IWSG Wednesday: On the Brink

Since the IWSG moderators have asked us to introduce ourselves, here's a little about me: I grew up in Montana and Utah, and after a stint in Pennsylvania, I'm back in southern Utah with my family. I teach English at a local university (my specialization is nineteenth-century women's rhetoric, though I mostly teach composition), and in my spare time I write, read, dream, walk, and generally avoid housework. My husband and I have three kids, ranging from 2-9. I have a pretty good life!














I missed last month's post for a fairly good reason: I was in the middle of trying to decide which offer of representation to accept, and pretty much everything that wasn't agent or family or work related got shunted completely out of my head.

Now, standing at the edge of a new year, I'm both elated and terrified. I decided a long time ago I wanted to do traditional publishing, but one of the downsides is the sometimes lack of control over things. My agent currently has my revised MS and is putting together a submission list--sometime in the next week or so I should be on submission for the first time.

And I have no idea what will happen.

For someone like me, who's a planner and doesn't really like surprises, this kind of not-knowing can be horrifying. But I'm trying to see it less as walking blind and more as an adventure. Anything could happen.

Hopefully "anything" will be something good--a book contract at some point this year. But if not, I've got a shiny new MS that I'm excited about.

And really, I do this for the writing.

Here's to a New Year, new writing goals, and new successes (and profitable failures) for all of us!

Stronger than You Know

 Whenever I pick up a book by an author I know, I'm both excited and hesitant (excited because--look, I know her! And hesitant because if I don't like it, I never know what to say. Usually I don't say anything). Luckily, Jolene Perry's Stronger Than You Know was lovely--a perfect mix of drama and hope.

When the novel opens, Joy is struggling with just about everything: adjusting to her new school, a new life with her aunt and uncle and cousins, talking to anyone she's not related to. Sometimes just existing.

Because Joy has just escaped from a terrible, abusive environment with a mother who almost never let her leave their tiny trailer home, and who didn't protect Joy from her boyfriends in the most basic way a mother should.

What I loved about this book was how Perry managed to make Joy wounded and believable without drowning the book in darkness--it's easy to write dark. It's less easy to write hope that doesn't dissolve into schmaltz. I loved Joy--she was vulnerable, but there was an iron core to her. She'd gone through terrible things, but she wasn't willing to let those things define her. Watching Joy come out of the trauma of her past was one of the best parts of the novel.

I also loved that Joy was surrounded by good people. So often, it's easy to create drama in books by making everyone around the hero disagreeable. But Joy's aunt and uncle are warm and loving and wonderful. Justin was great, too, as the boy who sees something in Joy she doesn't yet see herself, but who's careful to only ask for what Joy is ready to give.

Overall, a powerful book about a survivor, one that made me smile as often (or more) than it made me cry.