I've been meaning to post these pictures for a while, but somehow time got away from me. In March, I went to lovely Indianapolis for Rosie Con, which was the first time I had been to Indianapolis since I was a child. I was invited because ALL WE HAVE LEFT was nominated for the Eliot Rosewater Award, chosen by Indiana High School students. It was a lovely trip, and I met so many great people!

On Friday, I went to Chapel Hill Middle School and gave several presentations, as well as eating lunch with the book club. Brenda Krebs, the media specialist, was so welcoming and thorough in her preparations. Everything went off without a hitch!

My mom, who came with me from Florida to keep me company, really hit it off with Sheri, the principal of Chapel Hill. 

So, if you're in Indianapolis, what better thing to do after an author dinner but to go racing? What a blast. These babies weren't your run-of-the-mill go-carts. They were fast! 

Do I look cold? That's because it was 87 degrees when I left Florida and in Indianapolis it was...not.

I really had an amazing time, and am so thankful for the Rosie Con  Committee for inviting me!  

But this is the easy answer, because it often feels as if writing for me is like breathing. It’s something I feel compelled to do, something as important to me as oxygen.
The fact is that the answer is not so neat. Yes, I love to write, but what compels me to tell the stories I tell? Why do I spend years of my life entwined in the lives of these characters, their heartbreak and their laughter, their struggles and their triumphs?  
Every story I have published, I have been asked: why did you write this story?
But never have I been asked: How do you choose into which story to pour your heart?
Oftentimes there seems to be so many potential stories in my head that I could sift them like shimmering diamonds through my fingers. But somewhere in there is a story that gleams the brightest, a story that I feel that I have to tell, no matter what.
But…why?
Writing a book is not easy undertaking. Maybe it would be easier if I were a poet or a songwriter. This isn’t to say that these undertakings are easy: in fact I have found myself sadly lacking at a talent to do either. It seems appealing, though, to choose a subject, lovingly fashion the words together in a heartbeat of emotion, and then move on to the next one. It would not be easy, but the time commitment—of both time, and of soul—would be less cumbersome.
And yet I write books.
I’ve begun to see that I do not choose the story; the story chooses me. I wake up some mornings with words I want to say, sometimes so loud in my head that I feel like they are shouting. It makes me feel like I need to shout them. And that’s what gets me out of bed and onto my computer. I’m driven by the same primal urge that drove cavemen to paint on walls, a need to communicate something that seems so important to me that I am willing to spend years of my life to say them. I don’t have answers, I have questions, questions that I want to explore.
In a sense, my writing is therapy. Not so much that I’m working things out in my own past, but in that I am trying to understand the world around me. Because sometimes it makes no damn sense, but I have to believe that there is a reason in there somewhere, that other people have the same questions I do, and somehow together we can work it out. I don’t feel that I have some great wisdom to impart; my writing is more of a collaborative effort between me and the reader, us holding hands and leaping into places that, alone, we would be afraid to go.
The stories I tell are not just oxygen to me, but the beating of my heart. My writing is a joyful, sometimes anguished, shout at the world.
I write because I have something to say.

I recently spent the day at the St. Stephen’s Episcopal School in Bradenton, and had the opportunity to talk to both the middle school and upper school about 9/11, as well as eat lunch with the book club. I was impressed by every single student I encountered at SSES, and feel honored to have been invited. (Thank you, Ms. Pommer!) It was a thought-provoking day, and I couldn’t have asked for a better audience. 

 I also had the pleasure of speaking to Mr. Hoonhout’s creative writing class about the importance of voice in our writing, and wanted to talk about some of the things I have been thinking about.
 
To an author a voice means a lot of things, but mainly it is what you hear when an editor or reader likes your work (What an unusual, fresh voice!”) or doesn’t (“The voice just didn’t resonate with me.”). Every published author has heard some variation of this over the years, hopefully the former, because that’s what gets you published. :)
 
The question is, what is voice?
 
The first thing we need to do is separate author voice from character voice.
 
Character voice is how your character sounds, which is imbued from their history, their experiences– who they are. In any given story, you as an author are going to be asked to show many different character voices, and you must know the character to do this: their goals, their heartbreaks, their fateful decisions. Every single sentence should show your reader who that person is.
 
You can tell a LOT about a character in just one sentence. For example, your character comes up to their locker and there is someone standing in front of it:
 
A mean person might shoulder the other person out of the way and say, “Hey, loser get out of my way.”
 
A shy person might say nothing and wait for the other person to leave.
 
