Etc.

Spot the repeating characters, towns, and places in my books…

The National Book Awards: HONEY, BABY, SWEETHEART

The Printz Awards and The Josette Frank Award: A HEART IN A BODY IN THE WORLD

Library Love

One of the most constant and sustaining truths of my life has been this: I love the library.  It’s a love that’s been steadfast and unwavering since I was about six years old.  I understood right from the start that every set of library doors were the sort of magic portals that lead to other lands.  My God, right within reach there were dinosaurs and planets and presidents and girl detectives!  It was a blissful mismatch of promises, the very sort I required: adventure and escape all in a setting of order and safety.  

From then on, I was the library-goer who needed the library.  I was (am) a bit of an addict.  The thrill of bringing home a stack of books so heavy you could barely carry them (I can take all these?  For free?  Really?) began then and has never left me.   But even more, all the answers were in that place.  I ate lunch in there sometimes when I was a teen and needed a reprieve from being a teen.  As a young mother, I trolled the aisles dripping babies and book bags as I tried to learn how to be a writer.  And later, I hid in Self Help as I tried to understand – and leave - my abusive marriage.  That’s another thing: librarians keep your secrets.  Between those walls and those covers there is all of life, the whole record of us poor old souls doing what we can to get through it, and librarians know this.   

Every few weeks, I still make my pilgrimage, hauling around my too-full bag.  And every time, I still can’t quite believe no one’s chasing me out as I make off with the goods.  So, dear librarians, thank you for this greedy joy.  Thank you, too, for the life-changing power of information.  Your libraries have been my sanctuary and my sigh of relief, and I am ever grateful.   

Call Me Irresponsible… The Unreliable Narrator, Writer’s Digest article 2015

The unreliable narrator … Ah, don’t you love that unsettling, page-turning, blockbuster-making literary device? An unreliable narrator makes for the bad boy of novels—ensuring a delicious but uneasy read, an on-the-edge wondering of what might happen next.

Usually, we feel we’re in good hands with whatever main characters we’re spending time with between the covers. We can count on them, we think, to tell us the truth. But then comes a protagonist you’re just not sure you can entirely trust, and the dark and compelling journey begins. How, as writers, do we take our own readers on such a ride?Every human being is, to some degree, an unreliable narrator. When we tell our stories to others, and even when we tell our stories to ourselves, we create our own version of events and of our lives as a whole. We don’t necessarily mean to deceive. But we can see and understand our experiences only from our own viewpoint—a shifting viewpoint at that. Facing the truth is a messy business. It involves denial, and pride, and the fact that understanding takes time; it relies on perspective (or lack of it), and the pesky fact that we can only face the truth we can stand to face at any given moment.

Every one of our characters is unreliable, too, whether we intend it or not. They can see only through their own, flawed eyes, same as us. Their singular opinions, blind spots and insights make them uniquely themselves and help lend your work the all-important “voice.” Our characters’ innate unreliability gives them the layers that make them realistic.When creating my own unreliable narrator, Dani Keller in He’s Gone, I didn’t see her as being willfully dishonest in the way she tells her story. I saw her as struggling with a hard truth that she hadn’t even entirely admitted to herself yet.

And then I turned it up a notch.

Because, while every realistic character should and will be unreliable in part, there are times when you want that unreliability to do more than paint the shadings of a convincing character: You want it to propel plot. There’s nothing like a question in the reader’s mind to get the pages turning, and when the question is about who the narrator actually even is, you can guarantee a need to find out…

One of the best parts of a writing life: author friends.

Judging the National Book Awards for Young PeopleLiterature was emotional, meaningful, and inspiring… Especially with fellow judges and friends Emily Lockhart and Cecil Castellucci.

SO MANY amazing events. But some just stay with you…

You know, in this job there are the magic moments of awards and travel and exciting experiences. But there are the OTHER magic moments, like when you visit a high school in a small town and meet passionate librarians, and where a theater full of kids have ALL READ YOUR BOOK, but even more than that, are thoughtful, smart, and curious people, who remind you why you do what you do. Magic, like that evening, too, when you visit the town's library, and you all talk books and life and you feel true COMMUNITY. Hillary the librarian, who grew up going to that very library, is there. Her father is a librarian, and her mother is A LIBRARIAN, and they are ALL THERE. So is the couple who will head to the high school football game later, and the badass mom and daughter, and others, including an array of little guys, one who walks two miles to the library nearly every day (and who is a writer himself, he says), and another little guy, who tells you very seriously, "I never met a writer before. You're the first." When you leave, the little guys on their way home spot you and wave goodbye, and you drive home in the spectacular golden light of fall, through the Skagit Valley cornfields, past cows in golden light, and barns in golden light, and stunning green pastures in golden light. The music is on loud, and then the sky puts on an unbelievable show of orange and pink, and you CANNOT BELIEVE that you are lucky enough to have this life. Thank you so much, Sedro-Woolley, for bringing me to your beautiful town, making HEART a community read, and for letting me in. Central Skagit Library Sedro-Woolley High School.

A few others…

Readers are funny.

Cultivating Creativity: Writer’s Digest article (Featuring a few wise friends)

“It is the struggle for any of us writers, professional or aspiring – to stay inspired, to keep after it, to continue to be creatively productive through the bills and laundry and kids with colds, through rejections and stacks of pages and self-doubt.  Through the years.   

I know this struggle intimately.  I wrote five books in the difficult will-this-ever-happen time before becoming published, and have written thirteen more since.  Staying in the game, making a life as an artist, has sometimes felt like sheer will.  Determination, though, has been only one part of the equation.  Creativity is often described as a garden that needs tending - accurate if that garden also includes rocky ground, carnivorous plants, and periods of drought.  Keeping the garden beautiful, keeping it producing over a lifetime, takes more than just the willpower of the gardener…  

More A Heart In A Body In The World fun (Plus, that stunning NY Times review)