Book Review – STILL LIFE WITH TORNADO by A.S. King

 

I am a huge fan of A.S. King and have been ever since I read her novel PLEASE IGNORE VERA DIETZ. The voice was so authentic and gut-wrenching. Part of me WAS Vera – at least, my teen-self floating close to the surface could really relate to the heavy shit Vera was going through. (Honestly, you should stop whatever you’re doing and go read this awesome book right now. Seriously. I will NOT be offended.)

Each book of hers that I have read has been just as stellar as the first. And did I mention that she always adds a dash of magical realism just to make things even more interesting?

STILL LIFE WITH TORNADO by A. S. King

Published by: Penguin Young Readers Group

Release Date: October 11, 2016

Genres: Young Adult, Magical Realism, Contemporary

 

Plot Summary:

Sarah can’t draw. This is a problem, because as long as she can remember, she has “done the art.” She thinks she’s having an existential crisis. And she might be right; she does keep running into past and future versions of herself as she explores the urban ruins of Philadelphia. Or maybe she’s finally waking up to the tornado that is her family, the tornado that six years ago sent her once-beloved older brother flying across the country for a reason she can’t quite recall.

After decades of staying together “for the kids” and building a family on a foundation of lies and violence, Sarah’s parents have reached the end. Now Sarah must come to grips with years spent sleepwalking in the ruins of their toxic marriage. As Sarah herself often observes, nothing about her pain is remotely original —and yet it still hurts. Insightful, heartbreaking, and ultimately hopeful, this is a vivid portrait of everyday abuse and survival that will linger with readers long after the last page.

Sarah’s crisis starts when her art teacher tells her that there is no such thing as an original idea and that’s it. She can no longer create. That “truth bomb” explodes her entire world and she starts spiraling. But is that really what happened? Is that really where the problem started?

Sarah starts bumping in to her past and future selves who have a few things to say about Sarah’s crisis. At first, she thinks maybe she’s hallucinating, but other people can see her other selves, too. Her other selves have memories she can’t remember and opinions that rub her the wrong way. Will she listen to them or continue to self-destruct? (Even though self-destruction isn’t an original idea.)

That’s the other thing I love about King’s books, they are deceptively deep. You’ll be seeing things from the perspective of a pagoda, learning how to build an invisible helicopter, sending passengers love as they fly overhead in airplanes, or having conversations with different versions of yourself then BAM! You realize she’s hit you across the brain with some heavy philosophical shit out of nowhere that makes you disoriented for days. (In a good way.) She tackles heavy issues in a fantastical way like no one else.

Trust me, once you read one of her books, you’ll want to read them all. You can start with this one. It’s amazing.

Learn more about A.S. King here.

 

Fall is for Festivals! Book Festivals are Everywhere

Nothing makes a bibliophile happier than going to an event that celebrates books, where they have the opportunity to immerse themselves in the language of books, hang out with other like-minded booklovers, and BUY MORE BOOKS! Or maybe that’s just me.

Original Photo credit Jaredd Craig on Unsplash

I, for one, am thrilled at how much our literary world has grown in Oklahoma in the past few years – from the increase in independent book store openings (which has led to an increase in author events!) to new book festivals and book cons, I’ll take it all!

Here are a couple of great events that are fairly new to our state coming up this fall that you won’t want to miss!

OK Book Fest – September 21, 2019 – Oklahoma City Boathouse District

The Mission of this festival is to bring “authors and readers together to create an exciting venue where literacy, artistic expression, and cultural experiences are celebrated”.

This is a completely FREE event. Featuring over 100 authors from around the country, including some of our own SCBWI OK favorites!

