In Which I Review My Year in Reading for the Third Time

 I've always read a lot, but for most of my life I never recorded what I read. I know I can do it electronically via Goodreads, but I only use Goodreads for reviews, and perhaps this makes me a bad person, but I don't write a review for every single book I read. Plus, not everything I read is even available on Goodreads. I kept a reading journal for the first time in 2022. In that case I just found a random half empty notebook left over from one of my children's school years and ripped out and recycled the pages that had been used for assignments. In 2023 I bought myself a nice journal to record my reading. It's just under half full at this point, so I presume it will last at least through the end of 2026.

I record not only the titles and authors, but the the genre and age group, whether I read or listened on audio, and a sentence or two about my impressions of the book.

For the third year in a row, the number of books I read decreased, though I still seem to read more than average. The first year I read 217 books. In 2022 I wasn't writing anything of my own and I wasn't working outside the home with regularity until the middle of October. That left me with a lot of time to read. In 2023 I read 153 books, which means the number decreased by 64. I believe that was mostly due to regularly working 15 hours a week outside the home and also due to some personal turmoil and a short reading drought brought on by frustration regarding my own lack of writing success. So what happened this year?

This year I read 115 books. That's still a decrease, but only a decrease of 37 books. I think the decrease happened for two reasons. First, I read and listened to more adult books this year than in previous years and adult books are, on average, longer than middle grade books, which dominated my reading in 2022 and 2023. Second, in addition to continuing to work outside the home 15 hours of a week, I dedicated much of my time on my days off and evenings working on producing a query ready draft of the first novel manuscript I finished since 2021. That left me with less time to dedicate to reading.

I went through my journal and broke down the books in several different ways. First, by age group. In 2024 I read:

3 picture books

3 chapter books

57 middle grade books

6 young adult books

46 adult books

I listened to 39 audiobooks and read 76 print books. 

The majority of the books I read, 90, were fiction, and 25 were nonfiction. That's actually a decent increase in percentage of nonfiction books. Last year I read only three fewer nonfiction books, 22, but 131 fiction.

Of the nonfiction, 1 was a book length essay about writing, 2 were popular history, and 22 were theology. Yeah, I read a lot of theology.  I won't go into details on this blog, but my theology has evolved a lot over the last few years, and a lot of these books helped me bring things I'd been feeling in my heart into my head.

I read/listen to most of my books by myself, but I also read some books to my teen, who still hasn't outgrown bedtime reading, thankfully, and we also often listen to books together on the drive to and from school and on road trips. This year I read/listened to 95 books by myself and read/listened to 20 books with my teen. This is down from previous years because her schedule has gotten busier and we haven't had time to read every night.

Nearly everything I read was written in prose. I read 1 novel in verse, 11 graphic novels, and 102 prose books.

Two of the books I read were beta reads for writing friends. The other 113 were published books.

Finally, breaking the fiction down by genre, I read:

34 contemporary realistic books

28 speculative books

15 mysteries/thrillers

9 historical books

and, finally, 4 romances

The genre breakdown doesn't completely reflect my own preferences. More than half the books I read/listened to with my teen were contemporary realistic, because that's her preferred genre. I do like the genre quite a bit, however.

The speculative books leaned toward contemporary fantasy, but there was a bit of science fiction, paranormal, and mostly contemporary with speculative elements mixed in.

I hope you enjoyed this breakdown. Whether my numbers look small or large to you, I hope you enjoyed your reading year. Whether you read one book or 500, you're a winner in my book.

In Which I Wonder If There's Actually a Place for What I Write, But Also Hope (And Kinda, Sorta Believe) There Is

Remember that cozy mystery I was writing in June? Well, believe it or not given the record of the last three years, I actually finished it. I finished a draft worth sharing around Labor Day and my original very optimistic goal was to have it query ready by Halloween. Well, crazily enough, my critique partners are not robots and have their own lives and writing and family obligations so I didn't get the first set of feedback back until early October. I then had another two people read it, who also have their own lives (the nerve of people not dedicating all their time to reading my manuscripts, I tell you 😂) so I didn't get that feedback back until early November. Hence, I was query ready not by Halloween but by Thanksgiving. It turns out there are fewer agents looking for cozy mysteries than looking for middle grade, plus a lot of agents close to queries the last month or two of the year, so I only sent out eight query letters for my first round. I did get a request within a couple days, which felt really good. Unfortunately it ended in a pass last week, but I think (hope) it's a good sign that I may have actually written something marketable this time. We'll see.

Perhaps because of my anxious ADHD brain that tends to catastrophize, however, part of me also wonders whether there's actually a place in traditional publishing (and no shade on those who self/indie publish, I just know how much work that is and have no interest in taking that route at least so far) for my writing, and particularly for this book. My writing has always been influenced by my Christian faith, and this book especially given that the main character is a pastor, but I never wanted to and still don't want to write for the faith based market. I know it's a big market and if that's your jam more power to you. But based on those I've read, way too often books written for the Christian market sacrifice craft in the name of getting a particular message across. Are there books in that market I enjoy? There are a few. There's a reason I pitched my mystery as Mitford with murder. But overall it's not for me, especially since the majority of the market is very Evangelical focused and I am absolutely, positively not an Evangelical at this stage in my life. To be fair, I also have a message I want to get across in my books, but the message is always secondary to the story. I write stories with hope. Stories in which the marginalized are valued and lifted up. Stories in which characters live well with invisibility disabilities but also struggle because sometimes it sucks. And while, as a Christian, I believe the hope for the world is centered on Jesus, I want my stories to be accessible and meaningful to people of all faiths and none.

Thoughts of this kind were in the back of my mind this week as I placed these nativity figures in my garden. Our family has a lot of nativity sets inside the house, and I was lamenting to my daughter that we don't have an outdoor nativity. She pointed out that we had one in the basement that should be hardy enough to survive outdoors and that's not super meaningful to us if it doesn't. So I took them from a spot in the basement where they were hardly seen anyway and put them in the front garden. They're by the lighthouse because Jesus is the light of the world. Either that or that was the best clear space for them. Probably both. Anyway, because I overthink everything, I was thinking about which nativity figure best symbolizes me. Definitely not Jesus. I mean, sure, I try to be like Jesus, but I miss the mark a large portion of the time. I don't think Mary and Joseph fit me well either. They're way too focused on the baby, and that's also not what I'm like most of the time. The wise men? They came from far away with really expensive gifts. Most of time I feel like what I have to give to Jesus is of little value. That just leaves the angel and the shepherd unless I want to delve into the animals. I'm definitely not a sinless messenger of light, so that leaves the shepherd. And, honestly, given his position in this setup, he's kinda perfect. He's standing back, holding a vulnerable lamb, looking toward the Christ Child, but not part of the crowd right up next to him. He heard the heavenly chorus. He kind of wants the baby to notice him. But also, he has a job to do. He needs to take care of this little lamb. Maybe it was orphaned. Maybe its mother rejected it. Or maybe its mother is at his feet and the little lamb just needed some extra love. Most of the time, I'm like the shepherd.  I'm not flashy like those sages from the east who didn't actually even show up for a couple years but somehow always barge into the nativity sets anyway. I'm not totally focused on Jesus like his mother and his earthly father. I'm very much of Earth so definitely not an angel. I'm just standing back, looking at Jesus, hoping he approves of me, trying my best to be faithful to the tasks I've been given and take care of those who need it most.

My hope is that, someday, my books will be on shelves, giving people stories with hope and love and faithfulness. Stories with queer joy and disabled joy. But also queer struggle and disabled struggle, because they intermingle in the real world.  Will that ever happen? No clue at this point, but in the meantime I'll do my best to keep the faith and keep taking care of the vulnerable lambs. 

