2009 has been a really tough year, and I think many of us are glad to see the end of it. However, I will always hold a warm spot in my heart for 2009 nonetheless, because it's the year I Finally Got Published.

When I wrote the first draft of Knife back in 1993 I had no idea if it would ever amount to anything. I only knew that I loved the characters, and that the kernel of the story was sound and strong even if I wasn't quite sure how to get to it yet. Over the years of submissions and rejections and revisions that followed, I never lost the conviction that there was something in that manuscript, and that I shouldn't give up on it. And ultimately, my faith in Knife and Paul's story was justified -- not only did it see print this year, but it's become a UK bestseller. I could never have foreseen that, and I am tremendously grateful to my publishers and my readers for making it happen.

Another reason I feel kindly about 2009 is that at the end of the year, I finally completed a working draft of another book I feel passionately about, Touching Indigo. It took me nearly three years of research and writing, during which I foolishly unmade my own creative process and had to cobble it back together again. But in the end I was proud of what I'd done, and so was my agent, and we both look forward to seeing what 2010 brings for the manuscript.

***

As for 2010, my current resolutions are as follows:

1. Follow a regular, disciplined schedule for no less than 30 days (I already have this plotted out on a chart, a PDF of which now serves as my desktop so I can't ignore it)

2. Get a complete draft of my current WIP done by April.

The second is dependent on the achievement of the first, I believe -- I'm going to have to hold myself very firmly to a routine if I'm going to get the time I need to write, and still spend the necessary time on family and other commitments.

I'll let you know how it goes.

***

Finally, in the spirit of writing and resolutions, I'd like to share with you this great video from YA author Jackson Pearce, in which myself and a slew of other authors were happy to participate. The advice is simple, but sound, and I hope it encourages those of my friends who are trying to write and publish their work in the coming year.



Happy New Year, everyone!

I have been waiting and waiting for the opportunity to share this good news, and today I finally got the go-ahead from my agent to tell the world about it --

I have sold two more faery books to Orchard, my wonderful publisher in the UK!

Like Knife and Rebel, these next two novels will be more or less complete stories in themselves, but (like Rebel) they are also sequels to the earlier books, so we'll be seeing some familiar characters and plot threads cropping up as well.

If all goes well, then Arrow, the third book, will hit bookstores in the UK and Commonwealth in 2011 and Swift, the fourth volume, in 2012.

My delighted thanks to the good folks at Orchard Books UK, and to all the enthusiastic and loyal young readers, librarians, teachers and booksellers overseas who have helped to make my faery books a success!

Nearly all my good news these days seems to be coming from the other side of the pond -- which is not a bad thing by any means! But in any case, I found out this week courtesy of some schoolchildren who e-mailed me from the UK that Knife has been nominated for the Hillingdon Secondary School Book of the Year for 2010. The nominees are selected by a team of librarians, copies of the nominated books are read by students at all participating schools and then the final award winner is voted on by the students themselves, so I'm really delighted to be part of this!

And also related to the UK editions of my books, I just completed a short "Meet the Author" video where I talk about the inspirations behind Knife and Rebel, for Orchard Books to use on their website:



I have already been mocked* for the Scarf That Ate Rebecca's Head, so you can hold off on that one. :) Next time I shall know better.

--
* Not by my publisher, I hasten to add. And it was all in good fun anyway.

I'm featured on Cynsations today (which is a really fantastic newsletter/roundup for those interested in YA lit -- if you're not subscribed to it yet, you should be), talking about the technical aspects of writing Faery Rebels: Spell Hunter.

If you'd like to know why I chose third rather than first-person point of view, or find out more about the research and the worldbuilding that went into the book, check it out!

I am happy to announce that in just a couple of weeks (well, three to be exact), I will be flying down to the AASL Conference in Charlotte, NC to do a signing for many lovely school librarians, and while I am visiting I will also be doing this:

Meet the Debs! Where: Park Road Books, Charlotte, NC When: Friday November 6, 2009 at 5 p.m. Who: R.J. Anderson (Faery Rebels: Spell Hunter) Lauren Bjorkman (My Invented Life), Jennifer Jabaley (Lipstick Apology), Neesha Meminger (Shine, Coconut Moon), Shani Petroff (Bedeviled: Daddy's Little Angel), Cynthea Liu (Paris Pan Takes the Dare), and Erin Dionne (Models Don't Eat Chocolate Cookies).

