Tag Second in Command

Behind the scenes of my second verse novel

caravanofcomposition 2 Comments

Book journeys are all unique. From plot bunny to manuscript, from query letter to author copies – every book has its own story. So what’s the story behind Listen Up, my verse novel newly released from West 44 Books?

In early 2018, while I anxiously awaited the launch of my debut novel, Second in Command, my editor called for the next round of pitches. A pitch is one sentence that describes the general plot of a book, but in this case, she was looking for a query and first 500 words. Fiction queries, letters of about 250 words designed to give an agent and editor an idea of the who, what, when, where, why of your book, are typically written when a book is complete. Writers often complain about them, but I’m actually one of those weird types who enjoy writing query letters. Maybe it’s all those writing conference sessions, or the satisfaction of being able to sum up the major players and conflict of a book in 250 words or less. Maybe it’s because I once got to hang out and pick the brain of literary agent and query guru Janet Reid, better known as the Query Shark, and she gave my query her stamp of approval. (It may have helped that my friend Dee introduced Janet to sponge candy the day we met.)

Whatever the reason, I wrote a query, sent it to Dee, who helped me clean it up, and wrote my 500 words. Hit submit.

Wait, back up. Where did the idea come from? you ask. My intent at the time was to do a modern retelling of Pump up the Volume, an awesome 90’s movie staring my teen heartthrob, Christian Slater. If you’ve never seen the film, you should watch it because, well, because Christian Slater. With no shirt on. Also it’s a pretty good movie. It’s about a super-shy kid who moves to a new town and uses the radio his parents got him, intended to keep in touch with his old friends, to start an underground radio station. He starts out using it to push boundaries but ends up tackling serious issues and uncovering a plot to remove “bad” students from the school. I knew I couldn’t take on something so huge in 10k words (and wanted my book to be inspired by, not a copy of the movie), so I kept the key elements: shy character, wants to speak out but struggles in real life so finds a way to do it anonymously. In the movie, it’s radio. In my book, he starts a video channel.

So I pitched the book idea in January 2018. Pitched another idea shortly after, about two friends who try to solve the mystery of a missing girl in their neighborhood. Neither were approved. But they weren’t outright rejected either. I started working on the second idea, wrote a few poems, read them to some of my writer friends, who promptly told me they were terrible. Which they were. So I worked on other projects. I wrote several short stories for another imprint, blogged a bit, and changed tenses and major plot lines in my YA historical fiction novel after an unsuccessful round of queries. Forgot all about Listen Up.

Then in October of 2019 my editor wrote to ask if I’d like to write the book. That she’d been thinking about it since I sent the pitch in nearly two years earlier. Oh, and could I write it in a month?

Queue excitement, followed swiftly by panic. Sure! I could write a book in a month. People do that all the time during NaNoWriMo. I made myself a schedule and spent nearly every soccer practice camped out with my laptop. Thankfully, the characters were very cooperative, telling me who they were and what they wanted. The plot was a bit more elusive, and as I approached the end, I realized there was a major hole that needed to be fixed. With a deadline fast approaching, I locked myself in my writing room one weekend and brainstormed until I figured out how to untwist the mess I had made and give the book a proper ending.

Wanna know a secret? That is not easy when your book consists of nothing but poetry. You have to figure out a way to move or rewrite in chunks while keeping the story flowing and the poems intact. When I finished the first draft, I brought it to my husband and asked him to, “Please tell me if this sucks.” He’s a no BS kinda guy, so I knew he’d be honest. And he was. He told me it didn’t suck and helped me fix the parts that were confusing or unclear. I’m deeply thankful for his insight and for my other three beta readers: Adrienne, Alexis, and Carla, who were able to quickly give me notes before I turned it into my editor. And for the random student I met during an instant admit session who answered my questions about Autobody classes. I think his name was Joe. Thank you.

I’m also deeply indebted to my editor, Caitie. Her notes are always kind and helpful, and my favorite part of the process was when I turned in my first draft and she called me a “writing superhero”. Her faith in me has been a huge confidence boost.

Sadly, the journey from acceptance to release day hasn’t been sunshine and rainbows. The pandemic caused a lot of problems in the publishing industry, especially in educational publishing. I originally wrote and planned to publish this post on October 1, but on that day there were no books available to order. I haven’t gotten my author copies yet, and the library rejected the request to carry it because their supplier didn’t have any copies. But my friends, family, and coworkers have been encouraging – sending me texts, pre-ordering the book, letting me read some of the poems at our weekly meeting. And my mom called to say her friends were all excited to get their copies. I’m thankful for all of that, truly.

There is so much I love about writing – I love creating characters and stories, of letting my mind wander into all the what-if’s. I love the way it feels like therapy sometimes, like it’s this free, easy way to work through the garbage in my head. But I mostly love when someone reads something I’ve written and tells me how it made them feel. When a student admits my book is the first he’s ever finished and another sends me the poem she felt inspired to write.

