Building a "provocative" book club

So some of you may know that I'm in the embryonic stages of starting a community YA book club that focuses on issue books. I've been interested in this ever since Simone Elkeles mentioned to me that she did book club in the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center.

My MSW friends have offered to help and we'll be working in conjunction with clinicians and pediatricians in the community to find kids who would be interested in something like this. Luckily, I happen to know clinicians and pediatricians and social workers who have A LOT of heart for this idea. We had a BIG meeting today to brainstorm over how to run something like this because it actually takes a lot of parts.

We need space for the book club (thank you, library). We need teens to be in it. We need books. We need book club questions. We need resource information (since we're dealing with issue books, we thought it would be good to have resources available on the issues). And we need PARENTAL CONSENT.

Julio asked me why I would get involved with something that is seemingly a TREMENDOUS amount of work. My answer was very simple, but also very true:

And in case you haven't read the article "Why the Best Kids Books Are Written in Blood" from Sherman Alexie, I'm linking it here.

Simplicity is my favorite word

I know I should join Pinterest or Tumblr or Klout or all these things, but honestly, I don't have enough to say or share, I think. Also, I'm not great with online time management and wonder how others balance it. How do you find time to write, have a day job, have a family/friends, and do all the social media stuff? I'm a major multi-tasker, but still...

It's a bit exhausting to me. So today, I'm going to share two simple things that made me smile this week:

This is going to be my life in one year!!!

This is so awesome, I want to squeeze everyone in the world.

Also, next Tuesday, I'm bringing back INSIDE THE AUTHOR'S STUDIO and will have K.M. Walton on my blog and will be giving away a copy of CRACKED. So you all should pop back for that.

On Writing Loss...

So MJ and I have drafted and edited a book called LOVE BLIND. It's a book I wanted to write for a long time, but didn't think I could. Which makes me feel very proud of it. I don't think I could have written it alone. There's something about passing a difficult book back and forth between people. Like when it becomes too much, it is so nice to send it along and say, "Okay, your turn."

The book is about two friends who never get their timing right. I call it my anti-love story. At the heart of this book is the loss of a very good friend. Though the book is not my story and the character is not him, the sentiment behind it belongs to him. Losing someone too early, not being able to say goodbye, these are things I understand. I imagine that many of you feel the same way.

There is something about writing through grief that is amazingly therapeutic. For me, it is better when I am far away enough from an experience that I can incorporate the feelings, but also know that I've worked my way through them. All of what I write is fiction. But at the same time, there is an element of truth in the feelings that cannot be fictionalized. Grief cannot really be fictionalized.

So without further ado, here is our very unconventional WIP blurb for LOVE BLIND:

Hailey was fifteen when she met Kyle. Fifteen with a beautiful voice, two adoring moms, and eyes that never worked quite right. Eyes that got worse every year.

Kyle was sixteen when he met Hailey. Sixteen, painfully shy, and plagued by constant thoughts of how messed up his life was—with his mom, with his one friend.

Then Hailey told Kyle about her list: a catalogue of all of the things she feared. She wanted to cross them off before the end of high school. She insisted Kyle write a list of his own, and he couldn't tell her no.

For a while it was good, sort of. An odd friendship, but one they both counted on, and then it began to change into more. Until it started to crack.

But still, they had their lists. A tentative connection that held them together when nothing else did.

Hailey was seventeen when she lost Kyle. Seventeen and in love with a boy who’d become her best friend. A boy who left behind all the things he could never say to her as an unfinished task on his list.