 

Tammi Sauer                                        Jerry Bennett      

 

 

 

 

Gwendolyn Hooks                               Brenda Maier  

 

 

 

 

Traci Sorell                                             Kim Ventrella 

 

 

 

 

Barbara Lowell                                       Brad McClelland     

 

 

 

 

Mariana Llanos                                      Mike Wimmer     

 

 

 

 

Jennifer Lynn Barnes                          Una Belle Townsend

 

 

 

 

Susan Myers                                          Alexandra Ott

 

 

 

 

There will be panel discussions, presentations, crafts, poetry readings, book signings, food trucks, and more. Check out the website for a full listing of authors and for a schedule of events.

 

Oklahoma Teen Book Con (OKTBC) – November 16, 2019 – OU Memorial Union Norman, OK

 

The OK Teen Book Con is a FREE event that strives to connect teens to YA authors and their books. There will be author panels, book signings, author meet ups, a teen artist gallery and more!

It has a new home in Norman, OK, this year which will probably make it much better attended than when it was in Guthrie. Last year they had the awesome Maggie Stiefvater of the RAVEN CYCLE books – I’m a HUGE fan!

This year, the phenomenal Neal Shusterman will be the Keynote Speaker! I had the pleasure of seeing him speak at the LA SCBWI conference a few years ago and he was wonderful. He talked about his fabulous book CHALLENGER DEEP. So moving.

 

The fine folks at OKTBC keep announcing other authors that will be attending a little at a time, just to keep us hungry for more. You can follow along on their Twitter or their Instagram account to see who else will be announced and to keep up with information on this event.

If you are a YA author and would like to attend this event, you can find an author submission form and the submission criteria on the event website.

How about you? Are you planning on attending any book-related events this fall?

The Creative Soul and Depression – A Post Worth Revisiting

I originally wrote this post while participating in a group blog, The Great Noveling Adventure, that is no longer active. It was first published on March 9, 2014.

I still find it very relevant to me. Maybe you will, too.

 

Photo by Andrei Lazarev on Unsplash

In a very nebulous, non-scientific, late-at-night-inside-my-head-before-I-fall-asleep way, I have wondered about the connection between artistic talent and depressive temperament.

Many writers and artists I know, including myself, struggle with depression in one form or another.

Why?

Is it because we are more emotionally sensitive to the world at large? Is it because as the saying goes, writing is easy, all you have to do is open a vein and bleed?

I came across two pieces on the web this week that added some food for thought to this question.

• This first piece I heard on Fresh Air while driving in my car. It’s a fascinating interview on NPR of Alexander Payne, the director of “Nebraska”. At one point he discussed how all great actors have ready access to their emotions at any time. What he said next was such an, “Ah ha!” moment for me, I sat in my driveway for ten minutes in my car mulling it over after the interview ended.

And that’s why life is often so difficult for them because they can’t keep their emotions tamped down, as like…as you and I can. So then if you can put an oil pump on that spurting oil well of emotion, then you can be a professional actor…

It’s beautiful to see how fully they wish to give of themselves. And I’ve always been confused by people saying of a certain actor’s performance, oh, it’s so brave. What a brave performance. What I think, that’s what they’re there to do, they’re there to do anything. It’s not brave. I think it’s the job. And it also should be coming from an attitude of fun and playfulness, and isn’t it delightful to be doing this and to be expressing these emotions and going deeply, deeply into who we are. And showing those of us who have less ready access to our emotions, and often have to pay people to help us get in touch with our emotions, to show us what’s available, what’s beneath the surface. It’s beautiful what they do.

I loved this so much. It made absolute sense to me. How similar is that to a writer connecting to the emotional truth of a scene? Of a character?

• This second piece was written by one of my favorite YA authors, Libba Bray. She recently posted this deeply personal look at her own struggle with depression on her blog, entitled Miles and Miles of No-Man’s Land. I would strongly encourage you to take a moment to hop on over and bookmark this page. You will want to read this over and over again.

She describes depression as I’ve experienced so well. You can have a good moment and still be depressed. You can laugh at a joke, make it through a day okay and still be on the verge of losing it.

As she describes it:

There is an undertow to depression. It doesn’t take you all at once. It leaves you with some false sense that you are coping. That you are in control. That you have the shore still well in sight, until, at some point, you raise your head to find yourself all alone, battered by rough seas with absolutely no idea which way you should swim.