An outgoing person might say, “Since you’re standing there, hold my backpack, will you? Aren’t you in my biology class?”
 
How your characters react is telling. Who they are shines through in even this simple interaction.
 
You need to know who your character is inside and out to be able to do this successfully. When I wrote All We Have Left, I switched between two girls point of view, and it was a challenge to understand who these girls were, and how they were different, as well as how they were the same. Jesse was dark and sarcastic and sometimes shy; Alia was optimistic, breezy and feisty. How they approached the world was completely different, colored by their experiences. Every sentence that came out of their mouths, every scene they narrated, had to reflect the person they were. What’s more, I had to know why they were like that: their life experiences, their hopes, their dreams, their crushing failures. As a writer, we always know way more about our characters than what makes it onto paper. The reader is only seeing the shining, jagged iceberg, with just hints of what lies below the surface.
 
Now that we understand a little better what character voice is, we need to look at author voice.
 
Author voice is much more difficult to define. In some ways, it’s like telling a blind person what the sky looks like. Every one of us would approach this in a different way, because we all have our own unique way of looking at the world.
 
Your voice isn’t one in a million, it’s one in a billion. It’s who you are when you’re talking to your best friend, it’s the realness of writing a letter to your future self, it’s the stuff that you think but never actually say. It’s your utterly unique way of looking at the world, and no one else can look at it quite the same way because no one else has had the life story that you have.
 
To write in your own voice you have to be brave. You have to care deeply about what you’re writing. You have to be you.
 
If all this sounds like you have to know yourself pretty well before you find your voice, then I have done my job. Because your author voice is exactly, solely you, and you have to dig for it. You have to unearth it, polish it up, and watch how it sparkles. It’s not easy, and it’s not for the faint-hearted, but when you find it… ah.
 
Finding your own voice isn’t something you learn. It’s not something you search for in a thousand books. It’s the moment you realize that as well as an author said something, it’s not the way you would have said it.   
 
Do you have any examples of how voice places a role in your own work?
 
I have asked Mr. Hoonhout’s class to chime in on this, and I look forward to seeing some of the example of the exercises they have been working on.  

January was quiet month for me, spent mostly with family and on vacation. This has given me a lot of time to reflect on the past year and the upcoming one. Another resolution: to not let a groove turn into a rut! I'm not entirely sure how to tell the difference, but I am resolving to examine my life more closely. Sometimes we continue to do things because they are easy, and not because they add value and meaning to our lives.

Speaking of vacation, every January we take off to the mountains of West Virginia to go skiing. It's a tradition my husband and I started in college, and over the years it has evolved from a college friends free-for-all, to a family and friends event that I cherish. My two boys now ski better and faster than I do. Not bad for a pair of Florida crackers!  

On another note, these two women have read everything that I have written before it was published. They are my first readers, and my brainstorming partners, patiently listening while I discuss story and plot lines for hours on end. I honestly don't know how I could do it without you, Mom and Aunt Joyce. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

A bit of book news to share. ALL WE HAVE LEFT was nominated for a Teen Choice Book Award, and was named as a Notable Social Studies Book by the Children's Book Council. As I dive into my next book, it's incredibly nice to hear that ALL WE HAVE LEFT has been so warmly received. Is there a little bit of pressure to turn out a new book as good-- or even better? Yes. Yes, there is.  :) 

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​Peace out.

I wish I could show a video of what happened a few days ago. A dolphin came to the side of our boat and poked his head out of the water to look at us, no doubt wanting some food. We did not oblige, but he hung around for about five minutes right at the edge of the boat. I THOUGHT I was taking a video the whole time, but when I looked down at the screen, I realized that I never hit record. Very much a blond moment!

Anyway, this is a sunset shot from where we saw the dolphin.

Here's to new beginnings and leaving regrets behind in the old year.

Peace out.

November is a beautiful month in SW Florida. While everyone else is hunkering down next to crackling fires and watching leaves fall in glorious drifts of colors, down here we are turning off the air conditioner, opening the windows, and beginning to prepare for a glorious winter of sunshine and flowers. 

For example, this was my view at a recent signing on my island. It was an absolutely gorgeous night, and as the sun began to fall, sirens began to blare over the water.

Hey, look! Is that Santa Clause on that boat?
​Why yes. Yes, it is.

If you look real close, you'll see he's wearing white boots. I've heard these called several different things depending on where I've lived (Mullet Boots, Matlacha Slippers, Seaford Reeboks, Wanchese Bedroom Slippers) but they always mean I'm living in a  community next to the water.  

