, after all, even if they’re not intending to find out from personal experience any time soon.

The essays run the gamut from good experience to bad, but most capture the awkwardness of the first time. All the experience are women’s, with the writers looking back to high school, college, or even later. Most of the articles address sex with boys/men, but there are several about lesbian experiences. Some of the girls wanted to shed their virginity. Others were more resistant. Some experienced abuse. One waited until she was married. I won’t go into the details of any of them because it’s best to read them as-is.

After the experience essays are some extras: a short essay about how girls should take charge of their sex lives by: knowing their bodies, knowing what turns them on, knowing what they’re up against (in terms of society’s expectations, ever-present porn, and lack of reasonable sex ed), safe sex, knowing how to talk about it, and knowing when they’re ready. Then there’s an interview with a teen media specialist that talks about how most media targeting teens doesn’t address the female sexual experience at all, usually fading to black; labels like slut and prude frame much of the conversation; and several other interesting things. Finally there is a list of resources for both girls and their parents.

I’d recommend this to all teen girls at least, say, fifteen. Or anyone who’s really curious.

Stuck

Posted on by kellyvincent

I’ve been trying to write lately with very little success. I went to a writing workshop with Mary Buckham last Saturday, which was great, but I haven’t done any real writing. I’m not sure what the problem is, but I have distracted myself with other work, namely painting my kitchen cabinets. They do look good, though I did have a tiny bit of trouble rehanging them with the new hinges I got. I have to make a few adjustments with my recently-purchased Dremel and a sanding block. I forgot to take before pictures, but I found an old one from when I moved in.

Kitchen Cabinets Before
Before
Kitchen Cabinets After
After

Much better, eh?

Anyway, it’s not helping me get any writing done. I’m (theoretically) working on two books right now: my third YA, entitled Ugly, and one other I’m writing under a pen name. I’m stuck on both. My writing group met yesterday morning and gave me feedback on Chapter 4 of Ugly, so that’s progress, but I should actually be going through my complete draft for my second pass because I’ve replotted some things and need to add a lot of details. The other book has also been significantly replotted and there is quite a bit to do on it (even more replotting, too).

I have sent Finding Frances out to a few more agents, but I haven’t heard anything back except a No or two. Sometimes it’s hard to know if I should take the hint or keep trying. But I guess I’ll keep submitting because otherwise I would probably get depressed. It’s strange that the constant refrain of “No” doesn’t depress me, but I suppose I have the illusion of eventual success.

I haven’t even looked at Sadie Speaks in months. I’m still not sure what to do with that one. It’s like my group said yesterday as we wallowed in self-pity—writing is hard.

Review: Once and for All by Sarah Dessen

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Once and for All book coverDessen is one of my favorite YA authors because she paints such realistic teens. Yes, they’re white and usually reasonably well off with mostly functional families around them. But still, she digs deep into their lives and makes even an average girl interesting.

Eighteen-year-old Louna Barrett is the daughter of a very successful wedding planner and works most of the weddings herself. She doesn’t necessarily love it but it’s what she knows and she’s good at it, and she only has to do it until she goes off to college. Louna is incredibly guarded, due to a tragedy that we know very little about for the first part of the book. When she meets Ambrose, she can’t stand him because he’s an irresponsible hassle. When her mom hires him to work for the company for the summer, Louna can’t believe it. She’s got to work with this idiot.

Louna and Ambrose first meet at his mother’s wedding, where she has to retrieve him for pictures with his mother and the rest of the family. Her first thought is that he’s really good-looking, but her second thought is that he was too annoying. She says:

He was like that upside-down exclamation point at the beginning of a sentence in Spanish, the mere appearance of which warned of something complicated ahead.

He’s outside flirting with a couple girls instead of inside where he needs to be, and Louna strong-arms him inside. Later he asks her to dance and makes it clear he’s interested in her even though she turns him down. So she isn’t happy to be stuck working with him, but she tries to make the best of it by offloading some of her work to him.

Once it gets going, the book alternates between the current day, where Louna’s dealing with Ambrose, and flashbacks to her time with Ethan, her first real love. We know something really bad happened to him and it takes a little while before we get the full story. Still, we know that Ethan was a great guy and it’s no wonder Louna can’t get over him and move on. In the present day, Louna and Ambrose make a bet that requires him to date just one girl for seven weeks and her to date multiple guys over the same period.