I went into a few classrooms to talk about Second in Command, and I am hopeful that I’ll be able to do that again someday. In the meantime, if I can get my procrastinator’s butt into gear, I’ll put together some video clips of me reading the book and would love to find ways to interact virtually with my readers. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, here are the links to order a copy if you’re so inclined:
West44 Books
Amazon

And if you read the book, please leave a review. Thank you all, for the support. ❤

Launch party love

caravanofcomposition 4 Comments

I feel incredibly blessed. Last night was the launch party for Second in Command. Friends, family, and coworkers came out to help celebrate and many others shared their well wishes throughout the day. I even met a few new people who heard about the event and wanted to check out my book.

I wanted to share my speech here for anyone who missed it because I think so much of writing is about the journeys we take and the people who help us along the way.

Thank you, Gina for that perfect introduction, and a huge thank you to Mary and the Burchfield Penney Art Center for hosting this event. Mary runs a book club here on the first Thursday of every month – it celebrates local Buffalo authors and it’s a wonderful way to learn about the history and culture of Buffalo and be exposed to some of our amazing talent. *(Note: the next book club is March 7)

At the risk of sounding like I’m at the Oscars (if I go too long feel free to cue the obnoxious music), there are a bunch of people I need to thank for getting me up here. My parents, for believing in me and traveling back from Florida into the icy grips of Buffalo to help celebrate and bake cookies. My mother in law, and my sister and her family for their support and encouragement, my kiddos for inspiration – this is the first thing I’ve written they could actually read (usually there’s a tiny bit of swearing in my books). And that handsome man in uniform who endures endless rounds of brainstorming, as well as my fits of jealously and self-doubt and all the other demons we writers face. He’s always there with practical advice like, “Just sit down and write.” As many of you know, he was active duty Navy for five years and now serves as a Reservist. We were apart for most of 2003 and I pulled on some of those memories when writing the book. But more about that in a bit.

I want to thank my friends and family – coworkers, both past and present, scout friends and writer friends – especially my Wednesday night and sometimes Sunday afternoon clan, members of our local children’s writers and illustrators (we’re known as BNCWI), Kristy my cheerleader, Jenn for our writing slash counseling sessions, Dee for introducing me to this crazy world of children’s books, my beta readers – CJ, Claudia, Carla, Gina, and Lilly. Sam, who designed this beautiful cover. Caitie, and everyone at West 44 who took a chance on my idea and helped make a lifelong dream come true. Everyone here today for coming out and supporting me. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Okay, cue the music. Onto the juicy part. How did I get here? No wait, that’s a Talking Heads song. Here’s the condensed version. When I was 16, I wrote a lot of angsty poetry. Like Leo, the main character in Second in Command, I was trying to figure out who I was and where I fit in the world. That’s the great thing about young adult literature. We can all relate to those feelings of identity and fitting in – they’re universal. And writing, for me, as a far from 16-year-old who still carries a few wounds on her heart, is a form of therapy. You present readers with a character who has a goal, give him/her obstacles, and then here’s the fun part – you help them figure out how to solve their problems. And unlike real life, there are revisions – you can change the course of events and your characters’ reactions, you get to be in control of their fate.

I get the YA part, you say, but what is a verse novel? A verse novel is a story told entirely through poetry. Poetry is beautiful because it strips everything down to raw emotion – much like the teenage experience. When Caitie told our critique group about her new imprint that would feature verse novels for struggling readers I thought, YES! Brilliant! I used to teach high school students with learning disabilities, and I remember how some of them struggled to find accessible literature that spoke to their experiences in a way that didn’t feel dumbed down. Poetry can be intimidating to some, yes, but it can also be freeing in a way because there’s all this white space on the page and the sentences are bare, the emotion is right there for the reader to see and feel.

I was excited to be part of something like that – and to be able to write poetry again. While that might frighten some writers, I immediately started to think about the different types of poems I could use and how I’d be able to play with language and structure. The clincher? One of the possible topics was deployed parents. Poetry, young adult book for struggling readers, about a military family. Around our house we call that the Trifecta.

So I created Leo, and I gave him a goal – he wants to earn Eagle Scout and become a police officer, and I gave him conflicts – Mom, who he admires and depends on to a degree, gets deployed and younger brother Jack quickly takes advantage of the situation by getting into trouble. It’s clear the brothers are close, but they fight – in the way brothers do. Not that I have any experience with that or anything. And Leo feels this strong sense of responsibility, especially when it comes to his siblings, but he’s also freaking out a little. And when I sat down to write I had to dredge up some difficult memories of my husband’s deployment. I wanted the story to be real for my readers. I had to tap into those feelings and remember the other families from that time. It was 2003 and everyone in our little military town knew someone who was deployed. Leo’s family was inspired by our next door neighbors. Mom left with the hospital ship. Dad commuted over an hour to work each day. The kids looked out for each other. It was sweet and heartbreaking, and they stayed with me for a long time.

