Some of you may know about my health challenges and how that affects my writing, and YA author/ generally rad person Sara Zarr gets to the heart of it in her interview with me on her podcast This Creative Life.

I still haven’t heard it because I hate listening to the sound of my own voice, and also when I try to open it on itunes it won’t work yet.  So hopefully it is as hilarious as I remember it to be.  And in a good way.  In fact, if someone could let me know, that would be great.

Meanwhile, it is less than a month to the great WIFYR (Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers)!  June 18-22 at the Waterford School in Sandy, UT!  There are still spots available if you want to sign up for this truly life-changing conference.  I won’t be teaching full-time this year, but I will be speaking on Friday afternoon and I am PSYCHED.  If you, too, are psyched about writing and the writing life, this is the place to be.  Tell them Em Dawg sent you.

The Skinny:

For all children’s authors seeking to be published and/or improve their work, Writing and Illustrating for Young Readers in Sandy, UT, is the conference not to be missed. This year the five-day conference, June 18-22, 2012, offers nine morning workshops for the chance to get your manuscript critiqued by an experienced author/illustrator/editor faculty and afternoon classes.  http://www.wifyr.com/
This year the conference sponsors its first annual Writing Contest and Scholarship. Don’t miss your chance at a $1,000 award. http://www.wifyr.com/blog/2012/03/09/1rst-annual-wifyr-writing-competition-and-fellowship-award/

Nothing major—just from the north end of the Salt Lake Valley to the south end, to be closer to my husband’s office (and, of course, to be closer to Bree Despain and all the other awesome South Jordan YA writers).  One thing I was very much looking forward to was the change of scenery along the roads I traveled most often.  I found one North Salt Lake billboard on Redwood Road to be especially troubling.  Tired of being normal? it asked in obnoxiously big letters.

This is something I personally I have never had the luxury of tiring of.  The less normal I got, the more frustrating the billboard became.  No, I would think, I am not tired of being normal.  What I am tired of is being abnormal.  Normal people don’t have to remind themselves to eat, or go to the bathroom.  Normal people don’t have to remind themselves how to sleep, or how to wake up.    Normal people’s brains belong to them and only them.

So much runs on auto-pilot when you’re a normal person.  The thought that someone wouldn’t be grateful for that— would even WISH IT AWAY—got me so worked up I had to consciously calm myself.  Let’s face it, I probably shouldn’t be driving anyway, but I definitely shouldn’t be driving angry.

Why is being normal not good enough?

Do you feel normal?  Are you tired of it?

Now we’ve moved into our new home.  It’s different on the south end of the valley than the north.  Now, I like by a lake that isn’t full of saltwater.  Now, I live equidistant from four libraries.  Now, I live across the street from a blue house.

But when I was driving around  my new city the other day  I passed a billboard.   And yep.  In obnoxiously big letters it asked:  Tired of being normal?

Even more than my birthday, I think of December 8 as my day.  It’s the day I circle on the calendar; the day I make plans for.  My parents give me chocolates.  A college roommate thought it quite bizarre that I celebrate the day I was hit by a car.  I’m sure others think so, too.  But every December 8 I put on my shoes and think:  I’m still here.  I’m still putting on my shoes.

For reasons making perfect sense in my mind, I spent most of my life after that December 8 believing I would only live to twenty-six.  By this same unique brand of logic, at twenty-six I got the distinct impression that I hadn’t completed my life mission yet—to be an author—and I had five more years to do so.  That gave me until thirty-one to get the book(s) out there I needed to.  I was confident I could get it done.  And I was fine with the idea that by thirty-one, I too would be done.

What I didn’t count on was getting sick just shy of my thirtieth birthday.  I always assumed (you know, like you do) that I’d suffer brain death: that at some point, my brain would just stop working.  I hadn’t counted on that happening slowly, but each day my mind betrayed me more and more. The end was coming—I could feel it, and I was prepared.  I was almost thirty-one, and I was tired of suffering.  God had promised me—had PROMISED me—it would be over soon.

And then it was over.  But not in the way I expected.

I started getting better.

When my brain told me right hand to move, it would move.  When I wanted to sit up and look down at the same time, I did it without dizziness.  I walked down grocery store aisles unafraid of collapsing.  I could type again.  I could write again.

