Q&A with Sofia Robleda

  

 

 

Sofia Robleda is the author of the new novel The Other Moctezuma Girls. She also has written the novel Daughter of Fire. Also a psychologist, she is originally from Mexico and lives in London. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write The Other Moctezuma Girls?

 

A: As I researched my debut novel, Daughter of Fire, I came across the story of Tecuichpoch, the last empress of the Mexica (more commonly known today as the Aztecs).

 

She was baptized with the Spanish name Isabel Moctezuma, and not only survived the smallpox epidemic that killed 90 percent of the population, a siege during the Spanish conquest, six marriages, and giving birth to seven children, but also managed to sue the Spanish Crown successfully enough that she ended up being the wealthiest landowner in New Spain.

 

She left behind a will that was highly contested by all her children, and which tore her family apart.

 

For years, I could not get her or her testament out of my mind. I clearly remember thinking of her as I gave birth to my son four and a half years ago – so she has been with me for a long time.

 

I simply find it appalling that people don’t know who she is, that she has been relegated to the sidelines of history, and I am on a mission to make sure as many people as possible know and are inspired by her story as I have been.

 

Q: How did you research the novel, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?

 

A: The research for this novel was intense and built on a lot of the foundations I had established with my previous novel, Daughter of Fire. However, unlike Daughter of Fire, which relates more to the Maya in the 16th century in Guatemala, I was now focussing on a completely different civilization, the Mexica.

 

To build this new picture, I obviously read as many books as I could – not only on the Mexica and Isabel Moctezuma (there are sadly not many books about her), but also on the customs and ways of life in 16th century Mexico, both pre- and post-colonization.

 

I went back to Mexico City in 2023 and visited several museums. There was a lot of “experiential” research too. I love this type of ground research, because it gives me that sensory information that history books lack sometimes, and really makes the setting come alive.

 

I took several workshops – one which took me canoeing around the remaining lake and chinampas in Xochimilco to learn about the 700-year-old system of agriculture the Mexica used – and another with a chef who is an expert in pre-Hispanic food.

 

I walked around the forest of Chapultepec, and I hiked the foot of the volcano of Iztaccihuatl with my sister and an expert mountain guide. It was an incredible amount of work!

 

I’m not sure if there was much that really “surprised” me from my research, per se, as there was a lot of overlap with the research I’d conducted from my debut novel on the 16th century history of Guatemala and the K’iche’ Maya.

 

However, there were many facts that touched and saddened me. The fact that only 2 percent of the lakes in Mexico City remain, for example, because they were drained by the Spanish and Mexican governments. That is something I continue to be devastated by and think about often.

 

Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: The book title was chosen after a conversation with my agent, Johanna Castillo, who was originally an editor and is just brilliant.

 

It happened many years ago, before my debut was published, perhaps 2022 even, so I can’t remember the full details, but we were talking about how much I love Philippa Gregory, and how I wanted to break ground like she had done with 16th century England, and bring 16th century Mexico to the world stage.

 

We were talking about the overlap between the Tudors and the Moctezuma/Cortes court in terms of the intrigues and the women who have been sidelined from the historical narrative.

 

I’m not sure if we were discussing titles, or what we were saying but I must’ve said something like, “I want to write The Other Boleyn Girl for Mexico. I want the Moctezumas to be as well-known as the Tudors. I want to be the Mexican Philippa Gregory,” and she said, “Well, call it that, then! Call it The Other Moctezuma Girl.” And because there’s more than one in the novel, we made it plural.

 

Q: The author Mariely Lares called the book “a superb reclamation of history rarely seen through the ends of women who endured, researched intelligently and written with heart.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: Mariely is an incredibly talented author of two gorgeous historical fantasy novels set in Mexico, and she is just as invested as me in deep-diving when researching her novels so it was a relief that she felt this way.

 

She was one of the first people to read The Other Moctezuma Girls, because of how much I value her opinion and her expertise. I feel like her words sum up what I was trying to achieve, so it is humbling to think I may have done it.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: There’s a very intriguing character in this novel that makes a plot-twisting appearance, and they’re someone I’d like to learn about and explore a bit further.

 

Once I have a bit more time, in between raising my son, and working part-time as a clinical psychologist, and editing/promoting this novel, I’m hoping I can get back into researching them and their life, and write my next novel!

