Jayne Entwhistle and Me

Four of my ten novels, including the last two, have come out in audio versions. I have almost no say in anything to do with the audio versions beyond saying, "Thank you for putting my book out in audio." For The War That Saved My Life, I got an email saying that the narrator the company wanted could only do the book if she could do it immediately, and so they'd hired her and they hoped I didn't mind.

"Is she British?" I asked.

Dur, they said.  Awesome, said I.

I love audio books. I listen to them on long drives. Because I have the Last Living Tape Deck among all my friends and family, I've got a great big library of books on tape now, donations from everyone who'd upgraded their technology. And don't look down your nose at me about it. My tape deck sits above the CD slot in my extremely badass Ford F-350 quad cab diesel dually, which I bought in 2001 and will never, ever, sell. That sucker could pull a house out of a sinkhole, and it's pulled my horses and carried my children safely and well. And it has a tape deck. And I have the entire Outlander series (except the last book, not released on tape), most of the novels of Jane Austen, and Teacher Man read by Frank McCourt himself, so I don't lack for entertainment on the road.

I can be picky about my narrators. If they don't match my idea of how the book should sound, I stop listening and read the paperback later.

I could not have been more pleased about Jayne Entwhistle version of The War That Saved My Life. She got every nuance exactly right--Ada's grit, Jamie's innocence, Lady Thorton's upper-crust accent, Susan's cultivated Oxbridge one. Someone recently tweeted that they could listen to Jayne read the phone book, with enjoyment, and I could, too. I loved, loved, loved, listening to her read my book.

A book Jayne recorded won the Odyssey last year as well. I really don't follow current audio book trends (see: last living tape deck), and so while I loved my audio book I didn't have any sort of feeling about its winning an award. Nor was I told ahead of time, since the award goes to the producer, not the author. Which meant it was a pleasant surprise, watching the live feed awards show. It turns out that the internet feed must have been a few seconds slower than the actual live announcement--which makes sense--because just when they announced the Honor award for Echo my phone went off like a firecracker. I looked down at its screen and saw I'd won--the producer had won, Jayne had won, whomever, it was all good--just before it came up on the computer screen.

(The publishers all know slightly ahead of time. They've got their announcement tweets ready, and hit SEND just as the award is given.)

The awesome part about this is that I will apparently now get to meet Jayne Entwhistle. I am such a fan.

Lynda Mullaly Hunt and Me

So in the past few days I've amassed some ALA stories. (That's American Library Association, for you Muggles.)

Sunday morning I went to church, like always. The weather was dreadful, heading for worse, with cold rain which is the hardest weather on horses. As soon as we got home from church, I changed into barn clothes, and, while my daughter was changing, so that we could go get our horses under shelter, I went into my office to check the weather radar. On my way through the kitchen I grabbed my cell phone so I could plug it into the charger in my office.

Now please note: as you might imagine, I was completely aware of all the awards ALA was going to be handing out Monday morning. I was pretty sure that someone would call me first if I won something, which turned out to be 2/3rds correct, but I did think any calls would come through my home phone number. Not that I'd spent a whole lot of time considering the logistics of calls from award committees--I just want you to understand that when I was walking into my office late Sunday morning and my phone went off in my hand, I didn't think it was any big deal.

Then I saw the caller ID: a number from Boston, MA. Boston, where the ALA Midwinter meeting was. (For the record, I'm in east Tennessee..) I laughed, briefly thinking that it was cruel for the universe to send me automated calls about credit cards, or whatever sort of dreck this was, from the very city hosting ALA.

"This is Kim," I said.

"This is the Chair of the Schneider Award Committee," the person on the other end replied. (She said her name. I never caught it.)

I said, "Oh, my."

On the other end of the phone a room erupted in laughter. Clearly I was on a speaker to the whole committee. The Chair explained that for the first time in the history of the Schneider Award, they'd been unable to chose between two books, and had therefore declared both winners. The War That Saved My Life was one.

"Who's the other?" I immediately asked, but they told me I'd have to watch Monday's press conference to find out. They advised me that the Schneider award would be announced very early in the lineup. I told them I'd get up for it.

