Erin Thomas

A funny thing happened with my daughter last week. It has me thinking about characters in kids’ books, and the things they do.

Sarah is a swimmer — a pretty good one. She’s involved with the local swimming team’s pre-competitive program. Last month she tried out for the competitive team and was accepted, although the practice times don’t work out for us. We decided to keep her in the pre-competitive program instead, because hey — any swimming is better than no swimming.

So here’s the story. Class started up again last week, and as it happened, I was busy in Toronto that night, so my wonderful mother came to the rescue and drove Sarah to swimming instead. Once they were suited up, Sarah and her friend, also a strong swimmer, made their way from the locker room onto the pool deck and looked around for their new class.

There are six lanes in the large pool at the local swimming complex. The first two had younger kids in them… or so Sarah decided. The other four lanes had older kids. That looked more promising. Sarah and her friend joined the big kids.

Did I mention that my daughter and her friend are also very tall for their age?

To make a long story short, they invaded the senior competitive team’s swim practice. So not only were these kids regular, experienced, competitive swimmers, they were also several years older.

Sure, these older kids were better and faster. And yes, it was a problem, having two slower swimmers in their midst. A big problem — Sarah and her friend ended up being given a lane to themselves, which worked out great for them, but wasn’t so wonderful for the other, already-overcrowded senior swimmers.

Sarah and her friend were hopelessly outmatched, of course, but they were tall enough and managed well enough with the lengths and exercises that it never occurred to the coach that they actually belonged in the pre-competitive class a couple of lanes over. And it never occurred to Sarah and her friend that they were in the wrong place, either. That’s the part I find interesting.

That tells me that a kid can be in completely over his or her head, and still muddle along. It tells me that it’s not so far-fetched to write about kids who think they can be detectives, or spies, or rocket scientists — not someday, not when they’re grown up, but right now, in the moment of your story. The thing is, kids don’t see themselves as little. They don’t see themselves as too young, or too small, or incapable. As far as they’re concerned, legal driving age is a mere technicality — give them a chance, they could win the Indy. How hard can it be?

The swimming mess is all straightened out now. Sarah’s back in the pre-competitive level where she belongs. Those kids aren’t really so much smaller than her, not really. Not to my eye. A lot of them look to be her age or even older, given the crazy giraffe height thing my daughter has going on. (She didn’t get it from me, that’s all I can say.) And yeah, she passes them in the water a lot of the time, but not always.

Put her with the slower kids, she’ll swim with the slower kids. But put her with the big kids, and she’s darn well going to do everything in her power to keep up. And doesn’t that make for the more interesting story?

Put your characters in the wrong lane. Put them with the big kids; put them where they can’t keep up. See if they swim.

They might surprise you.

* * *

(Pool photo by Patrik Affentrager on Stock Exchange.)

There are things I was thinking of blogging about today — about the mess that is my manuscript and the folly of posting goals in a space as public as a blog. About a large publisher’s recent decision to take on a self-publishing imprint, with possible publication by one of the publisher’s traditional lines as the ever-present carrot for authors. About reading Charlotte’s Web with my daughter — we finished last night — and being overwhelmed by the beauty and simplicity and perfection of White’s language.

And then my husband came home and asked if I’d heard about what happened in Connecticut.

So he told me, and I kissed my daughter on the head about eighteen times without telling her why, and now she’s downstairs and safe and I’m up here in my office. I cried. It feels like a bit of a presumption to do that, since I didn’t know anyone involved, but I couldn’t help it.

Somewhere, parents and families are dealing with the worst thing imaginable.

My thoughts and prayers go out to them.

I’m going to go sit with my daughter now.

It’s getting close to submission time for Tyler’s Intergalactic Spy Squad. (Title change!) And as a result, I’ve been something of a non-productive, panicky mess for the past few weeks.

On the plus side, I got lots of Christmas knitting done.

Here’s the thing. Most of the books that I’ve submitted to publishers (except for one not-quite-ready effort very early in my writing career when I didn’t know better), and all of my published books, came with deadlines already attached.

But this one is different. Nobody’s waiting for it, except maybe my agent — and I wasn’t even sure of that until yesterday. There’s no real due date, except for the one in my head. Which, for the record, was last December.

So it’s really easy to keep working on it and working on it. A book can always get better. Always. There are changes I wish I could make to my published novels… but, of course, they’re off-limits. This one isn’t.

