With less than six months to go until the release of The Most Dazzling Girl in Berlin, it’s time to start a countdown with fun tidbits leading up to the release. Looking forward to sharing each of these with you! For now, please do check out the short teaser (link below). Full trailer to come at the end of January!
September 29: Teaser
October 29: Book research
November 29: Playlist
December 29: Berlin research trip
January 29: Trailer
February 28: Film research
March 29: RELEASE DAY
My critique partner Michelle Mason will be launching her debut YA novel a week from today! What is a critique partner, you ask? Well, critique partners are fellow writers with whom you swap chapters or manuscripts. I’ve lost count how many Michelle and I have exchanged, but I know we’ve read several manuscripts for each other over the years, offering feedback and brainstorming help, as well as consoling one another when the inevitable rejections stream in and celebrating our victories together. In sum, critique partners are invaluable. And now, after so many years of cheering for each other, I am excited to celebrate her and her book! The title is Your Life Has Been Delayed.
Here’s the blurb:
Past and present collide in a captivating YA debut about a girl who takes off on a flight and lands . . . twenty-five years later.
When Jenny boards her flight back from New York, the biggest things on her mind are applying to Columbia and reuniting with her brand-new boyfriend. But when she and the other passengers disembark in St. Louis, they’re told that their plane disappeared-twenty-five years ago.
Doesn’t it sound awesome? (Spoiler alert: it is!) Oh yeah, and for anyone watching the Netflix series Manifest, this is totally the YA version!
Please join Michelle at one of her book launch events. You can purchase the book, preferably from Michelle’s local independent bookseller, The Novel Neighbor. Order a signed copy of Your Life Has Been Delayed.
I’m also hosting a pre-order giveaway over on Twitter! Just hop over there and follow/RT my tweet about the giveaway to enter!
I finally decided to gather all of my YouTube recordings together, and the result is a newish YouTube channel!
Any requests for specific content you’d like to see? Just let me know and I’ll do my best to add it!
What a year, right?
I know a lot of people didn’t have the energy to read much this year (totally understandable!), but reading is normally one of my escapes, and it was even more so this year. I’m closing in on 100 books for the year (two left to go), but I’m more than halfway on both of the last two, so I can safely say they won’t be favorites. As usual, most of my reads this year were YA titles, along with some MG, a handful of adult fiction, and a healthy stack of nonfiction research titles.
Also as usual, some of my favorite books of 2020 were YA historicals!
WE ARE NOT FREE by Traci Chee. This beautifully-written book showed me how little I knew about Japanese internment camps during WWII, despite having read several books about the subject already. It was a National Book Award finalist, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it picks up other awards down the road. Fourteen POVs! One of them in verse! So many feelings!
DARK AND DEEPEST RED by Anna-Marie McLemore. Simply gorgeous writing! This queer retelling of THE RED SHOES set in 1518 in Strasbourg made me swoon. McLemore often makes my personal best-of lists, and this was one of my favorites yet.
A CLOUD OF OUTRAGEOUS BLUE by Vesper Stamper (author/illustrator). This (1348) plague book felt incredibly relevant today (oof), and the beautiful illustrations alongside the lyrical text brought the story to life. A orphaned teen with synesthesia illuminating manuscripts when the Black Death comes to town? Yes, please.
Besides historicals, something else I always love to read are books in verse. Two of my favorites this year:
THE BLACK FLAMINGO by Dean Atta. Somehow I missed that this came out in 2019 in the UK, but it was out here in the US this year. This coming-of-age story about a mixed-race gay teen growing up in London was just stunning.
PUNCHING THE AIR by Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam. This powerful book about a Black boy wrongfully incarcerated showed me so much I didn’t know about the prison system. So much emotion in these pages.
I also found myself wanting to escape into the Before Times, so some of the contemporary novels out this year but written in the Before were favorites of mine, including:
MAD, BAD, & DANGEROUS TO KNOW by Samira Ahmed. Travelling to Paris in this dual-timeline (present day and 19th century) was a delicious escape, and unraveling the mystery of a Muslim woman connected to Alexander Dumas made for a gripping read!
THE LIFE AND (MEDIEVAL) TIMES OF KIT SWEETLY by Jamie Pacton. This feminist story is about a teen who wants to be a knight at the medieval restaurant where she’s a serving wench so she can earn more to help her family and attend her dream college. With a diverse set of characters and an honest look at poverty, this book offers a unique take on the college-bound YA novel.