We will be signing copies of our books and chatting to all comers -- if you're in the area, please drop by and say hello!

I am especially excited about this trip because not only do I get to meet a bunch of terrific fellow authors and hang out with my wonderful agent, I will be jaunting up to visit my dear friend cesario while I am there. Whee!

***

Next, I am exceedingly excited because today -- yes! today! -- I am going to have tea and hang out with the lovely and hilarious Adrienne Kress, author of two of my favorite middle-grade books of the last few years -- Alex and the Ironic Gentleman and Timothy and the Dragon's Gate. More people need to read these books. Seriously. They are adventurous and fantastical and witty and insightful and just plain fun. And so is Adrienne. So this too is made of WIN.

***

There may also be some very, very good news brewing on the writing front. I cannot say what about, exactly, not yet, as the details are yet to be confirmed. But I will tell you as soon as I can.

***

And finally, something for you lot -- it's Debsness time again!

Yes, you heard right, I have emerged from the depths of the word mines triumphant! Touching Indigo, my paranormal YA novel, is now complete at ~60K words.

I have to say, this was the most challenging book I've ever written. Part of it was my own fault, in trying a completely new approach to writing when I began the book in January 2007. In a foolish attempt to make myself more productive and "professional", I succumbed to the siren call of First Draft in 30 Days, and also to the spreadsheet method of outlining, both of which turned out to be serious mistakes for me and really hindered my writing of the book.

So there's a perfect example of how methods that work wonderfully for authors with certain mindsets/personality types can be disastrously wrong for others. In my case, I got so caught up with trying to make the spreadsheet all balanced and pretty ("Hm, I see that I've had X number of scenes with this character, so obviously I need to insert a scene with this character") that I lost the ability to tell the story in a natural way. It wasn't until I threw out my outline and just told the story as I remembered it, feeling my way intuitively from scene to scene, that it all came together again.

Anyway, I know the book can only get better from here, and I hope to make it better in subsequent revisions, but right now I am very well pleased. And best of all, I made my deadline, so now I can a) read Catching Fire and Dreamdark: Silksinger, among other new releases I've been drooling over; and b) buy myself that new laptop! I'm thinking seriously about going Mac this time, so I can use Scrivener. The only thing that makes me hesitate is that the nearest Apple Store is two hours' drive away, so if I need any service or repairs, I'm pretty much bunned...

I will post again soon about the wonderful new music I discovered over the course of writing the last two-thirds of Indigo, and many other things. Right now, I'm just glad to be back in touch with my online friends again.

I'm up to 30K on Touching Indigo and heading into Part Two, which is where I got bogged down all those times before. This time, though, I feel like I've finally sorted out all the problems with the first section and have a good foundation on which to build. So I am optimistic.

Besides, I've given myself yet another incentive -- in addition to the "you can buy a new laptop ONLY IF you get this book done before mid-October" plan mentioned in my last post, I've also told myself that I am not allowed to purchase any new books, in any form, until I've finished writing my own.

Yes, that includes Catching Fire.

*sob*

Excuse me, I'm going to go work on my book now.

As many of my readers know, I've been struggling with my dearly beloved but also insanely complicated and demanding standalone YA novel, Touching Indigo, for two years now.

( A brief history of my attempt to write this book )

Fortunately, an offhand comment by anywherebeyond when I was lamenting to her about my research woes gave me the key to the whole problem -- even if it took a few weeks, indeed months, for me to see it clearly. She asked whether I couldn't just set the story earlier in my heroine's personal timeline -- having her committed to psychiatric hospital before being tried for murder, instead of afterward.

At first I resisted the idea, as it seemed like it would be a lot of work. But slowly it grew on me, as I realized that this would make the stakes higher and the tension greater -- so it might be worth the effort after all. But it wasn't until last night that it hit me what a huge mistake I'd really made in those opening chapters.

( Let me explain... )

So like I said in the subject line, feeling too stupid to live, but also happier about tackling another revision than I've been in a long, long time.

And thank you, anywherebeyond, for giving me the key -- even if you didn't know it, and even if it took me forever and a day to figure out how to use it to unlock the door!