And then another December 8 rolled around.  I was invited to a Christmas party at a local bookstore where I signed my two books.  I mingled with friends and remembered how many good, good people I know, and how much I love them.  I heard about a long-distance friend’s good news and was so genuinely thrilled for him it felt as though I were experiencing the joy as my own (MM, this is to you) .  It hit me real and tangible:  I need more time with these people. I’m not done living yet.

It’s a mixed blessing.  I’d grown accustomed to not wanting more for myself, I had learned to be content, I was at peace with finishing my life.  And now that my life isn’t finished, I need to keep going.  And it isn’t easy to keep going, especially when you’re anyone, but especially especially when you’re an author and writing is HARD, and finding the strength to finish that next book can look impossible.

But I’ve found that some pretty strange things are possible, and not just for other people, but for me, so for now I am just going to put my shoes on and think:  I’m still here.  I’m still putting on my shoes, and remember just what a lucky thing that is.

Here’s where else we’ve been:

Bunch of signings in the Bay Area with my BFF J.L (Jessica) Powers, including a stop at premiere indie bookstore Kepler’s.  Besides meeting a bunch of new writer friends–and seeing old friends, too–I learned something very interesting about YA bookselling guru Angela.  She closes her eyes in EVERY SINGLE PICTURE.

Next we were off to:

Oh, okay, so this is not where we were off to next.  Next I went to meet some delightful high school students, and this picture is of a mannequin in New York City, so you see how I could get the two confused, right?  And the picture isn’t even turned the right way but I’ll keep it because whether or not it’s the right picture, it took a long time to load.

So this is the trip to New York I took with writer pals Brodi Ashton and Bree Despain.   We went for writing-related purposes, of course, but we did squeeze in a couple of hours to shop  (I ended up buying nothing, and all Brodi bought was a fan, but whatevs).  All I could find were clothes designed to fit the mannequin pictured above.  And alas, I am not shaped like the mannequin above.  There’s a picture to prove this, but I think my site is too family-friendly to post it.

Speaking of posting pictures, I was trying to do that just now and got three errors in a row, so maybe I’m doing something wrong?  I will check and get back to you tomorrow.

A funny thing happened on the way to my book launch.  And by “on the way to” I mean “on the way to, and then throughout.”

Apparently, during my reading/signing, something struck me as HILARIOUS. If only I remembered what it was. Oh, the jubilance. Spell check just told me jubilance isn’t a word. Forget you, spell check. Forget you.

I count any night when I am on a sign to be a PARTY. And what a party it was. For one thing, there was music, when The SIX performed LIVE as The Barely Manilows. It was a one-time-only gig, but you can relive it if you want to (And you do. Trust me on this):

Plus, there was food. The desserts weren’t chocolate, but they were–dare I say it?–better. At least as far as BACK WHEN YOU WERE EASIER TO LOVE is concerned.

By the way, I should add that all photos are courtesy of Heather Gardner at Fire and Ice . My husband took pictures, but they are all of me. To make matters worse, in every one of them I am talking, my mouth contorted in various expressions that lead me to wonder why I look like a raving street person while discussing my feelings on German surnames.

Anyway, the night was a huge success, and I even held the honor of having the best-behaved line Rachel at King’s English had ever seen. I was proud, until I realized that maybe it was because this was the one time I wasn’t actually IN the line (I’m not great at waiting my turn. So sue me.)

If you would like to book The Barely Manilows for your wedding/bat mitzvah/high scool reunion, please contact Brodi for details. In fact, if we can flood her blog with requests, that would be good.

Looks like we made it, friends. Looks like we made it.

I happen to love, love, love J.L, so much so that I am traveling to her Northern California home where we will be doing a few book events together.  And to prep for this sweet, sweet mini-tour, I wanted to post some stuff about this fine woman and her compelling, fascinating book:

THE WOMAN BEHIND THE BOOK
J.L. Powers was conceived in northern Kenya, grew up in the big bad border town of El Paso, Texas, and eats jalapeños on everything—but that doesn’t mean she was able to stomach the fiery pepper of Mozambique known as the piri-piri! About ten years ago, she became so obsessed with South Africa that she got not one but two master’s degrees in African history. She’s so confused by now that when she tries to speak Spanish, she ends up speaking Zulu instead. This Thing Called the Future is her second young adult novel.