Finally, books I loved in other genres and categories:
STAMPED: RACISM, ANTIRACISM, AND YOU by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi. Nonfiction! This was such a fantastic non-history book (you’ll get this if you’ve read the book). I listened to the audiobook with my family, and we all learned so much history we didn’t know. The audio version was especially fantastic.
EFRÉN DIVIDED by Ernesto Cisneros. Middle grade! I loved quite a few middle-grade books this year, but this one really captured my heart. Efrén’s parents are undocumented, and when his mother is deported to Mexico, he must not only help with his young siblings and make do with very little, but also try everything he can to get his family back together. So many feelings in this lovely book. Dreamers and their families deserve to stay here!
UPRIGHT WOMEN WANTED by Sarah Gailey. Adult fiction! This book came out in 2019, but I didn’t read it until this year. It’s got an old west feel, but it’s set in a near-future United States, with a group of queer librarians delivering subversive literature on horseback. I loved everything about it.
What about *you*? Please share your favorite books of 2020 here!
Some exciting audiobook and paperback news to share about White Rose! These formats will both be released less than a month from now (on January 12, 2021).
I’d really hoped for an audiobook someday, so this truly a dream come true. The narrator (Nicola Barber) has a great voice for Sophie Scholl, and I can’t wait to listen to the whole book. Please take a look over at libro.fm, where it’s currently up for pre-order. And there’s a sample available right there!
I’m also thrilled that the paperback is scheduled to release on the same day. You can pre-order from your local independent bookstore, or if you’re looking for a non-amazon way to get it shipped to you, you can find it on bookshop.org.
You can support any listed independent bookstore (click “Find a Bookstore” up top to search), or you can support individual enterprises, like What’s Her Name, a fantastic podcast I love about women from history.
In thanks of all the support for White Rose so far, I’m currently running a giveaway over on Twitter. I’ll be personalizing two hardcover copies for the winners. Enter over there by 17 December!
Yesterday afternoon I had the great pleasure of attending the virtual launch of Friends & Anemones, a poetry anthology for kids.
FRIENDS AND ANEMONES: Ocean Poems for Children, is a fun and informative collection of original poems and art by New England authors and illustrators. Hands join fins in an adventure through kelp forests to meet sea otters and whales. Attend an underwater birthday party! Voyage through tempests to bottom-of-the-ocean volcanos and mysterious creatures in the deep, deep darkness. This book is a valuable ecological and poetry resource for parents as well as librarians and teachers. The Writers’ Loft brings together authors and artists from all over New England to collaborate, because writing doesn’t have to be a solitary pursuit!
The Writers’ Loft in Sherborn, MA curated this project, with Kristen Wixted and Heather Kelly editing. I was lucky enough to serve as one of the judges, along with fellow poet Matt Forrest Esenwine, and I even have a poem in the book myself! It’s wonderful to now see all the beautiful poems and illustrations in their finished forms.
Please do order your copies through Bookshop.org to support The Blue Bunny bookstore, which hosted the event! Happy reading!
I’m so excited to share that HMH Versify will be publishing my next YA historical novel-in-verse, THE MOST DAZZLING GIRL IN BERLIN!
I have been working on this project for a long time, but I continue to love it as much as I did when I began the very first draft. The Weimar Republic was a fascinating and complex era, and Berlin was most decidedly the hub of its universe. Finding out what it was like to live then and there–especially in the queer community in Schöneberg–totally captured my heart. I hope it captures readers’ hearts too!
For any other writers (especially those writing historical fiction) who might want to know how long my projects have taken me:
Conclusions:
It’s been a busy few months in many ways, but I’ve been the lucky recipient of three pieces of lovely news about my debut novel, White Rose:
There are plenty of places to submit short fiction, as you can see from a quick scroll through Submittable, but it hasn’t always been so easy to find the perfect home for your shorts that truly fall under the YA umbrella. Back in 2017, I summed up a list of five journals accepting YA short fiction, but the landscape has definitely changed. Only two of the original five publications are still in operation. Even a new one suggested by a reader (The Passed Note) has since shut down. However! There is now a brand new YA journal! Voyage launched in the summer of 2020, and they not only have some great content up already, but they are also open to submissions!
In summary, the following journals are now open for YA:
Any other favorite journals I missed that accept YA submissions? Please feel free to share in the comments!
I’m thrilled to announce that A Kiss Before Breakfast, a project I submitted to the SCBWI WIP translation grant, has won the award!
Translation is a relatively new obsession for me, but the source text (Un beso antes de desayunar, a picture book from Spain) has been one of my family’s favorite books for years. The text is so lovely that I couldn’t stop thinking about it and had to give it my best shot.
Find the full list of grants and winners here. Congrats to all!