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: This book was written out of my deep love of Mexico and our people, and it fills me with a deep sense of anger and sadness that it is coming out at a time when Mexicans and Latines are being harassed, rounded up, abused and scapegoated in the United States.

 

I hope that those who read it are touched by and buoyed by the pride, strength, and resilience of Tecuichpoch and her daughters. 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Sofia Robleda. 

Q&A with Sandra K. Griffith

  

Photo by Ric Griffith

 

 

 

 

Sandra K. Griffith is the author of the new novel One Beautiful Year of Normal. She is a psychologist, and she lives in West Virginia and in Georgia. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write One Beautiful Year of Normal, and how did you create your character August?

 

A: I've always remembered wanting to have a career both as a psychologist and a writer, but it wasn’t until I read a Jonathan Kellerman novel as a graduate student in the early '90s that I realized it was possible to have a foot in both worlds. (Jonathan Kellerman is a psychologist whose fictional character is as well.)

 

As an avid reader of coming-of-age stories, psychological thrillers, and family sagas, I wanted to write something that combined genres. I just regret it took me so long to do it!

 

I’ve been a psychologist for over 30 years with a busy practice that has primarily focused on children and adults who experience severe, debilitating issues, some of which present in unusual ways. The mother-daughter dynamic in One Beautiful Year of Normal was shaped by this.

 

The devastating effects of mental illnesses are not confined to the people who suffer from them. They spill over to everyone around them, and in August’s case, change the entire trajectory of her life. 

 

Q: The author Suzanne Simonetti said of your novel, “Moving and mysterious, One Beautiful Year of Normal is a riveting family drama which takes a hard look at unchecked psychological issues that can ricochet through the generations. What do you think of that description?

 

A: When I read that my first thought was I wish I’d written it! I understand why she’s a bestselling author!

 

Q: How was the novel’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: The book was submitted with a different title, but Brooke Warner from She Writes Press called and suggested this one. It’s a line from the book and references the main character as a woman in her early 30s realizing for the first time that the only normal period in her life was the year she lived with her aunt when she was 12 years old. 

 

Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing, or did you make changes along the way. 

 

A: I wrote the first chapter first, then the last, and worked my way through it from there. I then rewrote every word at least a dozen times. 

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m just finishing a second book, which is a much faster-paced psychological thriller. It is not a sequel, but there are some crossover characters. 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Q&A with Marcella White Campbell

  

 

 

 

Marcella White Campbell is the author of the new children's picture book Maya's Journey. She is the executive director emeritus of the organization Be'chol Lashon. 

 

Q: How much was Maya’s Journey based on your own family history?

 

A: Maya’s Journey was inspired by the stories I told my children when they were young. I was trying to help them understand that both sides of their history were really the same story.

 

My children are Black and Jewish, and the story we tell small American children about the Jewish story is very simple. Jews lived in a place where they were unhappy, they sailed to America, and that was their happy ending!

 

It’s the barest outline of three thousand years of deeply complex history, and it doesn’t include many, many other Jewish stories, but it is very easy to tell to children as their first experience with their Jewish heritage.

​

A storybook framing can’t hold the outlines of the African-American story because that story takes place exclusively on American soil and can’t be distilled down to a story of progress. There are triumphs and setbacks, some large, some small. It is difficult to point to an “end” to the story since we’re still fighting for rights today.

 

But the African-American history in America is also a history of migration, one that is really important to my own family’s history. My grandparents, like millions of others, left the South in a movement of people that we now call The Great Migration. They left behind centuries of history to escape segregation and look for new kinds of freedoms. They also left to escape a very real threat of violence.

​

I wanted my children to understand that, first of all, neither story is actually simple. I also wanted them to know that the stories have much in common.

 

I told them that all sides of their family—their Ashkenazi-Jewish-African-American family—are made up of people who were intelligent and brave and resourceful, and some of them had to leave home even though they didn’t want to.

 

But no matter what their journeys were, their ancestors would have thought my children were both part of an ongoing story, and a happy ending. They left their homes and everything they knew to find opportunities and freedoms that make my children who they are.

​

In short: it’s inspired by our family history, but it also represents the history of many other families.

​

Q: How did you research the book, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?

​

A: The first inklings of the book actually began with my grandmother’s story. The real-life Martha lost her mother, Mary, when she was only a toddler; her great sorrow was that she knew almost nothing about her mother—she didn’t even remember her face.