I have to admit that this wasn’t my favorite Dessen novel. I never really warmed up to Ambrose. I mean, it’s not like he was a horrible guy, but he did do some jerky things, even if sometimes it was passively—by not doing or saying something he should have. And Louna herself is a little on the bland side.

That’s not to say that the book doesn’t have strengths. A lot of people will love the background of all the weddings, and I admit even though I find weddings tedious, those elements were actually interesting to me because it went totally behind the scenes and aired some of the dirty laundry. And Louna’s best friend, Jilly, is entertaining and very likable. And supportive. Louna’s mom and her business partner, William, are both good characters, too.

So I’d definitely recommend this for Dessen’s fans, as well as anyone who really digs weddings.

Review: The Nature of Jade by Deb Caletti

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The Nature of Jade book coverI always like a good book that deals with mental health issues, as long as it does so realistically and non-preachily.* The Nature of Jade fits the bill.

Jade’s a very open character, revealing a lot about herself early on, and she’s frank as the book proceeds, too. She has Panic Disorder and struggles to keep herself under control a lot of the time. She has found that watching elephants calms her down, so she keeps the Seattle zoo’s 24-hour elephant webcam on, which is where she first sees a boy in a red jacket coming regularly to visit, a toddler in tow. She becomes mildly infatuated and even goes there hoping to meet him, but he doesn’t show up again. In the end, she volunteers with the elephants and becomes a bit of an elephant care expert.

Then the red-jacket-boy shows up again and she actually meets him and learns his name. They start seeing each other and she really likes him, but her instincts tell her that something is up, though she doesn’t know what. When she finds out, it’s a bit of a shock. Other readers might guess, but I didn’t. Also, once I found out, I assumed the book would go one direction, but it went another.

The Nature of Jade is only my second Caletti book, but I consider myself a fan. She creates wonderfully deep characters who go through interesting journeys. Even the non-viewpoint characters are fleshed out really well. Her writing is nice—great setting details, realistic dialogue that fits each character, and the internal thoughts are powerful. Take this:

Some guys give you the edgy feeling of dogs behind chain-link fences, and some give you the nervousness of high heels you’re not used to. But Sebastian—he makes me feel like I just buried my nose in warm laundry.

She also made me laugh (with understanding) with lines like this:

Blushing is so unfair. Might as well wear a sign: WHAT YOU THINK MATTERS TO ME.

I have to mention the bizarre similarities between this book and E. Lockhart’s Ruby Oliver books, which I don’t feel bad about because the two of them expressed the same surprise (I wrote about seeing them speak here). But it’s uncanny—neither knew about the other’s book when she wrote her book (the road to book-completion to publication is long, and the first Ruby Oliver book came out in 2005 and The Nature of Jade in early 2007). Ruby also lives in Seattle, has anxiety attacks, sees a therapist, and volunteers at Seattle’s zoo. Ruby lives in a houseboat and Jade’s boyfriend lives in one. Also, on a side note, there’s a guy named Titus in the story and Lockhart’s got a major character with that name in Fly on the Wall. Weirdness.

Anyway, that’s not important. If you like books about complex people facing difficult situations, you should enjoy this one.

* According to Merriam-Webster, this really is a word.

Writing Update

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It’s been a little while since I bored you with an update about what’s going on with my writing.

I’m working away on the third book, whose working title is Ugly. This is the 80,000-word novel I wrote in 28 days in November for NaNoWriMo. I’m taking it through my writing group chapter by chapter and met with them yesterday to go over Chapter 3. I like it and feel like it’s going to end up being a pretty solid book, though it’s going to take a lot of work. The first draft is pretty rough, though there is definitely some good stuff in there.

Sadie Speaks is still currently being neglected as I don’t know what to do with it. It needs major work, but it feels like I need somebody else to tell me what to do with it. A couple of freelance editors have seen it, but they didn’t quite share my editorial vision so I didn’t really agree with their suggestions. So I’m going to have to figure it out on my own.

Finding Frances is still getting nowhere with agents and editors. It’s currently with one of each, but I pinged them both Monday because they’ve had it for 3 months. The editor got back to me to say she had received it and would only contact me if she was interested in more. The agent never responded. So I’m not exactly holding my breath on either of those. I’m pretty worn out with querying it and am not sure I’m going to summon the energy to try again.