THE BOOK
“This novel takes a loving, clear-eyed look at the clash of old and new through the experience of one appealing teenager… A compassionate and moving window on a harsh world.”—Kirkus Reviews

“… a compelling, often harrowing portrait of a struggling country, where old beliefs and rituals still have power, but can’t erase the problems of the present. Readers will be fully invested in Khosi’s efforts to secure a better future.”—Publishers Weekly

EWS: How did you come up with your protagonist Khosi? Did you base her on a specific person you met or is she a composite character?

When I first spent time in South Africa in 2006, I was on a Fulbright-Hayes to study the Zulu language. I stayed for a time with a family in Imbali township. One of the daughters was 14-year-old Khosi, a beautiful young woman, always cooking and cleaning and being a good daughter and granddaughter. But she startled me one day by revealing that she liked to go to parties where she was a V.I.P. and all the men paid attention to her. By men, she wasn’t talking about other teenagers—she was talking about men in their twenties, thirties, even forties. When we went walking in the township, the drunk young men wandering by and giving us the eye and sometimes making comments made me nervous—but she dismissed them without even thinking about it. They were hardly on her radar screen, they were so much a part of daily life for her. Obviously, she was the spark for the girl in my book, a 14-year-old named Khosi. But from there, my character had to take on a life of her own.

I did draw on my own thoughts and feelings when I was a teenager to write her, but I had to be careful. The life of 14-year-old-Jessica growing up in the U.S., even with religious parents who taught me and my brothers that there was an invisible spiritual world that was even more real than the visible world, was extremely different than the life of a 14-year-old Zulu girl, growing up with both Christian and traditional Zulu beliefs and navigating the very weird world of African belief systems nestled within the westernized world of education, medicine, and politics.

So I did a lot—and I mean a lot—of research.

EWS Can you tell me about your background in South Africa? How did you get interested in that country?

I’ve always had a morbid fascination with injustice. In South Africa, injustice was perpetrated on a daily basis against the country’s black majority. Once you start looking at the rich history of European immigration, the dynamics between Dutch and English settlers, the mixed race population, and the sea of Africans, you don’t have to look very far to start finding fascinating stories. And once I started visiting South Africa, it was impossible not to fall in love with people there and impossible not to get involved. You meet utter extremes of human depravity and supernatural grace every single day, it seems like.

For example, a couple of years ago, I received a surprise phone call from a South African woman I’d never met who was seeking asylum in the United States. She was hoping I would write a letter on her behalf to the judge who was overseeing her case. She was white, and she was fleeing her family, who belong to a notorious white supremacy group in South Africa known as the White Wolves. They were angry that she had adopted black children after 1994, when South Africa became a democratic country and blacks were finally allowed equality on a political basis. One day, they caught her as she was driving from her farm to Pretoria. By the side of the road, her own uncle disemboweled her and left her there to die, with her entrails and guts hanging out of her on the asphalt. Amazingly, she managed to recover, and she fled to the U.S., where she lived illegally once her visa ran out. She was afraid to return to South Africa because she believed her family would kill her. Unfortunately, the U.S. did not grant her asylum. She was deported to South Africa and last I heard, her daughter told me that she was moving to the Dominican Republic. I hope she made it there safely.

On the other side, the side of grace, I met a Zulu woman named S’the Ndlovu. S’the was an HIV-AIDS worker and lived in Imbali township, the township that is the setting of my book. Out of her own small salary, probably insufficient to meet her own needs since she had two daughters and was single, she started feeding local AIDS orphans. By the time I met her, she was feeding up to 80 kids a day. I don’t know how she did it, but I can say that I meet generous, self-sacrificing people like her every day I spend in South Africa.

EWS: I was intrigued by the healing methods in Khosi’s world, so different from Western medicine. How do you feel about traditional healing? Have you used it or had any experience with it?

Well, it turns out the answer to that question is rather complicated—and I’m writing a non-fiction memoir about it. We all know herbs can be efficacious, so answering that part is rather obvious—I think herbalism is fine, though it must be practiced by someone with knowledge since some herbs can be dangerous. The real question is about their spiritual powers. Among the Zulu, traditional healers consult their ancestors to seek the cause of your health issue (which includes disease but is not limited to it). I do believe some people have a gift for healing and that sometimes that gift is supernatural in origin. There are plenty of charlatans out there but I encountered many “spirit” healers (for lack of a better term)—not just of the African variety, I also came across a man practicing Native American shamanism in Cape Town, and I can’t tell you how many Christian prophets I encountered—and many of them seemed genuine. Some of them clearly spoke to my life in a helpful and healing way, and I respect their calling. Also, just about everybody you encounter in South Africa has a story that can make the hairs on your arms rise. Belief is not an issue there the way it is among Americans. I don’t think I could have written this book if I didn’t believe in it to some degree or another. On the other hand, if I had cancer, I’d go to a medical doctor.