But there’s also a point when you have to shove a manuscript out the door and get on with something else, and I’m very close to that point. And that’s scary. So I stopped working on it for a while.

I’ve seen this happen to my writing friends, but somehow, with my deadline-driven past, I figured I’d be immune. Ha!

There’s an Erica Jong quotation: “I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged.” That probably ties into it. When I stop making my book better and start sending it out, it can be rejected. Before that, it can’t.

And let’s face it, rejections are inevitable. If I’m lucky, there’ll be someone somewhere along the line who says yes, but there will probably be a lot of no’s before it gets to that point. That’s the nature of the business.

Anyhow, I’m back on the writing wagon now, and I have a finish line in mind. On December 7 it goes to my agent and to another trusted friend (thanks, Sue!). That should give me time to address the last few things I want to deal with, and to do a read-aloud and tighten the manuscript. It might be close, but it’s doable.

And then… back to the Christmas knitting to avoid fretting while I wait for feedback. After all, these procrastination projects have to be good for something!

Yesterday was CANSCAIP’s annual Packaging Your Imagination conference in Toronto. I try to make it every year if I can–even the year that I was eight-and-three-quarters months pregnant and not at all sure I’d be able to pop myself free of the desk, once I had wedged myself into it.

This year’s PYI Conference was fabulous, as ever. Tim Wynne-Jones gave the welcome address and had us all laughing. I heard Lena Coakley on Writing Fantasy, Tim Wynne-Jones on the Mechanics of Dialogue, and Allan Stratton on Character. Finally, Richard Scrimger wrapped it all up with a keynote.

Blogging about someone else’s presentation is always a bit awkward. I want to give useful information, but not be unfair to the presenters. I usually try to share one writing tip from each presentation. Today, though, I’m going to be a little bit unfair to Lena, just because she had a series of writing exercises that went together really wonderfully and showed me how ideas can be found in unlikely places. (The rest of her talk was incredible, too–if you ever have the chance to hear her talk about writing craft, don’t miss it!)

Lena had us each make a list of things we thought were “cool.” No parameters other than that. I had favourite colours and foods on my list, as well as Doctor Who, mechanical pencils, teacups, the Edwardian period, dogs, Santorini, knitting with bright yarn, violins, and stained glass. And cowboys–I was thinking about Firefly (when am I not?), and about Ghost Medicine, a fabulous book by Andrew Smith that I recently finished.

Our next job was to pick two that seemed unlikely to go together. We were to come up with a few different combinations. For me, the best/worst fit was cowboys and knitting with bright yarn. But I really didn’t know what to do with that, other than maybe a really corny picture book.

But Lena made us think harder. What would be a situation where those two things went together? And who would be in that situation, or for whom would it be the biggest problem? And after listening to Lena and working through the exercises, my cowboy knitting circle (dusty coats and hats sitting around a campfire on a cold desert night, with the splat of chewing tobacco being spit into the fire, and the steady clack-clack of knitting needles and bright scarves and socks taking form, and everyone’s secretly a little jealous because Trigger-Finger Eddie can do cables…) actually turned into the start of a post-apocalyptic Wild West scenario with a girl in disguise trying to get her brother safely across the prairies to… well, somewhere.

In case you’re wondering, the reason they’re knitting is that a plague wiped out most of the women. The ones that survived are locked away for their own safety, which is all well and good so long as you’re not the one stuck in a “safe house” and used as a glorified breeding mare. Yeah, not exactly original, but what do you want from a thirty-second exercise?

Now I’m not sure the world needs another post-apocalyptic YA right now, and it certainly doesn’t need one written by me, featuring cowboys, when I barely know one end of a horse from another. And honestly, having thought it through, I bet those wild-westers really did know basic knitting, and sewing, and all sorts of skills that they’d need when they were out there on cattle drives and had to do repairs, so my idea probably wasn’t as out-there as I had imagined. But the thing is, this crazy idea that I wasn’t taking very seriously actually sort of turned into something. And I like this girl character; I’m interested in her. And it all came from mashing together two things that didn’t belong.

