Lara Zielin

Last night, tornadoes hit close to home. Literally. It’s one thing to research and write a book about tornadoes, as I did with ‘The Waiting Sky,’ but it’s another thing entirely when they destroy homes and lives around you.

This image comes from Baynews 9 TV, and they have a slideshow of the damage here.

It’s hard to know how to help in these situations. One of the best solutions is to support the Red Cross as they help the people who lost their homes. (Fortunately, there was no loss of life with this storm.) The Red Cross of Southeast Michigan is already setting up a shelter at the middle school in Dexter, Michigan — the town most severely hit. You can learn more about their efforts here, and there’s also a donation button.

I just gave. I want to do more, but for right now, supporting the people on the ground who have the tools to help, seems like the right course of action. My thoughts and prayers are with the families affected by this storm.

This video shows the tornado approaching Dexter homes.

Josh Berk is that guy. The funny guy. The cheeky guy. The guy who’s not afraid to make poop and boner jokes to get you giggling — but somehow still crafts substantive, amazing stories with depth. His debut novel, ‘The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin,’ was awesome in that way, and I’m not the only one who thinks so. The book was a nominee for the New York State Charlotte Award as well as the Pennsylvania Young Readers Choice Award, and it WON the Cooperative Children’s Book Center Award.

Now, Josh is back with his second book, ‘Guy Langman, Crime Scene Procrastinator.’ The Kirkus review — and we all know how hard to please they are — praised its wealth of “good boner jokes.”

Josh has been asking authors to read excerpts from his new book, and when he asked me, I jumped at the chance. Not literally, but I did squee.

Here’s me reading a passage, and if you want more clips of authors reading passages from it, you should totally check out Josh’s blog, which, in his words, is “sometimes about writing, sometimes about MC Hammer, and sometimes about things that happen to me in the bathroom.” After the video, stick around to win a copy of Josh’s new book!

Okay, you know what? I’m not just giving away a copy of Josh’s new book, ‘Guy Langman.’ I’m also giving away a copy of ‘The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin.‘ So that’s TWO prizes instead of just one! Zomg, leave a comment to win! Contest ends March 23rd!

Have you ever pulled off the perfect prank? The one that has you laughing so hard you cry and maybe pee your pants a little? One that’s both funny and cheeky — but doesn’t hurt anyone or damage any property? I can only think of one time I pulled off a prank that met that criteria. I was at the mall with friends, and I was sixteen.

You might think this prank takes place IN the mall, but oh no. It takes place just OUTSIDE the mall. As we were leaving, we spotted some yellow caution tape cordoning off a part of the sidewalk (I think they’d just repaired the sidewalk), just outside the main doors. Here, let me set the stage for you.

(Side note: I have NO IDEA why it was called London Square Mall either. This was Wisconsin, about as far from Piccadilly Circle and Her Majesty as you could get. But props to them for trying to be creative.)

We were all staring at the caution tape. And I think we were all thinking about the sidewalk chalk we’d just purchased. A whole, huge tub of it, just waiting to be opened and used.

And so you can imagine what we did. We drew a crime scene behind the yellow tape.

My friend Cara, brave soul, actually laid down on the sidewalk so we could get the outline right.

We were fast. Exacting. Ninjas of chalk, really.

And then, when we were finished, a bus pulled up. A whole, huge bus full of old people being taken to the mall on an outing. And through the glass, I could see their eyes as they took in the (crime) scene we’d just created. And it looked something like this:

And then? We nearly couldn’t make it to our car because we had lost it with laughter.

Later that afternoon, we returned to the, uh, scene of the crime, and there was a huge puddle of water where someone had washed away all the chalk.

To this day, I love thinking about the complaints that prompted that cleanup.

So this one time? There was this half marathon. It was in Wisconsin. And it had LEINENKUGEL’S in the name! And I thought to myself, “There is no better half marathon in the whole world.”

And I signed up for it.

Except, I’d never done a half marathon before. And I didn’t read the fine print. Which said, and I quote:

Half Marathon course: (Challenging) Nice mix of hills and flats. One major climb at about the 4.5 mile mark. Finish with a taxing 1,000 meter gradual climb.

Before I knew it, I was running by myself and bawling my eyes out because I wasn’t just tired and overwhelmed. I was also last. Dead last by about a half mile. I mean, the water stations were closed down by the time I got there. I was humiliated beyond belief. And so I stopped. At about mile seven I threw in the towel. I said screw this race, and I gave up.

Until now.

I might be slow, but I think I can do this race now. In fact, if I have to crawl over the goddang finish line, I’m going to do it and I’m going to beat this stupid course. I didn’t have many New Years resolutions, but this was one: I am going to finish the Leinenkugel’s half marathon.