I was 99% sure that I knew who the other award-winner was. The Schneider Family Award is given for disability representation in three age groups: young child, middle grades, and YA. I'd thought all along that I had a chance at the Schneider, but I also thought Lynda Mullaly Hunt had a strong chance, for her lovely nuanced book about a dyslexic girl, Fish In A Tree.

Now the Real Committees can do what they like, at any time, and while I follow children's literature closely (hello--it's my job) I don't read or even hear about every book. So I thought my co-winner was Lyn Hunt, but I didn't know it. I was itching to find out. At the same time, I'd promised the Chair that I would only tell my immediate family and my editor before the press conference on Monday.

So I got on Twitter and sent Lyn a personal message. No words, just an emoji of a smiley face blowing her a kiss. I figured she'd either know exactly what I meant, or she'd think I was nuts, but since we'd never met there would really be no harm done.

Five minutes later she tweeted me an emoji of a smiley face with hearts for eyes. After that we switched to words.

Hooray for Lyn! Hooray for Fish In A Tree! Go read it, if you haven't already. I like it very much.

Wow. (That was All She Could Say. WOW.)

Well, we've had rather a good Monday morning here at the Bradley household. I just finished watching my book, my very own book, the one I wrote and rewrote (and rewrote and rewrote) and love, get all the love at the American Library Association's youth media awards press conference. The War That Saved My Life is now a Newbery Honor book and co-winner of the Schneider Award; the audio version won the Odyssey.

It's pretty amazing. I haven't even begun to process it, but meanwhile my phone is going off like the smoke alarm on Thanksgiving Day. I love the other winners: Last Stop on Market Street (though seriously--who saw that coming???), Echo, Roller Girl, and Fish in a Tree. I'm really chuffed right now.

But I'll tell you a secret: we had our big celebration last night. NOT because I knew what was coming--I did find out about the Schneider Award yesterday, to my amazement, but got the call from the Newbery committee at 6:30 this morning and learned about the Odyssey award by watching the press conference.

Last night my husband cooked me and our daughter a wonderful dinner. We ate it in front of a fire in the fireplace, with the sort of wine he cellars for special occasions. My food was served on the CONGRATULATIONS plate that our family pulls out when congratulations are due. And it wasn't for the Schneider, although I'm massively thrilled about that.

It was because my family celebrates journeys instead of destinations.

I don't want to get all mushy here. This day is really important to me, but I've always known that awards are way outside my control. All I can ever do is write as well as I can, and this year, as the buzz increased, it was pretty clear that a lot of people thought my book deserved a seat at the table. So we gave it one at our house, too, toasted the book and the trip, not the award.

My husband is a very talented surgeon. He's awesome about spending time with our family, both by working reasonable hours and by taking lots of vacation, but his days fill up really far in advance and he can't just decide to skip one. Rescheduling patients is reserved for family funerals, the birth of a child--even when he ruptured his Achilles tendon and had to have emergency surgery, the man only missed two days of work.

So you can imagine my surprise last Thursday night, when Bart said, "I'm going to tell you now. I took Monday off work. I'm going to stay and watch the awards with you." He grinned. "If you win we'll cheer, and if you don't we'll say, "Boooooo."

"You took Monday off?" I'm flabbergasted.

"I wanted to be with you."

"Yes, but--when did you do that?" I know he's scheduling surgeries six months in advance.

He smiled even bigger. "Months ago."

Geez, the love I have behind me. Geez, the party I have in front of me. We're over the moon, here--and we were before the announcements began.

Chronic PTSD, Ada, and Me

This is a cross-post from http://www.teenlibrariantoolbox.com/, something I wrote as part of their special month-long blogathon about mental health issues in YA books. I hope it helps someone somewhere. It's about as personal as I've ever gotten in print, so be nice to me, please.

Chronic Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Ada, and Me

Back when I fell to pieces, about ten years ago, the therapist who helped me said that she thought I had Chronic Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, as a result of years of childhood sexual abuse. She also told me I needed to be on anti-depressant medication, yesterday, and on anti-anxiety medication until my overall health improved.