In related news, I decided to do an MFA (Master of Fine Arts). I got accepted to both of the ones I applied to, but I decided to go with Oklahoma City University’s Red Earth MFA and its concentration in Young Adult Fiction. I’m pretty excited about this. It starts in July. It’s a low-residency model, which means twice a year I have to go there for an intensive 10-day residency, where there are craft talks, I’ll meet with my faculty mentor for the semester, and I can mingle with other students. Then for the rest of the semester, I’ll send packets of writing in to my mentor, who will send back feedback. I also have to read a lot of books, as some of the writing is critical annotations of genre books or responses to craft books. I have to attend a residency before each of my four semesters and then go to the one immediately after my last semester to wrap things up.

Finally, in unrelated news, I started a new job at work. I’m no longer a software developer and am now a data scientist (my actual job title is Analytics Analyst, which is hilarious, and not deeply meaningful). I will leave you with a picture of my favorite parking space at work:

Parking space blocked by post

Review: All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

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All the Bright Places book coverAll the Bright Places sort of destroyed me for a day, it was so emotionally demanding. I mean, the story took me through the wringer and once I’d finished it, I couldn’t stop thinking about it and reliving the emotions I’d felt while reading it. I came to the book without being aware of the hype and the comparisons to Eleanor and Park and The Fault in Our Stars. Despite that, Eleanor and Park was exactly the book it made me think of, not because of the story, but because of the emotional depth and the journey it took me on.

Mental illness and suicide are at the forefront of everything in the book, but the story goes beyond the mental illness to tell a story about two teenagers who seem unbelievably real. Violet Markey was in a car accident that killed her sister several months before the book begins. Violet blames herself for what happened and has pretty much stopped living. She just floats from day to day and slips further into depression. The things she used to care about most don’t matter to her at all anymore. One day her feet carry her to the top of her school’s six-story-tall bell tower.

That’s where she encounters Theodore Finch, the school’s resident “freak,” as the bullies call him. But Finch isn’t a freak—he’s a kid with a serious and treatable mental illness that he doesn’t understand or want to acknowledge. We don’t initially have a name for what’s wrong with him, but he loses track of time, sometimes seems to wake up with no memory of how he got places, goes days without sleeping, and at times has so much energy that he has to run for miles to feel normal again. It’s not hard to figure it out if you know a little about mental illness, but it doesn’t get named until close to the end.

Finch is self-aware despite being afraid of labels, which he thinks will lead to being mistaken for a mental illness. Here he is thinking about a breakdown he had:

It’s my experience that people are a lot more sympathetic when they can see you hurting, and for the millionth time in my life I wish for measles or smallpox or some other recognizable just to make it simple for me and also for them.

He’s not wrong.

Despite Finch’s obsession with death, I was convinced throughout that he does want to live, but that he needs to learn how. And he’s trying. Although he resists the efforts of the school counselor he’s required to see, there are moments when he’s almost honest with him. And one time he tells Violet that he gets into these moods that he can’t shake:

“Kind of black, sinking moods. I imagine it’s what being in the eye of a tornado would be like. All calm and blinding at the same time. I hate them.”

It’s a huge moment because he’s actually being open and honest about how he feels. But Violet doesn’t have enough experience with him to recognize it. She chalks it up to being a teenager. Earlier in the book, he describes his father’s black moods:

“Like, the blackest black. Like, no moon, no stars, storm’s coming black.

She doesn’t make the connection right away—but it’s sad, because why would she? She’s not a psychiatrist. She’s just a kid with not much real-world experience.

If Finch isn’t going to get through to Violet, someone who deeply cares about him, what about his family? Violet and Finch’s families are radically different. Violet’s parents are engaged with her even though they don’t really know what to do for her. Admittedly, they don’t catch on to how badly Violet’s handling her sister’s death—they don’t see the depression for what it is. Probably they should have gotten her into counseling other than the school counselor. But it’s not unbelievable that they wouldn’t think of it.

Finch’s family, on the other hand, is horrible. He has a physically abusive father and a super-detached mother who is herself likely suffering from depression after being dumped by Finch’s father. She pays no attention to Finch or his sisters and it’s a deeply frustrating situation for the reader throughout the book. It’s so obvious that something is really, really wrong. But again, it’s entirely believable that a family like this could exist. It’s also clear that whatever afflicts Finch also afflicts his father and that his father would never, ever admit to having a mental illness.