There's been a lot of talk lately about authors behaving badly in response to negative reviews -- in some cases really, really badly. And having had some past experience with less-than-stellar reviews of my work, I can understand the disappointment and frustration that the authors involved were feeling when they allowed their emotions to get the better of their judgment. Nobody likes to be told that the book of their heart, the one they put months or years of effort into creating, has fallen short of excellence -- even if it's only in one critic's opinion.

On the other hand, I've often heard it said by wise and experienced folk that book reviews are written for readers, not for writers -- so in a sense people like Ms. Hoffman and Mr. de Botton are eavesdropping on a conversation that was never intended to include them, and shouldn't be surprised when they don't like everything they hear. I know many authors who deliberately avoid reading any reviews of their work whatsoever (meaning reviews written after the book is published, when it's too late to change it anyway), for this very reason.

Mind you, I am still a publishing n00b myself, and therefore unable to resist reading every review of my book that crosses my path. So if I get a bad review, it's my business to deal with it -- privately that is, without swearing vengeance on the reviewer and their descendants unto the third and fourth generation. (Though it can be tempting.)

Fortunately, I've noticed something about the reviews I've received so far that makes me a lot more relaxed and philosophical about getting the occasional bad one.

"There are too few faeries introduced to us in the book -- it would have been nice to meet some more of them," said one of my early reviewers, and I felt a little sad about all the incidental characters who vanished in revisions. But then, a few days later, I came across another reader lamenting, "There are too many faeries mentioned in the book and I couldn't keep track of them all."

"This book has far much romance for its intended audience!" complained another reviewer on GoodReads. And then, a couple of months down the line, a young reader complained "This book is not a romance AT ALL."

"The antagonist needs more villainy," mused one respectable critic, but then a commenter elsewhere said, "The antagonist's villainy made me so furious I could hardly get through the book."

A review which stated, "The story was muddled and confusing, I couldn't follow it" was followed almost immediately by another saying, "The plot was too plainly spelled out, I would have liked to figure some things out for myself."

Oh, well, okay then.

Of course, there are times when multiple reviewers (or worse, nearly all the reviewers) agree that a particular aspect of the book or story is weak. In which case I think it's the author's duty to swallow their pride, make a note of this particular fault in their writing, and try to do better in future... but in my experience of reading and writing book reviews, this happens a lot less often than one might think.

Anyway, all this has made one thing very clear to me: there is no point in getting upset over one bad review, or even a whole bunch of bad reviews, because every reader brings different tastes and expectations to a book, and it's impossible to please everyone. The best thing I can do when I'm disappointed by a particular review is to remember that I don't love every book I read either, and that some of the books I love best have been heavily criticized by others, and try to move on.

So now that my little faery book is widely available in bookstores, and a good number of you folks out there seem to have read it... are there any questions about the book that you'd like to ask? Leave a comment, and I will do my best to satisfy (unless the answer would totally spoil you for some important aspect of Rebel a.k.a. Wayfarer, that is).

Needless to say there will be MASSIVE SPOILERS in the comments, so people who still plan to read the book for themselves might want to skip this one.

I dashed downtown to my beloved indie children's bookseller to pick up my special order this morning, and am now the proud owner of:

• Dull Boy by Sarah Cross (sarahcross), which I have already read and adored and had to own;
  
• The Demon's Lexicon by Sarah Rees Brennan (sarahtales), which I have been dying to read for over a year now, and am saving up to reward myself once I have done at LEAST an hour of work on my WiP today is utterly stunning and made me squeal out loud in the middle of my kitchen;
  
• Any Which Wall by Laurel Snyder (@LaurelSnyder), which is billed as a magical adventure in the spirit of Edward Eager, and since I loooooooove Eager (Half Magic, people! How can anyone not love Half Magic?) I am positively drooling over this one as well.

Then I went to the library, because I woke up with all sorts of new ideas scrambling around in my head for Touching Indigo (the aforementioned WiP) and decided it was time to knuckle down and get serious with my research instead of having the vapors over it. I hate research, because I am so inefficient at it and I worry constantly that something I find out will kill my book stone-dead, and yet I also can't bear to just make stuff up when there are legitimate facts to be had. So these are the books currently piled on my desk:

• The Day the Voices Stopped: A Memoir of Madness and Hope by Ken Steele and Claire Berman
  
• Touched With Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament by Kay Redfield Jamison
  
• Straight Talk about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder by Kay Marie Porterfield
  
• From Crime to Punishment: 6th Edition by Joel E. Pink and David C. Perrier
  
• No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times by Dorothy Rabinowitz
  
• Youth Injustice: Canadian Perspectives Edited by Thomas O'Reilly-Fleming and Barry Clark
  
• Youth in Conflict with the Law by Paul Maxim and Paul Whitehead

So that will tell you a few more things about the plot of Touching Indigo... and also why this book has been giving me hairy conniptions for over two years. SO MUCH STUFF TO GET WRONG OMG.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go Write Stuff.