Which brings me to another past time well known on the islands of SW Florida. Cast netting. And yes, there is actually a thing called a "Cast Net Rodeo." The kids dress up in cowboy hats and throw nets at both moving and stationary targets.  

This guy was cute.

This guy was not.

I have some book news as well. ALL WE HAVE LEFT was nominated for the Young Adult Library Services Association best young adult fiction list.
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It's also an Amazon and a Kirkus Reviews best book for 2016.

​It was listed among the ALA's top 10 religion and spiritualty books for youth for 2016.
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​Finally, I just found out today that ALL WE HAVE LEFT is the winner of the Bookbrowse Award for best young adult book of 2016.

You know how much I love my sunsets... I will leave you with this one.
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​Peace out.

Halloween is my favorite holiday. I love that you can shrug off your everyday clothes and become anyone, or anything, for a night. I like to think of it as a dress rehearsal for the future, because our kids should have the option to become whoever they want in life. Of course, my kids dressed up as ghouls for Halloween, so it may be that their goal in life  is to play extras on the set of Walking Dead.

I'm a tad bit biased about this holiday, because it's my birthday as well. As I was growing up, my mom used to tell me: "On the day you were born, we knew you were going to be a sweet treat!" This was on the good days. On the bad days, it was: "We knew from the very beginning you were going to be a little witch!"

I'm sorry, Mom. I really, really am. I deserve to have the worst teenagers in the history of god-awful teenagers. Seriously. I'm not sure how she put up with me.

In early October, I was invited to a writing retreat in Sarasota with three lovely young adult authors. I can't tell you how wonderful it was to spend a weekend writing, brainstorming, and sending inappropriate tweets at one in the morning.
It was, quite simply, a blast.

In book news, I recently learned that ALL WE HAVE LEFT will be a Kindle monthly selection ($1.99) for the month of December. Woo-hoo!

Also, I received a nice review and write-up in The Horn Book Magazine. "This timely, ultimately hopeful story of love, courage, and human goodness when it matters most is a much-needed antidote to our era’s Islamophobia, fear, and the tense political and social conditions that young people are surely internalizing."
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I've had so many people contact me who have been reading the story in their book clubs. I can't tell you how much I love that teens and adults are getting together and discussing this book!

On a more personal note, a teacher at my son's school pulled me aside to tell me that she was recently going through a rough patch, so much so that she wrote "faith and strength" and tucked the words into her prayer box. That same day she read the passage in ALL WE HAVE LEFT about faith and strength. By the end of her story, we were both crying.   THIS. Sometimes it feels as if I am writing in a yawning vacuum, and then moments come along that remind me exactly why I do this.

I'll leave you with this shot from one of my favorite places. This is where I come to regroup and center when things have gotten overwhelming in the real world. And they've gotten really overwhelming lately. So much anger. So much unhappiness. I hope that we can come together. I hope that we can remember what is important. Our kids are growing up in this world that we are making, and we owe it to them to get it right.

September was a busy, exhilarating month. So busy that it's taken almost until the middle of October to post about it!

The second week of September, I traveled with my two sons and my mom to New York City. I knew it was going to be quite an experience for my boys when they were impressed by the escalator at the airport. ("Can we do it again, Mom? And again?")

The second day we were there, I had the intense pleasure of strolling to Starbucks, picking up the New York Times, and seeing my book on the front page of the Arts Section. Heady stuff, that! 

As my boys had never been to NYC, we did all the normal touristy things: Times Square, the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, and the Empire State Building. My oldest son was co-opted into a street performance in Time Square-- a guy literally flipped over him. Did I get a picture of it? No. No, I did not.

​On Sunday, September 11th, fifteen years after planes crashed into the Twin Towers, we went to the 9/11 Memorial. I was crying, as were others, as we heard the chimes that marked the horrendous events of that day. It was a solemn, heart-breaking experience. 

I visited many bookstores and libraries while in the city, including the wonderful Books of Wonder and The Strand. So cool to see my book on their shelves!

I had the pleasure of meeting not only my wonderful editor, Mary Kate Castellani, but the entire Bloomsbury team who worked so hard to make ALL WE HAVE LEFT look beautiful inside and out! It was so nice to finally put faces to names.

On Tuesday, I traveled by train to the beautiful town of Westport Connecticut, where I met the wonderful staff of the Westport Library, as well as four lovely authors: Nora Baskin (Nine, Ten: a 9/11 Story), Gae Polisner (The Memory of Things), Jewell Parker Rhodes (Towers Falling), and Lauren Tarshis (I Survived series). It was an inspiring, moving discussion about healing through words. If you missed it, here's a link to the Facebook video below.        

