Excited to share the cover of Watch Your Back, by YA Fusion blogger and author Tracy Bilen! Watch Your Back is Tracy's newest young adult novel and will be an April 2015 release.

Here's a short description of the novel:

When sixteen-year-old Kate hears the boom that ends her parents’ life, she doesn’t even realize it has anything to do with her. Until the police arrive at her front door.

Sent to live with her aunt at a ski school in Vermont, Kate tries to adapt to her new life. But then Kate’s aunt is hit by a speeding car and a rogue FBI agent tries to force Kate into his car at gunpoint. She’s saved by Ryan, the risk-taking skier she’s only just met.

On the run, the two must unravel the truth about her parents’ murder in order to stop a terrorist plot and save their own lives.

Stay in touch with Tracy at www.tracybilen.com or at YA Fusion.

So really, I confess to having my own rating system for books:

1 star/heart/whatever: Do I really have to give it anything? Pretty much a zero.
2 whatevers: Meh.
3 whatevers: Okay, you're on to something here
4 whatevers: I like it. I'd tell my friends it was worth the read
5 whatevers: I am buying this book because even though there's already too many books and not enough time, I will want to read this again.

My "five whatevers" book of the week? Openly Straight, by Bill Konigsburg. Straight or gay, I wish all my friends, enemies, and frenemies would read this book. Protagonist Rafe has been out since 8th grade. He lives a life free from discrimination in Boulder, CO, and gives tolerance speeches at schools. But what he really wants is to be a regular guy, not that gay guy. Why does his sexual orientation have to be his headline?

Rafe transfers to an all-boys boarding school across the country and makes the decision to be, well, openly straight. He's not going to hook up with any girls, but he wants to know what it's like to have people see him first and not gay first. You can probably guess what happens to Rafe at his all-boys school, of course once he's pretending to be straight he'll finally find the perfect guy to be his boyfriend. But Rafe's journey opens up so many questions about how we let labels define both ourselves and others. Albie, Toby, and Ben are wonderfully developed secondary characters and I want to take a class with Mr. Scarborough, Rafe's writing teacher, who pushes Rafe to take his writing above and beyond.

Here's an excerpt:
"...[T]he fact that there was this party and everyone other than my grandmother was pretending that something wasn't true about me made me feel slimy, like I needed to take a long shower. While everyone else was talking, I wandered back over to the tofu pig. It looked real, unless you got up close to it. Then you could see: It was very much not. Up close, you could see how the artist molded the tofu, and the places were there were cracks in the pigskin. You could even see the finger indentations where he'd tried to massage the tofu flat. It was like when you approach a woman whom you think is beautiful and you see the caked-on blush and mascara, and you realize what you are seeing isn't her; it's her vanity. You're seeing her attempt at beauty and it's the opposite of beauty that you're looking at." (Konigsburg 236).

This book is humorous and real - don't miss the trip. Happy reading!

Since revisions for The Boy Next Door are keeping me insanely busy, for the next couple of weeks I'll only be posting once a week on Wednesdays about what I'm reading for VCFA homework. This week I'm swooning over David Levithan's Boy Meets Boy. This novel is a sweet romance between two high school boys, Paul and Noah, and I loved the phrasings used in their early relationship scenes. Especially favorite was this passage:

    "The first bell rings and I'm not sure what we'll do - is there a way to acknowledge our newfound closeness without being one of those couples who can't get through the day without a loud hallway snog?
    It's Noah who finds the answer, without me having to ask the question. "I'll see you later," he says, and as he does, he runs his finger briefly over my wrist. It passes me over like air, and makes me shiver like a kiss." (Levithan 79).

     The cast of characters was laugh out loud funny, especially Infinite Darlene, the high school's star quarterback and homecoming queen. The setting was definitely utopian but fitting for the story, since it allowed the focus to stay mostly on Paul and Noah's relationship and not on their sexual orientation.

    Boy Meets Boy was the April selection for the Swoon Reads book club, feel free to join the discussion here.

Extra teaching duties this week kept me from posting a Technique Tuesday reflection, so today is a change-up from the usual: a "Way with Words" Wednesday. The past couple of days, I've been devouring Jennifer Donnelly's A Northern Light. Here's just a few of the reasons why:

Romance, history, and a murder mystery could produce a page turning book enough on their own, but Donnelly is brilliant at setting up page turns such as this one, which ends a first page description of a perfect summer day in the North Woods and the belief that all days will go on like this: "I believe these things. With all my heart. For I am good at telling myself lies" (Donnelly 1).

