One-Day Weekend

I realllly needed this weekend, mostly to deal with house stuff that just isn’t getting done during the week (good thing the children and I don’t need to put on real clothes to go anywhere because the laundry situation is out of control). But I stayed up late Friday night to watch a documentary I needed to see for work, then got up at 4:30 on Saturday morning to try to get some editing done. By the time Will was ready to go down for his morning nap around 9:00 I was totally exhausted. I slept for a couple hours, went on a 30-minute walk around the neighborhood (big mistake), and lay on the floor next to Will for an hour until Matt took him and Alice outside. Then I slept until dinnertime. So nothing got done on Saturday!

Today was much better and we had a nice, uneventful day hanging out at home. I cleaned up the kitchen. Matt fixed the lawnmower. I took my tomato seedlings outside so they could get some extra sunlight. We’re running a little low on food so I’m probably going to have to go to the grocery store at some point this week (wearing one of the cute masks my aunt sent us!). So that will be an exciting trip in the car. You know how some old people like to just “go for a drive”? I get it now. I really, really get it.

My old band director lives in our neighborhood and has been going out on her porch nearly every night since the stay-at-home order started to play a “Corona Concert” for whoever is walking by. Sometimes other people bring their instruments and join her. It is my very favorite thing to come out of all of this, and I kind of hope she’ll keep it up occasionally after we’re all back out in the world again.

Reading Update:

Liberty Falling by Nevada Barr: The Anna Pigeon series is my very favorite mystery series (national parks + murder, what could be better?) and I usually devour them, but this one took me a long eleven days to read—mostly because I was reading it over my first days back at work and partly because this is my least favorite AP book to date. It takes place in New York City with the Statue of Liberty as a centerpiece and I just really missed having a more typical national park as the setting. The mystery was compelling, though, and the ending was pretty gripping. Just not my personal fave (for the record, my favorites so far in the series are #2, A Superior Death, and #11, Flashback. Finished on 4/17/20.

The Hypnotist’s Love Story by Liane Moriarty: I really like Liane Moriarty’s books and I just started this one today and am already sucked in. She knows how to tell a story!

Corona Concert Series

What I read on maternity leave #2

My total maternity leave book count came in at 29! I read some really great books over the past three-ish months. Here they are!

Out of the total 29 books, I read:

15 adults novels (5 of which I would classify as mystery/suspense)

9 works of prescriptive nonfiction

3 memoirs

2 narrative nonfiction

Almost a complete split between fiction and nonfiction! It’s my policy to only read what I want to on maternity (no reading for work), so I took the opportunity to dive a little more into women’s fiction than I usually do. I enjoyed everything I read and would most highly recommend Tisha, Back of Beyond, Dead Wake, and When We Were Vikings.

Diving back in

The weirdness of the past several weeks has been compounded for me because I’ve been on maternity leave… but tomorrow I’m diving back in to work from the comfort of my home workstation set up on a dining table in my living room. Matt is still going to work, so I’ll be here watching two young children and doing my job simultaneously. I am nervous. I sat on 2 1/2 hours of conference calls on Friday and while it wasn’t a disaster, it was pretty exhausting. This is how I’m expecting my schedule to basically function:

4:45 a.m.: Wake up, brush hair and teeth, put on professional-ish shirt (no one can see my pants on conference calls!), make highly caffeinated tea

5:00 a.m.: Sit down at computer, edit or do other focused work (no checking email until after some real work gets done!)

7:00 a.m.: Check email, probably feed Will

7:30-8:00 a.m.: Get Alice breakfast and set her up with some kind of activity

8:00-10:00 a.m.: Conference calls, manage email, work on small projects, cater to children’s whims as necessary

10:00-11:00 a.m.: Take kids outside, run Alice around as much as possible, manage urgent emails from phone

11:00-12:00: Manage email, work on small projects

12:00-1:00 p.m.: Unavailable for work, making lunch and putting kids down for nap

1:00-3:00 p.m.: SACRED NAPTIME! Edit or do focused work, participate in extremely important conference calls that require no child drop-ins

3:00-5:00 p.m.: Work on projects (Alice will get screen time after nap)

5:00-6:00 p.m.: Clear out inbox and close things down for the day (Matt will hopefully be home at 5:00 or before most days)

And of course I can always hop back on later at night and on the weekends as needed. I’ve had several conversations with Alice about how I’m “going back to work” and will need her to play by herself a lot more, but she’s three—she has no idea what work is or why it’s important. So we will see how it goes. I’m really hoping to limit her screen time to two hours every afternoon. Wish me luck!

