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 Recommend Two Fall Reads

 There are new books coming out all the time, and I have neither the time nor the money to buy and read all of them. I can solve the money problem by instead requesting that my local library system acquire the books, which I highly recommend. To my chagrin, however, that does not increase my time.

However, two books came out recently that I thought I would love enough I went ahead and bought them. The first is a debut novel and the second is the writer's second book, a companion to their first novel that takes place in the same small Appalachian town.

Lisa Frenkel Riddiough's debut Elvis and the World As It Stands is a delightful read. I mean, how can you beat a story narrated by an adorable kitten and featuring a host of friendly and cute pets? This book is so much more than a cute pet story, however. It has a deep and important message about family and belonging. As we approach the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, it's also the perfect book for the children of those of us who were teens or young adults on that day. Its gentle but real treatment of the subject including Elvis's girl building a LEGO model of both the World Trade Center as it was before 9/11 and the Freedom Tower is a great way for young readers to enter that historical moment in an accessible way. Most importantly, though, it's a well written and enjoyable book.

Sure it's only September 10th, but at least where I live there's a chill in the air in the mornings and the season is beginning to turn from summer into autumn. In my mind, this means it's time to think about Halloween. I love Halloween, but maybe not in the way you think when you hear about people loving Halloween. I love witches, but only when they're friendly and use their magic to help people. I love skeletons, when they're smiling and dancing. My Halloween aesthetic isn't Haunted Houses and bloody, skeletal hands coming out of graves but rather cute black kittens and smiling bat families. And of course pumpkins. Give me all the pumpkins and all the pumpkin flavored food and drinks. 

A lot of people enjoy watching scary movies and reading scary books as the autumn winds blow.  I am not one of those people, but I do appreciate just a little bit of spookiness. If you're like me, Ash VanOtterloo's second book, which was released this week, may also be for you. A Touch of Ruckus is a delightful romp in a haunted Appalachian forest. But not too haunted, because that would give me nightmares. It has excellent queer rep (the MC likes both boys and girls, and her new friend is nonbinary), rural Appalachian rep, and mental health rep, as well as a sneaky environmental message. It was everything I hoped it would be, and a great follow up to Ash's debut, Cattywampus.

Do you have any favorite fall reads? I'd love to hear about them in comments.

In Which There Is No Deadline By Which I Must Find an Agent or Be Published

I've been putting myself under a lot of pressure lately. I started taking my writing seriously as an actual potential career about a year ago. Through joining a challenge to prepare for a twitter pitch event I connected with a group of other writers and joined a Facebook group. I decided the novel I wrote 16 years ago wasn't quite ready for prime time, so I had some of those writers read it, got feedback, made some changes (including switching the gender of an important secondary character), and decided it was ready to pitch in March.

My dream came true a couple hours into the event. An agent at a pretty prestigious agency liked my pitch, which was invitation to query. I queried with great excitement. Just so I'd have some possible competitors if this agent made an offer, I queried half a dozen other carefully selected agents. I had my query letter critiqued and made it the best I thought it could be. 

The agent got back to me saying that she liked my idea but wasn't drawn in by the opening chapters. All the other agents passed as well. Two offered personal feedback saying specifically why the opening chapters hadn't drawn them in but saying that they liked the idea. I decided that I was done querying that manuscript for the time being and that, at some point, I would pull it back out and make some major revisions.

I then started work on a new idea and got one chapter in when school was "temporarily" cancelled. Spoiler alert: my kids still aren't back in traditional school. The book is an urban fantasy featuring fairies and I decided I wanted to do more research on fairies from around the world before I got far into the writing. I had requested several books from the library - then the library closed. I decided to shelve that idea.

Then I remembered a story idea that I talked about with a friend in the last lunch out I had this year. I rolled with it, and that main character, Anna Ono, grabbed ahold of my heart and mind in a way no other character I've written about ever has. I finished the first draft  in five weeks. I was absolutely certain that this book was "the one," the book that would get me an agent and my first book deal. 

I had the book beta read, polished, and ready to pitch in the June PitMad event. I got no agent likes. Not to be deterred, I researched agents and sent out query letters full of hope. I got form rejections or nothing at all. I researched more agents and sent out more query letters. I got a few personalized rejections and changed the opening chapters based on the feedback. I changed up my query.

I got a full request, then waited and waited. The agent who requested my full liked my pitch in the September PitMad Twitter pitch. I was very hopeful. A week later she got back to me. She had liked the story, but she hadn't loved it enough to make an offer.

Even before that, I had started another book. I started the first chapter the last week of July. I figured even if it took me 2-3 months to finish a draft I could still have it beta read and polished in time to pitch in December. It's a contemporary fantasy based on The Nutcracker. I figured December was the perfect time to pitch it. Then the book stalled in chapter 4. I still can't figure out precisely how the boy and his mouse sidekick are going to save the day. I seem to be really awesome at writing 1-5 chapters and not nearly as awesome at actually completing a whole book.