I pitched my idea, and they liked it. Then came drafting, deadlines, revisions – all that good stuff.

Writing isn’t easy. It’s lonely. Sometimes it feels like I cut up my heart and put it onto the page. And when you’ve got a world of other things on your plate – work, family, volunteering – you squeeze it in whenever and wherever you can. I wrote most of the book on a picnic table inside Epic Sports Center while my kids were at soccer practice. But then there was a book. With my name on it. And that was pretty awesome. The most rewarding thing for me is the opportunity to tell a story people connect to. When someone reads a poem and thinks, yes, this speaks to how I’m feeling. That is really powerful.

There are moments in my life when I felt so, so lonely and I would turn to my journal, or I’d turn to a book and get lost in the story. Words have a weird way of healing. My hope is that you pick up this book and whether you’re part of a military family or you had someone in your life that you depended on and now they’re gone and you’ve gotta figure it out on your own – of if you’ve ever had to decide where your loyalty lies, you’ll pick up this book and you’ll feel a connection to the characters, you’ll feel understood, you’ll feel a little less alone.

author

me, being authorly

Yeah, it was cold, and I’m a little crazy

caravanofcomposition 2 Comments

Friday morning at work, the wind whistling angrily against our office windows, the following conversation took place:
Coworker: What are your weekend plans?
Me: Oh, I’m going camping.
Coworker: …
Me: Yup.
Coworker: It’s supposed to be really cold this weekend. Are you crazy?
Me: (briefly contemplates) Yup.

One fateful day, when oldest was in first grade, I walked past the cub scout recruitment table and asked for more information. I had been a girl scout through high school and thought scouts would be good for our boys. Oldest and I went to the information night, and he was immediately hooked.

Little did I know how that decision would affect my life these past six+ years. Both our boys are active in scouting and oldest hopes to earn the highest rank of Eagle. Many of our close friends are fellow scout parents, and scouting has seeped into my life in more ways than I could have imagined.

Writing, for example. Leo, the main character in SECOND IN COMMAND, is working toward Eagle and strives to live his life by the scout law. In my current WIP, the main character paved the way for girls in BSA (the new name for Boy Scouts of America as girls are now welcomed at all levels). Side note, I am all for an integrated scouting program – we are one of the only countries who segregate by gender. Personally I think we should merge the good things about girl scouts and boy scouts and create one unit, let’s call it something simple like, Scouts of America (why are they leaving the “B” in there I wonder?), and allow anyone to join.

Scouting has also pushed me out of my comfort zone on multiple occasions. Sometimes to an unpleasant end, like the time I rowed into the swimming dock. And sometimes to an uncomfortable end, like this past weekend when we camped in single digit temperatures (minus 20 with the wind chill). But I’ve learned in my wise old age that trying something you didn’t think you could do introduces you to some amazing experiences. A good friend tried Aerial fitness a few years back and is completely hooked — we tease her that she joined the circus, but the stuff she does is incredible.

When oldest started going on camp outs with scouts, hubby would take him. They would have fun and come back filthy, the clothes I packed still neatly folded in their bags. I’m pretty sure the kids stayed up until 2am and ate an obscene amount of cheese puffs on those trips. Then youngest joined the pack, and I decided to go on camp outs too, partly because I wanted to have an extra set of hands/eyes on our kiddos, and partly because I didn’t want to be left out. I love camping and nature. I don’t mind outdoor bathrooms (although I will say after this weekend that you haven’t truly lived until you’ve experienced sub zero winds under the doors of a latrine) or getting dirty and going without makeup, running water, etc.

Problem: I didn’t exactly want to be the only mom there. The party crasher who makes her kids brush their teeth, go to bed before midnight, and change their underwear. Thankfully one of the other moms joined me on my first camp out, and we’ve gone together to almost all of them since. And now there are lots of moms who come out, and they bring disinfecting wipes for the latrine and healthy snacks, and I love that we watch out for each other. Some of them have become my closest friends.

camp moms

Camp moms are hardcore*

Just as scouting has opened up new ideas and opportunities for my boys, it has given me the chance to connect to nature, to other people, and to my own strengths. I joined the committee and developed my leadership skills. I’ve learned how to deal with challenging situations. I’ve been able to perform for an audience (my rendition of “Have you ever seen a penguin drinking tea” is killer) which fuels the attention seeking side of my introverted personality.