Photo by Ian Espinosa on Unsplash

I was moved by Bray’s words. She mentions a shame that comes with depression that makes it hard to talk about sometimes because it’s an invisible disease; you can’t see the wound it leaves like a broken limb. The gaping hole we may feel inside isn’t obvious to others around us. This is why it’s even more important to know that you are not alone.

So what are your thoughts on the creative soul and depression? Do these thoughts resonate with you?

 

2019 SCBWI Oklahoma Twitter Chats

 

 

One of my favorite “jobs” is that of Social Media Coordinator for the SCBWI Oklahoma Region, and one of my favorite things about that position is hosting a monthly Twitter Chat for our members where we talk for an hour with someone from the children’s publishing world, be it an agent, editor, author, or illustrator. The conversations are always lively and enlightening.

 

We meet on the fourth Tuesday of the month from 7-8pm CST using the hashtag #okscbwichat. If you’ve ever been curious about a Twitter Chat, join us! We love meeting new people.

Here are details on the chats we’ve already had so far in 2019, plus those still remaining. You can read the recaps for all of our chats, from this year and from those in years past, HERE.

---

 

JANUARY 22^nd– Jonathan Koelsch

Jonathan Koelsch has been illustrating professionally since graduating with honors from the University of Central Oklahoma in 1996 with a bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design, and attended Kansas City Art Institute’s illustration program for 3 years.

Jonathan frequently incorporates graphic design in his illustration work, and as an illustrator skilled in design is often hired by designers to create icons and logos. He has illustrated and designed comics, covers, posters and graphic novels for several independent publishers, in many art styles, from “American” style, to cartoon, to manga.

Most recently, Jonathan fully illustrated the two-thirds (42 pages) and cover of the Luther graphic novel, for Faith Inkubators, a Lutheran curriculum publisher (lutherstudy.com).

You can learn more about Jonathan on his website.

His Twitter handle is @jkArts 

You can read the chat recap with Jonathan HERE.

 

FEBRUARY 12^th– Jennifer March Soloway – SPECIAL CHAT

Jennifer March Soloway is a literary agent who represents authors and illustrators of picture book, middle grade, and young adult stories. She enjoys all genres and categories, such as laugh-out-loud picture books and middle-grade adventures, but her sweet spot is young adult.

A suspense junkie, she adores action-packed thrillers and mysteries. Throw in a dash of romance, and she’s hooked! But as much as she loves a good thriller, she finds her favorite novels are literary stories about ordinary teens focused on family, relationships, sexuality, mental illness, or addiction. Regardless of genre, she is actively seeking fresh new voices and perspectives underrepresented in literature.

Jennifer is actively building her client list and welcomes queries to soloway@andreabrownlit.com.

Find out more about Jennifer and about her full wish list by visiting her agency’s website.

Her Twitter handle is: @marchsoloway

You can read the chat recap with Jennifer HERE.

 

FEBRUARY 26^th– Mekisha Telfer

Mekisha Telfer is an associate editor at Roaring Brook Press (Macmillian), where she is building a list of picture books, middle-grade, and young adult novels. She got her start in publishing in 2014 as an editorial assistant with Simon and Schuster BFYR/Salaam reads, and has also worked briefly at Glasstown Entertainment.

Some titles she’s had the privilege of working on include the New York Times bestselling series TO ALL THE BOYS I’VE LOVED BEFORE by Jenny Han, EMERGENCY CONTACT by Mary H. K. Choi, THE GAUNTLET by Karuna Riazi, and Stuart Gibb’s Moon Base Alpha series. Mekisha is committed to supporting unrepresented voices and is always on the hunt for character-driven stories with a mix of humor and heart.

You can learn more about what Mekisha is looking for from her manuscript wish list here.

Her Twitter handle is: @MekishaTelfer

You can read the chat recap with Mekisha HERE.