So I set it aside. I went back to fairy related urban fantasy that stalled after chapter 1 back in March. I made some major changes to the main characters. I massively changed the original plot I had in mind. I got four chapters in. Then I stalled. I decided to write out a plot summary, which I've never done before. I'm about 2/3 through I think and now that has stalled. 

It's October 6th. There's no way I'm going to have a polished manuscript ready to pitch in December. If by some miracle one of the agents who has a query for Anna Ono hasn't offered representation before that I'll pitch it again, but I'm beginning to feel that it may not be "the one" after all. I still love the character, believe in her story, and want to share her with the world, but I'm wondering if her story simply isn't engaging enough to be the one that an agent falls in love with at first sight. Perhaps it's the one I'll have to bring to my agent after a different story has been accepted and say, "Hey, what do you think about this?"

I finally decided that I was done putting pressure on myself. Many writers take years to finish a draft of a novel, and that's okay. I don't need to put myself on any particular timeline. Right now I'm taking some time off writing and spending the next 2-4 weeks reading recently released middle grade urban fantasy. Maybe it will spark an idea, maybe it will just give me a deeper knowledge of the craft, maybe it will just give my brain a break. Probably a bit of all three.

Two of the writers I met through Facebook now have agents and books on submission to publishers. I know my writing is as good as theirs, and, because of that, I spent way too much time being jealous of them and setting deadlines by which I absolutely positively needed to reach the place they had reached. I'm giving myself permission to let go of that. I believe my writing is good and will someday find a place on shelves. I'm not setting a deadline on when that has to happen. 

In Which Writing and Supervising Remote Learning Don't Mix Very Well

 My kids are now on day 12 of remote learning. In Kentucky remote learning is known as nontraditional instruction, NTI for short. Some districts have been using a version of NTI for years on days that would otherwise have been cancelled for weather. Our district never chose to do that, but they did do "pandemic NTI" this spring after it became clear that we weren't returning to in person school. Educationally, it was kind of a disaster. My 3rd grader learned nothing and was not a fan. My 9th grader learned a little bit and didn't hate it as much, but neither kid had a good end to the school year.

The one good thing about the pretty light amount of responsibility for them was that it meant a light amount of responsibility for me as the parent supervising their learning. I started writing a new book about a week after they came home in mid March, and I had finished it by mid May.  By mid June I had gotten it beta read and revised and was ready to query. I did this by taking every single spare moment to write. I wrote while my daughter was doing her schoolwork. I sent her to watch Netflix and wrote. I brought a camp chair and my laptop and wrote while my daughter played in the creek at a local park and my son rode on the mountain bike trails. 

It was super helpful that I was passionate about my main character and felt like she was living inside my brain and demanding that I tell her story. I was able to get her story out on the page pretty quickly because it was constantly being built inside my head.

The good news about this fall is that remote learning, which our superintendent is calling NTI 2DL (the 2DL stands for differentiated distance learning) is infinitely better than the spring version of NTI. The teachers have actually received a little bit of training in remote teaching and the district has invested in technology that makes it easier to achieve. My kids are actually learning stuff. Another improvement is that we've expanded our Covid bubble to bring in a classmate for our 4th grader. The girls are both much happier this fall than they were in the spring, and, though they also sometimes distract each other, they most often spur each other on to do their best work. They can also help each other if one girl gets kicked out of zoom, which happens less than it did the first few days but still happens.

My 10th grader is also getting good content, though I don't feel like he's getting quite enough since for some unfathomable reason they've decided to do each class only twice a week. Overall, though, the kids have actually been learning new content and feeling engaged in school this fall, which is a good thing for them and for their educational futures.

It is, however, not a great thing for my writing. It turns out the average 4th grader has pretty pathetic typing skills. And, guess what, the classwork for remote learning often involves typing. This means that I basically serve as secretary for my daughter and her classmate whenever they have an assignment that involves a lot of typing. For short assignments I make them do it themselves, but, if they have to type a few sentences or more, it's so much less frustrating for all of us if I just step in and do the typing. Otherwise they're hunting and pecking for 20 minutes just to write three sentences. Oh, and this whole time they're asking me how to spell every third word, even more often if the words are in Spanish (they attend a Spanish immersion school and I used to be a Spanish teacher).

Add to this the fact that my 10th grader emerges from his "schoolroom" in the office downstairs several times a day to ask me to look over something or help him with something (because, surprise surprise, remote learning is pretty much the worst possible way to start learning a foreign language, just for instance) and I don't have very  few solid blocks of time during which I'm not interrupted. I also never know precisely when and how long those blocks will be. 

This makes writing just about impossible. I have a new work in progress started. It all began with a question that my daughter asked me last December when she was dancing as a mouse in The Nutcracker (between them, my kids have danced in 11 Nutcrackers, though, sadly, neither is currently taking dance so there would be no Nutcracker parenting this year even if not for the pandemic). She asked, "What if the mouse king won the battle?" I didn't have a great answer at the time, but the question stuck in my brain and, almost a year later, has emerged as a story that centers around a reimagining of the Nutcracker in which the roles of hero and villain are reversed.