Reading Update:

The Highway by C.J. Box: This is Book 2 in Box’s Highway Quartet thriller series. I read the first book, Back of Beyond, a few weeks ago and enjoyed it a lot. BoB is set in Yellowstone National Park, which is why I picked it off the shelf at the library—any book set in a national park is a book for me. The Highway takes us out of that setting into small towns in Montana and features a really sinister villain who doesn’t get his comeuppance in the end, leaving a clear path to Book 3. Box’s writing is fast-paced and engaging, and while I didn’t enjoy The Highway quite as much as BoB (mostly because of the lack of national parks content and because the story felt a bit more grim), I'm definitely planning to finish out the series as soon as our library system opens back up. Finished on 4/1/20.

168 Hours by Laura Vanderkam: I read one of Vanderkam’s other books, I Know How She Does It, on my maternity leave with Alice, so it felt fitting to dive into her best-known work now. 168 Hours reminds readers that we all have the same amount of time in a week, but some people make much better use of that time than others, and gives us ideas for how to optimize our hours. There wasn’t really anything new for me here since I’m pretty familiar with Vanderkam’s thoughts on the subject via her podcast “Best of Both Worlds”, which I wrote about recently in my favorite podcasts roundup, but I enjoyed going into a bit more detail and reminding myself as I head into what is likely going to be a fairly busy and stressful period of time working from home and caring for children simultaneously that I have a lot more control over my time than societal narratives may tell me I do. Finished on 4/3/20.

When We Were Vikings by Andrew David MacDonald: I first heard about this quirky debut novel from an editor at Book Expo last spring and I immediately added it to my TBR. Fiction, about a young woman named Zelda who was born on the Fetal Alcohol Syndrome spectrum and is obsessed with vikings. I loved the narrative voice and all the references to Norse culture, and I devoured it in less than a day. Also, the packaging of the hardcover edition is beautiful, and it’s definitely earning a forever place on my bookshelf. Highly recommended! Finished on 4/5/20.

Our neighbor has a flag for every occasion!

Denial

There has been a lot of discussion in the media about the 1918 flu pandemic and what we can learn from it as we manage today’s coronavirus. But as I’ve been listening to Erik Larsen’s Dead Wake, I can’t help but notice some other parallels from that completely unrelated disaster. On the surface, it’s tough to see connections between the two: the sinking of the Lusitania was a tragedy of humanity’s own making, motivated by a wartime agenda, while the coronavirus is a natural disaster that in many ways is completely out of our control. But there’s one underlying theme that runs beneath both events: denial in the face of concrete evidence.

Trump’s recent declaration that he wants the US open and “raring to go” by Easter (just a little more than two weeks away) flies completely in the face of what the medical community and public health experts are telling us about where we are in the trajectory of the pandemic. Each day, confirmed COVID-19 cases and related deaths rise, and some experts are predicting we’re at least three weeks away from the peak of the outbreak. But it’s a well-established fact by now that Trump doesn’t really care about data or facts the way most people understand them. What’s really fascinating is how he’s far from alone in this tendency. As described in Dead Wake, the denial of many, many people on the Lusitania, including a lot of the crew, as the ship foundered, is a striking parallel. If you’ve seen the movie Titanic, you’re familiar with the hubris of people stating confidently, “This ship can’t sink!” literally as the water is rising up to meet them. What is is about the human nature that we cling to hope and optimism, often past the point of rationality?

Today the stock market is on the rise as a result of the stimulus package rapidly making its way through Congress, promising $2 trillion in aid to individuals and companies. But realistically, if we’re facing down another four, six, or eight weeks of much of the country being shut down (which seems almost inevitable if you listen to the people who actually know what they’re talking about), it’s obvious that amount of money isn’t going to prop the economy up through this whole ordeal. And in a couple of weeks, when it becomes impossible to deny that fact any longer, we’ll be right back where we were a week ago, with investors freaking out and the market plummeting. It’s just so interesting how short-sighted we seem to be in the face of disaster and how desperately we want to believe that things can’t be nearly as bad as the evidence clearly shows they will become.