So thanks, Lena! I’m going to try this again sometime. I wonder what I can get from dogs, teacups and mechanical pencils…

Tim Wynne-Jones made me think about the tiny words we insert into dialogue exchanges. I had never really thought about them consciously before, but it’s true–“she sighed” as a pause is two beats shorter than “she looked away,” and when you start thinking about these things in beats and manipulating them consciously, your brain kind of twists a little. In a good way. It was dialogue as I’d never seen it before, and I’ll be poring through my notes and re-organizing my writing brain for a good long while yet.

Allan Stratton drew on his acting background to share some tips on getting into character. To be honest, the information wasn’t as in-depth or new as I would have liked, but it was a good reminder to always keep a character’s motivations in mind. What are they trying to accomplish, and what will they do to make it happen?

And Richard Scrimger was funny and sometimes shocking, and sometimes real and true in a way that made me wish I could write fast enough to get down everything he said.

It was a great day. I’m already looking forward to next year.

I’m learning how to knit socks. It’s still very much a work in progress. In the picture, you can see my two current projects. The one on the right is for my mom. She has knit me some lovely socks, which are on my feet as often as they’re out of the laundry. I figured it was time to return the favour.

The one on the left is for my long-suffering husband. Because he deserves some cheery footwear, too. 🙂

Why two projects? That’s easy. I ran out of things to do on the first one, at least until I can learn the next step; my good friend and knitting teacher, Jocelyne, lives in Peterborough. And I couldn’t start Mom’s second sock, because those knitting needles were all tied up in her first one. So, last night while watching Sarah’s choir practice, I started a second pair.

Starting another sock was a good reminder. That little chunk of knitting took me a good three or four tries to get started. Once I’ve done a round or two, I’m mostly okay, but getting it going is a bit tricky. I was proud of myself for getting that far; when I started the first sock, it took me weeks to get it to the point where I wasn’t tearing it out every second try.

It felt a lot more achievable this time. So I think this will be my strategy–learn something new on the Mom sock, then practice it (before I learn too many new things and have time to forget) on the Aaron sock.

I wonder if part of the reason why it felt more achievable was just that I knew it was. Because I had done it before. That’s what I’ve found with writing. Before I started writing for children, I had attempted the start of a romance novel. Apart from being terrible (first novel, and not really my genre, as it turns out), it’s unfinished. It felt like such a huge undertaking; I don’t think I even got halfway.

My first completed novel came about as the result of a novel marathon. I put myself in a position where I’d be forced to write to the end, and to write quickly, without overthinking it. It’s pretty terrible, too, although salvageable, I think. I might go back to it one day. But the thing that novel taught me, which kick-started my writing as a career, was that I was capable of finishing.

That’s it. Nothing fancy. It’s not published; it’s not even something I’d bring out to my writing groups, these days. Not without a lot of work, first. But after I reached the end once, I knew I could do it again, so I did, with another novel. And then another one. And eventually, they got to be a bit better.

I’m working the opposite way now; trying to slow down, and go for better quality in early drafts. But I can do that because I’m confident that, one way or another, I have the ability to tell a story from beginning to end. I know I can get there, because I’ve gotten there before.

I’ll let you know if the same can be said of knitting socks…

Last weekend my daughter and I took a road trip. A good friend of mine was celebrating his fortieth birthday. This friend, Paul, is someone I’ve known my entire life; his parents are my parents’ best friends. He and his younger brother, and my younger brother and I, were pretty much raised as siblings. Cousins at the very least.

It’s a strange thing, having these cousin-brothers that I don’t see very often. Whitby and Ottawa aren’t exactly next door. Still, we get together when we can, and I’m always struck by the way it’s a strange blend of knowing someone very well and not knowing them at all.

I have only the vaguest idea of what Paul does at work, for example. I know that he goes in very late (he never did mornings) and stays late. I know he’s crazy-smart and works with computers. But I don’t know who his friends are there, or what matters to him most about his job, or what he would change if he could.

I’ve met a few of his friends over the years. He’s met a few of mine. But we don’t talk about them much, and I don’t know how they fit into the jigsaw-puzzle of his life and relationships. Not the way I do with my real brother.

But we were kids together, and that’s a different kind of knowing. I know what makes him laugh, and what jokes not to make. I know the house he grew up in as well as I know my own. I know what computer games they had, and the shade of the shag carpet in the living room. There was a pole in the basement, supporting one of the roof beams, and it was close enough to the open-sided stairs that we could grab onto it and swing down. Like ninjas. I know that his mom stocked skim milk in the fridge, and his father makes wicked scrambled eggs. I know him with mullet-hair, and he knows me with braces and glasses.