 

When I had my own daughter, and had that connection with her, I really felt the call to find out as much as I could about that lost history. I reconnected the story over 20 years of research. I now know the names of Mary’s parents and siblings, the town where she came from, and so much more about who she might have been.

 

I wish I could tell my grandmother these things. But the next best thing, I thought, would be to choose my grandmother’s story to represent our family.

​

Essie is my husband’s great-grandmother, who emigrated from Dorohoi, Romania. And for Essie and me, it all started with a photo of a firecracker of a young woman. She’s posed in a turn of the century photographer’s studio, with a painted Atlantic City behind her.

 

This phrase is so overused but I think it applies here: she really does have a twinkle in her eye. She seems like a funny, outgoing person who’s ready for an American adventure.

 

When I talked to my mother-in-law about Essie, it was a really emotional moment for both of us. Her memories of Essie lined up with what I’d felt from the photo. She was an energetic woman with a great sense of humor. She came to the United States when she was only 15; she only spoke Yiddish, and had yet to learn to read or write.

​

Essie had to leave her younger siblings behind in Romania, but she never forgot them. She did as much as she could to help them, even when they were under Nazi occupation. Sometimes, the few dollars she could send from the United States made all the difference.

​

My master’s thesis centered around Jewish American women like Essie, who immigrated to the United States at around the time Essie did. I drew from that history to build Essie’s world.

 

It doesn’t just represent her story, but is an example of one kind of Jewish American woman’s immigrant story at that time, where working, learning, and helping the people around her through social work is central to her identity.

​

I already knew about African American history too, especially the story of the Great Migration, the movement of people from the South to the North, East, and West that brought my grandparents to San Francisco.

 

What I did *not* know was the history of the Jim Crow train cars. I knew that the trains were segregated—but I didn’t know how poorly the Black cars and waiting rooms were maintained. It hadn’t occurred to me that my grandmother’s very last experience of the indignities of segregation followed her all the way across the Mississippi and possibly as far West as California.

 

Q: What do you think Olivia Smith’s illustrations add to the book?

 

A: It was surprisingly hard to write my grandmother’s side of the story. I grew up in my grandmother’s house; I knew her, and it sometimes felt intimidating to try to tell a story about someone who had already told me her story on her own terms. I got a little lost in trying to tell the *right* story in the *right* way.

​

The first image Olivia sent us depicted Martha playing the piano in her grandmother’s parlor. I burst into tears. A sense memory of playing piano in my own grandmother’s house came over me; I could hear her voice behind me, telling me the stories behind the sheet music.

 

I had written so many words, but Olivia’s illustration captured the *feeling* of being there. She helped me to understand that I didn’t need to write a careful, line-by-line retelling of my grandmother’s biographical details. I needed to communicate what she felt like as a person, what it felt like to be near her.

​

Olivia brings such softness and kindness to each page. It feels warm inside her illustrations. She treated my family’s people with such empathy and care. I felt that I could trust her with our story.  

​

Q: What do you hope kids take away from the story?

​

A: Maya’s big problem, in this story, is that she doesn’t understand *why* she should learn about her family history. In the end, she realizes that she’s really just finding out more parts of her own story, more about what makes her who she is.

 

When you learn more about your identity, it opens up more possibility for you. You are still unique, but, at the same time, you’re never alone. I hope that kids are able to access the strength that comes from that.

​

I hope the story makes them curious about their own family stories. For all the family research, I wouldn’t have been able to write this book if I hadn’t listened to my family’s stories.

 

I loved learning about them as children—my grandmother skipping to the corner store, my grandfather paying for a new bike by charging other kids for rides…Those stories made me feel closer to them.

​

I hope that children learn that there are many ways to be Jewish. Essie is Jewish, and so is Maya. Martha isn’t. Children might wonder how and why that is. I hope it leads them to further questions and conversations, and helps them to expand their understanding of their friends and classmates.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

​

A: When I’m not writing, I facilitate workshops for adults around creativity, memory, and identity. Some people don’t think they’re creative; but one way every person can be creative is to tell their own unique story, in their own words.

 

Connecting to that story—a story no one has heard before, a story only you could ever write—is empowering. And we need more of them! The more complicated our human story is, the better.