I didn’t have any qualms about taking medication. It was very clear to me that I needed help. I already took medication to control my asthma and allergy symptoms, and, for that matter, used oral contraception. Medicine to keep me from harming myself and my family, and to help pull me out of my current abyss? Yes, please.

But my scientific mind—I make my living as a writer, but I was trained to be a research chemist—had questions. The psychologist was telling me that 1) my symptoms were a direct result of the abuse in my past; and 2) my symptoms were the result of faulty chemistry in my brain. For this to be true, then my abusive past had to have caused my faulty brain chemistry. (Clearly there could be a genetic predisposition as well, which I think likely looking up the branches of my family tree.)

Ten years ago my psychologist said, probably yes. Today, with a decade more of neuroscientific research on the topic, we know that the answer is actually, oh hell yes. Chronic Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is similar to the sort of PTSD that battlefield veterans get, but differs in some specific ways important in terms of its treatment. (For more on this, I recommend the excellent book The Body Keeps The Score, by Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D.)

I get annoyed when people say glibly, “Oh, trigger warning,” about something that might make a person a teeny bit upset. A real trigger feels like an explosion. An atom bomb. Something, some small phrase, or sound, or smell—especially smell—sends those of us with PTSD straight back into the actual experience of our trauma—the sights, the sounds, and especially the terror. Real triggers set off wailing air-raid sirens in my nonverbal brain—what I call my Inner Lizard—and I descend straight into memories of forty years ago, as though they are my current reality. Telling myself that I’m grown up, I’m safe, I’m strong, doesn’t help at all—my Inner Lizard can’t access verbal logic. I can only be soothed by what is physical—such as my heavy blanket, a special therapeutic comforter that weighs 25 pounds—or chemical, such as Atavan.

Trauma survivors avoid triggers at all costs. Luckily, most of us have become ace at a handy defense mechanism called dissociation. It’s when we psychically leave a situation we can’t physically escape. Our bodies and brains disconnect. This keeps us more-or-less sane through moments of crisis, but unfortunately can cause to big problems in dealing with the everyday, non-traumatic world. Once you’ve learned to dissociate, you can’t always stop doing it, even in times when you’d like to stay fully present and aware. And people hate it when you leave them.

In my novel, The War That Saved My Life, triggers, flashbacks, and dissociation plague my ten-year-old protagonist. Ada has grown up imprisoned by disability and by physical and mental abuse. She’s evacuated—this is London, World War II—to the home of a woman who treats her kindly, but Ada carries internal scars. She dissociates when people touch her. Several incidents—memories of her mother’s insults, the smell of damp air raid shelter—send her into full-blown meltdowns. Because it’s England, 1939, I can’t give my dear Ada modern medication, nor can I give her the trained, patient help of a modern therapist. (Even 30 years ago, therapy quite often did more harm than good to people with Chronic PTSD. My current psychiatrist says it’s one of the most challenging mental health problems to treat.) But I give her all the small things that I found helped me along the way. Ponies. (I’m not being funny—look up the use of horses in therapy.) Being wrapped tightly in a blanket. Physical ways to counteract triggers—such as Susan hanging sage and lavender in the air raid shelter, to mask the damp smell. Susan learns to be patient and careful about how she physically interacts with Ada; Ada learns to keep breathing through her distress.

It’s a slow process. There’s never a magic turning point in the book in which Ada is suddenly healed. Trauma survivors don’t heal like that. In nurturing, safe environments we can advance in small steps, gradually rebuilding ourselves from the shattered pieces of our past. Then, if we’re very lucky—as I was--we become better, more empathetic, more compassionate versions of who we might have been. I would prefer not to understand trauma as well as I do. Yet without my past I never could have written The War That Saved My Life. I can’t say I’m grateful I was harmed. I’m not. I know I’m lucky to have healed as fully as I did. And yet—I’m grateful I could write this book. Grateful every day, to have told Ada’s story well

"Do I Ever Revise?"