Donnelly doesn't shy away from the harshness of life and I loved the raw emotion in the scene where narrator Mattie goes to visit her childhood friend, Minnie, after the birth of Minnie's twins. Minnie's cabin is a mess and she's trying to breastfeed both babies at once. She hands the babies to Mattie to get tea for her visitor. Mattie has trouble hiding her reaction to the babies:
"I was trying to settle them, so they'd stop screaming, so the wet from the diapers wouldn't soak into my skirt, when the next thing I knew, Minnie was standing over me, her arms at her side, her hands clenched.
    "Give them to me! Give them back! Don't look at them like that! Don't look at me! Just get out! Go! Get out of here!" she shouted.
    "Min...I...I'm sorry! I wasn't...I didn't mean..."
    But it was too late. Miinie was hysterical. She crushed the babies to here and started to cry. "You hate them, don't you, Mattie? Don't you?"
    "Minnie! What are you saying?"
    "I know you do. I hate them, too. Sometimes. I do." Her voice had dropped to a whisper. Her eyes were tormented" (Donnelly 271).

And the descriptions, oh the character descriptions! "Once I saw Beth lift her head at the sound of a coyote's cry at twilight. Her eyes widened - half in wonder, half in fear - and I saw that she would be beautiful someday. Not just pretty, truly beautiful. I saw the restlessness in Lawton long before he left. I saw it when he was only a boy and would toss sticks and leaves into the rushing waters of the Moose River and watch them go where he could not" (Donnelly 280).

My copy is filled with sticky notes marking even more favorite passages, but for now I have to get back to my own writing.

In a post on The Cambridge Children's Literature Students' Blog, a student remarked, “One thing I have decided on for sure in my quest is that children's literature cannot help but be didactic. In its very essence, it is an adult's construction of what children should be exposed to” (Ashley, n.p.). Yet while some children's books leave readers feeling the stiffness of the pew, others leave them feeling they have discovered something new about the world. Apart from the obvious advice of “don't preach,” however, how can writers avoid being didactic?

The premise of Angela Johnson's novel, The First Part Last, seems to lend itself to the pulpit. A teen boy gets his girlfriend pregnant and she ends up in a vegetative coma after suffering a complication from the pregnancy. Yet this love story between teen father and daughter is no Sunday morning special.

Remember how at six you were sure your parents knew everything? How that had changed by the time you hit sixteen? As much as parents would like their teens to listen to them, the truth of the matter is that adults don't know everything. Few things in life are clearly black and white, and one way that Johnson avoids preaching is by making even Bobby's parents unsure of what to do. After Bobby is arrested for graffiti, his mother takes him and baby Feather to live with his father. But after moving them there, “she got back into her Jeep and sat there without turning on the ignition” (Johnson 101), illustrating her own uncertainty about her choice.

Bobby's peers don't preach, for they don't know what to do, either. When Bobby first tells K-Boy and J.L. his news, they both laugh at him, even making jokes at first. Bobby's example isn't allowed to be a lesson to his friends, either:

            Two girls pass by us and stare at K-Boy. I mean they stop in the middle of the sidewalk and stare. He smiles back.
            I grab him by the arm. “Uh huh, they are so fine, but not today.” (Johnson 39)

That's as far as any “conversion” goes. Bobby knows his peers will continue to have sex and doesn't ask for any abstinence beyond that one day.

Leaving the parents and friends lost in the mist of what to do lets Bobby make choices different than what might commonly be suggested for someone in his situation. When Nia ends up in a coma, Bobby decides to keep their baby. A social worker tries briefly to intervene but Bobby responds, “No, I don't know anything about raising a kid. I'm sixteen and none of those people on the wall look like the kind of family me and Feather's gonna be. But I'm doing it” (124).  Nia's parents tell him they'll support his decision but Bobby's observations make it clear they won't really be involved: “[W]hen they looked at the baby through the nursery glass, it was like they were saying good-bye” (Johnson 126). No outside force pressures Bobby into this choice. It could be argued that his choice is didactic as well, just against what is commonly accepted, but apart from the previously quoted outburst, Bobby doesn't extol his decision.