In Which I Shoot My Shot Even Though I'm Not Confident It Will Hit Its Mark

 Last year I had a grand plan to blog every month. It's June 7th and my last post was January 1st, so you see how well that went.

I have, however, for the first time in two years, spent a decent amount of time writing this year. After my beloved middle grade steam/ecopunk book that everyone was SURE would get me an agent went nowhere fast I tried to start a whole lot of stories, included the ill-fated romance that made me think I might be coming out of a dry spell (ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha is what I say to that now) and the quite possibly brilliant Christmas ghost story idea for which I have a lovely, edited outline. But I could never get beyond 20,000 words, and usually not beyond a couple chapters.

I'm almost 2/3 of the way through my current manuscript, my second attempt to write for adults but this time in a genre I enjoy without reservation. It's a cozy mystery. It combines a setting based on my favorite place to vacation as a child, a protagonist that shares a lot of my characteristics while fully being her own person, and a lot of quirky secondary characters. Meet the moodboard for Ordinary Crime, because of course I have a moodboard.

This is the most commercial thing I've ever written. Cozy Mysteries are the second most popular genre, just behind romance (which I made a futile attempt to write). Does this mean I'll be sure to get an agent and a book deal if I actually finish this? Of course not. However, I'm hoping I'll at least get a higher request rate if I actually manage to get this thing query ready.

But what about the actual title of this post, Beth? We're getting there. I'm mostly concentrating on the WIP, but I recently participated in an off-Twitter Pitch contest, and ended up with three requests for queries for Harbor Lightkeep. So, expecting nothing, I sent them off. Two were from agents I somehow never managed to query in the two years I queried the manuscript and one was from an agent I queried with an earlier version. I did disclose this in the query letter, to be clear.

I also found out from a writing friend that a small but solid press that most often only takes agented manuscripts is open to unagented manuscripts this week. Years ago, someone commented on a tweet about my Nutcracker portal fantasy that it sounded like something this press might publish. I looked into it, but at the time I wasn't quite ready to veer away from the agent route. By the time I thought I might consider submitting directly to a small press they were closed to unagented submissions. The chances they'll be interested are tiny, but tiny is still more than zero.

I'm dedicating most of my heart and mind right now to the mystery. I love all my other books and want to see them on shelves someday, but I've come to be okay with the idea that my debut may not be middle grade. That doesn't mean the books will for sure never be published. If the small press snaps up Mousecracker or one of the agents who requested a query falls in love with Harbor Lightkeep, awesome. But if they don't, it's okay. The next thing is already well underway, really and truly underway for the first time in a long time.

In Which I Review My Year in Reading

 I'm done pretending I'm going to update this blog monthly. I'll check in when I'm inspired and have something to say. Maybe that will happen more often if I actually have books on the shelves in the future.

Anyway, it's the first day of 2024 (how is that even possible, by the way?) so it's time to review my 2023 year in reading. I didn't read quite as many books as last year, but still a very respectable number. I think my number dipped for a few reasons. First of all, I started consistently working for pay last year in early October. Since then, I've been working 15 hours a week teaching preschool. That means that for 9 months of last year I simply had more time to read each week. Second, this year has included some personal challenges for me and sometimes I just haven't had the energy to read or even listen to a book. Third, I'm now on the second year of querying the book everyone (including published writers who read the manuscript) was so sure would be "the one" with nary an agent offer or book contract in sight, which has at times poisoned my desire to read other peoples' books. That last one is a pretty small factor. My lack of success with that book has completely sabotaged my own writing.

I've personally found that recording my reading makes it more meaningful to me, and this year I went a step further and bought myself a pretty journal to use as my reading log. It's not full, and should serve me for at least a couple more years.

First, let's make it clear that audiobooks count as reading. So my total number of "books read" includes both print and audio books. I'll get more granular with it below, just wanted to get that out of the way. My total number of books read is 153. That's only 58 less than 2022, not bad given the mitigating factors above.

First of all, 115 were print books while 38 were audio.

I read 140 books that were new to me and reread 13 books.

I read 124 of the books by myself and 29 with my twelve year old.

Most of the books, 149, were in English, but 3 were in Swedish and one was in Spanish.

Again, the majority of the books,131, were fiction while 22 were nonfiction.

Breaking it down by age group, I read:

6 picture books

4 chapter books

93 middle grade books

9 young adult bookss

and 41 adult books

Breaking the fiction down by genre, I read:

61 speculative  books (these were mostly fantasy, but I've also lumped in paranormal, dystopian, and horror)

43 realistic fiction

15 mysteries

and, last but not least, 5 romances

That last breakdown I did was by format:

121 of the books were traditional prose format

28 were graphic (you might call them comics), including three graphic memoirs and a graphic history

3 were novels in verse

1 was a book of poetry

I've always been a big reader, but this is only the second year I've kept a reading log. I highly recommend it. Whether you read four books a year or four hundred, remembering what you read and taking some space to reflect on it can be really helpful. Despite my number of books read being fewer than last year, I know I read more books than average. Averaging it out, I read almost three books a week. Remember though that the majority of these books are written for children, which  makes them quicker reads. Also, I normally have four books going at once: one print book I'm reading on my own, one print book I'm reading to my 12yo, one audiobook I'm listening to on my own and one audiobook I'm listening to with my 12yo. That gets me through books faster than I'd get through them if I took them one at a time. Whether your total number of books read in 2023 is much smaller than mine, much larger than mine, or about the same, if you read something you're a winner in my book.

In Which I Admit I May Only Be A Middle Grade Writer, And That's Okay

Remember my last post when I thought I had worked through my psychological turmoil and might actually be able to finish my contemporary romance? Well, all I have to say to that is, ha ha ha, joke's on me because I've added all of 3,000 words to that book since July. I love the idea of finishing that book, but I don't actually love that book. Maybe I'll finish it someday. It feels wrong to leave unfinished a project that's 25,000 words in. But I've given myself permission to do it. I just don't love writing outside the middle grade space, it turns out.

One of my friends in the #MGWaves is a writing craft nerd, and she offered to do an outline workshop with some of us. That gave me the impetus to dust off an idea I had almost a year ago. I even wrote a few chapters of that version of the idea, but I was trying to narrate it in the voice of Charles Dickens and, surprise surprise, that's actually really hard. I think I nailed the first chapter, but then when my critique group read the second chapter they wondered why Dickens wasn't narrating anymore. Could I have done more reading, gone through a million edits, and eventually gotten it right? Maybe. But in the end I found I just didn't have the ambition to attempt it.

So the Dickens inspired Christmas ghost story was tossed into the bin. But a skeleton of a winter ghost story with darkness and light, grief and joy, remained. So I gave it flesh. The ghost is now the MC's older sister. The first names have changed to match the theme. The family is much more fleshed out and much more flawed. Real wrong has been done to the vengeful ghosts.

Basically it's a whole lot better than the original idea. I still only have an outline (though a pretty detailed one thanks to my awesome friends) and character sketches, but it's something. 

And of course I made a new moodboard/aesthetic, because that's what I do. Here it is, in all its glory. Now let's see if I can actually make this thing into a completed manuscript. Whether that then makes it into a book is not up to me, as I have painfully learned, but finished manuscript is something I can control and I hope I can push past my hard feelings about querying the manuscript that would be "the one" for nearly two years now and get this story written. I think it has the potential to be something really beautiful. Maybe even better than Harbor Lightkeep. And that's saying a lot. Because I did not think I could beat a glucose alert fox.