In half an hour or so, I'm Skypeing a group of students from--well, I just went and looked it up, and I don't know where they're from. I know the name of their school, but frankly it could be anywhere. Anyhow, their librarian sent me a list of their questions ahead of time, which I completely appreciate, not so much because I need to prepare answers, but because it cuts down on questions like, "Have you ever been to prison?" which I have gotten before. (No. I have not.)

One child is apparently going to ask me, "Do you revise?"

I am so tempted to say, No. I do not. Every word in The War That Saved My Life is printed exactly as it first sprung from my brow, shining and whole. I don't even have to fix typos.

It would be, of course, the world's biggest lie.

In the spirit of inquiry, this morning I tried to look up my first email from my editor, Liz, about TWTSML. I have long remembered, and maintained, that her initial reaction was to say, and I mean this as a quote, "This isn't really your next book, is it?"

Which is of course editor speak for this is SO bad. We are never, ever, publishing this. Yikes.

It turns out I changed email addresses right about then and so my email records don't go back quite far enough. Liz retired and no longer has her files, either, and Lauri Hornik, head of Dial and my very old friend, insists that Liz would never have been quite so blunt. Lauri understands memory as a fallible thing, which it is, but still I'm pretty sure I'm correct here. Liz's first reaction was oh hell no. And I read her first reaction and thought, damn. Then I wrote back that yes, it was indeed my next book, but that clearly I had some work to do. And I took the 70 pages of novel I had at that point and threw them into the trash. I started again.

And again. And again. For a few drafts I solicited opinions from my husband and daughter, and these were so uniformly negative that I didn't even bother consulting Liz. But then I finally got it. I sent Liz another couple of pages with the triumphant heading, "Ada Finds Her Voice," and these were on the new email, so I just unearthed them.

And they're terrible. Really gut-clenchingly bad. Here, exhibit A, the opening paragraph (skipping a prologue which I eventually discarded):

I'm remembering what it was like, seven years ago when things began.  Susan found my birth certificate, so now I know that I was ten years old in 1939, but I didn't know it then.  It's hard to believe I didn't know how old I was, but in truth my world before the war consisted of two things:  our third-floor flat, and whatever I could see or hear or talk to out our single window down to the street.  Birthdays weren't celebrated in our flat or on the street.  No one ever mentioned mine.

Please contrast that to the opening of the final, published version:

"Ada! Get back from that window!" Mam's voice, shouting. Mam's arm, grabbing mine...

This is actually making my day, because I'm hip deep in revision of the sequel, and honestly it's starting to be a real mess. (And I'm sorry about the double-spacing. I can't get it to stop.) I mean, I'm at the part where most of the stuff that will happen is down, but my editor (Jess) had a sort of brilliant idea about getting rid of a whole bunch of fairly good writing, so I'm trying to do that while retaining my favorite lines--it's a mess. And apparently, that's okay. Because if I can turn "this isn't your next novel" into "Ada Finds her Voice (which, while dreck, was infinitely better than what it replaced)", and the crap paragraph above into an actual novel, then I'll be okay with this sequel too. After all, I do revise.

About That Pesky Newbery

Several years ago, I was volunteering in the cafeteria of my children's school (least favorite volunteer job ever) and kept checking my phone. After awhile one of the other volunteers gave me an Odd Look about it. "The Newbery Award is being announced this morning," I explained (I have to believe this was before the days of live internet feeds. Otherwise I'm pretty sure I would have been home by my computer.). "I'm dying to see who wins."

"Oh," said the Other Volunteer. "Who do you want to win?"

I said, "ME!"

She said, "OH!" as though she had never once considered that, which she probably hadn't, because 1) most people in Bristol assume I self-publish, and 2) why would she?

She asked, "Is that, like, possible?"

"Possible," I said. "I have a book that's eligible. Not probable. And I'm thinking that if I did win, I would already know by now. But still--"

Looking back, I'm pretty sure this was the year of For Freedom, which, while never winning a major award, inexplicably came in at #57 on Time magazine's recent list of 100 Best Children's Books Of All Time. So it was a long shot, but not perhaps a wholly ridiculous one.

A few weeks ago, at a middle school basketball game, I asked a friend who is a middle school librarian, "So, who do you like for the Newbery?"

"Echo!" she said. "I am such a fan of Echo!"