Perhaps the ultimate in “preachy” factors, even God is left out as an authority. The only time God is mentioned at all is when Nia first enters her coma:

            The whacked part was I didn't start trying to make a deal with God till I was almost running through the doors. And when I see my mom's face I know I got to catch up.
            So I start begging.
            I say how it's supposed to work out 'cause we thought about it. We made a mistake but we aren't stupid. We were going to do the right thing.
            Then I guess I start babbling about how Nia looks when she sleeps and how she smiles and eats and laughs, but I have to stop 'cause even though I don't think about God or go to church, maybe this isn't the way you make deals with him.
            Maybe he doesn't listen if you scare everybody in the emergency room and hold on to your mom that tight while you're screaming and crying more than you ever have in your whole life. (Johnson 120)

However, this moment doesn't cause Bobby to have a spiritual revelation. He doesn't develop a relationship with God, nor does he blame God for his troubles or reflect on what sins (even the seemingly obvious) might have caused this fury. He doesn't even refer to the Almighty with caps, using he instead of He. The focus of this hospital scene isn't judgment or right versus wrong but simply Bobby's pain at the loss of Nia.

Johnson neither glorifies nor attacks teen parenthood but successfully pulls off a mixture of the sweet and sour. For example, she tempers harsh reality with humor, as in Bobby's mother's rules for him about baby Feather's care:

            If she hollers, she is mine.
            If she needs to be changed, she is always mine.
            In the dictionary next to “sitter,” there is not a picture of Grandma.
            It's time to grow up.
            Too late, you're out of time. Be a grown-up. (Johnson 14)

Johnson also is careful to balance the fear of emergency room visits, the smell of spit-up, and the sleepless nights with the warmth of Feather, her sweet new baby smell, and realizations such as these: “I know something about this little thing that is my baby. I know that she needs me. I know what she does when she just needs me” (Johnson 15).

Some situations are hard to express in words, and keeping complicated issues as simple as possible also helps Johnson avoid donning the clergy robe. For example, Johnson leaves the part where Nia actually tells Bobby she's pregnant “off screen”, choosing to show only this:

            ...Nia was waiting on our stoop for me with a red balloon. Just sittin' there with a balloon, looking all lost. I'll never forget that look and how her voice shook when she said, “Bobby, I've got something to tell you.”
            Then she handed me the balloon. (Johnson 6)

Johnson thus avoids complicated and perhaps preachy discussions about exactly how this happened, whether they should/could/would have done something earlier, etc. Another technique Johnson uses that emphasizes the difficulties of the situation without preaching is having Bobby himself avoid thinking about it. At the obstetrician's office, for example, Bobby says, “I look at the skiing trophies and think about how cool and windy it must be to go down the slopes, and how I always wanted to learn how to ski” (Johnson 28).

The First Part Last is not without somewhat didactic moments, including this lecture:

            I waited to hear how they'd been talking to me for years about this. How we all talked about respect and responsibility. How [my father] and me had taken the ferry out to Staten Island and talked about sex, to and from the island. And didn't we go together and get the condoms? What the hell about those pamphlets [my mother] put beside my bed about STDs and teenage pregnancy?
            How did this happen? Where was my head? Where was my sense? What the hell were we going to do?
            And then, not moving and still quiet, my pops just starts to cry. (Johnson 12-13)

Yet this is the only lecture and notice how the protagonist lectures himself and that the attitude is one of regret but not of shame.

There is also a “preacher” of sorts, who asks Bobby to consider what it means to be a man. But Johnson avoids being didactic here by twisting the traditional. Her “preacher,” “Just Frank,” lives his life “hanging on the corner, drinking forties at ten in the morning” (Johnson 7).  Meanwhile, Bobby's teacher, the stereotypical helper, turns out to be no help at all but “just hopes [Bobby is] getting help” (44).

Having played in the gray for the entire novel, Johnson doesn't tie everything up in a nice lesson at the conclusion but ends with uncertainty as well. After moving to Ohio to raise Feather alone, Bobby won't tell about saying good-bye or the places in the city he misses but says, “I can tell you how it feels sitting in the window with Feather pointing out the creek that rolls past our backyard. I can tell you how it is to feel as brand new as my daughter even though I don't know what comes next in this place called Heaven” (Johnson 131).

The secret then, is to play in the gray. All this uncertainty means Johnson avoids a didactic message. Ironically,  the novel still illustrates what many of its didactic equivalents attempt to portray: the hardships of teen pregnancy. But because of the gray, the messages are many and more than just messages. Bobby says, “I've never been closer to or loved anybody more than I love Feather” (Johnson 95) but what is love? What does it mean to be a family? What is success, what does it mean to be a man? These conversation starters are seeds for discussion and, through such discussion, personal growth for the reader.