I don’t really have a point to make here—just musing about how very different events in very different times seem to bring out the exact same emotions and thought processes in people.

At our house, we’ve been taking walks, making pancakes, and painting with watercolors. Alice got a scooter as an early Easter present, and I don’t think there have ever been more people out wandering around the neighborhood. Clearly we’re all bored and just looking for something to do!

Casual unicorn out for a stroll

Quarantine - Days 4, 5, 6, and beyond...

It’s definitely starting to feel like Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day around here! We wake up, play, do Camp Kindergarten, play some more, eat lunch, nap, go for a walk, eat dinner, play, go to bed. Over and over and over and over…

I had been looking forward to the weekend, but it ended up being frustrating. Having Matt home just disrupted the routine and encouraged Alice to act out and push boundaries, and I didn’t actually get more time to myself somehow. Blargh. I have started up again with my tried and true 8 minute abs workout, which is kicking my butt, and I’m doing the One Hundred Pushups Project. So hopefully I’ll come out of this at least a little more in shape than I was previously (trying to give myself a break and remember that I’m less than 12 weeks postpartum when I feel frustrated about my fitness level).

I’m starting to get really stressed about “going back” to work in less than two weeks. I just can’t imagine how I’ll balance trying to be available/working during the day and watching two very young kids. I’m confident I can do my job well and put in 40 hours a week, but a lot of those hours are going to have to be early mornings, nights, and weekends when I’m not also being a primary caregiver. I know everyone is dealing with some logistics juggling but I think I have a bit more of a challenge than most of my colleagues in terms of my kids being so young and me not having a work-from-home spouse to switch off with during the day. Whatever happens, I’ll figure it out! I have a few manuscripts incoming right after I return that I’m REALLY looking forward to editing, so that will be my focus for my nights and weekends time while I focus on communications and smaller projects that don’t require as much deep concentration during the day.

I’ve been trying to stay away from book industry news because I suspect it’s mostly terrible. I can’t even imagine what all this is doing to independent bookstores and even to B&N, which relies heavily on people walking into stores and browsing. One thing I am confident in is my company’s ability to weather this and even thrive under tough economic conditions. I wasn’t working there during the 2008 recession, but the company’s proactive response during that dark time is a big part of our culture now and we’re able to draw on that experience as we meet whatever lies ahead in the coming weeks and months. I’m looking forward to reconnecting with my colleagues and my work, and figuring out what’s next for all of us.

Reading Update:

Mrs. Everything by Jennifer Weiner: I ended up liking this novel quite a bit! I’m interested in going back reading some of Weiner’s earlier novels, which I understand are a bit different than this one. I enjoyed getting the perspective of the main characters as they grew and matured, and to consider the different roles women play at different times in their lives and how society dictates those roles. I’m still a little unsure whether the main characters’ names (Jo and Bethie) are supposed to be an allusion to Little Women. At the beginning of the novel it seemed like they must be, as Jo was a tomboy-ish aspiring writer and Beth was a goody two-shoes type, but it never really became clear, so it may have just been a coincidence. Finished on 3/19/20.

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata: I had read about this short, strange little novel on both Modern Mrs. Darcy and The SHU Box (I think) a while ago. It was weird, but a fun quick read! What I found most interesting was the idea of the convenience store (or any workplace, really) as its own little world with accepted rules, culture, and vocabulary. I definitely feel this sometimes at work, and because I really jive with the culture of my workplace it’s actually one of the things I enjoy most about my job. Maybe that makes me uncool or whatever because I’m not trying to rebel against my workplace and genuinely buy into and agree with a lot of the corporate messaging, but… I identified with the main character in some ways because of it! Finished 3/21/20.

Dead Wake by Erik Larson: Another audiobook from OverDrive that I think I’m actually going to get through! I love a good Erik Larson book. Totally gripping narrative nonfiction about the last crossing of the British passenger ship RMS Lusitania during WWI. Very much enjoying it!

“A” Is for Alibi by Sue Grafton: Somehow I’ve made it this far in life without reading any of Grafton’s famed “alphabet” Kinsey Millhone mysteries. I’m remedying that now, and looking forward to working my way through the whole series.

One good thing about being forced to stay at home is the number of art collaborations Alice and I are doing together!