It's a good thing I thought to Google my book title today! Otherwise I would never have known about this:

Browse Inside Faery Rebels: Spell Hunter

Which gives you an electronic preview of the cover (flaps included), the first 67 pages of the book, and even the Acknowledgments at the end.

I heart my publisher.

ETA 12:00 EST: Server glitch means the preview's down for the moment. Will post again when it's back up.

ETA 3:30 EST: It's working again now!

I have now received my second round of edits for Faery Rebels Book 2, and they are due in early May, so I have a lot of work to do between now and then! For which cause I fear that I must put my BEDA* ambitions aside and focus on making this manuscript as tight and clear and compelling a story as I can.

But as penance for abandoning my faithful readers for the next couple of weeks or so, I will share some tidbits about this second book, which goes by the working title of Faery Rebels: Wayfarer in the US (that may well change, though) and by Rebel in the UK:

The story takes place some years after the events of Spell Hunter a.k.a. Knife, and it's told from two perspectives. One is Paul's young cousin Timothy, and the other a girl named Linden whom you may remember from the first book. But even though Linden and Timothy are at the heart of this particular adventure, rest assured that the characters from Book One also play an important part (and get some of the best lines!). It's a much bigger adventure in some ways; it definitely expands our view of the world the Oakenfolk live in. Anyway, I am quite excited about it, as are my US and UK editors, and I hope that those who've read and loved the first book will enjoy this one too.

And now I must dash away and work on my book some more!

--
*Blog Every Day April, as mentioned in this post.

Should have talked it over
Should have thought it through
I think I might have bit off
A little more than I could chew
Well, I have got to get out
From underneath this weight
Or it's gonna kill me

But the shining of the silver
The glimmer of the gold
Kept giving me a fever
But left me feeling cold
I'm right back in the middle
And if I don't come out soon
Come in and get me

'Cause I keep slaying all these dragons
But more keep coming
And I keep praying for this fight to end

Uh, oh, here I go
Wading through a lot of stuff you know
Juggling it all while I'm balancing on a wire
Slow down, I have found
Seems that every time I turn around
Got one foot in the muck and another foot in the mire
Well, I'm scaling down, pulling back
Got to try
To simplify

I put my golden ring on
Unseen I went down where
War and peace collided
Inside the dragon's lair
When pleasure is your master
Convenience is your king
Your heart's divided

I keep weighing
All these options
More keep a-coming
I keep straying
From the way I'm told

Uh, oh, here I go
Wading through a lot of stuff you know
Juggling it all while I'm balancing on a wire
Slow down, I have found
Seems that every time I turn around
Got one foot in the muck and another foot in the mire
Well, I'm scaling down, pulling back
Got to try
To simplify

-- From the album "A Room Full of Stories" (1997)
Lyrics by Wes King and Wayne Kirkpatrick

Listen to a 30-second sample on last.fm

I am poaching this entire post from lisamantchev and altering it to suit my purposes, because I'm insanely lazy busy right now...

***

I am pleased to announce my participation in flycon2009, March 13-17, 2009.

From the LJ Profile:

Flycon will be an online convention planned to have activities during the peak hours of every time zone. It will begin midnight, Friday 13th in March 2009, in Australia and roll with the sun. We are looking for panelists, authors and editors and agents to host discussions, podcasts as readings, volunteers, and for people to spread the word through the blogosphere. We will be having a couple of sites host forums and chat space, with everything co-ordinated through this Live Journal community with rss feeds, updates and eventual archiving. We will be running IRCs as well as bulletin boards, so that every time zone is covered.

Preliminary Schedule is up here.