In Which I Think I Might be Coming Out of a Dry Spell

I had really good intentions last year of blogging here at least once a month, but this year has done everything it can to stop me from doing that. As I mentioned in my last post, a family crisis in February took up a lot of my time and energy for several months. Even though that's essentially over, it's taking awhile to get back to normal, or a new normal. Add to that the fact that the book I've been querying for a year and a half now is still languishing in the trenches and the idea of coming back to this blog just wasn't super attractive. 

But I think I may have made some headway in my own mental health journey that could get me back to writing more regularly, though I make no promises of blogging regularly. As you might remember, I've been working on a contemporary romance on and off since last March. I'm still less than halfway through. That's super slow compared to the pace at which I've written all of my other books, even Harbor Lightkeep, which took a long time compared to my other three finished manuscripts.

I was super excited when I first got the idea and the first two chapters and a working synopsis came to me pretty quickly. Then I slowed down. Way down. I'd write a paragraph and go weeks without even opening the document. Or I'd open the document every day for a week, only to write one sentence and delete it each time. I talked a good talk about wanting to finish the book. I even participated in #RomComMarch on Twitter this year and joined a Slack for it. But actually doing the writing? That didn't go nearly so well.

What I've realized is that I've spent a very long time thinking of myself as a middle grade writer. I mean, there's a reason the blog has the name it has. I still love Middle Grade books. I still dream of having middle grade books published someday. But because in my head I've been a middle grade writer for so long, I haven't allowed myself to own the idea that I could also be a romance writer. If I actually finish this book and actually start querying it I'll be querying as an adult contemporary romance writer, and that isn't what I thought I was going to be.

Of course, my brain knows that writing this one book, or even multiple books, in a genre and age group I didn't originally think I wanted to write doesn't mean I can never write or publish middle grade. But that's what my heart has been telling me. 

I've been trying to get a handle on my own mental health since my family crisis in February, and part of that has included seeing a therapist. One of the things my therapist is teaching me, which isn't super brilliant or groundbreaking but is still really hard for me, is the concept of responding rather than reacting. That is, if someone (usually my husband or one of my kids) says something that pushes my buttons, I need to take some breaths, walk away if necessary, and respond when I'm ready to respond calmly instead of reacting right away with anger that will inevitably hurt people.

I'm still just okay at this. But working on this has helped me realize that my tendency to react rather than responding has bled into my writing life. Rather than respond to the idea that actually finishing and querying this romance would make me something other than the middle grade writer I wanted to be with the logic that the two weren't mutually exclusive, I reacted by actively avoiding finishing the book.

I can't say for sure that having this knowledge will allow me to finish the book in a reasonable manner. I might just find another excuse. But at least now I know why it's taking so long.

I don't have a photo representing what's been going on in my heart and mind, but I hate not including a photo, so here's my gorgeous cat, Daniel Tiger, on one of  his favorite perches, the bookshelf that holds my 12yo's graphic novel collection.

In Which Kids Need Diverse Books

I've written about this topic in some fashion before (here, here, and here if you'd like to check it out), but I'm sorry to report that the need to talk about this is perennial. Book bans around the nation still going at full steam. Teachers and librarians are being called groomers for the audacious act of providing kids access to books with queer characters.

Before I go on, I want to apologize to my half dozen regular readers for not fulfilling my promise to blog monthly. A major crisis hit my family not long after the last post. It took up most of my mental energy for the rest of February, all of March, and well into April. I'm just now approaching a new normal and getting back into the things I set aside because they weren't top priority during a crisis.

I do want to note that, when my mental health was at its worst during the epicenter of the crisis, the two best ways to escape were reading and writing. I wasn't able to get in the right frame to work on my adult contemporary romance often, but when I did it, it was refreshing to escape to the world I created for a little while. 

All that taken care of, let's talk again about diverse books and why kids need them. I'm going to keep this simple.

1) Kids that are part of a minority group in some way (BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, neurodivergent, disabled, there's probably more I'm not thinking of) need to see kids like them. They need to see these kids as the heroes of the story. They also need to see them as background characters, just part of a functioning society.

2) Kids that are not part of any minority group, or are part of a group other than the one being represented need to see kids who aren't like them in stories. They need to see that it's not just the white, cishet, able-bodied, neurotypical kids who save the day or just have an every day experience they can relate to. They also need to see kids who are different from them as side characters, just part of a normal, functioning society.

Upper elementary and middle school age kids (you know, the age group middle grade books are written for?) in particular are in a stage in which they're beginning to figure out who they are. My 12yo has three classmates who came out as nonbinary between the end of elementary school and the beginning of middle school. And I'm sure that's just the start of the queer kids she'll meet. Many kids at this age are still figuring out how they identify, who they might want to date, etc. They might not sort themselves out until they're almost done with high school, or even well into adulthood. Heck, I'm 48 and I'm still figuring things out about myself.

But if both cishet kids and queer kids (whether or not they know yet that they're queer) grow up reading a diversity of books that feature a spectrum of queer experiences, we're a whole lot more likely to end up with a loving and accepting society.

Unless you live under a rock and literally never talk to a single kid, the odds are high that you know a queer kid and/or a BIPOC kid, probably a lot more than one of each. But how would I even know that, you ask? You don't need to. If the queer kids in your life see you as a safe person and come out to you, great. But just because none of them have doesn't mean they're not there. Oh, but everyone I know is white, you say. Do you know? Like for real know? Have you asked them all about their racial background? Could they be mixed race and white-appearing? Even if you have defied the odds and somehow really do know only white people, those white kids still need to read books with BIPOC kids.

There are lots of things we as a nation need to do to create a just and safe society for the rising generation and the generations that come after them. I don't know what they all are, and I don't know how to do the majority of them. But what I do know is that one important aspect is giving them the opportunity to read a diversity of books.

I'll end with a picture of my 12yo's graphic novel collection. She's white, and as of this time she identifies as cishet, though that could change as she ages and gets to know herself better. Regardless, her shelves are filled with books about BIPOC kids, books about queer kids, and, yes, books about cishet white kids. Because we don't need to throw anyone under the bus to make bookstore and library shelves reflect the actual world we live in.

In Which I Get to Meet Some Of My People

I missed writing a blog post in January, in large part because I was busy feeling sorry for myself, but I blogged twice in December, so that makes up for it, right? Right? Whatever. All six of you who regularly read these posts can rejoice over me having a new one. 😂

Remember that new idea I was excited about? Or that thread of hope I was hanging onto in December? Yeah, that new idea is currently stalled in chapter 5. So I started a rewrite of the contemporary MG I wrote almost three years ago. It also stalled in chapter 5. Since my contemporary romance is also stalled in chapter 5, it's clear this is a theme for me. Don't ask me why chapter 5 is the one that breaks me.

A couple weeks ago I had a full on meltdown at dinnertime because my son didn't want to eat the dinner I had made with him specifically in mind. I am over having kids who are picky eaters despite everything I've tried to change that and who have only gotten worse with age (they're way past preschool), but that's not what the meltdown was really about. It was really about the fact that I feel like all my years of effort in writing have gotten me nowhere. Empirically I know that's not true. I've continued to develop my craft. I've formed great relationships within the writing world. I've gotten to know the industry much better than I did three years ago. But none of that is any guarantee I'll get an agent, let alone a book deal, and in the end that is still both my dream and my goal.

My breakdown was well timed, because it happened not long before something that was planned back in October: a retreat in Nashville, Tennessee with some of the other women in the #MGWaves. In case you don't want to look back at the linked post, in brief, the Waves are a writing support and critique group that began as a group for people who had submitted middle grade books to Pitch Wars in the fall of 2020. Some of the original members left after Pitch Wards ended, and some others came in through friends. Over the years, we've developed real friendships, though most of us had never met in person.