EWS: What do you hope people take away from your book?

Americans are giving millions and millions of dollars every year to fund HIV-AIDS programs in Africa. The lion’s share of that money buys antiretroviral medications for HIV-positive people. This is a program started by George W. Bush called PEPFAR (The U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief). I was not a fan of George W. Bush but never let anyone tell you he didn’t do any good—the people of Africa are some of his hugest fans, even die-hard liberals. Anyway, those are our tax dollars at work. Because of us, there are literally thousands of people who are alive today who would otherwise be dead. Since we’re sending that money, I think we should meet some of the people whose lives we’re saving. And we shouldn’t meet them in a “you’re the recipient of my charity” kind of way. We should meet them on their turf, experiencing their life, and understanding their world. Africans are the most generous, hospitable people I’ve ever met—black, white, and mixed-race. My book offers people the vicarious opportunity to enter that world and to fall in love with Africans.

A NOTE FROM EM: This is a terrific, unique read, and I’m giving a copy to one lucky blog reader! To enter, leave a comment about one of your favorite YA books that helped you see the world in a new way. Oh, and if you spread the word about this contest via twitter, facebook, or your own blog, that’s a second entry. Maximum two entries per person because otherwise I get confused.

Thank you, J.L Powers, and best of luck with the new book!

It’s not my birthday, but it IS my book birthday. Today my book comes out into the world, but that’s not what I’m thinking about. I’m thinking about the people who helped me write the book. Here’s the super-sad news: through some kind of mix-up not entirely understood, my acknowledgments never made it into BACK WHEN YOU WERE EASIER TO LOVE. And I have a lot of people to thank! And I want to do it in public but really, this is the most public forum I have access to. Maybe someday when my cover band, The Barely Manilows, makes it big. But until then:

PEOPLE ASK ME HOW I WROTE THIS BOOK

People ask me how  I wrote this book, and I tell them it wasn’t without help.  Thanks to the people who made Back When You Were Easier to Love possible:

Sara Zarr, Anne Bowen and James Dashner—the best writing posse a girl could have.

The SIX:  Bree Despain, Brodi Ashton, Kim Reid, Sara Bolton and Valynne Nagamatsu—the best critique group a girl could have.

Utah writer-mentors Louise Plummer, who saw this novel in its earliest draft, and Ann Cannon, who saw it in its final one.

My family—Pops, Mom, Juliana, Reo, Holden, Ethan, Cami, Andy and Hannah.  And my family-in-law—Brent, Yoriko, Shannon, Mike, Josiah, Ha, Andrea and Brian.

Julie Strauss-Gabel, rock star editor; Abby Kuperstock and Lori Thorn , for their mad cover (and spine) design skills; Lisa Yoskowitz; Rosanna Lauer and the rest of the Dutton team.

Michael Bourret.  Not every agent would entertain the notion of attending a Barry Manilow concert with a client.  Michael would.  I am lucky to have him.

Daniel.  My hero.

And Sabrina–for being so much better than Ismene.

Thank you.

You know how sometimes when you read something to yourself, it doesn’t sound the way it sounds when you read it out loud?  So the first time I saw it, I was thinking, “Seriously, B1 helps you make friends?  My diet must be completely B1 deficient.”  Junior high was a lonely time for me.

It didn’t sink in until I looked at the poster again, a close-up of two kittens in a feline-style embrace (because if my education taught me anything, it is that cats are the universal spokesmen, confirming everything from “hang in there!” to “I can haz cheezeburger.”)  Be one.

Each night I asked God for friends.  I told Him:  If I can make a friend, I promise to be one.

It was a promise I took seriously, but unfortunately, friends were not to be for years to come.  Plenty of people offered to be my friend, but suspiciously, all these people ended up changing schools or skipping town after only a few days of friendship.  Things were not looking good.