And, here’s the other thing. When I did this race before, I was in a pretty unhappy place. I was in a struggling relationship, I felt hopeless about my career prospects, I believed I was fat, and I thought, “If I could just finish this race, I’ll be worth something.”

And when I didn’t finish, I just felt six thousand times more hopeless about myself.

Now, though, I know the truth. It doesn’t matter what I weigh, where I work, how fast I run — nothing. I matter anyway. I wish that, before, even if I had been dead last, I would have felt proud for even being out there. But I just wasn’t in that kind of a head space. Things are different now, though, which means this course and I are going to meet again. And even if I’m dead last, I’m going to finish. And then I’m going to celebrate among people I love, and who love me back.

And that is going to be a major, major victory.

Comments are officially closed, and the results are in: We have a winner for the LIONS OF LITTLE ROCK giveaway!

Congratulations, Margaret Yang!

I know you will love Kristin’s new book. Thanks for commenting, and happy reading!!

I love celebrating milestones, so when The Waiting Sky was finally edited and approved for publication (August 2, 2012 baby!) I wanted to mark the occasion in a fabulous way.

Celebrating 'The Waiting Sky' with Dick and Jane.

As you may know from posts like this and this, Rob and I love to visit antique stores. So when a local store had an old-school Dick and Jane book for sale, I paid attention.

You see, the main character in The Waiting Sky is named Jane, and in some ways the Dick and Jane text fit her perfectly. “Oh, see Jane!” is pretty much what you want to say as she begins to figure out who she is, and to manage the complex relationships around her. The picture of Jane riding off into the distance, leaving Dick behind (heh) is awesome.

I bought the book and had two of the pages framed. They hang side-by-side in my office and I am delighted every time I look at them.

For Aggie Winchester, I celebrated the book’s publication with these Fluevog “Munster” shoes, and I love those too. But the Dick and Jane art might be my favorite. Sometimes the simplest words can have the biggest impact.

Kristin Levine didn’t always want to be a writer, but she (wisely) changed her mind, and now she’s officially in the Cool Kids Club. In fact, she’s pretty much at the head table now that her second book, THE LIONS OF LITTLE ROCK, is out on shelves. It follows two girls whose unbreakable friendship challenges the notions of segregation and Jim Crow in 1950s Arkansas.

Kristin was kind enough to stop by the blog and chat about her inspirations, her writing process, and of course, I asked her to tackle the ultimate question: cheese or chocolate? If you leave a comment on this post, you’ll be entered to win a copy of LIONS, which she’s kindly giving away!

Q: What inspired you to write Lions?

KL: When I was in elementary school in the early 1980s, my mainly white neighborhood was paired with a mainly black neighborhood to create two integrated elementary schools, one for grades K-3 and the other for grades 4-6. When I asked my parents why I had to ride the bus to school, instead of just going to the school nearest my house, they told me it was a great opportunity for me to go to school with people who were different from me, by race, social class, religion, etc.  They said it was only fair that the busing be shared by both neighborhoods. Their enthusiasm for the pairing of our schools made a huge impression on me.

In addition, my mother grew up in Little Rock.  When I started asking her about her childhood, the very first thing she told me was about listening to the lions roar [in the nearby zoo] at night. Something about that detail stuck with me. Because of my personal experience with integration and my mother’s family history, 1950s Little Rock seemed like an obvious choice of time and place for my second book.

KL: I was good at math like Marlee, and I think I shared her sense of wanting to do what was right, but otherwise, I don’t think I was too much like her as a child.

The idea of Marlee being so quiet came from my editor telling me I needed to work on Marlee’s “voice.”  I think I took her a little too literally, but I started thinking about a girl I had known when I was in junior high who almost never spoke. Once I tried briefly to be friendly to her, but when she didn’t respond right away, I went back to simply ignoring her like everyone else.  I’ve always wondered what would have happened if I’d tried a little harder.

I’m not shy at all in person (in fact, I love to talk), but sometimes I do feel really shy when posting things online.  I see other people posting all these cute, clever things on Facebook and I don’t know how they do it.  I’ll obsess for 20 minutes over a status update, then decide that maybe someone could misunderstand me and be offended and end up not posting anything all.  Maybe it has to do with being a writer and feeling like everything I write has to be just right.

In any case, like Marlee I’m trying to get better at participating in discussions, especially online, and not just lurking in the background. So yeah, I guess I do believe authors always put part of themselves in their characters.