Works Cited:

  Ashley. “Subversively Didactic.” The Cambridge Children's Literature Students' Blog. Blogger.com, 28 August 2012. Web. 27 March 2014. <http://cambridgechildrenslit.blogspot.com/2012/08/subversively-didactic.html>

Johnson, Angela. The First Part Last. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003. Print.

I am proud to belong to a fantastic SCBWI critique group called Four Ladies and a Gent, and my fellow members helped make Pairing Up what it is today. I knew the novel was ready for submission when our gent, a writer of MG fantasy and sci-fi, confessed that he couldn't believe I'd sold him on a figure skating romance. I think well-written stories can reach far beyond their intended audiences, and with that in mind I have two recommendations for this weekend with premises I never thought I'd like.

I must confess that I am not a horse person. My apologies to all of you who are, but please don't stop reading because I'm about to recommend a couple of great horse books. If, like me, you just want to get out of this "stinking fresh country air" (quote from my four-year-old self), please also keep reading because these amazing authors sold me on their novels despite the fact that they're both about horses.

Nineteen-year-old Sean Kendrick is in love with water horses. It doesn't matter that one killed his father, that the mythical creatures brought to life in this novel would gladly eat their riders for lunch, that they're monsters. Puck (Kate) O'Connolly is terrified of these beasts who made her an orphan, yet through the novel she grows to love them and Sean.

Stiefvater made me love these monstrous horses as well, with a world so seamlessly built into her story that I'm going to have to write an entire critical essay this month on how she did it. A fantasy without information dumps? A rare creature indeed, and I'm on a quest to find more. You don't have to like horses OR fantasy to LOVE The Scorpio Races, Stiefvater will sell you on her story either way.

This is a light-hearted romance and not a fantasy at all, yet Kenneally uses her character's voice to show her world. I am a huge fan of Kenneally's use of landscape to flavor her character's voices and this book didn't fail to please, heading off to the races right out of the starting gate. Having read Kenneally's previous books, I also enjoyed the skillful way in which “where-are-they-now” scenes with characters from prior works were woven together with Savannah's story.

Happy reading!

If you want to be a big goldfish, you can't swim in a small pond. My coach liked to apply this saying to the skating world as well. Look at Olympic gold ice dancers Meryl Davis and Charlie White - they train with the silver medalists Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir. There's a lot to be said for surrounding yourself with talent, and I like to think about writing the same way. It's part of why I'm studying at VCFA. Fortunately for writing, you can surround yourself with talent without freezing your butt off. Just curl up in your favorite chair with a good book. If you're looking for a book to up the size of your pond, here are a couple of suggestions...

For an example of a great premise:

So often we see the story of the adopted child who doesn't feel like he or she fits in, but this book flipped that premise by taking the perspective of a couple's one biological child among twelve adopted children. Heightening the already amplified teenage angst of this situation, Bonnie(TM) gets to have her worst moments carefully edited into an hour of prime time television – her family is the cast of the reality show Baker's Dozen. An interesting cast as well as the inclusion of e-mails, web sites, tabloid articles, and TV scripts makes this book really something.

For an example of an excellent hook:

Breaking the rules, this book begins with a back story prologue. And, to use language of the main character, Gerald, it's so damn interesting readers won't give a shit. Lesson learned: although everyone poops, even young adults (and adults!) are fascinated by it.

You could win a copy of Something Real - enter the Pairing Up trivia contest! By entering the trivia contest, you are certifying that you are at least 13 years old. One entry per e-mail address. Winner will be contacted via e-mail to arrange prize delivery. Please note that I can only mail prizes to US addresses. To win, you must be the first to guess the original names of Gabe and Maddy in Pairing Up. If no one has guessed both correctly by my next Technique Tuesday post, then the first person to have guessed Gabe's name correctly is the winner. Fortunately, I'm not Rumpelstiltskin so I'm giving you multiple choice options. :-) CONTEST CLOSED - CONGRATULATIONS TO WENDY!