I’ve talked mostly about Finch here, but Violet’s journey is just as significant. With his help, she learns to live again—she overcomes things that scare her and starts wanting to enjoy herself again. Rather than living a day at a time, she starts planning ahead. It’s a very realistic and believable recovery, given that her depression had a specific trigger.

Although this book is about mental illness and suicide, it’s not overly message-y. It’s a great story written really well. It is told in dual perspective, and Violet and Finch’s voices are totally different and true to their situations. Niven loads the book with little details that make the characters and settings authentic and relatable (this is one of the things that makes it like Eleanor and Park for me—because Rowell is a master of important details). Her descriptions throughout are excellent. Here’s Finch thinking about how he sometimes feels:

[T]he headaches are part of it. It’s like my brain is firing so fast that it can’t keep up with itself. Words. Colors. Sounds. Sometimes everything else fades into the background and all I’m left with is sound. I can hear everything, but not just hear it—I can feel it too. But then it can come on all at once—the sounds turn into light, and the light goes too bright, and it’s like it’s slicing me in two, and then comes the headache. But it’s not just a headache I feel, I can see it, like it’s made up of a million colors, all of them blinding.

I really cannot recommend this book enough. It’s important and well-executed and everyone should read it for insight into authentic depression and suicidal ideations, as well as for the good story.

Review: Break by Hannah Moskowitz

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Break book coverThis book distressed me. Probably not in what could be said to be a good way, but in the right way (the way it was intended to).

The book is about a boy who is intentionally breaking his bones because he knows they grow back stronger. Jonah’s on a mission to break every single one in his body. This just gave me the willies every time he talked about it, or broke another. It’s hard to willfully break your own bones. I’m pretty sure that not many people can intentionally hurt themselves. It’s unnatural, after all.

So, it’s distressing to read about.

On top of his bone-breaking mission, Jonah has a complicated life: his parents fight all the time, he has an 8-month-old brother who screams constantly, and his 16-year-old brother, Jesse, is severely allergic to many foods. And Jonah feels responsible for taking care of Jesse. Jonah’s also got his friend Naomi, who films all his breaking, and a not-girlfriend named Charlotte who he makes out with.

We know going into the book that Jonah’s doing the bone-breaking because everything’s falling apart around him. And more than the first half is just more of that and all his family troubles and responsibilities. But then he gets found out about two-thirds of the way through the book and everything gets a little crazy. Unsurprisingly, Jonah’s self-destructive choices become a mental health issue and that has big consequences for him.

I’ll be honest—I’m not sure if I liked this book. It was definitely well-written (lots of realistic tough moments, well-drawn and believable characters, evocative use of language, and more). But the sense of discomfort was with me the whole time I was reading it. And once Jonah’s mental illness starts getting addressed, I felt like several improbable things happened. I also thought the ending left several things unresolved.

It still could easily appeal to a lot of readers, though. It’s definitely gritty and the characters are complicated and interesting. A lot of people will be able to relate to Jonah’s attempt at dealing with his problems in the wrong way.

Favorite Reads of 2017

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I thought I’d go over my favorite YA books that I read in 2017. (These aren’t necessarily books published in 2017.)

E. Lockhart tops the list with her Ruby Oliver Series. The four books (plus the prequel in Not Like I’m Jealous or Anything) are so good—funny while dealing with some significant issues. See the review for the series or the one for Not Like I’m Jealous or Anything.

Next comes One of Us Is Lying by Karen McManus, which is clever, fast-paced, and has more depth than I expected from a thriller. See the review here.

I really enjoyed Unbecoming by Jenny Downham. It also delves deep into the complicated life of a teenager but has extra layers dedicated to her mother and grandmother (both of which are interesting despite the fact that this is a YA book). You can see the review of the book for more. The other book by Downham that I read this year, Before I Die, also makes the list. This is a gut-wrenching book about, well, dying. I reviewed it here.

Lockhart shows up again again with The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, which was technically a reread in 2017, but I think that counts. Frankie’s a fantastic character who takes something to the kind of extremes we’ve all probably wanted to go to at some point (but have been too chicken). The review is here.

One last that I’d like to mention is The Miseducation of Cameron Post by Emily M. Danforth. This is a seriously long book about being a lesbian in a harsh, not-understanding place. But it digs deep and keeps you interested. See the review here.

 

A Bonus

The view from my dining room window on Christmas day:

the march of the snow-capped bushes
They’re Coming…

I swear there didn’t use to be so many of them. Clearly, they’re multiplying.