When I was eleven years old and in 5th grade, I was having a hard year.  I’m not sure exactly why — changing friends, puberty, feeling like I didn’t fit in, etc.  At one point during that year I read Lloyd Alexander’s Chronicles of Prydain series (The Book of Three, The Black Cauldron, The Castle of Llyr, Taran Wanderer, The High King) and I loved them so much, I started carrying around all five of them in a bag with me at all times, just in case I wanted to read part of them again.

It sounds like this would have caused me to be even weirder and more isolated, but it actually had the opposite effect.  I started loaning out my books, and pretty soon, everyone in the 5th grade was reading them.  Eventually, even the cutest, most popular boy in school came up to me and asked to borrow the first book in the series!  So those books have always maintained a special place in my heart.

More recently, The Watsons Go to Birmingham, 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis was probably the biggest influence on The Lions of Little Rock and my first book, The Best Bad Luck I Ever Had. I love Curtis’ mix of humor and history, and just adore what a loving family he portrays in that book, despite all the conflict and drama.

Sigh.  Well, that was a huge mistake.  Turns out, I am not a “seat-of-your pants” kind of a writer.  (I totally admire those of you who are!)  I guess it was a good thing to learn about myself, but it was painful to realize I needed to go back and plot things out when I was already 170+ pages into the story.

Needless to say, for my next book I shall return to the plotting method.

Q: What advice would you give to any aspiring authors reading this?

Kristin said she didn't want to be a writer when she was younger, but this photo of her typing away could indicate otherwise.

KL: Find a good critique group.  Learning to give and receive criticism — and how to respond to constructive criticism from others without losing what makes your voice unique — is an invaluable skill.  Also, the thicker your skin (think rhinoceros) the better. My editorial letters were always pages long. But the thing is, my editor was right like 99% of the time, so I had to find a way to listen to and respond to her comments.

KL: I’m still trying to figure out exactly what I’m going to do next.  I’ve always wanted to write sci-fi or fantasy, which at first seems like a big leap, but I guess it’s really not. In historical fiction, you’re trying to create a time and place, just like you’re creating a different world in sci-fi or fantasy.

But of course I also really enjoy historical fiction.  And now that I’ve based one book on my grandfather (The Best Bad Luck I Ever Had) and one book very loosely on my mother (The Lions of Little Rock) my father is clamoring that it’s HIS turn for a book.  So there may be a book about a paperboy in Chicago in my future!

Thanks again for stopping by, Kristin! And friends, don’t forget to leave a comment to be entered to win your very own copy of LIONS!

Dear TotallyLooksLike.com,

My dad TOTALLY LOOKS LIKE Tom Clancy.

You may know Tom from such works as The Hunt for Red October, a novel that became a movie starring Alec Baldwin, before Alec made me snort milk out my nose as Jack Donaghy, saying things like, “My name is Jack Donaghy, and I have bedbugs.”

You may know my dad from … drinks like gin and tonics. He makes a mean one.

Props to my mom who is holding the book.

Recently, a friend of mine asked for recommendations on how to get through a tough run. After a brutal jog today, I was inspired to write these “I will” statements. Even though my run pretty much sucked, I got through it. And I’ll get through the next one.

I WILL.

There are always good books to read. Always. But for some reason, I just feel like the young-adult shelves in particular are PACKED right now with amazing novels. I’m not a book critic (I know how much work goes into books, even the bad ones, and I’m not about to slam anybody) but I do love crowing about amazing works. Here are four:

Zomg, the awesome in this photo threatens to overtake us all!

Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins. Funny, fast-paced and flirty, Anna gives readers the experience of Paris without the expense of a plane ticket. Oh, and it’s all about falling in love, and who doesn’t want to fall in love in Paris? Je a’dore!

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater. Words almost fail to describe how epically awesome this book is. Stiefvater builds an entire world where wild, dangerous horses come out of the sea and men try to race them. The point of view differs between two characters who develop feelings for each other (ergo, a romance! yay!), but the book is totally seamless. The writing, the story, the landscape, the horses — everything is just beautiful.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor. I didn’t realize this was a first in a series. Which sometimes makes me sad because then the books don’t exist as complete novels, by themselves. But this one totally did. Even if there was never another, I’d be like, wow, that was awesome. Another paranormal romance, this book’s love story just sucks you in, and you totally believe the world the author creates. Again, the writing is amazing! Beautiful, captivating, stunning all the way around.

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. No paranormal here, just two teens with a history of cancer, fighting for every day, falling in love. Talk about raising the stakes. Green is so, so good at writing YA — he’s just gets it, and this is another of his masterpieces.

I hope you’ll check out these books. Holy wah — I just feel so lucky to have access to all this amazing writing!