Back at home, I received this beautiful drawing of the cover of ALL WE HAVE LEFT, as envisioned by one of the fourth-grade participants of a talk I did on 9/11.

​Murdock is getting bigger! At six months old, we have conquered potty-training and are now moving into the running-away stage. It's like raising a kid in fast-forward!

​​I'll leave you with this. It's a place I bike to in the morning, and it makes me happy. :)

It's a Flamingo! No, it's not. It's a Roseate Spoonbill. But for the first year that I lived in Florida, I told people that I was seeing flamingos. And yes, they looked at me like I was odd. Thankfully, I'm used to that. :)
August was an awesome month, and I've memorialized some of that awesomeness in pictures.

What on earth, are you asking? Well, this is me playing golf for the very first time...at least that I can remember. My husband swears we played golf in college, but I. DO. NOT. REMEMBER. There's a reason for this, I'm pretty sure. I am not spectacular at golf. Not at all.
​On a more interesting note, however, is the paw print we saw in one of the sand thingees. It's hard to tell by the picture, but it was huuuge, like panther-size. As far as I know, there aren't any endangered Florida panthers on our tiny island, but maybe they are sasquatching us. 

This one is just fun. I was on a doggy play date at a friend's house, and Murdock and Hattie were playing with her dog, Gem. They lined up (Murdock pushing and shoving in the back-- "it's my turn, it's my turn!") and then they jumped in one by one.

The first day of school. Somehow watching Murdock grow from puppy to dog has been reminding me of how quickly the kids are growing up.  When they were babies, I remember older people stopping me to tell me how fast it went by.
​They were right.

I do have book news! Something pretty exciting happened on August 9th. In case you weren't keeping score, ALL WE HAVE LEFT came out. Murdock kept me company as I fielded messages and posts. ​It was a beautiful day!

And this happened. Not only was ALL WE HAVE LEFT picked as an Amazon Book of the Month, it was also picked for the August YA Book Club. Color me excited!

This came home in my son's pocket, all wrinkled up and scribbled upon. I had almost forgotten ALL WE HAVE LEFT was coming out in the Scholastic catalogue, and he was pretty surprised when he saw it there. He raised his hand and told his teacher that it was his mom's book.
"Are you sure?" she asked.
"Uh, yes?" he answered.
​He still doesn't think she believes him.
 

And finally, I was interviewed for the School Library Journal. Only librarians and authors are geekish enough to get excited about this...and yes, I am a geek. Here's a link to the article if you want to get your geek on. :)

And of course, we have to have the requisite cute puppy picture. This is one of our favorite places to go on our boat, as it is a deserted piece of land right across from a bunch a gazillion-dollar condos. It's good fishing and usually pretty free of people. In other words...perfect. 

Like mother, like son! He has worked his way through Harry Potter and now has started on the Lightning Thief series.

And here you thought I'd managed to go through an entire post without a sunset picture. Nope, I snuck in one.
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​I was just thinking that most of my pictures are on the beach, or on the boat, because...well, that's what we do for fun. BUT. But, I will have some pictures from an entirely different locale next month. See you then!

July was a crazy-fun month! The Fourth of July has always been my favorite holiday, and we spent it on the boat fishing and watching the firework shows. We always spend a lot of time out on the boat this time of year, so I have loads of pictures of sunsets. I always tell myself I need to stop taking pictures of sunsets, but when you see these, do you blame me??

Murdock is getting bigger and has finally found his sea legs. We still haven't conquered the potty-training thing, which is frustrating, but we work on it every day. I swear, in some ways it's like having a toddler again.

In our boat wanderings, we often see some pretty cool things. If you look real close, you'll see something strange about this tree. I tried counting them, but gave up!

There's also been some good book news this month. Fist of all, ALL WE HAVE LEFT comes out ONE week from today. It's been a long road, but I'm so happy it's almost here. I received my author copies a few weeks ago. They are so pretty!

The book has gotten a lot of love. Two starred reviews, and it's showed up on both Kirkus Review's and Bookish.com's list of must-reads for the summer. It was featured in Bookpage's August print edition, and I just found out that it's an Amazon Best Book of the Month, as well as on Bustle's list of Best Books of August.

​All very heady stuff and I'm very excited to share ALL WE HAVE LEFT with the world on August 9th!
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