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On reading, as a writer
Hello, friends! So much for my goal of sending a newsletter every month. I kept trying to think of March themes and then didn’t. You came very close to seeing a timeline of my pandemic hair situation but it felt too silly. (Both the newsletter and my pandemic hair, thankfully long since shaved off.) First…
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Reading and Writing and Dad, and Freed by Flame and Storm’s Pub Day
Today is the release of my second book, Freed by Flame and Storm. This should be a celebratory blog post, but it isn’t quite. This is the book’s dedication: My father passed away two weeks ago today. You can see how Freed’s release is bittersweet. * It wasn’t until I was in college that I…
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Science Fiction Fairy Tale: A Wrinkle in Time
My August/September YA classics read was Madeline L’engle’s A Wrinkle in Time — but technically, it was a reread. When I was a kid, probably only eight or nine years old, my mother read Wrinkle to me out loud, which left only two lasting impressions for me: the line “There is such a thing as…
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Blitzball Is Hell: A (Very) Few Thoughts On A Separate Peace
Hey, before we dig in! I was on a podcast! Superhero Ethics invited me to drop by and talk about storytelling and the hero’s journey, especially with regards to Star Wars and what the changes from A New Hope to Rogue One signify. Recording was super fun and I think it was a great conversation,…
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The Scourge of Apathy and The Catcher In The Rye
So. The Catcher in the Rye. I have to admit, this was one of the books I most dreaded reading for this project, because it’s also one of the very few I’ve read before. And the truth was, I didn’t like it very much. And it’s really hard to talk about why without feeling like…
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Six Months Out Giveaway
BOOK TWO: IT’S TIME. Um. In six months. Still: six months goes by so quickly! I can’t believe we’re already in June of this completely ludicrous year. So if the next six months go as quickly as the previous six did, well, it’s basically time for Freed by Flame and Storm, right? Or maybe I’m…
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The Free World of Francie Nelson’s Brooklyn
I knew even less about A Tree Grows in Brooklyn when I started reading it than I had about Little Women. But it was, in a lot of a ways, a perfect answer to Little Women, right down to the moment, early on, where Francie mentions that she read and enjoyed Little Women. Liberty vs.…
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Little Women, Female Ambition, and Castles in the Air
Hey everyone, have you read your Pilgrim’s Progress lately? Because it’s time to talk about what I got out of reading Little Women, in this first real installment of the YA Classics Catch Up. But first, one housekeeping note — as I experimented with formats, I found I had a pretty fun time capturing some…
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Assault, Consent, and Romance in Bound by Blood and Sand
(Notes: This blog entry discusses rape culture, also, there are minor BBB&S spoilers.) It’s April, which is sexual assault awareness month. So I want to take a second to talk about sexual assault in Bound by Blood and Sand, because, well, it’s in there. Jae, the protagonist, is a survivor of rape before the book…
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The YA Classics Catch Up Blogathon
My name is Becky and I have a confession: I am a YA writer who is shamefully un-read in the classics of my own category. I’ve never read The Outsiders. I’ve never read A Separate Peace. And while I have read The Catcher in the Rye, it was only grudgingly for class, and I hated…
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