Eleanor & Park, by Rainbow Rowell, is the story of two misfits. Eleanor lives with a stepfather whose goal in life seems to be making her miserable, shares a room with her four brothers and sisters in a house with no door on the bathroom, and is tormented by her classmates. Park falls short, both physically and otherwise, of his father's expectations. Yet Eleanor & Park lives up to the “sexy, smart, tender romance” it is proclaimed to be in by Gayle Foreman's cover review. By strategically placing tender, smart, and sexy moments in the otherwise tragic lives of her characters, Rowell both tames tension and amplifies the effect of these hopeful moments to leave readers with the sense that love can uncross the stars.

The novel opens with a short prologue that is actually a reprint of part of a scene that occurs much later in the book, where Park mourns the loss of Eleanor: “Standing behind him until he turned his head. Lying next to him just before he woke up. Making everyone else seem drabber and flatter and never good enough” (Rowell 1). Both tragic and tender, this scene sets the tone for the novel and provides the tenderness readers need to sustain them through Eleanor and Park's first meeting. A far cry from love at first sight, Park describes Eleanor using the words big, awkward, and mess. He compares her to a scarecrow. When he grudgingly allows her space on his seat, his first words to her are “Jesus-fuck...just sit down” (Rowell 9). Quite the heartthrob, and Eleanor's no better, silently thinking of Park as “that stupid Asian kid” (Rowell 12). Yet the prologue gives readers a sense that there is so much more to come, enough to sustain us through Chapter 6, when Eleanor finally thinks that Park at least has “cool shoes” (Rowell 24) and Park admits it feels “wrong to sit next to somebody every day and not talk to her” (Rowell 24).

Park and Eleanor slowly begin to interact with each other after Park realizes that Eleanor is reading his comics along with him on the bus and notices her eyes:

The new girl's eyes were darker than his mom's, really dark, almost like holes in her face. That made it sound bad, but it wasn't. It might even be the best thing about her. It kind of reminded Park of the way artists draw Jean Grey sometimes when she's using her telepathy, with her eyes all blacked out and alien. (Rowell 33-34)

Park still doesn't say anything to Eleanor, but he begins holding his comics to make it easier for her to read along with him, begins saving them only to read on the bus so she doesn't miss sections, even begins bringing comics to silently lend to her. These smallest gestures of kindness are amplified because Rowell surrounds them with the depiction of Eleanor's crappy home life, where her creepy stepfather has torn down even the sheet that was over the bathroom doorway, and the back story reveal of how Eleanor had to live with another family for months, which was “Terrible. Lonely. [But still b]etter than here” (Rowell 36).

Though Eleanor's home life is awful, Rowell doesn't make her a mere damsel in distress. She establishes Eleanor as intelligent and funny by interjecting scenes such as this one from an English class discussion:

[Shakespeare's] so obviously making fun of them...Romeo and Juliet are just two rich kids who've always gotten every little thing they want. And now, they think they want each other...They don't even know each other...It was 'Oh my God, he's so cute' at first sight. If Shakespeare wanted you to believe they were in love, he wouldn't tell you in almost the very first scene that Romeo was so hung up on Rosaline...It's Shakespeare making fun of love. (Rowell 44)

Wow. This girl is so smart, and I want to get to know her better.

So does Park. They begin really talking on the bus, with playful banter including witty one-liners from Eleanor such as “The least boring Batman story ever, huh? Does Batman raise both eyebrows?” (Rowell 60). Rowell writes, “They agreed about everything important and argued about everything else. And that was good, too, because whenever they argued, Eleanor could always crack Park up” (Rowell 64). These smart scenes diffuse nights at home where Eleanor comforts her siblings as her stepfather rages and attacks their mother in the next room, where Eleanor wakes up smelling like pee because her brother wet the bed and heads off for the bus with only the scent of her stepfather's bacon for breakfast.

Having established a tender, smart foundation for the blossoming romance between her two main characters, Rowell begins to include the first sexual scenes between Eleanor and Park. It doesn't take much. Combined with the tragedy that surrounds them, these scenes are amplified to the point where Rowell is able to sustain Eleanor and Park holding hands for the first time over two whole pages – and it's extremely hot. Not even beginning with actual hand-holding, Park first is simply holding the old silk scarf Eleanor had tied around her wrist. When he finally “slid the silk and his fingers into her open palm...Eleanor disintegrated” (Rowell 71). After, Eleanor wonders: “How could it be possible that there were that many nerve endings all in one place? And were they always there , or did they just flip on whenever they felt like it? Because, if they were always there, how did she manage to turn doorknobs without fainting?” (Rowell 73). Set against the tragic, the power of this scene is completely credible.