"Angie," I said, "you're supposed to say me."

"Of course, you too," she said instantly. "Your book, and Echo. I really loved Echo."

Somewhere, Pam Munoz Ryan, who wrote Echo, is sitting down to work (actually, I think she lives in California. She may still be asleep) trying not to remember that this time next week someone's book will have been awarded the Newbery Award. Laura Amy Schlitz is also putting it out of her mind. As well as Sharon Draper, Cassie Beasley, and a host of other writers, including me.

I want to win the Newbery so bad it makes my teeth hurt.

And yet, it doesn't really matter at all.

Both of these things are absolutely true.

Earlier this year, when The War That Saved My Life started attracting a whole lot of buzz--way more than any of my previous books--a lot of people that love me and know a lot about publishing cautioned me not to get my hopes of too high. Yes, there was Newbery talk---but talk was cheap, and the Committee (I always think of them as a variation on Nick Hornby's Polysyllabic Spree) made their own choices. The Newbery is not a popularity contest. Sometimes, or so I'm told, it's a compromise.

Sure, I told my friends. Of course I already know that. Take a look down the list of winners. Some make perfect sense to me--others, not so much. And the ones that make sense to me puzzle other people exceedingly, and vice versa. "How about the bug poems one?" I offered as an example. "No one likes the bug poems."

"I LOVE the bug poems," another librarian (and ex-Committee member, though not for that year) exclaimed. "I have kids reading the bug poems one ALL THE TIME."

So there you are. Five days until the big reveal. Not that I'm counting. (I'm counting.) (Hi, Pam!)

The Fun Goes On

We have been on vacation. We do it really well. Just this past weekend we went to Arizona, to watch my son's school (and husband's alma mater) lose abysmally to Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl. The game was a bit of a drag, especially after Jaylon Smith got hurt (He blew out his knee. He was expected to be a top-ten NFL draft pick. He also is a graduate of my Catholic high school's cross-town Catholic rival, and he lived in the same dorm as my son. So I kind of felt I knew him, though we never met.), but the rest of the trip was fabulous. We hiked in the desert and went to see Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West (it turns out FLW was really odd). I couldn't live in a desert full time--tough country for horses--but it was interesting to be in it for awhile.

Yesterday my husband got up at 5:30 and toddled off to do important and life-changing eye surgery. I planned to get up in time for the 8:30 yoga class--but instead slept until 10:20. Which meant I still got up before my children. It's turned cold in Bristol--it was 70 here on Christmas Day, then 70 in Arizona, and last night was 15--but my daughter and I went out riding anyhow, me muttering my winter mantra ("there is no bad weather, there are only inappropriate clothing choices") through clenched teeth. Then I went to a late yoga class, and cooked a nice dinner, and stared at the tree in the living room, still decorated but starting to look a little tattered. My husband, who after restoring sight to the blind tried to teach a bunch of fifth graders to play better basketball--your guess as to which task is harder--no, I'll tell you, it's basketball--sighed and suggested we start taking it down, but I'd gotten a new Felix Francis (that's Dick Francis's son, not as good as his father but reminiscent enough to be worth reading) novel from the library and I suggested we leave the tree alone.

Our son leaves tomorrow for a semester in London. I've prepared him by sharing my TunnelBear subscription and buying him a large jar of peanut butter. Not kidding. TunnelBear makes your computer look like it's in a different country, which is how I've seen all of Season 6 of Downton Abbey already (itv in Britain shows replays on line, to British computers only); my son will use it to access our DirecTV subscription and watch important American sports. As for the peanut butter, someone from the study abroad office actually advised the London students to take peanut butter with them, as British peanut butter is noticeably inferior. When my son asked if I thought this was true, I told him that when my dear childhood friends the Magliochettis moved to London, Mrs. Mag packed a case of peanut butter and a case of her favorite brand of tampons. So yeah, it made sense to me.

I went to England when I was thirteen, to visit the Magliochettis. The War That Saved My Life is dedicated to Mrs. Mag.

Anyway, the party's over. It's 7:25 am and I'm writing. From where I sit, it's all good.