I guess my point is this: you never know when an opportunity is going to change the course of your life. Stay open to new things. I volunteered to co-lead an activity at my son’s school and met my very first writer friend. She led me into a world of other writers which eventually led to the opportunity to write SECOND IN COMMAND. Sometimes when something new comes our way our first instinct is to say no, our plate is full enough already, thank you. But the thing you are eager to say no to might just be the thing that changes your life for the better.

*It was 4 degrees out when we took this picture.

Second in Command’s BOOK BIRTHDAY!

caravanofcomposition 8 Comments

Today is the day. Second in Command is officially in the world! I am excited — and slightly terrified — but mostly excited for friends and family to be able to read something I wrote, to be able to hold a book in their hands and say, hey, I know the chic who wrote this!

cover

The journey to this moment isn’t exactly as I’d planned, but whatever is, right? I was working on an blog interview earlier this week and reflecting on my wandering path as a writer. It’s definitely been in my blood since forever. I used to make up songs about the weird wallpaper in my parents’ bathroom, and there are an usually weird number of notebooks in our house that contain my random thoughts scrawled on the pages. I write. It’s what I do. Whether or not it’s any good has always remained a mystery. I never successfully wooed anyone with my poetry, but there was that time I wrote a haiku as a model for my seventh grade students entering into a local newspaper contest and ended up with the winning entry. I’ve accumulated my share of rejections from the industry, but as my husband is fond of saying, it only takes one yes in a pile of no’s.

The first novel I wrote wasn’t very good. I know that now. At the time I thought it was genius, having never been able to write an entire novel before that moment. I wanted EVERYONE to read it. I should have kept it to myself, neatly bound and stuffed into a dresser drawer. But I didn’t and had to endure a painful amount of criticism, most of which was rightly deserved. My second novel was better, but it just couldn’t deliver all that I’d hoped it would, and it too suffered criticism and rejection. (Note: I haven’t given up on her just yet, but she needs to age a bit, like a fine wine, until I figure out how to sort out the difficulties.) While I was in the painful throes of revisions with #2, an opportunity came my way. One of the members of my critique group is an editor and she was starting a new imprint aimed at reluctant readers. She wanted young adult books written in verse. Pitch your ideas to me, she said. Hmm, I thought. I could do that. She had a list of possible topics and one of them was a parent on deployment.

My mind went immediately to 2003. We lived in Silverdale, Washington, on an incredibly steep dead end street full of military families. My husband left in January for a three week underway and didn’t come home until late September. Our next door neighbors were a sweet family with three young kids. Mom served on a deployed hospital ship. Dad worked in Seattle, which from where we lived took over an hour to get to. I remember checking up on the kids once in a while and helping them with the yard work. (We each had about .08 acres of land. Seriously. You could have cut the front lawn with a pair of clippers.) Sometimes they had me over for dinner, and once I went to a school meeting for the middle son. There’s an unwritten agreement among military families: we look out for one another.

I wanted to tell a story about a family struggling through deployment, and I wanted it to be universal so that someone who has never experienced deployment could understand what the characters felt. Separation is hard. On everyone involved. And we all handle it differently. What if one character wanted to be strong on the surface even though he was hurting on the inside? What if another character was angry and needed to act out his feelings, even if it meant getting in trouble? I wrote a poem about two brothers who promise to look out for each other. Sketched it out in the back of one of my notebooks and then read it out loud to my writing group. They loved it, so I kept going. I asked my kids to help me with character names and worked on the pitch.

My idea was accepted, and from there I had deadlines, something I have discovered is very helpful in the writing world. Left to my own devices, I’ll write when the muse strikes, but give me a calendar with something due and I’ll sit at my laptop like it’s my job. Because it was, in a way. This was the first time I got paid to write.

So here we are, a year after turning in the initial draft, a copy of my book sitting next to me on the desk like no big deal. Only it is a big deal. My kids actually read it. A book I wrote. With my picture in the back. Youngest seemed most excited about that part and wanted to know if I realized all the stuff written in my bio. (I wish I had video taped him incredulously saying, “What? Featured in Adoptive Families magazine?!?”) Oldest, who disagrees with everything I say/do/recommend said it was, “Pretty good.” My parents haven’t read it yet, but they are flying from Florida into the icy winter grips of Buffalo to attend my launch party. And my late grandmother has been sending me signs all month. She’s proud, I think.

So yeah, I’m pretty excited about today. And I hope people like the book. But if they don’t, that’s okay. Poetry isn’t for everyone. But I hope it lands in the hands of a kid, or a spouse, or someone that feels the loneliness that comes when someone you love is far away — possibly in danger, and you are doing everything you can to keep it together for your siblings, or your kids, or maybe just yourself as I had been back in 2003. I hope that person reads my words and feels a little stronger. A little less alone.

If you’d like to read the book, or send a copy to someone who might need it, visit one of these links: Amazon * IndieBound * Barnes & Noble

Happy book birthday, Second in Command!!