When a girl named Tina (who “went” with Park in sixth grade) and some other mean classmates dump Eleanor's clothes in the toilet during gym class, Park gets an accidental view of Eleanor in her tight gym suit. Rowell twists the tragic into sexy by making Park aroused: “How could he even look at her now? He wouldn't be able to. Not without stripping her down to her gym suit. Without thinking about that long white zipper” (Rowell 245). Park's next meeting with Eleanor results in six steamy pages of make-out bliss, at the end of which he confesses his gym suit turn-on. Rowell sneaks in a classic bit of comic relief with Eleanor's smart response: “Tina would be so pissed” (Rowell 254).

Through the inclusion of these and other tender, smart, and sexy scenes, Rowell sets readers up for the book's climax and conclusion. When Eleanor's stepfather finds out about Park, he is livid. Eleanor has to leave home again and we know she can never come back. Her last scenes with Park, as he drives her to her uncle's house hours away, are filled with the tragic and tender as we know they have to say good-bye. Unable to express her emotions for Park in words, Eleanor doesn't answer his letters. But after all these two have been through, this can't be the end and finally, on the last page, there's a postcard from Eleanor. “It filled his head with song lyrics...just three words long” (325). Rowell never says what those three words are, but we know they're the three that Eleanor never managed to tell Park. Just that one sentence and we know these star-crossed lovers get a happily ever after. Tender and tragic, smart and sad, sexy and stinging: Eleanor & Park is a combination as timeless as sweet and sour sauce that leaves readers wanting to come back for seconds.

Is your work in progress too sweet or too sour? I hope this provides some food for thought. Also, check back this weekend for the debut of a new blog feature: "What to Read this Weekend." I'll be sharing a pair of YA books each Friday that I'm reading for inspiration, annotated with why you might check them out to improve your own craft. Included with the first "What to Read this Weekend" post will be the promised quiz to guess Gabe's original name in Pairing Up to win a hardcover copy of Something Real, fellow VCFA student Heather Demetrios's fantastic debut novel.

Works Cited:

Rowell, Rainbow. Eleanor & Park. New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2013. Print.

Last week for Technique Tuesday, I mentioned some of my favorite mentor texts. Miranda Kenneally's Catching Jordan made the swoon list for laughs but I also adore the voice of her main character, Jordan Woods. It's often said that if you want to talk the talk, you've got to walk the walk. If we want our readers to suspend disbelief and immerse themselves in our stories, we need to make our characters' walk believable through their talk. In Catching Jordan, a novel about a female high school quarterback who falls in love with a new teammate even as he rivals for her position, Kenneally uses sports similes and metaphors to show how fully immersed her protagonist Jordan Woods is in the world of football, thus building a credible world and characters.

Though the descriptions of football practices and games are realistic and well-researched, I found myself believing Jordan as a character more when she compared things normally unrelated to the sport to “football, dominator of fall – football, love of my life” (1). In Jordan's world, her friends don't make out, they kiss “as if winning the state championship depends on it” (6). The grass isn't just green, it's like “lying on Astroturf, only without the rug burns” (128). Instead of saying “after dinner,” Jordan says “before Monday Night Football” (187). Speaking “football” shows how close to her heart Jordan holds her beloved sport and quarterback abilities; football is always on her mind.

The comparisons extend beyond descriptions of events and setting to express Jordan's deepest emotions. Her emptiness is “a playbook without plays” (173). When she is angry at her father, really, really angry, she tells us, “And though it's sacrilege, I'm considering smashing his Joe Montana autographed picture” (167). Describing awe, she writes in her journal, “I thought I'd died and gone to the Super Bowl (as starting QB)” (38). Some of these comparisons may sound cheesy out of context or even in context, but the sincerity with which they are used only further drives the message home. Jordan loves all things football, even her best friend and long-time teammate Sam Henry's Cracker Jacks football charm prize that he wears religiously on a chain around his neck.

Other characters besides Jordan also speak “football.” When Jordan and Henry (Sam Henry goes by his last name) pair up for a class project to take care of an electronic baby, Jordan worries what they will do with the doll during practice. Henry says, “That's what grandparents and the junior varsity players are for” (105). JJ, another teammate, comments “Should I leave you two alone so you can make out with a football?” (189). Dialog examples such as these two bring credibility to the other members of Jordan's championship team.