​

I’ll also be spending time visiting schools and bookstores to talk about Maya’s Journey, and talking about how family stories like ours can open conversations across generations. I’m looking forward to hearing and seeing how children like mine respond to the book! I hope every child can find themselves in the story.

​

And, of course, I’m always writing! I write about my own identity, about my family, and about people and places that never existed before, on my Substack and in a variety of other places.

​

Q: Anything else we should know?

​

A: Making joyful art when the world is heavy can feel frivolous. But through all of human history, even when violence was right outside the door, our ancestors still had and shared moments of joy, bursts of laughter.

 

And through it all, while they thrived or merely survived, they created songs and stories that still inspire us today—that get us through our own difficult times.

​

I wanted to make sure that Essie and Martha showed resilience in weathering real challenges and even dangers, but also had loving moments with their friends and loved ones. Joy is part of resilience, and children need to know that.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Feb. 25

 

 

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
Feb. 25, 1937: Bob Schieffer born.

Q&A with Evie Woods

  

 

 

Evie Woods is the author of the new novel The Violin Maker's Secret. Her other books include The Lost Bookshop. She lives on the West Coast of Ireland. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write The Violin Maker's Secret, and how did you create your characters Devlin, Walter, and Gabrielle?

 

A: The idea grew from a constellation of things, as my novels often do.

 

A few years ago, I was watching a TV show set in Dingle, Ireland, where singers and bands come from all around the world to play in a tiny church.

 

In an interview, one musician spoke about how he had inherited his instrument from another musician, which would then be passed on to someone else when his career ended. This got me thinking about the provenance of instruments, who they belong to and just imagining, what if they could tell their own story...

 

Then I read Gone: A Girl, a Violin, a Life Unstrung, a compelling book by the world-famous violinist Min Kym. It details the theft of her priceless violin from a cafe in London and the aftermath of that.

 

Finally, I heard an old ballad called "The Two Sisters," which is a story of betrayal, death and ultimately retribution. But you’ll have to read the book to see how that fits in, as I don’t want to spoil it!

 

Somehow, all of these elements came together in a story that explores music, mystery and magic.

 

Q: How did you research the novel, and what did you learn that especially surprised you?

 

A: I really enjoyed researching all of the violin lore and just when I thought I had everything I needed, I would find something even more spectacular!

 

I studied musicianship in school, so I relished revisiting some of my favorite composers and uncovering new aspects to their life stories. Documentaries are always a great source of information and I found some intriguing ones on unsolved art theft and the history of Cremona’s luthiers.

 

Of course online research can end up being the largest of rabbit holes, but that’s where I sourced much information on Paganini and the various violinists who I reference in the book.

 

I don’t like to read too much fiction when I’m writing, but The Lost Stradivarius by John Meade Faulkner was a wonderful jumping off point for me, as was The Weight of a Piano by Chris Cander.

 

I think what surprised me the most was discovering the existence of the “Irish Stradivarius,” a man called Thomas Perry, who had a workshop in Dublin. I never imagined that Ireland, struggling under colonial rule, was home to a luthier, so that was a wonderful discovery.

 

Q: What do you see as the role of magic in the book?

 

A: For me, magical realism presents characters with a catalyst for change by encountering something outside of their normal, everyday experience. As a novelist, it is my favorite element to write, because I get to truly play and let my imagination run wild.

 

In this book, the real magical moments in my books are when the characters see things differently, or from a different perspective for the first time and that can really change the trajectory of their story.

 

The magic of the violin is that she allows each character to see themselves and who they are, beyond their story. She helps them to find their true voice and ultimately transform painful pasts into a brighter future, not in spite of their experience, but because of it. And that is essentially a power that each of us can tap into.

 

I like to use magical realism as a device to spark that awareness within my characters and even though they might not be able to change what's happened to them, they can change who they want to be. They are the heroes of their own story.

 

Q: How would you describe the dynamics among your three protagonists?

 

A: Ah yes, I just love the interplay between these three! It was important to me that they were all rather reluctant adventurers!

 

As the reader, you can see that their lives aren’t exactly “thriving” and that they need some form of catalyst to change things, but how many of us actually volunteer for a challenge? Especially one that is bound to cause trouble. So I really enjoyed coaxing them along and watching them flourish as the journey goes on.

 

They are all quite different - age, gender and social class, so to have them united by one common goal allowed space for some interesting character development.