PANELS I AM ON:

Crossing over from fan fiction to pro writing: Pros, cons, weirdnesses, how-tos
Friday, March 13, 3 p.m. EST
Other panelists: Karen Miller, positive pat, Saundra Mitchell

They may do things differently there, but I'm reading from here: How do we, as readers, negotiate the borders between fiction and commentary, between when it's about the human condition, and when it's about us?
Friday, March 13th, 8 p.m. EST
Other panelists: Alma Alexander, Maureen Kincaid Speller, a_d_medievalist

Author chat: Debut 2009 SF/Fantasy novelists session
Saturday, March 14th, 9 a.m. EST
Other panelists: Lisa Mantchev, Jenny Moss, Saundra Mitchell, Deva Fagan

***

Please drop by the community and comment on the threads with your questions and contributions! LJ means it's never too late to participate!

Today's debut2009 author interview (and I have to tell you, this will be the last one for a while -- I'm totally swamped with revisions right now!) is with the delightful, multi-talented, and incredibly hard-working Saundra Mitchell, author of Shadowed Summer.

This was the very first book I read by a fellow Deb, and I have to say, it blew me away. I don't normally read ghost stories -- I'm a total wimp for anything horrific, plus the whole ghost thing grates on my theology. But I was really impressed by the way Saundra drew me into her story and skillfully suspended my disbelief right to the very end. Plus, her prose is just beautiful, and she has a deft knack for vivid characterization that I really envy like whoa admire.

But enough about me! On to the book!


ABOUT SHADOWED SUMMER

Nothing ever happened in Ondine, Louisiana, not even the summer Elijah Landry disappeared. His mother knew he ascended to heaven, the police believed he ran away, and his girlfriend thought he was murdered.

Decades later, certain she saw his ghost in the town cemetery, fourteen-year-old Iris Rhame is determined to find out the truth behind "The Incident With the Landry Boy."

Enlisting the help of her best friend Collette, and forced to endure the company of Collette's latest crush, Ben, Iris spends a summer digging into the past and stirring old ghosts, in search of a boy she never knew.

What she doesn't realize is that in a town as small as Ondine, every secret is a family secret.

ABOUT SAUNDRA MITCHELL

A screenwriter and author, Saundra Mitchell penned the screenplays for the Fresh Films and Girls in the Director's Chair short film series. Her short story "Ready to Wear" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and her first feature film, Revenge Ends, debuted on the festival circuit in 2008. In her free time, she enjoys ghost hunting, papermaking, and spending time with her husband and her two children.

Tantalizing, no? Let's find out more about Saundra and her book ( under the cut... )

You can learn more about Shadowed Summer by visiting the dedicated site, where you can read an excerpt from the first chapter, see more interviews with Saundra, and download a bunch of neat extras related to the book.

Shadowed Summer can also be ordered from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or support your local independent bookseller.

Visit Saundra on the web at www.saundramitchell.com.

Today I'm happy to introduce fellow debut2009 member Erin Dionne, the author of the delightful tween novel Models Don't Eat Chocolate Cookies!

ABOUT THE BOOK

Thirteen-year-old Celeste Harris is no string bean, but comfy sweatpants and a daily chocolate cookie suit her just fine. Her under-the-radar lifestyle could have continued too, if her aunt hadn’t entered her in the HuskyPeach Modeling Challenge. To get out of it, she’s forced to launch Operation Skinny Celeste—because, after all, a thin girl can’t be a fat model! What Celeste never imagined was that losing weight would help her gain a backbone . . . or that all she needed to shine was a spotlight.

ABOUT ERIN DIONNE

Erin Dionne has lived on two coasts and in four states. Her debut novel, MODELS DON’T EAT CHOCOLATE COOKIES, was inspired by events that occurred in seventh grade, when she wore a scary peach bridesmaid dress in her cousin’s wedding and threw up on her gym teacher’s shoes (not at the same event). Although humiliating at the time, these experiences are working for her now.

Erin lives outside of Boston with her husband and daughter, and a very insistent dog named Grafton. She roots for the Red Sox, teaches English at an art college, and sometimes eats chocolate cookies.

( Click here for more with Erin Dionne! )

As a parting note, I read Models a few months ago and would readily recommend it to readers aged ten and up who would enjoy a witty, charming novel with a great first-person narrative voice. I loved and sympathized with Celeste right away and I'm sure that many readers will, too! You can order the book from Amazon or find it through IndieBound.

Today I'm excited to be hosting the talented and versatile debut2009 author Cynthea Liu, who just celebrated her release date for her first book The Great Call of China yesterday with an exciting online party! Congratulations, Cynthea!