Review: Not Like I’m Jealous or Anything edited by Marissa Walsh

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Not Like I'm Jealous or Anything book coverThis is really a weird little collection. I got it for the Ruby Oliver prequel short story by E. Lockhart. But it has six short stories, four essays, a poem, a tongue-in-cheek quiz, and a few bonus lists of jealousy-related things (music, books, movies, etc.). My favorite extra is the list of names of green Crayola crayons.

It’s weird for several reasons, but one is that although it’s supposed to be a YA title as far as I can gather (since most of the stories deal with the teenage years), the very first story is about a girl’s tenth birthday party. She’s jealous of her richer friends because her family can’t afford a fancy party. What’s a middle grade story doing in a YA book? I have no idea.

The second story is the Ruby Oliver one, and its great if you already love Roo. It’s about her involvement in a bake sale, when she’s paired up with her boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend and finds herself maddeningly jealous of her.

There are several more stories: one about a girl whose boyfriend becomes infatuated with someone else; one about a girl who’s so in love with the circumstances surrounding her relationship with her boyfriend that she can’t deal when those circumstances change; one about a girl who ends up being jealous of the attention her little sister gets from the guy she herself likes (and about getting back at a bully principal); and finally one about a girl who’s jealous boyfriend drives her to find a well of courage within herself.

There are a couple of essays from friends Ned Vizzini and Marty Beckerman. Vizzini talks about death and envy, which is sad in retrospect since he committed suicide a few years ago (the essay probably can’t be taken quite at face value). Specifically, he’s jealous of Beckerman for being better at apparently everything. Beckerman’s essay is the second really weird thing about this collection. It’s full of f-bombs and innuendo, which is just odd in a collection with a middle grade story. Otherwise, it’s about being jealous of Vizzini because he’s better at everything. Two additional essays deal with sibling jealousy and overcoming jealousy of practically everything you don’t have.

I’d recommend this book mostly for the Ruby Oliver story, but if you are particularly interested in jealousy, you might find it entertaining overall. The stories and essays are a mix of serious and funny, with a dose of weird thrown in for good measure.

Review: Stay by Deb Caletti

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Stay book coverIf you’re sick of all the romanticized obsessive love that’s in YA literature today, this is the antidote.

17-year-old Clara Oates goes with her father to a small coastal Washington town from Seattle to escape an obsessive and increasingly dangerous ex-boyfriend, Christian. The plan is to hide out for a while and hope Christian moves on. The book tells the story from that point, but also goes back and gives us the history of the relationship, from the first night they met. The first chapter opens with that very first meeting before bringing us back to present time, where Clara and her dad are getting settled in the Airbnb-type house they’ll be staying in and trying to figure out what the guy who owns it does for a living.

Her dad is a well-known mystery writer so hiding out is a little iffy. Still, they hope it works. While there, Clara gets a job and meets another boy and we see her really starting to move on. All while she goes over the increasingly disturbing history of her relationship with Christian.

Caletti could have been lazy but she gives us numerous subplots in the present-day that keep us intrigued. And something I loved about the book is that although Clara is clearly wiser than she was before Christian, there are still many things she doesn’t know, particularly about her mother and her father. So she still has more to learn, even though at the beginning of the book she already thinks she’s learned everything she needs to.

The voice in the book is wonderful. It’s told in first person and Clara is open and so real. She’s also self-aware at the point she’s narrating the book, but she’s telling the story of herself going from a fairly naïve girl to a much wiser one. It’s unusual in its use of footnotes, which adds something kind of fun, because Clara gives us little facets of the story that aren’t necessarily required but are interesting. For instance:

** Telling people about your dead mother is always delicate. You have to be prepared for them to spill their sympathy as if it happened yesterday. … I deal more with their reaction than they do with mine, and so you have to choose your timing.

Caletti’s writing is beautiful and it’s no fluke that she was a National Book Award finalist. The characters are all well-drawn and distinct through witty and natural dialogue.

I’d recommend this for all teens who are dating or considering it because it provides a very relatable and realistic (but not preachy) cautionary tale about possessive and obsessive love—the kind that leads to long-term domestic violence. And too much of YA features those kinds of relationships as admirable. They’re not, and this book shows why.