I like the story I've come up with. I believe in it, but, since school started, I've made absolutely no progress on it. I started really well late this summer. I checked out every single book about mice (the story features a talking mouse) or The Nutcracker that our library had and I brought them with me on a visit to my parents' house in Michigan. I spent a lot of time reading on the 8 hour drive up. I also spent some time reading in the "mobile office" I set up in the back of our minivan while our son rode at one of the many mountain bike parks within a half hour of my parents's house (it turns out there's much better mountain biking in West Michigan than there is in Central Kentucky). I got an outline for the story down and even started the first two chapters.

I was so excited about how well it was going. I was hoping that, if I didn't get an agent through this round of querying my current book, I might have the new one ready to pitch during Pitch Madness in December. I figured December would be the perfect month to pitch a Nutcracker themed book. Given that we're 1/3 of the way through September and I'm on chapter 5, I think that it extremely unlikely that's going to happen. I'm crossing my fingers that the full manuscript I have out to an agent results in an offer of representation. If I have an agent there's no pressure to finish something else in time to get it ready to pitch to agents on a particular timetable. I'd still want to work on it, of course, and, if I do get an offer, I'm hoping my hypothetical agent will love my WIP as much as they love my current project. Maybe knowing there will be someone to rep it to publishers after it's done will motivate me. Only time will tell if this hypothetical situation comes to pass.

In the meantime, the one thing supervising remote schooling has allowed me to do is pursue activities that work better for me even with frequent interruptions. Starting this blog is an example of that. At least I'm writing, even if I'm not writing a story. Another activity I've been making more time for is reading. I've read some great recent middle grade books which, though they don't  related to directly to anything I plan to write, can help me become a better writer and also give me a picture of the current market. Because, like it or not, understanding what will actually sell is part and parcel of being a writer. I've also done some reading my own education (I'm slowly making my way through Stamped from the Beginning) and my own enjoyment (I just received a copy of my friend Allison's newest romance novel, Since September. 

I'm hoping this role of remote learning supervisor will just be a short blip in my life and I'll soon be back to having more time to write. Either that or I'm going to have to make my ADHD brain hyperfocus on my WIP so I actually get it done. It's definitely an interesting time in history to be a writer and a parent.

In Which I Introduce the Blog and Attempt to Tell You Why I Love Books

 Sometimes I wish I lived a few generations ago. I mean, yeah, there are a lot of things that are easier and better about the times we live in, but I feel like being a writer was easier in a way back then. You know, back when publishers actually read unsolicited manuscripts and authors didn't have to "build a platform." L.M. Montgomery was grateful to work at the post office so her neighbors wouldn't see how many copies of the manuscript for Anne of Green Gables she sent to publishers, but at least she didn't have to query dozens of agents before even having a chance to have a publisher look at the manuscript.

I'm not actually out to whine, however. Overall I like the century I live in (2020 has been a real bear, but thankfully that doesn't speak to our time period as a whole) and, since this is the time I ended up in, building a platform is something I have to do. Thankfully, I'm really good at writing about myself and gushing about books I like, so I may be able to make a success of this :).

I don't remember learning to read. My mom says I learned in kindergarten, which was unusual for the early 1980's since formal reading skills weren't normally taught until first grade at that time. Some people remember a particular book that hooked them on reading. I don't. As far as I remember, I eagerly read anything I could get my hands on as a child. I loved books about horses and cats in particular, but I would happily pick up my older brother's The Three Investigators books as well.

If I remember correctly, it was third grade when I discovered Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising sequence, and, if I hadn't already loved books, those books would have fully won me over. She drew me into her world of Old Ones, Dark lords, and Welsh legends. I still dream of seeing the mountains of Wales someday thanks to her books, and I'd like to stop by Cornwall as well. Maybe I'll catch sight of the Greenwitch beneath the waves off the coast.

Sometimes I've wondered I am an introvert because I fell so deeply in love with books at such a young age or if I fell so deeply in love with books at such a young age because I'm an introvert. I suspect it's the latter. I wanted real living friends too, but I made a lot of friends within the pages of books. This was good since I wasn't, and still am not, all that great at making real live in person friends. I've become more outgoing as an adult, but by the time that had happened I'd already entered the phase of adulthood in which it's famously difficult to make new friends, so my timing wasn't that great :).

As a White, upper middle class girl without a visible disability (I have ADHD, but I didn't even know that as a child), it was really easy for me to see myself in the characters I read. Nearly all of the girls I read about didn't look radically different than I did, though some of them lived in fantasy worlds or long ago.

As a writer, one of my passions is to create characters who make kids who are less likely to be portrayed in books feel seen. Except for writing about kids with ADHD I often have to do a lot of research to make this happen and portray those characters well and with sensitivity, but I believe it's well worth my time. Once I manage to get a book published, if just one kid who has felt invisible feels seen after reading one of my books it will all have been worth it.