 

Ultimately, they are each bound by a primal fear and have become stuck in protection mode. With the magic of the violin, they (again, reluctantly!) allow strangers into their lives and this process of friendship begins to work in a cathartic way.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Next up is a new edition of my very first novel, The Heirloom. My publisher, HarperCollins, has been republishing my backlist under my pseudonym, Evie Woods, and it has been a wonderful opportunity to revisit my novels with fresh eyes and re-introduce them to the world.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I have just hit a major career milestone - my books have now sold over 2 million copies globally!

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

Q&A with Deborah Goodrich Royce

  

 

 

 

 

Deborah Goodrich Royce is the author of the new novel Best Boy. Her other books include Reef Road. She is the creator of the Ocean House Author Series in Rhode Island. 

 

Q: You’ve said that an inspiration for your new novel was hearing from someone you worked with but did not remember. Can you say more about that?

 

A: A couple years ago, I received an email that began, “Do you remember me? I was your best boy on Survival Game.” As you can probably imagine, it caught my attention! The phrasing sounded borderline scandalous when, in fact, “best boy” is a job on a film, and Survival Game is a movie I did way back when I was an actress.

 

The email went on to detail touchpoints in our (unremembered by me!) shared experience at that time. He spoke of a Thanksgiving dinner we had together and later running into each other at the Cannes Film Festival. There, he said, I was holding a baby and he wondered for a moment if the child was his. But he clarified by saying, “but I knew that would not have been possible.”

 

After picking myself up off of the proverbial floor, I googled this fellow and found that he was legitimate. He had worked in the movie business. He had gone on to a writing career, much as I had done.

 

So there was nothing untoward in his email, but no matter how hard I tried, I didn’t remember him at all. I remembered doing that film. I remembered going to the Cannes Film Festival with my then-husband and baby, Alexandra. Just not him.

 

The genesis of Best Boy came from my subsequent meditations on memory and its fallibility and the fact that we do not all remember the same things.

 

Q: How was the novel’s title chosen and what does it signify for you?

 

A: Best Boy is a title that can be read at multiple levels. Rather than being a double entendre, it is a triple entendre (if such a thing exists!).

 

First, it refers to the best boy on a movie set, the thing Mark Remington claims to be in his mysterious letters to Viveca. Next, it signifies Sebastian Waldron, the brilliant, misunderstood teenage brother of Ingrid’s best friend, Em. And finally, it stands for Theo, Viveca’s sweet son and perhaps her chance at redemption.

 

Each one of these “boys” is instrumental in the trajectory of Ingrid/Viveca’s life for good or for ill.

 

Q: The author Victoria Christopher Murray said of the book, “Best Boy is a haunting, propulsive novel about the cost of secrets and the past’s refusal to stay buried.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: Let me begin by saying that I am a HUGE fan of Victoria and her novels! And it is because of her ability to write with nuance and subtlety about the complex decisions and inevitable mistakes that human beings make that I wanted her to read Best Boy.

 

There are costs to secrets and, despite the fact that nearly all of us know that, still we find ourselves keeping them. Ingrid undergoes a severe trauma as a teenager. She judges herself harshly for how she handles it and, consequently, she buries the past. Whether it is conscious or unconscious is almost beside the point. And that past pops up like a nightmarish whack-a-mole game in the present.

 

So I am deeply appreciative of Victoria’s endorsement of this morally knotty novel.

 

Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?

 

A: Ah, how to answer this without giving away the plot! In short, I thought I knew how Best Boy would end very early on in the writing process. But somehow along the way, I questioned my direction.

 

I have been called the “queen of the plot twist” in the past. But a plot twist—no matter how extreme—has to be organic. Even if readers don’t see it coming—and hopefully they won’t—when it does come they have to have that moment of saying, “Of course!” It cannot be so outrageous that the reader ends up throwing the book across the room.

 

Without going into detail, suffice it to say that I was headed down a path that I simply could not justify and I changed course.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: Right now I am working on a ghost story! But a really fun “Ghost and Mrs. Muir meets Agatha Christie” kind of ghost story.

 

My mother died a year and a half ago and I am finding this a really difficult loss. That said, I also feel her with me a lot and I find myself almost imbibing her essence as I go forward as now the oldest generation in my own family.

 

My mother had a very straightforward quality about her. She did not mince words. And she was often very funny, which is the quality I miss most about her.