COVID-19 on maternity leave

On Wednesday I took Will to his two-month well baby check (he’s tall and skinny with a big head, just like his dad!), then stopped by work afterwards to show him off. I had gone back and forth over whether to take him into an office building of 100+ people in the midst of coronavirus panic, but decided the risk at this point was probably reasonable as long as I didn’t let anyone else hold him and was careful about my hand-washing. It seems likely that a week or two from now things will be much worse, so I took the opportunity to see some friends and also grab some stuff from my desk in the event our physical offices are closed when I return to work in April.

Being on maternity leave during the rise of COVID-19 has been kind of a surreal experience. I have a lot of time to read the news, for better or worse. Initially just the thought of the novel coronavirus would send me into a tailspin of anxiety, but since it has become clear that the virus is not as dangerous for children as for some other groups (although there isn’t a lot of data on infants at this point), I’ve been able to mostly move past that emotional reaction, although my mom and Matt’s parents are in the 60+ age group and I worry that my mom isn’t being as careful as she should (she has a strong Bah humbug this whole thing is ridiculous attitude right now). I cruised around Target and got us stocked up on supplies last weekend before things got really crazy—definitely didn’t go into full-on prepper mode, but made sure we were topped up on TP, laundry detergent, diapers and wipes, etc. The price tag kind of made me choke (I don’t usually spend $150+ at Target!), but I’m glad I did, seeing all the pictures of empty store shelves on social media now!

The governor decided to close all Illinois schools starting Monday, so I’m losing my precious three days a week of Alice being out of the house. Honestly, it’s going to be a challenge being with both kids literally 24/7 for the next three weeks—I’ll need to make better use of nap time for my mental health maintenance rather than just passing out in bed with them for 90 minutes every day. But I am SO LUCKY to still be on maternity leave and not having to deal with worrying about childcare or working from home with them underfoot for at least a few weeks, and I’ll be offering myself up as a back-up babysitter to friends who are still working. We’ll do playdates and hang out with families in our neighborhood, but not having park district and library programs and all the fun things like children’s museums, etc. open will definitely change the way we move through the world. I hope the weather warms up a little so we can spend more time outside.

It seems like the news changes every day, so we’ll see how things go from here on out! For now, we’re happy and healthy and doing just fine. I hope everyone is able to stay safe out there.

Reading Update:

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell: I grabbed this audio book from OverDrive and actually managed to remember to listen to it! I like Gladwell’s stuff (although I wasn’t crazy about him as a narrator) and reading TTP felt particularly apt right now because the book opens with an example of how viruses gain momentum and “tip” into epidemics. Relevant to life right now! Overall I didn’t come away with any life-changing takeaways (maybe because the book is 10 years old?). Some of the topics, like the power of word of mouth, are things that I’ve thought about pretty extensively in relation to my work already. Finished on 3/12/20.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott: After seeing the excellent movie, I had to dig out my childhood copy and re-read it for the first time in probably 20-ish years. I have really specific memories of reading Little Women as a child because it was the longest book in my elementary school library and I REALLY wanted to get through it so I could take the Accelerated Reader test and get all those sweet sweet points. The story was just as lovely this time around, and as an adult I have more appreciation for how well the content holds up. It’s pretty amazing to think that Alice will most likely read and love a story written shortly after the Civil War, and find a reflection of herself in the characters and their lives. The human condition!! Finished on 3/13/20.

Mrs. Everything by Jennifer Weiner: I started this one around the same time I cracked open Little Women and have kind of neglected it, but so far so good! I haven’t read any of Weiner’s novels before, although I’ve seen her stuff online and followed her feud with Jonathan Franzen, so I’m looking forward to digging into this one more. I haven’t looked up anything online about it, so I don’t know—are the character names Jo and Bethie coincidental, or is there an overarching allusion to Little Women running throughout the book? Very funny if so, considering my timing for reading it!

Who wouldn’t want to self-quarantine at home with these two??

My favorite book of 2020 (so far) is one you've probably never heard of

One thing I really like about working in publishing is that it gives me a lot of ammunition for cocktail party conversation. I’m an introvert and don’t have a naturally outgoing personality (those are not the same thing, by the way! I’m deeply dedicated to the true definition of the term “introvert”), and people tend to have a lot of questions about editing, publishing, etc. Since I could talk about my job all day, all night, and into the next decade, it often makes social situations easier for me to just ramble on about work. But inevitably the conversation turns to “favorite” books.