This past weekend 14 of us rectified that with a retreat in Nashville, Tennessee. This was not a writing retreat, though a couple people did write while we were together. It was a gathering of friends who write. It was also exactly what my soul needed. I still don't know if I will every be agented or published. But even if that doesn't happen for me, I'm thankful I started the journey because it led me to an incredible group of friends.

In Which I Review My Reading Year

I've always read a lot of books, but before this year I've never kept a record of which books I've read or how many. This year I decided to keep a reading log and, since this is the last day of the year  it seems an appropriate time to review the year. Here's the cover of the reading log. I just used an old notebook and decorated it with stickers.

I used a different color pen for each age group. Here's an example of a two page spread showing books of different age groups. The crossed out part is a book I started but quite reading after a few chapters.

As you can see, I recorded more than the book's title. I record the author (and illustrator in the case of picture books and graphic novels with more than one creator), the genre, the dates I started and finished the book, and a sentence or two about the book.

Before I break down the numbers, let me make some things clear. First, I count audiobooks as reading. My 11yo and I almost always listen to an audiobook while we drive back and forth to school and other places around town. I listen to own audiobook both while I'm driving by myself and doing things around the house. That's how most of the adult books made it on the list. I only count books I read for the first time. I reread a few books with my 11yo that I read a previous year and didn't add them to the list. I teach two year old preschool three days a week and I also don't count the dozens of board books I read to the kids again and again at work. I do count picture books I read on my own to study picture book craft (which I still have a lot to learn about).

My grand total of books read in 2022 is 217. Yes, that's a huge number, but keep in mind that most of these aren't 300+ page novels written for adults. The large majority are middle grade books, which do tend to be quicker reads. Breaking it down by age category, I read:

58 adult books

4 young adult books

137 middle grade books

5 chapter books

13 picture books

Of these, 153 were print books and 64 were audiobooks.

Only 6 of the books I read were nonfiction. The other 211 were fiction.

This number may seem amazing to you, or you may have read even more books this year. It doesn't really matter. If you read this year (and remember, audiobooks count as reading) you're a winner in my book.

In Which I Hang Onto a Teeny, Tiny, Gossamer Thread of Hope

It's Advent, the season of hope and waiting. I don't talk much about my faith on this blog, so, in case you didn't pick this up earlier, I'm a Christian. As a Christian, during this season of the year I celebrate the creator of the universe coming to Earth as a tiny, helpless, newborn baby. If that's not a miracle to be in awe of I don't know what is.

Even many who aren't traditionally religious think of this time of year as a season full of hope and potential miracles. Many people are hoping for a "Christmas miracle."

I'm not expecting a publishing Christmas miracle. Well, unless it's a certain Big 5 publisher settling the strike and actually listening to their employees (hint, hint HarperCollins). But I certainly wouldn't say no to it. I actually tweeted jokingly about my publishing Christmas wish last week and it went, well, not truly viral but at least viral-adjacent as opposed to most of my tweets that get 0-6 likes.

I'm still hanging onto a teeny, tiny thread of hope for my steampunk airship adventure. It's still in about 20 agent inboxes and until the last one passes there's hope that one of them will be the agent who falls in love with it. But the hope is pretty tenuous. The agent I thought was my best chance, who asked for a revision back in June, recently passed on the manuscript. She didn't like the direction I took the revision in. I guess it's better to find out now that we have different editorial visions than after I sign a contract, but it was still heartbreaking.

As if that wasn't enough, the full manuscript of my Nutcracker reimagining was with an editor who is normally only open to agented submissions thanks to a pitch contest like. Earlier this week she passed on it not because of weakness in the writing but because she just didn't think it was a perfect fit for her.

To be clear, I'm disappointed but I'm not angry with the agent or the editor. Agents spend a lot of time with client manuscripts and need to go through a long slog of pitching them to swamped editors. Editors devote a lot of time and effort to manuscripts they sign and it's not worth their time to work on a book they don't love. Yes, agents and editors receive manuscripts that are poorly written, but at least as often they have to pass on things that are well written and just don't light them on fire. Think about your own reading habits. You don't check out every single book in the library or buy every single book at the bookstore. Most of the books you pass up aren't bad. They're just not books you're currently excited about.

On the heels of two rejections I was pretty hopeful about, I was briefly ready to throw in the towel or just take a long break. It's been a year since I started querying my Steampunk book. I've spent the year doing a bunch of smaller tweaks and one major revision. I've lost count of the times I've tweaked my query and opening pages. According to all the advice out there I've done all the right things and should have been overrun with requests at least if not offers. My book has all kinds of things agents are supposed to be looking for. It has disability rep. It has queer rep. It has a diverse cast. It addresses climate change. It's a mystery to me why it hasn't gotten more full requests.

But I don't get to control what agents and editors think. I only get to control what I write. I tried to start writing something new this spring but I kept stopping and starting with it and never got very far. Only time will tell, but so far I'm much more excited about my new #WIP. I enjoy reading adult contemporary romance and I liked the idea of writing one, but it doesn't excite me the way middle grade does. Reading and writing middle grade lights me on fire in a way other types of books don't. Yes, I can appreciate books in other age groups. Someday I might even write one. But middle grade is where my heart is.

And when it comes down to it, that's why I'm not ready to give up on pursuing traditional publication. When I decided to get serious about writing again three years ago I knew it would be hard. I didn't know it would be "writing and querying three books over three years with three requests between them that all ended in rejection" hard. Some people would have been ready to quit well before this time. And there is nothing wrong with that. Your mental and emotional health is more important than reaching the elusive goal of getting a book traditionally published. 

There are moments when I feel like it might be time to quit. But when it comes down to it I'm not ready.  I've liked all the paid jobs I've had. This fall I started a part time job teaching a two year old preschool class and I might actually like that one best of all. But what really lights me on fire, what really makes me feel like I'm doing what I was created to do, is writing. Until I stop feeling that, I'm going to keep plodding up this mountain path of unknown length full of logs, rocks, and roots. I may stop for awhile and take a rest on one of the logs, but I'm not ready to head down the mountain just yet. 

In Which a New Idea Grabs My Attention

Querying right now is soul sucking. There. I said it. I don't know if there's a better way for agents to make connections to writers they want to represent. I don't blame the agents for being busy and taking a long time to respond. I do sometimes wish I could go back in time to a time when there were fewer people trying to be published and seriously pursue being published then, but time machines are not a thing. Plus, I know that I'm a better writer now so there's that.

In large part due to the soul-suckingness of querying, I've found it really hard to get into writing something new. Harbor Lightkeep is the fourth book I've queried and I didn't have this problem with the other three, but I think the very fact that it's the fourth and I'm still trying to find an agent is part of what's stopping me. Every single time I finish a book I think "Okay, this one is going to be the one." And so far it never has been. 

It also doesn't help that I recently started a part time job, teaching two year old preschool three days a week. I love the job, even with all the dirty diapers I have to change, but it does limit my potential writing time. At the very least I blame the new job, which I started in October, for me not blogging in October.

I kept telling myself I was going to finish the adult contemporary romance I started in March this fall but no matter how many times I opened my computer and stared at the document I just could not work up the energy to add to the story. I do hope to finish that book someday. I really love the world I dreamed up. But romance just doesn't light my heart on fire the way middle grade does. So I officially gave up pretending my fall goal was to finish that book.

Finally, just over a week ago, a new idea grabbed onto me. I had always been intrigued by the seed of a the 200 word story I wrote last fall for #FallWritingFrenzy and kind of wanted to do more with the idea of a grieving girl summoning the ghost of her twin. But I wasn't sure where to go with it until suddenly I was.