 

MARCH 26^th– Alex Slater

Literary Agent Alex Slater has been with Trident Media Group since 2010. For many years he oversaw the foreign rights sales of all of Trident’s young adult and children’s projects, which includes the work of R.J. Palacio and Louis Sachar.

Now with his own list, he’s kept his focus on YA and middle grade with an eye towards contemporary fiction, light fantasy, narrative nonfiction, and any work in general that expands the ideas of representation in children’s literature. Particularly, his manuscript wish list includes graphic novels, stories that blend genres, and historically underrepresented voices. Some of his clients today include Keah Brown, Jodi Kendall, Adam Perry, and SCBWI’s 2017 Emerging Voices Award Winner Anuradha D. Rajurkar.

You can learn more about what Alex is looking for from his manuscript wishlist here. Or by visiting his agency website here.

His Twitter handle is: @abuckslater

You can read the chat recap with Alex HERE.

 

APRIL 23rd – Jess Rinker

Children’s author Jess Rinker received her MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has won many awards for her work including short story, creative nonfiction, and most recently an honorable mention for the Katherine Paterson Prize from Hunger Mountain for her middle grade novel THE YOUNG TRAVELERS CLUB.

In addition to writing, Jess also teaches in the MFA program at Sierra Nevada College and works as a freelance developmental editor.

Jessica Rinker’s debut picture book biography, GLORIA TAKES A STAND, comes out March 12, 2019 from Bloomsbury Children’s Books. Her second biography, SEND A GIRL: The Brenda Berkman Story, comes out March 2020.

​Jess also writes middle grade and her debut novel THE DARE SISTERS comes out Fall 2020 and Fall 2021 from Imprint/Macmillan.

​Currently she lives in New Jersey in a tiny town along the Delaware River with her husband, Joe McGee, who is also a children’s author.

You can learn more about her by visiting her website.

Her Twitter handle is: @jm_rinker 

You can read the chat recap with Jess HERE.

 

MAY 28^th– Lisa Papademetriou

Lisa Papademetriou is the author of A TALE OF HIGHLY UNUSUAL MAGIC (a South Asia Book Award Highly Commended Title), the New York Times-bestselling novel MIDDLE SCHOOL: MY BROTHER IS A BIG, FAT LIAR and HOMEROOM DIARIES (both with James Patterson), the CONFECTIONATELY YOURS series (over 750,000 books in print), and many other novels for middle grade and young adult readers.

Her books have appeared on many prestigious lists, including Bank Street Best Books of the Year, the NYPL Books for the Teen Age, the Texas Lone Star Reading List, andtranslated into French, German, Spanish, Polish, Italian, Portuguese, & Japanese. Her latest book, APARTMENT 1986, was a School Library Journal Popular Pick.

She has written for the Washington Post, authors the StART Up Studio column for Innovate413, and serves on the faculty of the MFA program at Sierra Nevada College. A former editor, she is the founder of the humorous grammar website, IvanaCorrectya.com.

Lisa evinces her passion for community and education by serving on the board of the Northampton Education Foundation, Click Workspace, and Athena Girls, and by giving workshops locally and across the United States on the subjects of writing, grammar, and creative courage.

You can learn more about her by visiting her website.

Her Twitter handle is: @axyfabulous 

You can read the chat recap with Lisa HERE.

 

JUNE 25^th– Joe McGee

Children’s author Joe McGee writes funny, quirky, offbeat stories for kids (and adults who still hold a piece of the magic). He has two picture books published, PEANUT BUTTER & BRAINS (Abrams) his debut PB which came out in 2015, and the sequel, ALIENS & JELLY (2017). A third book in the series, PEANUT BUTTER & SANTA CLAUS is scheduled for release in 2019.

Joe also has two series of Chapter Books coming out with Simon & Shuster (Aladdin) with the first book in the CREATURE CAMPERS series coming out this January 2019, and the first book in the JUNIOR MONSTER SCOUTS series scheduled for release in Fall 2019.