So I turned to books, as I’d done since I was a child.  In seventh grade I loved those novels about girls with life-threatening illnesses who had mere weeks to live.  I read a lot of those.  Because of my recent head injury, I was not a fast reader, as I had once been.  Maybe that’s why the slim volumes appealed to me, with their tales of characters who, like me, were no longer who they had once been.  It was all very pathetic.

But the truth was, it was healing, too.  Books have always been the friend I never had, which I think is why YA speaks to me so loudly.

Because now I have friends.  In fact, I have lots of friends—more than thirteen-year-old me would have imagined possible.  Sometimes even thirty-year-old me can’t believe it’s possible.  There are all these people in my life, and I love them all so much, and at night I pray as hard as I can:  Help me to be one.

And honestly, sometimes I don’t know how.  And sometimes I think that maybe the best way to be that friend is through books.  Because sometimes no one person is ever enough.  And I truly believe that books can fill that empty space where people can’t reach.

So tomorrow (Thursday, April 14)  is YALSA’s Support Teen Lit Day.  And you can show your support by Rocking the Drop. Tons of YA groups are participating, including the readergirlz Divas and my own rad peeps The Contemps. Here’s the plan.

1) Grab this banner, created by David Ostow, and add it to your website or blog.

This obviously isn’t the most important part, but it’s pretty darn cool looking.  Also, if you include it and link back to this  post or the Contemps or readergirlz or whatevs then we will all see how we can be this united force of literary friends.

2) Drop a book in any public place (bus seat, park bench, restaurant counter).  Wherever someone will find it.  Someone who just might have a space inside them that this book might fill.

If you want, you can put this bookplate in the front:

The good thing about including this bookplate is that hopefully people will open the book, see the bookplate, and  not worry that someone misplaced their book.  Because that would be my worry.  Then again, I worry too much.

Oh, and also it spreads the word about Rock the Drop.

3)  Then, snap a photo of your drop and email readergirlz AT gmail DOT com with the pic — they’ll be posting lots of pictures of drops happening all over the world.

I am totally planning to do this, because doing it will help me to be one.

But which book to drop?  And where?  Any ideas?

Lately I’ve had a lot of time to remember.  Or just ruminate in general.   When I haven’t been confined to bed, I’ve been somewhere much worse–the dental chair.  My itty-bitty baby bad tooth–right lateral incisor 7– needed to be replaced.  Real  7  simply never showed up to the party that is my mouth, so it was the highlight of my life when, at sixteen, I finally got an implant (up until then I’d worn a retainer with a tooth attached.  Attractive).

Thing is, I’d always remembered the oral surgeon telling me the tooth would be good for thirty years.  Now I realize that I was heavily medicated at the time and what he actually said was that the tooth would be good until I was thirty years.   Of course, now that I am thirty years and my tooth has eroded to a nub, they no longer manufacture it.   So I have been minus one incisor 7 for the last six weeks with no end in sight.  For the meantime, I’m forced to wear a “tissue former” if I don’t want to look like a slack-jawed gappy-toothed yokel (see above picture).  They call it a tissue former but that’s stupid because a) it makes no sense and b) it looks remarkably like the retainer I wore for my entire adolescence up to age sixteen.

Meanwhile, there’s a hole above 7 where there used to be an implant and there now is nothing.  The dentist protected it with a little cap.  A minuscule cap, invisible to the naked eye.  But that cap.  I feel that cap.  My tongue worries it over and over again.  And why?  It’s just a cap.  Only I feel it and I feel something else, something I only just realized–I feel seven years old.  I feel my big tooth growing in.  I keep checking if it’s getting bigger.  I didn’t think I remembered that feeling but I do; my body does.

Lately I’ve had a lot of time to remember.  Or just ruminate in general.  And I am ruminating that maybe our most important memories are the ones we don’t remember remembering.  The ones we only remember if we get down deep enough, past all the cerebral craziness into something realer; truer.

Try it.  Have a glass of the expensive orange juice you wanted to drink as a child but your mother only bought once, on your birthday.  Wash your hands with the same soap your Girl Scout leader kept at her bathroom sink.  Listen to the theme song from an old sitcom you’ve forgotten you loved (It’s a little wild and a little strange…when you make your home out on the range…Hey, Dude.)  Something that will remind you of what you don’t know you know.

Maybe you’ll be surprised.