The original story was inspired by a photo of a Dia de los Muertos ofrenda. But, while I feel a deeper connection to Latinx cultures than I often do to the cultures of my own ancestors thanks to the combination of my degrees in Spanish and having a child in a Spanish Immersion school, I don't want to steal a culture that doesn't belong to me for an entire novel. I toyed with the idea of having the story center around Halloween and the autumnal equinox and the traditions from many cultures that involve spirits visiting our world at that time of year. But it just wasn't clicking for me.

Finally I remembered my favorite ghost story from childhood: A Christmas Carol. The tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas never caught on in America, but it was huge in Victorian England and well before that so there's a rich culture to draw from. Plus, I love the idea of the veil between the living and the dead thinning at the darkest time of the year. I still have a lot of planning and research to do before I can do this story justice, but I'm finally really excited about something again. So I present to you the moodboard for what I'm currently calling #SpookyGhostTwinChristmasWIP. Although I've never actually used that hashtag since I'm taking a twitter break while I research and draft. And, no, this is not a NaNoWriMo project. It's just a project I happen to have started in November. 

In Which It Is Banned Books Week Again

I've posted before (here, here, and here if you want to read) about book bannings and #BannedBooksWeek, but unfortunately the topic is perennial and needs to continue being addressed. Books bannings have continued to increase over the past year. The continued increase in books featuring BIPOC and queer characters seems to really scare certain groups of conservative parents, and those groups know how to organize and how to make a lot of noise.

I have to say I'm a bit disappointed in some of the lists I've seen put out this week featuring banned books. A lot of them are classics (such as Lord of the Flies or To Kill a Mockingbird) or older children's books that were the subject of bans in the past but are overall really well known (such as Harry Potter).

The real danger right now is the hundreds of books that are being quietly removed from classrooms and school libraries because parent groups are challenging them. These groups assert that the very fact that a book stars a BIPOC child and mentions racism means it promotes Critical Race Theory and, even more often, that the very fact that a book features a queer character makes it "pornography". There are picture books being challenged as being "pornographic". Think about that for a minute. 

Unfortunately this phenomenon isn't limited to schools either. A small town in Michigan lost funding for its library in a vote this summer after a conservative group raised concerns that the librarians were "groomers" pushing "pornography" on children. Which is not in any way, shape or form what children's librarians who have books with queer characters in their collections are doing. I've heard anecdotes of Pride month displays in libraries all over the country being tampered with, everything from patrons checking out every single book to keep them out of the hands of children to outright vandalism.

A swift perusal of my shelves and my daughter's shelves produced a pile of middle grade books that I know have been challenged and removed from classrooms and/or libraries along with books I don't know for sure have been challenged but are likely to encounter challenges for the reasons cited above. If I looked for longer I could likely find even more books that commit the apparently grave crime of making children aware that racism still happens and queer people exist.

So, what can you do if you want books like this to get into the hands of readers? On a larger scale, if you know books bans are happening in your community, make your voice known. If your community and/or local school library is open to having the kinds of books that are being banned in its collection, request that they purchase books like this if they have funds to do so. If the library doesn't have the funds and you do, consider donating such books to your local school and/or community library, or to your child's classroom library or the classroom library of a teacher in your circle.

If you're a parent, godparent, aunt or uncle, or otherwise have a role in a child's life that involves buying gifts for them, give them books that have been challenged. There are books with queer and/or BIPOC kids in every genre and you can certainly find a book the child in your life will enjoy. Whether the child in your life will see themself in these books or whether they'll see that kids who are different from them can be heroes it's equally important for them to read these books.

I have a lot of hope that the generation nearing and just entering adulthood is going to bring about a sea change in the way our society sees and treats queer people and people of color. I'm not an idiot. I know there will also be pushback and challenges, but the young people I know give me a lot of hope that we're moving in the right direction and the larger part of their generation will be on the right side of history.

In Which I Am Really Bad at Waiting

Eleven days ago I sent my revised manuscript of HARBOR LIGHTKEEP AND THE BROKEN WORLD to the agent who asked me to revise and resubmit it. The same day I sent fresh queries to three other agents. Every time I check my email now I brace myself for bad news, smaller bad news like one of the new agents sending a form rejection or bigger bad news like the agent who wanted the R&R still not loving my book enough to offer rep. Either is a distinct possibility. I also brace myself for good news, like a full request from one of the new agents or an email asking for a call from the agent who got the revised full manuscript.

The agent who asked for the R&R seemed eager to read my book, so I had a vain hope that I'd know one way or the other within a few days, but nearly two weeks later I'm still waiting. To be clear, I'm not upset at this agent. She has clients she's working with on edits and sending on submission to editors. She's reading queries from other writers and reading full manuscripts she's requested. She's also a writer herself and needs to devote time to her own work. She doesn't owe me a fast response. That didn't stop me from hoping she would give me one anyway.

So now I wait, which is one of the things I'm worst at. I told myself, as well as telling my CPs and whoever sees my tweets, that once I turned in the R&R I was going to get back to work on the adult contemporary romance I started this spring and put on the back burner when I got the R&R request. Reader, I lied. Well, I didn't exactly lie. That's what I intended to do and what I still intend to do. But it hasn't actually happened yet. I've opened the document and read through what I've written so far, yes, but I have not added any more words to said document. 

Part of this is that my ADHD brain struggles to complete tasks I'm not excited about. Part of it is that I've never written anything for adults before and it's proving to be harder than I thought it would be.

Mind you, I haven't been staring at the wall or bingeing Netflix while not writing. I've been trying to conquer my large to be read pile instead. I've read some great books, and that's a valuable thing for any writer to do, but if I want to keep being a writer I really do need to actually get back to writing at some point.

I'm almost done with my TBR pile from the library (let's just forget about the 20+ books on my shelves that I haven't read yet for the moment, shall we?) so maybe this will be the week I figure out how to convince my brain that going back to work on the romance is exciting. We'll see.

I don't have a good picture to represent me not writing and holding my breath every time I check my email, so here's a beautiful photo of my cat, Daniel Tiger, instead. He's a reader, as you can see.

In Which Getting Published Isn't Easy

Some of my writing friends are talking about a recent article in the New York Times which purports to talk about how a book went from a messy first draft to a bestseller. Supposedly this is representative of how writing and getting published works. I don't subscribe to the New York Times and the article is behind a paywall, so I will admit from the start that I haven't read the article, I've just heard things about it.

What I've heard is that the article paints a rosy view of publishing. The author apparently had connections within the publishing world that helped get her her deal. She also got a high number deal for her middle grade debut, which is uncommon, and a lot of publicity was put behind it. Let me make it clear that this post is not coming from a sense of sour grapes because I've been querying for 2 1/2 years and don't have an agent let alone a book deal. I'm glad this writer has had so much success. I wish success like this for everyone who writes good books. 

The thing is, though, most people don't get that success and articles like that can make it look a lot easier than it is. Even successful writers experience setbacks. Even writers who have had multiple books published get rejections from editors. Selling one book does not mean you've "made it". Selling one book means you've sold one book, no more and no less.

Don't get me wrong. That's a big accomplishment. Many more people write a first draft of a book than go through all the work it takes to get that book ready to query to agents or editors. Many more people query than get an agent. Not all books signed by agents end up being the book that gets that writer a book deal. Sometimes a writer signs with an agent, the agent sends that book on submission to editors, and the writers gets a book deal in a few months. Sometimes it takes a year or more. Sometimes it doesn't happen at all and the agent sends another book instead. I have a few writing friends who signed with agents more than a year ago and have yet to have a book sell to editors. I have other writing friends whose debut book sold in less than a month. 