 

So let me just say I am working on a mother-daughter mystery where one of the characters just happens to not be inhabiting her physical body anymore!

 

Q: I'm so sorry for your loss...

 

Is there anything else we should know?

 

A: Writing is such an extraordinary process in which thoughts, feelings, words, plots come to you and through you. I am loving this journey so much…both the act of writing, which is naturally solitary, and the amazing relationships that have evolved with other writers over the years.

 

Two of my favorite ways of connecting with my fellow authors are: 1. Hosting the Ocean House Author Series in Watch Hill, Rhode Island where I get to interview the best and the brightest in our literary landscape and 2. Co-hosting the Deer Mountain Writers’ Retreat in the Catskill Mountains of New York State where I get to write all day and socialize with my favorite writers every evening.  

 

The writer’s road is always interesting and I feel very fortunate to be on it!

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Deborah Goodrich Royce. 

Q&A with Kara Thom

  

 

Kara Thom is the author of the new middle grade novel Sweet, Tart. Her other books include the Go! Go! Sports Girls series. She lives in Minnesota. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write Sweet, Tart, and how did you create your character Halle?

 

A: I mention in my author’s note at the end of the book that, like Halle, I witnessed a racehorse break down at a track. It was hard to “unsee” and to process the emotions I turned to writing. What followed was a narrative poem. Then an essay. Then, about six months later, I started a story for children.

 

I started what-ifing. What if the stables that used to exist near my home were still there? And what if that racehorse had been born and raised there? And what if a young girl went to inquire in person? And what if? And what if?

 

Halle is a product of my own processing and the need to create something beautiful from a tragedy. And like me, Halle does so much of her emotional processing through poetry.

 

Although, I’d say in the 10 years of writing this story she was written and rewritten so many times she became a separate and complete person, with her own characteristics, curiosities, and reactions.

 

I think so much of how writers develop a protagonist is in how they relate to other characters in the story and in many ways Halle comes into her own as she interacts with her sister, her new friends, her dog, and with Rocky, the pony.

 

Q: How would you describe the relationship between Halle and Rocky?

 

A: Halle longs for connection and she doesn’t have any expectations for that to come from a pony.

 

I think in a lot of “horse books” for children the main character is a horse-person—that is, a person familiar with horses and already has a special bond with a particular horse. Halle doesn’t have any of that, so her love of all things equine develops throughout the book.

 

Rocky is distant because he’s lost his best friend and slowly, slowly, he connects with her and she with him and they come to belong together.

 

Q: The Booklist review of the novel says, “A mix of heartwarming hope and soul-gripping grief, Thom’s narrative offers middle-grade readers emotional heft while still meeting them at their level and addressing questions they might have.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I’m honored. That I was able to write both the “soul-gripping grief” and “heartwarming hope” in such a way that readers might feel that as profoundly as I do brings me an enormous sense of satisfaction and great relief!

 

I also love that Sweet, Tart is described as having “emotional heft.” I occasionally substitute in a middle school media center and know kids who are reading middle grade are living through big emotions that don’t necessarily come from “Capital T” trauma, but just day-in-day-out stuff that can still be quite impactful on a young person feeling these feels for the first time. 

 

Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?

 

A: I thought I knew what was going to be the final scene early on. Then my manuscript fell into the hands of a fabulous editor (shout out to Kate Fletcher at Candlewick) who helped me take the story beyond what I had in mind, and I’m grateful for all of her suggestions and nudges that carried throughout the entire manuscript.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: In addition to getting into a middle school media center occasionally, I also work part-time as a bookseller for an independent bookstore, which allows me access to the latest and greatest books for children as well as the opportunity to talk to young readers about what kind of books interest them.

 

That keeps me inspired! I have three new middle-grade stories that are in various stages of creation. Sometimes I get a chance to put on my grown-up poet hat and work on the poetry manuscript that I hope to get published someday, too.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: As much as this is a story about horses and dogs, sisters and friends, it is also about the importance of creative expression, and for me specifically, a love letter to poetry. I am so proud to have been able to showcase some of my favorite poets and their poems, including Ada Limón, Ross Gay, and Connie Wanek.

 

The interactions between Halle and her teacher Mrs. Delgado encapsulate the discovery and wonder that I’ve experienced reading and learning about poetry. 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb