The Waiting Sky: author interview + GIVEAWAY!

Tornados – deadly, heartbreaking, and yet hauntingly beautiful. This summer I was at an event with author Lara Zielin where she told us about the tornado chase that inspired her latest book, The Waiting Sky. After hearing her account, I knew I had to read the book! It was amazing, and so is Lara’s offer (plus three other opportunities) at the end of this post!!

Here's the cover copy from The Waiting Sky:

Seventeen-year-old Jane McAllister, fleeing a troubled relationship with her alcoholic mom, spends a summer in the plains chasing — of all things — tornados. Somehow the chaos of tornados seems a lot more manageable than her very messy life back home. But, whether Jane returns home to a life of caring for her mother, or whether she strikes out in a different direction becomes the big question. And everyone — her brother, her best friend, and especially the handsome Max — has an opinion on what Jane should do.
But when her mother shows up in Tornado Alley drunk, insisting she come home, Jane fears she may have run out of options. The thought of a new life feels very far away, but not as far away as the last tornado Jane may ever chase, putting not only her life in danger, but the lives of the very people who may care about her most.

 

Lara was gracious enough to answer a few questions for us:

Please tell us a little about your everyday life.
It’s super exciting! I put on a cape and fly around, and then I fight
zombies using nothing but old bedposts. Then I eat cheese and
crackers. Okay, everything I just wrote is a lie – except for the
cheese and crackers part. I LOVE cheese and crackers.

The truth is, I have a full-time day job. So I do that, which is fun,
and then I go home and spend time with my husband, dogs, books, and
manuscripts. It’s a good, good life.

Tell us about the tornado chase that you took. Was it what you
expected? Any close encounters? And how did it inspire The Waiting
Sky?

In 2004, I went on a tornado chase all across tornado alley. It was
like those tours where you pay to go see whales in the ocean, only we
were paying to get up close to crazy weather! I didn't see any
tornadoes, but I saw some funnel clouds and some seriously bad storms.

One of the most surprising things about the tornado chase I was on was
that there was also lots of time on the road to just think, and more
than the bad weather, that’s where a lot of where my inspiration for
The Waiting Sky came from. Because here we were, expecting constant
adrenaline rushes, and instead what we got was hours and hours trapped
in a van with strangers, driving miles and miles. My main character,
Jane, has a similar situation in the book. She leaves a chaotic
situation at her home in Minnesota, and expects to find more chaos in
Tornado Alley, but instead she just has tons and tons of time to think
about how she might be able to change her life.

Besides your main character, who is your favorite character in The
Waiting Sky and why?

I love Ethan, Jane’s brother. First, I pictured him being waaaaay
cute! And secondly, he wants so badly to do the right thing for
himself and his sister, but he really struggles. Sometimes doing the
right thing is really hard. Sometimes it hurts people. Ethan
intellectually realizes this, but it’s still very challenging for him.

Do you have a favorite scene in The Waiting Sky?
I’m a sucker for a romantic moment, so I love it when Jane and her new
love interest, Max, climb into the unfinished barn at night. I’m not
going to say exactly whether any kissing happens, but, um … okay,
kissing TOTALLY HAPPENS.

Did you always know how The Waiting Sky would end, or did it change as you wrote it?
I don’t always know how my novels will end when I start them. So, I
just wrote the ending as it came to me!

You did a terrific job with the tension of the flashbacks...were they
a part of your first draft or did you add them in a later draft?

They were always part of the story, because everything takes place in
Tornado Alley and we have to get a sense of what Jane’s running from.
But omg, my editor helped me make them sooooo much better!

Is there anything you can tell us about how your cover was designed?

The amazing design fairies at Putnam emailed me and were like, “Look!
We threw glitter on some paper and this happened!” and I was like,
“Zomg, I freaking LOVE it!”

Which, okay, that’s not how it went down. But I’m not a designer so I
don’t know the first thing about how these amazing people do this kind
of amazing work. It’s just … well, amazing.

Can you tell us a little about the path to publication of your first
book, Donut Days?

Donut Days was a mess for so long! A big, fat, hot mess. It started
out as chick-lit, which sort of went by the wayside as a genre while I
was writing it. So then I turned it into YA, but the book still wasn’t
very good. With the help of some writing conferences and some writerly
friends, I was able to edit it to a place that an agent accepted it.
But it took a long time. From the time I started the novel to the time
I held the published book in my hands, it was eight years!

What’s next for you?

I am working on a book about a girl who suffers from panic attacks.
It’s called The Sum of Small Things. I hope it will be out in early
2014! Yay!!

If you would like a chance to win a (hardcover!) signed copy of The Waiting Sky (courtesy of Lara!), just leave your e-mail address in the comments section of this post. It’s not required for entry, but we’d also love to hear about what inspired you to write your latest novel! The giveaway (for U.S. residents) is open until Friday, October 12, 2012 at midnight eastern time.

In other giveaway news, you still have until Friday to enter last week’s YAFusion giveaway, Getting Somewhere by Beth Neff. To enter, please leave a comment under last week’s post.