It's variable, and a lot of it depends on the book getting in front of just the right editor at just the right time, which is difficult to impossible for an agent to predict. The thing is, not even agents, who have a different view into the industry than writers do, can know exactly what an editor has signed recently since deals aren't announced the second they're agreed upon. One friend got a rejection because that editor had just recently signed a book that was too similar. The editor said they might have signed my friend's book if they had received that one first. But they didn't.

I know this post is full of doom and gloom. It's rough out there in the world of traditional publishing. And though some people choose to publish on their own (some would call this indie publishing and some would call it self publishing) that's not actually any easier. There are absolutely indie writers who are successful and make  good income from their writing, but there are many, many more who just sell a few copies and make a few dollars or don't even break even. I don't think the answer is to abandon traditional publishing.

So what is the answer? If you figure it out, please let me know. In the meantime, I'm going to keep writing my stories about kids who don't let their invisible disabilities stop them from going on adventures and keep sending them to agents or (hopefully in the future) have my agent keep sending them to editors in the hope that they will be on the shelves for kids to read someday. With book bans, major bookstores not wanting to carry a variety of hardcover children's books (maybe I'll write more about this next month), and editors quitting making the editors who are left even more overworked, it's tempting to just throw in the towel and stop writing. Or to write only for myself.

There would be nothing wrong with doing this. You are not a bad person if you decided you're done with the query trenches for good or you decide you're done having your books sent on sub and failing if you're agented. Every person needs to make the decision that's best for their own mental health.

Personally, I'm not ready to give up. I have a lot of hope for the current version of my eco steampunk airship adventure, which I hope to finish final edits on and send some queries for by the end of the week. If that one isn't "the one," or it is in terms of getting me an agent but it fails on sub, I have more than a dozen other ideas in mind. I'm in the privileged position of being in a stable marriage to a partner with a good income, having kids in school, and working very part time. I have time to write, and I don't need it to make me money any time soon, if at all. Not everyone is in this position. In fact, I would say most people in the query trenches aren't in this position. There are plenty of people who keep writing and pursuing publication despite having more obstacles than I have. There are others who have the same privileges I have who decide they're done after a certain amount of time. Neither are right or wrong.

Getting a book from a messy rough draft to bookstore and library shelves, let alone to bestseller status, is tough. It takes a long time, a lot of work, a lot of tears, and quite possibly some fairy dust. If someday a reader finds my book and feels seen, finds a book they love to read for the first time, or just spends an enjoyable day or more absorbed in the world I've created, it will have been worth it to me. If I also have a book that reaches bestseller status and gets me a lot of money I will not complain. But for me it's about having my books reach readers first and foremost.

Because I like putting pictures in my posts, I'm ending this with a photo of a photo of an arctic fox that I took this past weekend at the Columbus Zoo. We saw actual arctic foxes, but they were curled up and snoozing and not in a great position for a good photo. This fox is exactly how I picture Crystal, the glucose alert fox in the book I'm querying. Enjoy the cute foxie!

In Which I Recommend Another Amazing, Diverse Magic School Book

Though the last book in the series was published almost 20 years ago now, thanks to the popularity of the movies and the theme park attractions based on them, the HP magic school books are firmly ingrained into our culture. 

However, there are new magic books coming out that I have hope may someday dethrone that series in the hearts of children. Last month I told you about Claribel Ortega's Witchlings, which I still highly recommend. But Witchlings isn't alone in creating an imaginative, fun, diverse magical world that holds its own against the HP world. Another fabulous contender is Dhonielle Clayton's The Marvellers, which came out this spring and which I just finished reading. 

In The Marvellers, Clayton imagines a magical society that mostly lives apart from the non-magical, whom they call Fewels. The Marvellers have built floating cities in the sky as well as a school that changes the way it looks every year known as the Arcanum. Starting at age 11, marveller children go and learn to harness their light at the Arcanum. Over the course of their first year, they are exposed to the five Paragons, and at the end of the year they learn their talent and join one of the Paragons. I love that the students aren't immediately boxed into one identity upon arrival. The MC of this book, Ella Durand, is from a magical family but not a Marveller family. Ella is from a Conjuror family. Conjurors are the descendants of slaves living in the Americas and the Caribbean. The Middle Passage changed their magic. They are in charge of the underworld and they use magic differently. They live in enclaves within Fewel cities. Marvellers have looked down on Conjurors for centuries, despite their shared history. Thanks to a change in Marveller law that her own parents pushed for, Ella is the first Conjuror to attend the Arcanum. Any Conjuror child is now welcome, but Ella is the only one who is brave enough to go. She encounters a lot of hate and prejudice, but also makes new friends, including a girl raised among Fewels who hates her magic and a boy with a secret who can talk to animals. The villain in this book is truly nuanced, and there are quite a few morally grey characters. The story tackles prejudice and racism head on, but is able to look at it differently because it takes place in an imaginary world. It tackles tough issues, but it feels like an engaging fantasy adventure and not at all like an issue book. The airborn world of the Marvellers is detailed, well conceived, and incredibly charming. I really want to visit the Arcanum and the floating cities. One thing I love about the book is that the students come from all over the world, which makes for a naturally diverse cast. The language issue is handled by having the students wear magical translation necklaces. As long as two people are wearing their necklaces, they'll hear each other in their native language. One student can be speaking French and another Swahili and there will be no communication problems. This book has so much to offer that the HP world lacks. It has made its way to the New York Times bestseller list. I hope it gets its own movie (or streaming show, which could actually reach a bigger audience) and earns a place in pop culture.

In Which I Gush About Some Queer Middle Grade Books

Before LGBTQIA+ Pride Month ends, I need to get to the post I've been meaning to write recommending some queer MG I've read this summer. First, these books I'm recommending are far from the only ones out there. There's more and more queer kidlit making its way into the world, which is a very good thing. It's a good thing for the queer kids, who are finally able to see themselves in books. It's a good thing for the kids working through their identity to see characters with similar questions. It's also a good thing for cishet kids to see queer kids in the books they read. Both so they understand the struggles those kids can go through and so they see the struggles and joys that are common to all of us, regardless of our sexual and gender identities. Especially in today's climate, when states are passing laws stopping trans kids from getting gender affirming care and/or preventing teachers from talking about LGBTQIA+ people in the classroom, we need to get these books into the hands of kids.  I believe it's my kids' generation that's going to turn the tide and make real progress to stop that toxic heteronormativity of western culture. I still sometimes struggle with "they" as a singular pronoun (even though it's been used in English for hundreds of years to refer to a person whose gender is unknown), but it slips off my kids' tongues naturally. They found out my cousin was gay and marrying another man and they were like, "Hope they have a great marriage." A teen at our church came out as nonbinary, started using they/them pronouns, and changed their preferred name, and my kids along with all the kids in the youth group just rolled with it, even though our church is on the conservative end of the UMC spectrum.

First up in my rundown is Michael Leali's lovely contemporary debut, The Civil War of Amos Abernathy. The writing and narrative style themselves are worthy of note. MC Amos' voice is classic middle grade and a treasure trove for a writer wanting to learn how to master voice. The novel is written alternating Amos' letters to a Civil War soldier who would likely have identified as a trans man if he had lived today with a present tense narrative covering one important day. The narrative combined with the letters slowly reveal what's happening and how important it is for Amos and his community. Amos has spent most of his life volunteering at a living history park of which his mom is the director. He has been out as a gay boy since elementary school, and he suddenly realizes in seventh grade that there are no queer people portrayed at the LHP. Along with his best friend and a new friend on whom he's developed a crush, he goes searching for queer people in the 19th century, including one I won't name who will likely surprise you. Amos' new friend and crush is from a conservative Christian family and he struggles with his feelings for Amos because he's been told his whole life that they're wrong. One thing I especially love about this book as a queer identifying and LGBTQIA+ affirming Christian myself is that Amos' family are also faithful churchgoers. They just attend a different, open and affirming church. So often religious characters in queer novels are painted exclusively as bigots, or at best as people who are reluctantly accepting but not happy about it. While that is absolutely the case for a portion of people of faith, that doesn't describe anywhere near all of us and I was glad to see both sides shown in this novel.