“Oh, you’re an editor? What’s your favorite book?”

Cue an entire lifetime of books read flashing before my eyes and an existential crisis as I try to select one of the many, many outstanding books I’ve read as my VERY FAVORITE EVER. I can’t do it. But, as of this writing, I do have a favorite book of 2020, it was a total shocker, and I bet you’ve never heard of it. I certainly hadn’t.

Tisha: The Wonderful Love Story of a Young Teacher in the Alaskan Wilderness by Robert Specht is a shining beautiful gem of narrative nonfiction. My mom, who has a certain talent for giving me incredible books that I would have never picked out myself, loaned it to me over the holidays. Honestly, nothing about it spoke to me—I found the title to be meaningless, the subtitle weirdly specific (I was super suspicious of a book calling itself “wonderful”), and the cover totally generic. But my mom left it on my coffee table, so I figured I better just read it fast so I could give it back to her and move on with my life. Once I started, I was underwhelmed by the first chapter or two—but just as I was considering putting it down, I got hooked and basically didn’t look up until I had devoured the whole thing.

Tisha (originally published in 1976—I read the 2018 Bantam edition) is the story of a real woman, Anne Hobbs, who left home at nineteen years old and moved to the Alaskan wilderness in 1927 to teach school. I don’t want to spoil a single second of the story, but the challenges and adventures Anne faces there are RIVETING, and the way she battles the negative forces she encounters in the isolated community is totally inspiring. There’s a point near the end of the book that’s literally a hold-onto-your-seat-can’t-catch-your-breath level of suspense and excitement. So intense and wonderful, and so not what I expected from this unassuming little book. Highly, highly recommended!

Frantic Friday

It feels like I woke up this morning, started running, and didn’t stop until after dinner! Yesterday I learned that a regional furniture store, Art Van, was going out of business and liquidation sales would start today, so I steeled myself to take Alice and Will to see if we could score some deals. Matt and I have been incredibly lucky to inherit most of our current furniture from family and friends, but I’m sloooowly trying to upgrade some things and fill in the gaps with new or vintage finds (fighting my penny-pinching nature all the way).

One thing I’m in the market for is a narrow table to put in the little room next to our kitchen, and I needed to find a tape measure to figure out the dimensions I would be working with. Of course, this morning none of the half-dozen tape measures we own could be found. While I was in the basement searching, I popped a load of laundry in the dryer. Five minutes later, I smelled something burning. When I opened the dryer door, the smell got MUCH stronger. I freaked out, unplugged everything I could see, and climbed into the thicket of spider webs behind the dryer to feel for hot spots. Matt hasn’t had a chance to go down there yet and figure out what happened, but thank god for those missing tape measures because if I hadn’t stayed in the basement to look for them, the house probably would have burned down—or at least gotten very, very smokey.

Tape measure-hunting helper

Tape measure finally found and dimensions in hand, I set out for the furniture store with a three-year-old and a newborn. There was a line at the door five minutes before opening, but we got in with the first rush of people and cruised around to scope everything out. Alice bopped around trying out every chair and couch, Will fussed and then eventually slept, and I pestered Matt with too many texts and pictures to make sure he wouldn’t hate whatever I bought. We ended up with two lamps and no one to help us carry them to the car, so we took two trips across the parking lot, with each lamp balanced very carefully above a snoozing Will on the stroller handle.

We hustled straight from the furniture store over to Alice’s tumbling class, sprinting in ten minutes late. I sat on the floor in the hallway and nursed Will, not the comfiest experience ever. Then a meltdown over veggie straws and the shortest nap ever launched us into the afternoon. We had a playdate at Alice’s swim buddy’s house, which involved Connect Four, painting, trying on of many old Halloween costumes, and many other activities, all while bouncing a fussy baby. By dinnertime I was happy to drop Alice off for a sleepover with her beloved Aunt Katie and head home with Will to find Matt grilling burgers. I had grand plans to go grocery shopping after dinner but we took advantage of our toddler-free evening and watched Lady Bird instead (it was okay—mostly it just made me desperate to see Little Women again for more Saoirse Ronan in my life). So there’s no food in the house, the dishwasher hasn’t been run, and the trail of magazines Alice laid out on the floor two days ago to avoid stepping on “hot lava” hasn’t been picked up, but I’m going to finish my ice cream and hop into bed with Mrs. Everything by Jennifer Weiner because it has been A DAY.