Also, there are giveaways for my own book, What She Left Behind at YA Book Queen (ends Tuesday!) and at Goodreads (ends October 20).

Reading for Resilience and Empathy, plus a GIVEAWAY of GETTING SOMEWHERE

I've been thinking about the intersection of my writing and social work careers. As a therapist, I always encouraged kids to journal, and when working with young children, I used play therapy often consisting of acting out stories. I wrote assessment reports chronicling people's lives. Fellow social worker/author Kristen Simmons told me that one of her professors said social work is in everything you do.

My stories tend to venture into realistic dark places, some would say too much, and I've wondered if my social work background has desensitized me. Not that it's made me cold or unfeeling, but that bad things no longer shock me, I've seen them happen again and again.  But I've also witnessed many triumphs.

This summer, a tragedy struck close to home. My ten-year-old daughter's classmate died suddenly and unexpectedly from a health condition - a wonderful little boy who had sat next to her in classes for 3 years. A joyous, talented, friendly boy who smiled and greeted and conversed with everyone - kids and grown-ups alike. The funeral home was filled with his pictures, drawings, and half-filled notebooks, symbolic of his young life cut way too short, and a poignant display of how he touched so many of us in those years. My daughter and I cried and shared memory after memory for days and weeks afterwards. His absence at the start of the school year brought a fresh round of tears, as well as plans for how to honor his memory.

Her classmate's death also intensified my daughter's fears and worries about other friends. The friend who lost an eye to retinoblastoma and the friend battling leukemia, currently awaiting a bone marrow transplant. It made her afraid that some hidden unknown disease could be lurking inside her as well. I never had to deal with death so directly as a child, and the first funerals I attended were for grandparents. But we all know someone who lost a parent, sibling, or friend during their childhood, and maybe you were the one who experienced this loss.

It's natural that as writers we are drawn to exploring these themes in our writing. And as readers, these stories give us a way to safely experience the grief and loss that we'll all confront some day. Still, the urge to protect my daughter is strong. The parents die in that book, the girl is abused, it's too scary, it's too sad. I've hesitated and occasionally objected to her reading certain books because the content was too mature for her. But mostly, I've trusted her to decide for herself. She has read books about a boy with autism and a girl with cerebral palsy. She's read books about families in Afghanistan and slaves during the Revolutionary War. She's read books about war and peace, wealth and poverty, magic and mystery. She's read books about love and hate, friendship and bullying. She's read books about grief and loss, holding on and letting go.

YA Fusion blog partner/author/teacher Bethany Griffin often talks about how reading builds empathy.
 "Readers are better people/citizens. Readers empathize. Empathetic people have the ability to stop and think ‘how would that feel to me’ before they act, therefore, a reader should be less likely to bully or harass someone who is different from them." (From an interview at the Novel Novice blog.)

It naturally follows that reading also builds resilience. If you experience challenging situations in books, you can better cope with challenging situations in your life. Stories are empowering. Stories expand your worldview.  If you haven't read Sherman Alexie's eloquent response to critics of YA literature's dark side, Why the Best Kids Books are Written in Blood, go here. "I write to give them weapons–in the form of words and ideas-that will help them fight their monsters."

At the SCBWI conference in Los Angeles this summer, Gary Schmidt spoke about children's writers having a responsibility. "Write the stories that give your readers more to be a human being with." This resonated strongly with me. Yes, there is a place for books that are purely entertaining, but for me, the best stories are also enlightening and empowering.  Books that ask big questions, books that touch a nerve, books that speak to the core of humanity in each of us. Books to build empathy and resilience. Do you have a book to recommend? My list is long, but I'll share a recent debut with you.

Beth Neff is the author of Getting Somewhere (Viking/Penguin, 2012) and the creator of a youth writing program called SEE (Sustainability, Empathy, and Empowerment). She's the best one to explain her program and philosophy, so please check out her website.



Getting Somewhere.  Four girls: dealer, junkie, recluse, thief

Sarah, Jenna, Lauren, and Cassie may look like ordinary girls, but they're not. They're delinquents whose lives collide when they're sent to an experimental juvenile detention program on a farm in the middle of nowhere. As the girls face up to the crimes they committed, three of them will heal the wounds of their pasts and discover strengths they never dreamed they had. And one, driven by a deep secret of her own, will seek to destroy everything they've all worked so hard for.

* I'd love to share my beautiful hardcover copy of Beth's novel, Getting Somewhere.  To enter the giveaway, please leave a comment below by Friday, October 5th, and include your email so I can contact you if you win.  This giveaway is for YA Fusion followers with U.S. mailing addresses.

* Banned book week begins September 30th. Check out this wonderful video to get yourself fired up.

* Tomorrow, I'll be at the Literary Rambles blog for Tip Tuesday, sharing advice from editor extraordinaire, Patricia Lee Gauch.  Please stop by and learn why she thinks the "show-don't-tell" rule can cause trouble. 

Have a wonderful week,
Kristin Lenz