In the Key of Us by Miriam J. Lockington gives us two queer Black girls experiencing first love at a prestigious music summer camp. I know from twitter interactions with the author that the camp was inspired by a camp that my brother attended for many years and, based on what I know of it from him, the portrayal of the environment at a camp like that was pretty spot on. In addition to giving us a sweet first love story between two girls, this books addresses what it's like to be a BIPOC in a heavily white environment. It also tackles issues of grief, guilt, self-harm, and family pressure. Told in dual POV, this book and is thoughtful and tackles important issues without feeling like a heavy "issue book".

The Mirrorwood by Deva Fagan is a secondary world fantasy loosely inspired by the story of Sleeping Beauty. While the MC, Fable, is cishet, I believe it deserves a mention in a rundown of queer kidlit because the world Fagan has created is queernormative. Fable has a nonbinary sibling who uses they/them pronouns and this is not in any way remarkable. Families with two dads and two moms are mentioned in the villages Fable visits as a matter of course. In the world created for this book, being queer is just a part of some people's identity. There's no indication that they encounter prejudice or pushback of any kind. Both queer kids and cishet kids (and adults!) can benefit from seeing a world like this.

If forced to name the queer MG book I read this summer that's the most important, it would have to be David Levithan's Answers in the Pages. It's a short little book (I read it in one afternoon) following a boy whose mom starts a campaign to have a book his teacher (who is gay) assigns based on one sentence at the end about the two boys in the book loving each other. The MC's story is interspersed with chapters from the (made up) book showing just how incredibly innocuous and age appropriate the book is. A third narrative, which seems to sit apart from the other two until they all dovetail at the end, follows two junior high boys whose friendship is growing into a mutual crush, and who aren't sure how to handle their feelings for each other. This book resonated with me as a parent because, when my 17yo was in elementary school, my reaction to a book with two boys who might be in love with each other would have been closer to the MC's mom's reaction than I would like to admit to myself. I don't think I would have moved to have such a book removed from the classroom, but I would have been uncomfortable with it and would have at least thought internally along the lines of the argument his mom gives. She's not portrayed as a bigot who hates all gay people. She just has an idea that kids don't need to think about their sexuality until at least high school and for that reason it will just confuse them to have gay people mentioned in books they read in elementary school. That's a pretty common view for Gen Xers and millenials who are the parents of kids in school right now. We were never exposed to gay characters in books until high school at the very earliest and it can feel weird to us for our kids to read the books available now. Yes, some of the people (maybe even most of the people) moving to ban books really are hateful bigots. Others are like the MC's mom, people who have a generational misunderstanding of what kids can "handle" in the books they read, and whose minds can be changed (as this mom's mind is) when they stop to really listen to the other side.

I hope you'll pick up some of these books if you haven't read them and consider passing them on to the children in your life. If you have other great queer kidlit recs, I'd love to hear about them in the comments.

In Which I Tell You About a Really Awesome Book About Young Witches That You Need to Read

Okay, five or so faithful readers, I promised I would be back later to share some of my summer reads. Well, guess what, I'm back the very next day. Write this down, because it will probably never happen again. I'll write a post later this summer with a rundown of multiple books I've read, but for now I want to tell you about a book that everyone who likes middle grade fantasy should read, but you should especially read if you (or your kids) are a Harry Potter fan.

Just to be clear, I was a serious HP fan for many years. The books didn't come out until I was an adult, and I didn't discover them until book four came out when I was in graduate school. Despite this, I embraced the books and their world wholeheartedly. I got all the new books from #5 on on release day, read them within a couple days, and shared them with friends. I stood in line to see the first three movies the day they were released. I was all in.

Then I found out recently that the author is not a particularly nice person, to put it lightly. She is a vocal advocate against transgender rights in the UK. As if that wasn't bad enough, she has repeatedly told trans readers on Twitter that the message of belonging and acceptance that they found when they read her books as children was not meant for people like them. 

I believe it's possible to separate an artist's work from the artist and I have no plans to disown people who still enjoy the world. It really is an exceptionally cool and well-crafted world (though there are some problems and contradictions which, as my 17yo likes to say, produce plot holes big enough to drive a lorry through). However, after finding out this information about the writer I looked at the books with a more critical eye and realized there's prejudice baked into the books that I was blind to when I first read them. Just as one example, the books are rife with fatphobia. Can you name a single fat character from those books who is an admirable person? Ethnic and racial stereotypes that I didn't notice offhand as a white American reader are also all over the books. The author literally used two Chinese last names for Cho Chang's name. 

So I've stepped away from that world but I was longing to find another magical world that didn't have the same problems with either the author and the world. There's lots of great middle grade fantasy out there. I adore all of Rick Riordan's books as well as the books from his imprint that uplifts writers from marginalized cultures, Rick Riordan presents. Rick is pretty much the opposite of J.K. Rowling. He is actively trying to raise of the voices of cultural minorities and sexual and gender minorities and to do everything he can to make the books he writes as inclusive as possible. However, his books and the books from his imprint, while amazing and delightful, are a different type of fantasy from the Harry Potter books.

I'm happy to report that there's a recently released middle grade fantasy written by a nonbinary author of Dominican descent that is similar in vein to HP without all the negative elements above. The author, Claribel Ortega, was actively trying to create a world similar to the HP world in which people like her would feel welcome and see themselves. Claribel has succeeded admirably with Witchlings from Scholastic. 

The middle grade reader and HP fan at my house has not yet read this, but she was excited right away by a cover that showed that the main character and important supporting characters are girls. The cover really is delightful. I want to credit the artist Lissy Marlin and jacket designer Christopher Stengel.

The book is already an NY Times Bestseller, and I hope it finds its way into the hearts of countless MG readers and MG loving adults. There's lots of room left for multiple sequels and the story would make a great movie. Just like in the HP world, there's a magical world that lives alongside our modern world. One difference I love is that magical kids (witchlings) aren't shipped off the boarding school. There are schools within the magical towns that they attend during the day. There are whole witch families that are part of the plot, which I love. Claribel, by the way, circumvents that wizard/witch gender binary in HP by calling magical people of all genders witches. Boys and men are witches, girls and women are witches, and nonbinary people of all ages are witches (or witchlings if they haven't reached their full powers).

Kids are sorted in houses in a special ceremony at the age of 12. You can even find out which house/coven you would be sorted into by taking this quiz. The sorting kicks off the action when MC Seven Salazar isn't place in House Hyacinth with her best friend as she always dreamed but rather is one of three witches who are designated as "spares", an underclass within the magical community. Seven and her fellow spares turn out to be more formidable than anyone would have imagined. But I'll leave it to you to find out what else happens.

I recommend you run, not walk, to your nearest library or bookseller, to pick up this book. If buying a new book isn't in your budget and your library doesn't have the book, put in a request. I can't speak for all library systems, but our system is nearly always willing to buy my requests, especially if they're bestselling children's books.

In Which the State of My Inbox Compels Me to Buy Oreos

The writing life is tough. I mean, yeah, it's amazing to dream up whole worlds and I don't want to stop doing it. But it's also really tough. I've been actively trying to get an agent for nearly two and a half years now. With four different books. In all that time I have only ever had one agent request a full manuscript and two request partial manuscripts. The partials were for the same book. Two of my manuscripts never got any requests at all.