So maybe there’s a kid-Paul in there somewhere, and that’s the person I know. We don’t really get rid of our kid selves, we just add layers on top.

Sometimes I think that’s how I know my characters. I don’t fill in fact sheets for them, not unless I have to. I don’t do personality quizzes for them, or draw family trees. So I couldn’t always tell you what my character’s favourite colour is, or even his middle name. But I have a sense of who he is, underneath, and I work out the rest as I need it. The way you learn about a person by spending time with her, but that initial connection can happen quickly.

Layers matter too. Our experience matters, and informs the choices we make. But it’s the person underneath who matters most.

And Paul, if you read this–you’ll always be one of my favourite real-life characters. 😉 Happy 40th!

Today my friend Sue and I had a random meeting with Maggie Stiefvater! We were at Mabel’s Fables, one of our favourite children’s bookstores in Toronto, planning to look at books and then go for lunch together. On the way up the stairs, we noticed a beautiful new book poster on the wall — it had a raven on it.

It took me a moment to realize it was for a new Maggie Stiefvater book — I hadn’t realized she had one coming out. I love her books. I turned to Sue. “Do you think they’ll have it?”

Upstairs, we found a schmancy cardboard display stand filled with copies of her new book, The Raven Boys, each one sporting a ‘Staff Picks’ sticker. We each grabbed one and started reading the cover flap (after admiring the cover — it really is gorgeous. Kind of spooky and painted-looking).

A woman who works at Mabel’s came by and said how much she had loved the book. Scorpio Races is still her favourite Maggie Stiefvater book, but she really enjoyed the new one, too. I’ve been a Maggie fan since Shiver, so I was sold right then and there. Then, she casually mentioned that Maggie would be stopping by in about twenty minutes to sign copies.

Seriously? Maggie’s American — she lives in Virginia, I think she said. Not exactly a local author!

Sue and I very happily retired to a corner to gossip and wait for Maggie Stiefvater to appear. I had to work at disguising my fan-girly glee; I’m pushing forty, after all.

Maggie and I -- both wearing the writerly uniform of blue jeans and black shirt

Maggie was lovely. It’s always nice when an author you admire is as friendly in person as you hope they will be. We each got a book signed (The Raven Boys for me, Scorpio Races for Sue), and took a photo with Maggie. It wasn’t her usual crowd of zillions; it wasn’t an official event, so there weren’t a lot of people there. Just us and the people from Mabel’s.

I felt very, very lucky to have the chance to meet her like that.

The Mabel’s staff, apparently, told Maggie when she arrived that she had two ‘lady-fans’ waiting upstairs. A polite way of saying that Sue and I are on the old side compared to the usual YA demographic. Works for us!

We talked a little bit about writing. Not much; I felt a bit self conscious about the whole thing, to be honest. She talked about world-building with Sue, and how important it is to know more about the world than appears in the book. For her, though, the story is defined by the characters. She isn’t planning a sequel to Scorpio Races, although she’d love to spend some more time in that world, because those characters are where they need to be for now.

That’s the story, so far, that’s closest to her heart. The one with the most of her in it. Which was interesting to hear, because that seems to be the one that resonates most with readers, as well. Something to think about, there.

I did manage to ask her what she likes to read — strong characters and a bit of magic, apparently. Not so much high fantasy anymore, although she used to read it. She loved The Night Circus. (Me too.)

Maggie and Sue -- same uniform

Sue and I didn’t want to take up too much of her time; we went downstairs and then headed out for lunch. But I’ve been feeling bouncy all day, because authors are my movie stars and rock stars, all rolled into one. I’m grateful that both Maggie and the Mabel’s staff were so friendly and gracious, and that Sue and I had the chance to visit with her.

My daughter nodded solemnly and summed it up very nicely when I picked her up from school and told her about it. “It’s as if (name of Daughter’s friend) met Justin Bieber, right?”

Yes. That’s it.

That’s it exactly.

Two weeks ago, I was in Port Joli, Nova Scotia, for a week-long writing workshop/retreat led by Peter Carver and Kathy Stinson. It was a wonderful experience, and I’m grateful to the Saskatchewan Arts Board and the Access Copyright Foundation for the opportunity to attend.