Joe is also on the faculty of Sierra Nevada College, Writing for Children & Young Adults low-residency MFA program, and is on the faculty of Rowan University, Writing Arts department.

You can learn more about him by visiting his website.

His Twitter handle is: @mcgeejp

You can read the chat recap with Joe HERE.

 

JULY 23^rd– Sharon Martin

Sharon Edge Martin has been a writer since she wrote her first poems at the age of eight.  She has worked as a waitress, an artist’s model, a musician, a bookkeeper, a jewelry designer, a newspaper editor, and a teacher, but no matter what other job she is doing, Martin is always a writer.

 Martin’s fiction stories have appeared in adult and juvenile magazines, including Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Her poetry for children and adults has been published in Amelia, Byline, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and dozens of small press and literary magazines and anthologies, including Elegant Rage, Dragon Poet Review, Malpais Review, Poets’ Market from Writers’ Digest Books, and in Michael Bugeja’s The Art and Craft of Poetry.  Her poetry chapbook, No Sanctuary, was published by Amelia Press in 1997.  In 2017,  Froggy Bottom Blues, a picture book illustrated by Timothy Lange, was published by Doodle and Peck. She won the OWFI Best Book of Poetry for her book, Not a Prodigal, and was a finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award for the same book in 2019.

Martin is an active member of SCBWI Oklahoma and is past president of Oklahoma Writers’ Federation.  In addition to her writing for children and young adults, she pens a weekly column on education and politics.  The essays appear regularly in The Oklahoma Observer.  She is active in the spoken poetry scene in Oklahoma and hosts a monthly reading in the historic Tidal School.  The building, now owned by Tidewater Winery, was commissioned by John D. Rockefeller to serve the children of his oil company employees.

Sharon and her husband, artist Dale Martin, live on a farm in Oklahoma. When she isn’t writing, you can find her tending chickens or working in her garden.

You can learn more about Sharon by visiting her website.

Her Twitter handle is @sharonedge.

You can read the chat recap with Sharon HERE.

 

SEPTEMBER 24^th– Rachel Murray

Associate editor Rachel Murray started at Henry Holt Books for Young Readers in 2014. She has experience with picture books, chapter books, middle grade fiction, and young adult novels in a variety of genres. She has had the pleasure of working on projects such as Stegothesaurus by Bridget Heos, illustrated by T. L. McBeth; First & Then and subsequent books by Emma Mills; and the NYT-bestselling Remnant Chronicles by Mary E. Pearson.

Rachel has begun building her own list with picture books and is looking to expand into the middle grade and young adult space. She has particular interest in horror/ghost stories/anything that gives her chills, contemporary romance, and magical realism. She welcomes characters with diverse backgrounds and perspectives.

You can learn more about Rachel by visiting her publishing house website.

Her Twitter handle is @rachelrmurray

You can read the chat recap with Rachel HERE.

 

OCTOBER 22^nd– Gwendolyn Hooks

 Gwendolyn Hooks is the author of the NAACP IMAGE AWARD winning picture book biography, Tiny Stitches-The Life of Medical Pioneer Vivien Thomas and Block Party, a Junior Library Guild Selection. Her newest books are The Garden and If You Were A Kid During the Civil Rights Movement. Gwen’s next book, Ona Judge Outwits the Washingtons: An Enslaved Woman Fights for Freedom,is scheduled to release on October 1^stof this year.

Other books include the popular Pet Club and Confetti Kids series. She writes both fiction and nonfiction, early readers, and chapter books from her home Oklahoma. An advocate of diverse books, Gwendolyn shares their beauty by encouraging young readers to explore the world through them.

You can learn more about Gwen by visiting her website.

Her Twitter handle is @GwentheGweat

---

We take a break in November and December due to the holidays. We’ll return again in January 2020 with a brand new Twitter chat schedule! It’s filling up fast, but if you have a suggestion for a guest, feel free to let me know. I’m happy to hear your ideas.