I've learned a lot over the past two and a half years. I know that each book has been better than the last. Every time I finished a book I was sure that book was going to be "the one". The one that got me an agent and then a book deal. Every time (so far) I have been wrong. But, looking back, I can see why the first three books didn't do that. I can see that I still needed to grow as a writer.

But this most recent one. I was so sure it was special. The pacing is on point. There's a cliffhanger ending at 10 pages, at 30 pages, and at 50 pages, the three increments agents normally ask for. It's unique. It has disability rep. It has queer rep. It has an environmental message. It even has a fox as a service animal.

Still, my inbox is crickets. I got two partial requests from agents who only ask for a query, but both ended in rejection. The advice is to query in small batches and change up  your query and opening pages if you don't get requests. So I've been doing that. I've had agented writers look over my query letter and opening pages. They've been pronounced great and sure to get requests. Still, agents don't seem to be getting the message.

Maybe it's not getting in front of the right person, people say. Is there a magic wand telling me who that right person might be? (Maybe you're an agent reading this after I queried you and you're that person? I can hope). Otherwise I just need to keep sending it to agents I think I'd like to work with who rep middle grade sci fi and seem like they might be interested. Maybe this will yield the results I'm looking for. Maybe the book is in the right inbox right now. There's no way to know that.

What I do know is that I'm not going to stop writing new stories. What I also know is that, if this round of queries doesn't go anywhere, I need to set this book aside. That doesn't mean it will be dead forever. My dream is that after I get an offer of rep for whatever book does that for me, my agent will be interested in eventually sending all of my books on submission to editors. There's no guarantee of that. But it's well within the realm of possibility. But at this point I need to protect my heart. I was so sure this was the book that was doing to get requests early and in spades. It has so many things agents are supposed to be looking for: disability rep, queer rep, and environmental message. I really don't know what it's missing. Or if it's missing nothing and the right person simply hasn't seen it.

That's one of the super frustrating things about writing. It can be really difficult to know if it's you or if it's them. But there are really two choices for writers facing piles of rejections. You can give up or you can keep writing. I'm not going to say I will always keep writing no matter what. That it doesn't matter at all if I never get published. I just feel compelled to tell stories. That's true for some people, but I'm not sure it will be true for me long term. If I'm still nowhere near publication in five years will I keep plugging away? I have lots of idea, so maybe. But maybe not. 

I love books, especially books for young people. I will never stop caring about them. But will I stop writing them if there's no hope they will ever make it on shelves? I just don't know. I hope I won't, but my battered heart can only take so much. If there comes a time when writing never brings me any joy I think it will be time to take a long break, at the very least.

Speaking of breaks, my kids are out of school for the summer, so I've decided to take a break from significant writing work. I might still write, but only if it brings me joy. Otherwise I'm going to enjoy spending time with my kids and I'm going to read a lot of books. 

Oh, and I mustn't forget the Oreos. One day last week when I was feeling particularly bad about the state of my inbox I found Fireworks Oreos at the store and I bought them. These are special edition Oreos that only come out in the summer. They have something like pop rocks in the cream. The rest of my family thinks that is super weird and will not eat them. So these are the only Oreos that are safe from my teenage son, who is basically a food black hole. So I get to eat my feelings and my family doesn't have more snack food tempting them. Everyone wins.

I've read some great books already this summer. I'll be back soon to share about some of them.

In Which My Son Attends a College Visit Weekend and I Come Away with Writing Advice

 My 17yo is starting to look seriously at colleges, and this weekend he attended an overnight visit event at Asbury University, which is his current top choice and only about 45 minutes from our house. He wants to study media production, and Asbury has a very well respected program. This weekend's visit was aimed at students interested in the media program and was capped off by the college's film festival on Saturday night. For the film festival weekend, there were judges and other visitors from the film industry on campus, giving talks and meeting with students and prospective students.

I stayed for the first talk before heading home, and I was pleasantly surprised that I took a lot a way from it as a writer. Asbury is a Christian university and the talk was aimed at that audience, titled "What every Christian needs to know before going to Hollywood". The speakers, a movie composer and a producer who are married to each other, emphasized that by "Hollywood" they really meant the entertainment industry in general, which is global, and that the principles would apply wherever the students ended up.

I was pleasantly surprised to realize that a whole lot of the advice applies to the creative life in general, including writing, and not just to moviemaking. It was also a good reminder that my son, who is severely dyslexic and doesn't read for pleasure (he can read, but it's a lot of work for him and he only reads when he needs the information) isn't quite as different from me as it would seem on the surface. At the core, he wants to build a life as a storyteller, just as I'm trying to do.

I won't share any of the specifically Christian advice on this general interest blog, but I thought some of the advice would apply to people of other faiths and no faith. Those points are as follows:

1. The importance of community. I've posted here about finding my writing community. Writing is most often a solitary occupation. When you're in the query trenches or agented but on submission to editors, it is also most often an incredibly discouraging occupation. If you have someone to share both your joys and your sorrows with, it's significantly more bearable.

2. Don't go into writing (they said filmmaking, but the principle is the same) because you want to be rich and famous. Go into it because you love to tell stories. That's what I try to keep in mind as I write story after story that no agents want to pick up so far. Yes, I want to see them on shelves and I hope to someday make some money from them, but it's unlikely that I'll get rich from it, which is okay. What I want to do is to tell stories that will both entertain and impact readers.

3. Show interest in other people in the industry. Don't always think about only yourself and what will benefit you. This may in the end open doors for you. I'm not sure if the "opening doors" part is quite as true in publishing, but, along with building a community of writing peers, I do think it's both helpful and important to establish relationships to whatever extent you can with writers ahead of you on the path. At least, they're more likely to read and hype your book if they already know who you are and have had good interactions with you.

4. It takes 10,000 hours of work before you become an expert in something. It may not take exactly 10,000 hours to write a novel that's good enough to get published, but in the case of the large majority of writers, it's not your first novel that ends up being your debut novel. Even if you do sell your first novel, the version that sits on shelves will go through sometimes significant edits and take a lot of work. Even established writers often say that they look back on their early published books and see all that they still had to learn. I can look back at my first three books and, even though I love the stories and hope to someday edit/rewrite them into books worthy of publication, I can see the things I still had to learn and the ways they're lacking. Not that my fourth book is perfect, but it's much better at this stage than the others were at the same stage because of everything I learned from writing them.

I returned to campus for the film festival last night, and I heard something there that was meaningful to me as a writer as well. The chair of the media communication department quoted a filmmaker whose name I immediately forgot (please tell me in the comments if you know who said this), who said "Make visible what, without you, might otherwise never have been seen." That really struck me, because that is half of why I write. First, because I love to tell stories, but second to make the marginalizations I identify with or am very close to, visible. This includes people on the asexual spectrum, girls with ADHD, and the diabetes community. Even if you don't identify with any marginalized group I still think this can apply. You might be making small town life visible, an unusual interest, an experience you've had, or something I haven't even thought of. Everyone has something unique to bring to their writing, and I believe there's a kid out there who could see a character like them in a book for the first time because of the story only you/I can tell.

To end, I'll share some pictures from the festival. I got to meet actor Joel McCreary, who played the prime minister of Genovia in the Princess Diaries as well as posing by statues of Kings Peter and Edmund of Narnia, which are actual set pieces from Prince Caspian movie. The media building as Asbury officially qualifies as a museum because of all the TV and movie artifacts it houses. They're all from projects that Asbury faculty and alumni have worked on.