To be specific, and accounting for the time differences, two weeks ago I was wearing my rainboots and walking down a woodsy trail near the ocean, carrying a purple bag that held my laptop, a bottle of water, and everything else I could think of that I might need in order to spend three hours writing. (Most especially the beautiful fingerless mitts that my friend Jocelyne made for me–it was cold!)

I made my way to a tiny cabin with one table, one chair, and two sets of bunk beds. Positioning the desk just right, I had a view through the woods to the ocean. And I wrote. The only interruption was when a spider dropped down from above, right in front of my face. I shrieked and shoved the chair backward into the bunk beds. Once I untangled chair from legs from bunk bed, I’m ashamed to say that the spider met a grisly end.

(One of the other workshop participants, a wonderful woman from northern Saskatchewan, tells me that spiders should never be killed. They spin the webs that keep away nightmares. I don’t tend to have a lot of those, though, so clearly I’m not sensitive to the spiritual vibrations of spiders.)

Spiders aside, it was a morning of focused writing time in a beautiful setting. And although I tried to write in a different location each day, the other mornings followed the same pattern. The afternoons were spent critiquing one another’s work and learning about writing. After that, we had “play time” until dinner, which generally meant wandering the beach and looking for rocks, or even splashing into the ocean. The food was great, the company was wonderful, and the week was productive and inspiring.

And then I came home.

Don’t get me wrong — I was ready to be here again. I missed my husband and my daughter. But I picked a rushed day to come home to (volunteering with the Terry Fox run, then helping with my daughter’s play rehearsal all afternoon), and the week that followed was start-up week for most of my daughters extracurriculars. Which are many.

It’s a different pace. My thoughts are scattered all over the place, trying to keep track of who needs to be where, at what time, with what. Emails and promises and responsibilities. That’s what writing retreats are for, I guess. Focus.

So I haven’t got focus on my side right now. But I did get a lot of work done during that week away, and part of that work involved making some pretty detailed revision notes. I’m happy that I have them to work from, now. It was wonderful to have that space and that time. And here in the real world again, I feel like I’ve finally got my feet back under me, so I can use what I learned at the retreat and move forward on my manuscript in a more ordinary way.

So there’s no ocean view here, but I can see the garage roof, and the house across the street. And it’s a lot warmer — although I still have my Jocelyne-mitts here, just because they make me smile. There’s a little more than an hour left before I pick my daughter up for lunch. And my revision notes tell me that it’s time to take a look at the Chris-and-Tyler scenes in my manuscript, so that’s my plan for the day.

It was great to be at the retreat. But it’s good to be home, too.

Last week, I finished a new draft of a book I’ve been working on for some time, Tyler’s Intergalactic Spy School.

It isn’t a book launch. It isn’t a contract. It isn’t even done yet — this is just one draft, out of many. Next week I’ll be heading to Nova Scotia with several other writers (thank you to the Saskatchewan Arts Board and the Access Copyright Foundation for the opportunity!), and will have the book critiqued. My husband has already read it, and pointed out a few continuity errors — a hazard of juggling so many different revisions. And just yesterday, my daughter pointed out gleefully that in one spot, I have the wrong character name down so it looks as if a character who couldn’t possibly be in that scene is wandering around a cabin with Tyler.

But every now and then in the writing, you reach a point that feels like a milestone. This was a milestone for me. I’ve even sent this draft to my agent for her feedback — she saw an early draft a couple of years ago, but I spared her all of the iterations in between.

The thing is, I’m pretty good at tearing things apart. I will question even the most basic premise of a story I’ve written, and start from scratch over and over again. It doesn’t always feel like progress, although, as one wise writer pointed out the other week, with each draft and rewrite I’m learning more about the craft. At least, I hope that’s the case.

It takes a lot more time to build a story up again and reconnect all the severed plotlines. And sometimes I can just tell I’m on the wrong track, and that I haven’t laid down all the right pieces to lead to a good ending. Then I scrap it and start again. I’ve done that many times with this book.

This version feels closer. It needs work, but that’s okay. I think I might actually have the shape of the story right this time. At the very least, I’ve written a cohesive draft that leads to an ending that I don’t hate. That I even kind of think has potential. This draft was worth sharing, where so many others over the past couple of years haven’t been.

My daughter is reading it. She picks it up willingly and asks me questions about what’s coming (which, of course, I don’t answer). Sometimes she reads lines aloud, laughing, which is something she usually only does with her favourite books. I feel honoured beyond all imagining when that happens. And, holding my own with every insecure writer on the planet, I get fretful in the silences in between.

