What I'm Reading

One of the grand things about working at an indie bookstore is access to books. ARCs and damaged copies and the ability to skim books when I have spare moments and the ability to basically check them out and bring them back--it's a fabulous benefit for my hourly pay job. Plus I'm the buyer for all children's books from board books to YA, so I get to see the catalogues far in advance for upcoming seasons.

Thus I'll be talking a lot in this space about books I'm looking forward to and of course ones I'm reading-- which is always more than one book at a time because who can read just one book at a time?

Here's some of what I'm up to:

On my nightstand:

David Arnold's forthcoming THE STRANGE FASCINATIONS OF NOAH HYPNOTIK, which is as wonderfully quirky and brilliantly written and I'll have more to say when I'm done. For now let me say that I was hooked by the end of page one.

Likewise I'm in love with a book that's been out for a while but I had not read: Jeff Zentner's THE SERPENT KING. I was already a fan of his Goodbye Days, but somehow had missed his debut. Now I'm in the middle and I am in love with Dill and Travis and Lydia and their story and if you haven't read this Nashville-set YA, then like me, you need to get to it. It is a story about life and friendship and family and religion and the crappy hands we are sometimes dealt and the people who sustain us even in the darkest moments.

Also reading the ARC of Julie Murphy's forthcoming PUDDIN', which is a companion to DUMPLIN' (which just got a shout out on the Golden Globes as I was typing this blog post to set it up for tomorrow!) This one is Millie's story, among other things, and dare I say it? I think it is even better than DUMPLIN' which I loved. I've only skimmed so far, so stay tuned.

And finally, I'm re-reading Dusti Bowling's sweet, funny, moving middle grade debut INSIGNIFICANT EVENTS IN THE LIFE OF A CACTUS, which is our store middle grade book club title for January. It's the story of Aven Green, born with no arms and one of the funniest, wittiest, most winning narrators ever, as her family moves to Arizona to run a dilapidated Western theme park and Aven adjusts to a new school, new friends, and a mystery that turns out to have very personal connections.

Five People I Love Today

Gonna be hard to keep it to five. But let me squoosh some together:

1. The guy who fixed my pineapple lamp (it was the socket) and made it work all spiffy again. I LOVE my pineapple lamp. And I was sad that it was all blinky. Now it is PERFECT. And the lady, in the same store, who waxed eloquent on the subject of bathroom lighting ("think of it as the jewelry. Pick your faucets first, then your mirrors, then your lights"). Well who knew? And so project master bath is actually moving forward and who knew I could be so excited about countertops?

2. Entrepreneur/author Bethenny Frankel because she is knows how to reinvent and knows her flaws and her strengths and even if you are reading this and scoffing about 'reality TV' let me say that she inspires me to get it done, to believe in myself, to pick up the pieces when I fail, to keep a keen eye on the world's absurdities, and  to laugh because laughter is awesome. 

3. Julie Murphy for writing DUMPLIN' and for telling the world that women can take up as much space in this world as they want or need to. 

4. Colleen Thompson, who writes kick ass romantic suspense (among many other genres) and who also does a lot to keep my head on straight and remind me to keep my eyes on my own work because that's the only thing I can control!

5. And all the team at Soho Press, with whom writing books is an honor and a pleasure. Soon they will start giving you sneak peeks at next year's IT WASN'T ALWAYS LIKE THIS and I can hardly wait! Here's a little teaser description: Part thriller, part murder mystery, part fairy tale in the vein of Tuck Everlasting, comes a story of accidental immortality, star-crossed romance, and a forever-seventeen-year-old girl who won't give up the search for the boy she loves.

Yeah, you want to read that, don't you? Well it's coming on 5/17/16.

Three for Tuesday

So much going on right now, but the Tuesday three shall be:

1. Happy surprise this morning with this review from a source I very much respect and thus I am totally honored and thrilled about what School Library Journal's Teen Librarian Toolbox had to say about FINDING PARIS:
http://www.teenlibrariantoolbox.com/2015/05/book-review-finding-paris-by-joy-preble/

Every author leaps for joy when a review totally GETS IT, totally understands what your novel is trying to do and how it's trying to do it. Makes my heart quite happy!!

Read the whole thing if you have a chance, but here's a snippet:

 "While this is a mystery and (less so) a romance, it is the much darker and more serious elements of the story that make this a hard book to put down and an even harder book to forget."

2. Just finished ALL THE RAGE by Courtney Summers, which is often a brutally emotional read, about a girl named Romy Grey, a small town, rape culture, recovery, bullying, and how hard it is for some people to believe the truth. As much - although not all-- of that is part of Finding Paris, I think they might someday make a fascinating companion read…

And also on the nightstand: Just started my precious arc of Julie Murphy's DUMPLIN' and I'm already swallowed up in WillowDean's world and hoping she gets the happily ever after I want for her.

Skimming through editor Cheryl Klein's SECOND SIGHT, because if anyone is a genius at breaking down plot, character, voice and revision techniques (besides my own wonderful editors), it's Cheryl Klein over at Scholastic!