Review: Fly on the Wall by E. Lockhart

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Fly on the Wall book coverHave you ever wished to be a fly on the wall somewhere totally inaccessible to you? Gretchen Yee does, and, strangely and without explanation, she gets her wish.

It sounds weird—and it is—though it starts off a simple story about a girl attending a competitive arts high school in Manhattan. Gretchen is a little obsessed with superheroes—reading them, drawing them, and wanting to be one (who doesn’t, at least a little). She’s a bit of an oddball. She’s awkward around and confused about boys, although there is one she particularly likes, Titus. She has a single friend, Katya, who has become a little distant recently. Then some unexpected turmoil starts at home, causing her to have to take a hard look at her mess of a bedroom and really her life. She’s a bit of a pack rat but can’t imagine getting rid of any of the stuff she has.

Gretchen’s an interesting and well-developed character full of contradictions. She seems a little shy, but she’s not. She’s not afraid to tell of the realtor who asks if she’s adopted when she’s with her white mom (her dad’s Chinese). She’s a little immature for 16 and needs to grow up. But boys… boys just frustrate her. She wants to understand Titus but can’t figure him out.

One day after class, she manages to initiate a chat with him about a weekend museum assignment, which provides a perfect opportunity to suggest they go together. She chickens out, but not before making an observation I loved:

Titus bends over to pick his pencil off the floor. There’s a strip of skin between his shirt and the top of his jeans in the back. I can see the top of his boxers. Plain light blue.

She can’t figure out boys as a whole, especially after an interaction she has with Titus, her ex-boyfriend Shane, and three other guys:

As they move past us, Shane bangs a locker hard, just to make noise, and I jump.

Why do boys do stuff like that?

Then Shane pinches her butt and she wants Katya to tell her what it means. Katya tells her it means nothing and not to worry about it.

In frustration, Gretchen says, “I wish I was a fly on the wall of the boys’ locker room.” That evening when she goes home to an empty house because both of her parents are out of town, she reads some Kafka and bam. Fly.

She witnesses exchanges she never expected and finally comes to understand some things about Titus and boy politics. It’s not at all like she expected.

The book is a little unusual in style, alternating fonts when going between inner monologue and real-time story. I wasn’t really sure what the point of that was, to be honest, and I found it a little distracting. But then again, it sort of suited the general strangeness of the book. I mean, the girl becomes a fly for a week and we never come to learn how. But it’s fine—we just accept it and enjoy the book for what it is. An interesting story about a girl coming to terms with sexuality, really (without any sex involved, though there were a fair number of “gherkins” in sight).

This is definitely a fast read, coming in at under 200 pages. Even though there are fantasy elements, I still think of it as contemporary more than fantasy. Anyone who’s enjoyed other Lockhart books will like this one, and so will anyone looking for a complex 16-year-old girl trying to figure things out.

A Conversation with E. Lockhart and Deb Caletti

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A couple weeks before it happened, I was lucky enough to find out about a little event at a library near Seattle billed as a ”conversation” between E. Lockhart and Deb Caletti. I wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but as I’d read and very much enjoyed a YA book by each of them, it seemed worth going to. Then, I ended up reading the whole Ruby Oliver series (Lockhart’s) right before the event. If you saw my review for them a couple weeks ago, you’ll know I liked them. 

The event basically was a conversation between the two authors. They sat in front of the audience in two big, comfy library chairs and chatted with each other. Occasionally, the event organizer asked a question, which would get them going back and forth and sometimes down shallow rabbit holes. It was fun. 

Deb Caletti and E. Lockhart

They talked a bit about themes that repeatedly come up in their novels, and decided that the predominant one has to do with the reinvention of self. Teenagers are finally at a point where they have enough power that they can reinvent themselves to some degree. This was a bit of a revelation for me, because I’ve long wondered what appeals to me so much about YA. The coming-of-age aspect didn’t make a lot of sense, since that wasn’t a good time for me. But I think the reinvention aspect is it, for the very reason that I hated my teenage years and have forever believed that I would be a happier person if had I lived them somewhere less conservative than Oklahoma. Even today, I wish I could have a big do-over for much of my life. 

While talking about this theme, it emerged that both Lockhart and Caletti have always had a secret plan for what to do when they need to go on the lam (what color to dye their hair, what to bring, where to go, etc.). They were both amazed and asked the audience if they too had such a plan. We were all cracking up about that. Lockhart said that reading and writing are sort of like running away without changing your hair color. 

