Best book mail is best! I’m so happy to have this lovely from A. R. Kahler on my shelf now. Also, be jealous because Alex writes the best inscriptions. ? I’m so proud of my amazing friend!
Via:: Tumblr to WordPress
When in doubt, support amazing people and diverse stories and creative art.
Books pictured:
Via:: Tumblr to WordPress
Sometimes we forget the good things that happen because the bad ones feel so much bigger. In an effort to keep that phenomenon at bay, here are my five good things for this past week.
My students just finished reading I AM Not a Serial Killer by Dan Wells and they LOVED it! So I decided that we’d express that love via fan art. This is what they’ve put together in just about an hour! I am a very happy author-teacher right now. ?
Via:: Tumblr to WordPress
These are my TBR shelves. I have even more books (the ones that I have read) triple stacked in my closet.
Looking at it after the reorganization, it appears as though there is a slight chance that I have a small book hoarding problem. ?
Via:: Tumblr to WordPress
I have three words for this book: powerful, insightful, and important. @IWGregorio has done a brilliant job educating the reader on what it means to be intersex/AIS while not lessening the emotional impact of Krissy’s story in the slightest. This is a book about tolerance, gender, love, strength, mistakes, forgiveness, finding out who you are, and the mutable nature of what it means to be a girl or a boy or human, really. An excellent story by an amazing author and one I highly recommend!
Via:: Tumblr to WordPress
Guys? Meet Courtney Stevens and Faking Normal.
I HAVE FEELINGS ABOUT THIS BOOK, OKAY? It’s poignant and powerful and full of purpose. I meant to post quotes while I read, but I couldn’t put it down long enough to follow through. So, go Courtney for that one.
Also, for anyone who hasn’t experienced rape/abuse and has wanted to learn about one of the quiet ways it destroys lives, read #FakingNormal. In the book, Courtney has captured the confusion and the guilt and the silence that hangs over this kind of situation brilliantly.
Last but definitely not least… Hey, Courtney? I want a Bodee. Kay? Kay. Thanks!
Via:: Tumblr to WordPress
I need to take more time to read, so this month I’m posting my TBR list! I picked these three exciting books up over the summer and I can’t wait to finally dig into them all! Faking Normal is up first because it’s been on my wishlist since I heard Courtney talk about it back in 2013. 😀
Via:: Tumblr to WordPress
The choices you make today could irrevocably change the course of your entire life. Left or right? Sleep in or go on time? Speak up or stay silent? Even the seemingly insignificant decisions could alter your world and not always for the better.
To be now at a junction in my life where every moment counts and every choice seems to have no middle ground is a scary place. The weight of what you (I) must do presses down on your shoulders until even Atlas would admit his burden be less.
But you’d never let anyone know this, would you?
Never complain. Humanity hates it when you complain.
No one can really understand what you’re going through, can they?
Now is the road that splits between childhood and maturity, between the beginning of your life and the end. It’s always just when you think you find a middle road that the path disappears and all that’s left is wilderness. Left to fight every step of the way, your breath being choked out by the branches that found their way around your neck.
So now do you believe me when I say every moment counts? How do you know when you’re going to hit a dead end and be choked out of life?
Guys? I just found this handwritten in an old notebook. I wrote this when I was 16 and depressed as hell but struggling to find a way back out of it and whoa. When I typed it up here, I tried to leave it almost exactly like 16-year-old me wrote it.
Remembering moments like this is what makes me so mad when people say that young adult books don’t matter, that creative writing classes aren’t important. That protecting our kids from unpleasant or controversial topics is better than exposing them to the troubled reality of our world.
Fuck that.
I was too scared and embarrassed to talk to anyone about what was really going on in my head when I was a teenager. Reading and writing probably saved my life. It’s not just important to give our kids books that touch on every single topic under the sun and to teach them how to muddle through their thoughts and express it on paper, it’s vital.
Give a kid a book that reflects what they’re going through. Teach a child to put their thoughts and emotions into fiction or non-fiction. Encourage art and creativity and questions. Do it.
You just might save a life.
Via:: Tumblr to WordPress
This weekend I did something I have never done before. I read Sing Sweet Nightingale in its entirety to my younger sister. Not that Haley couldn’t have read it herself, but she’s already read this book five or six times and I needed to read it aloud anyway for editing purposes. She hasn’t read the latest draft, so she volunteered to listen. Two birds and one stone and all that.
I already knew that reading text aloud can help you catch errors you wouldn’t see while reading silently (the human brain is such a strange place), but I wasn’t aware how much it could change your experience of your own book to read it to someone else. Moments that didn’t seem that amusing on the page are suddenly giggle-worthy and action sequences fly past as you read with the speed of a blow-by-blow fight commentator. The flip side is also possible, though. Moments you thought would be tear-jerking don’t come off with the same power as you thought they had or that dialogue you thought hid the massive exposition you needed to slip in doesn’t play it’s part as well as you’d hoped. Whatever the realization, good or bad, it’s worth the time and the slightly raw throat to read your book aloud. Preferably to an audience. Even if it’s an audience of one.
What this impromptu reading means in the larger scope of my life, though, is that I’m pretty much done with this round of edits! I’m waiting for one or two other beta readers to get back to me with notes (hopefully just to tell me I made all the right changes), then the draft goes back to the wonderful editresses for the next round! Line edits, I think. Which should be interesting. I’ve never done line edits before. It should be an experience, to say the least. The idea of examining each of my words with that much attention to detail is… daunting. In a good way, but daunting nonetheless.
I’m also nearing the time when I get to begin editing another project–something entirely different from anything else I have in the works and a project that I LOVE SO MUCH. The excitement level for this book is just, whoa. Love it. Things are happening with it and I really can’t wait to share more details, but for now, that’s it! Tis still in the works and up in the air, so I don’t want to say something now and have it not be true later. SEKRITS ARE FUN! Not really, but whatever. I have to pretend they are or I might go a little crazy. 😉
And, um… that’s it for now! Later, lovelies! <3