For now, I feel proud to have wrestled the story to this stage. That feeling might change next week, when the feedback starts to roll in. I might even tear the story apart again, although I hope not. I hope that I’ve reached the point where I can finally edit the story I’ve got, rather than doing  drastic rewrites connected only by a title. But if it’s necessary, that’s what I’ll do.

Even if I’m finally on the right track, the editing process won’t all be peaches. There will be that stage where I discover that my story is the worst drivel ever to have graced a computer screen, and that I should probably get a job in a toothpick factory. And at some point, my manuscript will be such a mess of deleted sections and new chunks and scribbled comments and sticky notes that it will be hard to remember that there was this moment, in early September, when it looked like a real story. When I was happy with it, and thought it was worth working with.

But I’ll try. Because in any climb, you have to stop now and then to admire the view and feel happy about what you’re doing, even if there’s half a mountain still ahead of you. This blog post, maybe, is me taking a picture. For later, when I need it.

So right now: my draft is finished. I have a story that you can read from beginning to end, and it mostly makes sense. And some cool things happen, and there’s an ending. (That part’s key. Endings are hard.) It feels good to have gotten to this point.

Maybe there should be cake!

🙂

The other day I had lunch with an old friend. Talk turned, as it usually does sooner or later, to books. My friend isn’t a bookavore; she reads for pleasure, but doesn’t often have the time for it. When she does find a book she loves, she reads it compulsively, unable to put it down.

It had been a long time since that had happened, but, she told me sheepishly, there was a book that grabbed her like that just recently.

I asked her what it was. It was the ‘sheepishly’ that interested me; my friend is usually very forthright, and never the type to look away.

“It’s not exactly high literature or anything,” she said, playing with her fork. “It was Fifty Shades of Grey.”

This book caused quite a stir in my little Twitterverse a few months ago, largely due to its fanfic origins. I waited to hear what she had to say about it. What made her love the book so much?

It wasn’t the sex on every other page. She rolled her eyes about that one, and said it got to be a little much, after a while. No, it wasn’t the sex, although that seems to be what the book is famous for. It was the characters.

I’ve never read the book, although I’ve read a lot of different opinions about it online. None of them said anything about outstanding character development. But nothing I’d come across was from a real reader, someone who picked up the book out of pure curiosity and enjoyment, not with a writing-related agenda. And do you know what? I liked what my friend had to say.

She connected with the female main character. She identified with her. My friend knows what it’s like to feel insecure and not good enough (don’t we all?), and to wonder what someone she finds attractive could possibly see in her. And as that character grew in confidence and strength, my friend took that journey with her. The character started to accept herself, and to accept that she could be ‘good enough’ — and my friend decided that maybe she could, too.

Reading the book made her feel good about herself.

My friend is intelligent, capable and driven. She’s an entrepreneur. She has friends and family who love and value her. She’s a kind, responsible person who is always there for the people who need her. We’re both creeping up on forty in a few years, but I think she looks pretty darned incredible. Her husband has been crazy-mad in love with her since high school, when they met — I know because I was there!

I guess what I’m trying to say is, there’s no reason why this smart, attractive, accomplished woman should ever doubt for a second that she’s not miles beyond ‘good enough.’ But sometime she does; we all do. Heck, I write for kids — it’s entirely too easy for me to slip back into that insecure twelve-year-old skin. Maybe because I never entirely crawled out of it.

So if this book, if any book, gives her what she needs to go on a character journey and realize her own self worth, that’s brilliant. On the strength of that alone, I would never begrudge E.L. James a single cent of the kazillions of dollars this book has brought in, whatever people might be saying about its fanfic origins. And besides, I love any book that gets people reading. Any book.

Am I going to read it? Probably not. But I’m glad my friend did, if the vicarious character journey helped her to see herself the way others see her — as someone special. Someone fabulous. If any book does that for any person, the author can be proud.

So no, I probably won’t rush out and add it to my teetering to-read pile. But when I see someone else reading it, I’m going to smile, and hope they get as much out of it as my friend did. And someday, I hope to write a book that takes someone else on a journey like that — the right book for the right person at the right time.

And maybe, just maybe, this helps me understand the whole Twilight thing a bit better…