They also talked about who their characters are really based on, and admitted that while they often start off thinking that their main characters are totally different from them, in the end they usually realize they’re writing themselves to a significant degree. 

Lockhart also ended up talking a bit about the true self, and how it doesn’t really exist because who a person is is always relative to the situation they’re in and the people they’re with. This was pretty interesting, but also intuitively true when you give it some thought. It’s code switching, basically. 

Then they talked a little about topics in YA versus adult fiction, pointing out that sometimes themes can be explored a little more deeply in adult for a couple reasons: adult readers have a tad more patience; and, they’ve seen more so need more depth for the ideas to be novel. YA readers aren’t yet as jaded simply because they haven’t had enough time to “read all the things.” Additionally, Lockhart pointed out that often teen readers are facing a topic or idea for the first time with the book they’re reading, and it’s important to present that authentically. 

It was an interesting event and I bought several of their books and had them signed. 🙂 I was glad I went out even though it was in the middle of NaNo. 

NaNo 2017 Update

Posted on by kellyvincent

NaNo is wrapping up and I’m pleased to say that I “won” Monday, though I technically hit the 50,000-word mark on Sunday the 19th. I’m not quite sure how I did it that fast, but I’m trying to finish the whole book by the end of the month. I’m projecting 80,000 words at this point. I think maybe the reason it went so fast is that it’s a semi-autobiographical story, so a lot of it was just telling what happened instead of having to figure out how things would go. Right now I’m in the middle of writing a visit to Glasgow, Scotland, which is really fun because I’m reliving the time I spent there (which was awesome).

Here’s my status as of this afternoon:

NaNo 2017 bar graph
NaNo progress

It’s really crazy. I should be at 43,333 by the end of today, but I’m currently at 70,855 and am not done for the day. 🙂

That’s all for now. I’m busy.

Review: How to Hang a Witch by Adriana Mather

Posted on by kellyvincent

How to Hang a Witch book coverI joined one of those new monthly book clubs where they send you a book you aren’t specifically expecting, and this was the first one they sent me. I hadn’t heard of it, although I was at Barnes and Noble the other day and they had about 5 outward-facing copies on display, so I’m guessing it’s gaining in popularity. It’s certainly got good reviews on Amazon (4.8 stars, which you rarely see).

It’s an interesting book about the Salem Witch Trials and the modern-day consequences—and how that relates to bullying. Which ies a really interesting take on the situation. Mather (the author) is a direct descendent of Cotton Mather, who is famous as the instigator of the Trials. So her main character, Samantha, is also one of his direct descendants. She moves to Salem into her dead grandmother’s house with her stepmother after her father has gone into a mysterious coma.

This triggers what appears to be an old curse that’s only active when all of the descendants of the major players of the Trials are in town. There’s a group of goth kids—four girls an a boy—who are known as The Descendants, because their direct ancestors were the ones executed in the Trials. Since Sam is a direct descendant of the man who started it all, they hate her. And the rest of the town, including many of the school’s teachers and administrators, also dislike her.

That’s partially where the connection to bullying comes in. Mather’s point is that its somewhat arbitrary—it can happen to anyone for any reason, but the community as a whole has to support it. This rings true for me, as although we usually view bullying as a kids’ problem, in many cases adults are nearly as complicit. In may own experience of being bullied, many adults explicitly blamed me while others just looked the other way. In her Author’s Note, Mather says, “Group agreement and group silence are equally as deadly.”

Anyway, in the book, The Descendants don’t like Sam and they blame her for the string of deaths and bad luck that have been hitting their families since she arrived. But Sam befriends a prickly ghost living in her house who also helps her uncover the cause of all the deaths, which can be traced back to the time of the Trials. Sam tries to tell everyone that the curse isn’t new and that she and her father are both in as much danger as anyone else, but instead they continue to blame her. Somehow she has to convince The Descendants to work with her to break the curse.

Sam is a complex character trying to make sense of her past. She’s grown up believing she’s cursed, so when she finds out she sort of really is, it’s a shock and she has to figure out how to deal. Her stepmother is also interesting because it’s really hard to tell if she’s good or bad or what. The ghost and his formal way of speaking are entertaining. Also, I should mention that there were moments late at night when I had to put the book down because I was getting a little creeped out. I get a tiny bit superstitious in the dark. A ghost, creepy woods that Sam is sensible enough to be scared of, and magic.