26 Kisses cover reveal

YA Books Central hosted a cover reveal and ARC giveaway for 26 Kisses today and I couldn't be more grateful and thrilled and excited that this gorgeous cover is out in the world!

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Under the covers

In celebration of the book cover reveal of 26 Kisses on Friday (YAY!!!), I thought I'd round up some of my very favorite contemporary YA book covers, because, let's face it, YA cover design is THE BOMB.

Part of my day job as an editor is communicating with the cover design team to help steer them in the right direction when they begin work on the covers for the books I edit. It's fascinating to see how Sourcebooks' immensely talented and creative team can take the descriptions I give them and turn text into images that encapsulate the book perfectly, but that I would never have been able to come up with in a bazillion years. And since I don't edit YA, this is my chance to do someserious lovin' on the category. So here are 12 non-Sourcebooks YA novels whose covers absolutely blew me away (I can't include Sourcebooks books because I adore them all and the list would have to be 100+ and ain't nobody got time for that).

I like my YA covers colorful, bright, and loud. I like big type and bold fonts. I like books that scream, "Read me! I'm goofy and weird and exactly what you need at this exact point in your life to remind you that being goofy and weird is okay!"

I think that the 26 Kisses cover embodies all these things, and I hope you agree when it is unveiled to the world on Friday at the wonderful YA Books Central!

What's your favorite YA cover? Was the book everything you'd hoped it would be?

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How a writers' conference changed my life

Five years ago, most of my friends were trying to figure out whether to go to grad school or join the Peace Corps. Maybe do Teach for America? Their options seemed endless—like they could literally just run off into the sunset, find something to do, and probably wind up pretty happy in the end. As for me…I knew there were only a few things that were going to cut it—working in publishing, building a career around books, maybe writing things that other people would actually want to read. The problem was, I had no idea how to get there.

Then I went to a writers’ conference.

Writers in Paradise is held in St. Petersburg, Florida, for a week every year in January, and I only decided to go because my life was a mess. My grandpa and my cat had just passed away (less than 30 hours apart), my parents were on the verge of splitting up, and I was desperate to escape snowy Minnesota during the heart of winter. I packed my bags and headed south, to attend a conference run by a team of writers I had vaguely heard of before but had never read. People like Dennis Lehane, Laura Lippman, Ann Hood, and Jane Hamilton. You know, no big deal.

When I arrived in St. Petersburg, I was 22 years old, had two college fiction workshops under my belt, and had never even been to a book signing. A week of workshops, lectures, and discussions later, I walked away with all the tools I needed to start my publishing career.

I started small, continuing to plug away on the novel-in-progress I had workshopped at WIP (which now lives a comfortable life in the bottom drawer of my desk). The following spring, I typed up the story of how my then-boyfriend (now-husband) and I met and sent it off to a contest at the New York Times—and was shocked when it placed as a runner-up and was published in the “Modern Love” column. That summer, I took a break from my full-time gig as a farmhand to attend the Denver Publishing Institute, where I learned about the publishing industry from the editorial, marketing, and sales perspectives. An unpaid internship, many nights of staying up late reading and writing, and a few key instances of incredibly good luck later, and I’m finally starting to feel like I have my foot in the door as I work for an incredible publishing company and my debut YA novel comes out next spring.

The point is, none of this would have happened without WIP and the amazing people I met there who a) showed me what it meant to be a “writer” and work in this very strange industry of ours and b) encouraged me to make it happen for myself. There are a lot of people out there happy to criticize writers’ conferences and question whether or not they actually benefit the people who pay to attend them, and it’s true that not all conferences are created equal. But if you’re a college kid, or someone who has written secretly for years, or a writer just looking to connect with other weirdos like you and get a big old injection of inspiration, then a writers’ conference might be just the thing to get you started on your path to success.

Me with my incredible classmates and the incomparable Jane Hamilton

Top summer reads

I'm so lucky to be able to surround myself with books in my day job as an editor and to burn the candle the rest of the time as an author! The ONLY downside to pursuing both careers at once is that time for recreational reading is tough to come by. But if I only get to read a few "for fun" books this summer, these five will definitely make the list!

26 Kisses!

It's so exciting to finally be able to announce that my debut YA novel, 26 Kisses, will be published in Summer 2016 by Simon Pulse. Hooray!