About the Book:

Chinese-born Cece was adopted when she was two years old by her American parents. Living in Texas, she's bored of her ho-hum high school and dull job. So when she learns about the S.A.S.S. program to Xi'an, China, she jumps at the chance. She'll be able to learn about her passion--anthropology--and it will give her the opportunity to explore her roots. But when she arrives, she receives quite a culture shock. And the closer she comes to finding out about her birth parents, the more apprehensive she gets. Enter Will, the cute guy she first meets on the plane. He and Cece really connect during the program. But can he help her get accustomed to a culture she should already know about, or will she leave China without the answers she's been looking for?

About the Author:

Cynthea spent her formative years in Oklahoma and Texas where she was a Whiz Quiz member, an Academic Decathloner, and a spelling bee champion. (Yes, she was very popular.) After attending college on the East Coast, she worked at a corporate job where she mastered PowerPoint and racked up thousands of frequent flyer miles. Eventually, she traded in her suit for sweats to do the fun stuff--writing for children. In addition to The Great Call of China (Puffin, February '09) and her middle-grade novel Paris Pan Takes The Dare (Putnam, June '09) Cynthea's nonfiction book Writing for Children and Teens: A Crash Course (how to write, revise, and publish your kid's or teen book with children's book publishers) is available in paperback.

( Click here for a fun Q&A session with Cynthea! )

Hee. I definitely know that feeling! Thanks for dropping by, Cynthea!

---

Finally, Cynthea's also put together a great little YouTube video describing how she came to write The Great Call of China and telling a little more about the book itself. Check it out:

I am a bit insanely excited about this, from Laini Taylor's blog:

Silksinger cover -- revealed!

This would be the second book in the Dreamdark series. I loved the first book, Blackbringer (read it twice in six months, in fact) and can't wait to meet Hirik and Whisper and explore more of the fantastic faery world that Ms. Taylor's created.

And yet, the author writes about the same book in a previous post:

I was on a really different track when I started writing [Silksinger] and it wasn't working out. It took FORTITUDE to keep going and find the right story. In fact, I think if that book had not been under contract as part of a two-book deal, I may not have written it. It was hard. (Imagine that said in a pitiful whine.) I'd have given up; I'm sure of it. But I didn't, and the book exists, and I love it. So: hurray!!!

I found this really encouraging. I know a lot of authors are afraid to talk about the difficulties of writing a particular book for fear of sounding whiny, or not appreciating what a privilege it is just to get published, or giving people a bad impression of the book's quality. Nobody wants to be the kind of author who turns off fans and potential readers by being negative all the time, and it's all too easy to tip that balance.

But on the other hand, it can be a tremendous encouragement to other writers who are struggling if they can see that we've struggled too. And I think it's possible to talk about these things in a way that is honest but doesn't wallow in self-pity or make the books we're working on sound like junk -- I think Laini Taylor has done an excellent job of that very thing. I'm actually more excited now to read Silksinger, knowing what a challenge it was for her and how hard she worked to make it the best book it could be.

What do you think about this -- fellow writers, readers, editors, agents? Do you get turned off when authors talk about difficulties with their writing process? Is there a right and a wrong way to do this kind of thing, or do you think it's better just not to do it at all?

This week's featured debut2009 author is the delightful Jenny Moss, who's here to tell us all about her excellent middle-grade historical novel Winnie's War.

About the Book:

Life in Winnie's sleepy town of Coward Creek, Texas, is just fine for her. Although her troubled mother's distant behavior has always worried Winnie, she's plenty busy caring for her younger sisters, going to school, playing chess with Mr. Levy, and avoiding her testy grandmother. Plus, her sweetheart Nolan is always there to make her smile when she's feeling low. But when the Spanish Influenza claims its first victim, lives are suddenly at stake, and Winnie has never felt so helpless. She must find a way to save the people she loves most, even if doing so means putting her own life at risk.

About the Author:

Jenny Moss is a former NASA engineer. She earned a master's degree in literature and taught writing as an adjunct at University of Houston-Clear Lake. She lives with her two teenagers in Houston, Texas. Welcome to the Oakenwyld, Jenny!

( Click here for the interview and more with Jenny! )

And now for a personal recommendation -- I had the privilege of reading Winnie's War a few months ago. It's a beautifully written, moving and engrossing book with real and engaging characters, and I would gladly recommend it to any young reader who is interested in the time period or just enjoys historical novels in general.