In the case of cheerleaders Carrie and Marie, football knowledge expressed through comments such as “I loved your flea-flicker play the other night” (204) opens Jordan up to trust the two as friends and confidantes even though she previously referred to cheerleaders as “idiotic” (3). We know Jordan likes Carrie when Carrie says “Now go get 'em,” (122) and Jordan notes that Carrie sounds “just like Coach when he gives us pep talks before games” (122) and is “surprised she doesn't slap my ass too” (122).

The first time Jordan meets her new team mate, gorgeous Ty Green, she's taken aback by his seeming lack of dedication to the sport. “A Texas football player who doesn't kneel down and pray to the Cowboys every Sunday?” (21). Ty turns out to be not only handsome but a talented quarterback, Jordan's equal on the field. Even as Jordan determines that she cannot date a teammate and remain focused on her dreams of playing college ball for Alabama, it doesn't take long for her to become smitten, “wanting to tackle Ty in the guys' locker room” (32). She attempts to hide her feelings, later saying “I drew a bunch of Xs and Os, which aren't hugs and kisses, but offensive plays from the team playbook” (37), but hiding in a potting shed with her journal, she isn't fooling even herself.

When Jordan injures her knee during the state championship game near the end of the book, we feel her pain intensely because we know how much football means to her. And of course, her thoughts center on “My ACL? Oh God...my future...” (249). When Henry accompanies her to the ER but her boyfriend Ty stops for flowers, Jordan realizes that “maybe my life needs some physical therapy too” (254). Later, upon hearing that her knee injury is just a sprain, she writes in her journal, “I feel like I've been given a free play” (256).

Kenneally masterfully twists this language of sports metaphors when she has Jordan try to discuss her feelings with Henry using a sports (albeit baseball) analogy, only to be told by Henry that he doesn't “speak Shitty Sports Metaphor Language” (162). Henry thus forces Jordan to confront her feelings for him directly, making the moment more powerful.

As with all writing tools, simile and metaphor may be overdone, but for sports novels I feel the grass is greener on the Astroturf side. Kenneally's use of sports simile and metaphor challenged me to think about how I could use comparisons from the world of figure skating in my own novel and I also saw applications for other hobbies that are important parts of characters' lives. Writing about a piano student? Metaphors may be key. An artist? Brush up your novel with similes. Until then, “I'm taking the ball and running with it” (256).

Works Cited:

Kenneally, Miranda. Catching Jordan. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks Fire, 2011.

I had the pleasure of meeting Heather Demetrios during my residency at Vermont College of Fine Arts, where she helped me with revisions on my work-in-progress, DANCE WITH ME. When she returned my manuscript, she confessed that she “used to be a figure skater so this was super fun to read!”

Heather's web site has a list of ten interesting things she might tell you if she met you at a party, including that her mom was struck by lightning when she was pregnant with her, but here we're getting an exclusive peek at her figure skating past:

“I skated with the LA FSA when I was in elementary school and part of junior high. When I stopped skating, I had landed my double flip. (But only once! The rest of the time I landed everywhere BUT my feet.) I started skating late - when I was ten years old or thereabouts. Maybe 11. Ultimately, I didn't really skate for years and years, but the time I did was very intensive (those 5:30 a.m. practices, etc.). I was struggling to master my jumps and was about to transition into ice dancing when I had to stop skating due to my family's financial situation. Still, I love it to this day and miss being on the ice. My favorite move was my best attempt at a Nancy Kerrigan Spiral and I loved doing sit spins. I HATED the axel, but loved loop jumps. My favorite memory is of my mom sewing sequins onto a costume while watching me practice. She was a single mom and it meant so much to me that she was making so many sacrifices for my skating. She sat in the cold and sewed so she could support me while I was practicing. It's one of my favorite memories of my mom, period.”

SOMETHING REAL, Heather's debut novel, isn't about figure skating but skaters will emphasize with the problems faced by main character Bonnie Baker. A skater's falls may be broadcast live and replayed, but Bonnie's whole life has been on TV. When her family's reality TV show, Baker's Dozen, is canceled, Bonnie gets a chance for real friends and maybe even a boyfriend. Then she finds out that her family is going back on the air. SOMETHING REAL hits the shelves on February 4 and is available for pre-order on Amazon right now. For more about the novel as well as Heather's upcoming works, visit Heather online at http://www.heatherdemetrios.com/. You can also follow her on Twitter: @HDemetrios