And I'm a few pages in to THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN by Paula Hawkins, which everyone is reading and now so am I! I'm sensing this is not going to be a happy read, but a fascinating one. 

3. And in my pop culture report, Jane has had her baby on last night's JANE THE VIRGIN, which if you haven't watched, you should totally catch up on this clever series. I'm newly addicted to CALL THE MIDWIFE, a BBC show that's been on for a few years now and why didn't anyone tell me?! Even the hubs is watching with me, having been primed and perhaps broken in by a few seasons of DOWNTON ABBEY. For now, as I have revisions to finish, let me just say "Chummy Noakes!" I am totally Team Chummy forever. On the Housewives front, Carole is having her fling on RHONY, Bethenny is back and feisty and understandably cranky with all the divorce shenanigans and I kinda like Dorinda, although she needs to dump the boyfriend. (Just saying). 

There's more of course, but like I say, there's writing to do and a talk I'm giving in June to write about setting and a new manuscript to get back to and so I leave you for now.

Coming soon: My interview with debut author Adam Silvera, about his forthcoming MORE HAPPY THAN NOT, out in June from our mutual publisher, Soho Press! 

You Don't Have To Like Them and Other Truths About Characters and Storytelling

Just finished reading the very talented Julie Murphy's amazing debut YA novel, SIDE EFFECTS MAY VARY. And here's the thing about her main character Alice: She is a mean girl. Getting cancer has not changed this; in fact dying has through much of the book, exacerbated her meanness. She is angry and cruel and her bucket list of revenge (it's not all revenge on the list, but a lot of it is) includes some very awful acts that she commits with pleasure. She loves a boy named Harvey but she fears--and rightfully so--that even though her disease is suddenly in remission, it will return, and so she pushes him away, cheats on his loving heart, uses him shamefully and with full knowledge of what she is doing and honestly has to think hard, once she tries to change her mindset, about what a non-mean person would do. The punishments she doles out to those who have wronged her (and let me say they've done some pretty crappy things) are as harsh if not harsher than the crimes they've committed.

I don't like her very much, not even at the end. I wouldn't be her friend. I have never understood the Regina Georges of the world. It rarely occurs to me to act in those ways and trust me when I say I'm no saint. I'm mouthy and snarky and sarcastic and I see the world through a sardonic lens most days and am happiest when surrounded by those who see it that way, too. But although I am myself a cancer survivor, I still don't relate to the way Alice acts, even if I can understand and analyze it. Almost dying--however close you get--changes you in ways you might never suspect it will. Trust me on this. Unless you've experienced it, you can't honestly say how you'd react. You really can't. It doesn't always make us noble. Even Gus and Hazel Grace in TFIOS--surely the prettiest, most articulate cancer-suffering duo in YA--have their awful moments. 

But I don't HAVE to like Alice for me to read and enjoy and savor this book. I don't HAVE to like her for me to think that Julie Murphy's written an awesome novel. I simply have to find her authentic and consistent within the fictional boundaries and character arc Murphy has created. And I do. (Okay, as someone who's spent a number of years in the classroom, I will say that my long term experience with high school is that there are fewer powerful student queen bee types in real life than there seem to be in fiction, but I'm okay with the trope. It's a decent stand in for the many nasty power mongers in the world. And interestingly, the place I see it most is the teacher's lounge, which is often a scary, angry, territorial den, a place where I was once told by someone in authority, "I don't care how smart you are as long as you're nice,"--implying that I wasn't-- but that's another story)

Still, I frequently read reviews of various books--including my own-- in which readers say, "I didn't like her/him." or "That was a terrible way to act." or "9th grade girls wouldn't swear like that." or "I would never do that to my sister. It made me hate her." And they down rate accordingly. 

Except my job as an author is NOT to make my characters all likeable. My job is to tell the authentic story of this character at this place and time in this particular set of experiences. My job is to ruminate on the nature of being human, which let's face it, is quite the journey. Some of us are awful. Some of us aren't. Some of us (even 9th grade girls!) swear like sailors. Some of us do terrible things and all of us have no idea how we would behave if our world was up-ended, or we were struggling or trapped in a life we didn't want but couldn't escape, one in which horrible things sometimes happened. If the truths we had to face felt, well, unfaceable. 

Writers are not obligated to tie it all up with a pretty pink bow, although I personally prefer a note of hope at the end, which Murphy has definitely supplied.

This means that my characters will frequently act or speak or think in ways I might not. And as a reader, I am thus privileged to safely experience worlds beyond my own limited personal experience.

 I'm hoping very hard that I have captured these things for my readers in the forthcoming FINDING PARIS (Balzer and Bray) and all its characters Leo and Paris and Max, as they struggle--not always in the best of ways-- to face their own choices and truths. 

Bravo, Julie Murphy, for being fearless enough to write a character that I don't like very much.

And if you haven't read SIDE EFFECTS MAY VARY (Balzer and Bray), you need to do so.