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Goodbye 2023!

2023 was a really terrible year. On the list of terrible things we have major knee surgery, another novel failing to get a book deal, a really upsetting reading slump, Neutron making it clear he’s about ready to retire, my mom being diagnosed with brain cancer, and more. It’s been a rough time, and I can’t wait for 2024 to start and hopefully move in a more positive direction.

But there were some good things that happened in 2023, and I’d like to focus on those right now.

I have a wonderful, supportive group of friends and writing buddies who I honestly could not have gotten through this year without. And this year I really strengthened and developed my friendships with some of my coworkers. I feel like I have an army around me holding me up, and I couldn’t be more happy to have all of them in my life.

I also successfully branded myself as the person in the office with all the space clothes, and I’ve got even more coming for 2024! A silly thing but a good thing. Everyone should have galaxy dresses.

My job has been fabulous about letting me telework from home, so I’ve been able to spend so much more time with my mom than I would have otherwise. We have had so many small adventures in the last few months and built so many precious memories.

I wrote a new book this year. It was a deeply personal book about the first time a friendship ends, but it’s also about prejudice and inclusivity, and I’ve thrown in some vampires, selkies, weerebears, and dragons for fun. The draft needs a lot of work, and I’m currently revising to add more actual plot to balance out all the feelings, but I’ve grown a lot as a writer because of this project, and I think I’ll be really proud of this book in the end. If I ever finish it.

I also started writing another book this fall, which I’m calling my destress project and which has done wonders for my mental health and my love of writing. I’ll have a lot more to say about this in 2024.

And I had two short stories published in 2023, which I completely forgot about in my first draft of this post! “Duet for a Soloist” was published in Electric Spec, and “Where No One Sleeps” was published in Andromeda Spaceways. I’m really proud of both of these stories and so glad I got to share them with you this year!

Despite the reading slump, I also read a total of forty-five books this year. Twenty of them were new books, and twenty-five were rereads. Here are my favorites:

  • The Bartimaeus Trilogy by Jonathan Stroud
  • Bloodmarked by Tracy Deonn
  • Before and After the Book Deal by Courtney Maum
  • Save the Cat! Writes a Young Adult Novel: The Ultimate Guide to Writing a YA Bestseller by Jessica Brody
  • Don’t Want to be Your Monster by Deke Moulton
  • The Thing About Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin
  • Chewing the Fat: An Oral History of Italian Foodways From Fascism to Dolce Vita by Karima Moyer-Nocchi
  • The Chalice of the Gods by Rick Riordan

I have added these books to my book recs page, and I will have more detailed thoughts about them soon, I hope!

As for what’s coming next in 2024? I don’t know, and I’m not going to set any goals for myself right now. I have plans for my blog and books and short stories I want to write, but I’m just going to keep doing my best with everything.

So happy New Year! Here’s to a 2024 full of light and love and words!

Where No One Sleeps to be Published in Andromeda Spaceways

Happy April friends!

The contract is signed, sealed, and delivered, so I can finally share that my historical fantasy story “Where No One Sleeps” is going to be published in Issue 90 of Andromeda Spaceways Magazine. Yay!

“Where No One Sleeps” is set in Argentina shortly after the end of World War II. It’s about a young Italian immigrant grappling with grief and memory and homesickness, along with a magical power that makes all of that a lot harder to handle. When I was writing this story, I drew on my own knowledge of Italian history and family stories about my great-grandfather, who immigrated to Argentina from Italy before eventually settling in the United States, so “Where No One Sleeps” is close to my heart. I can’t wait for you to read it!

The New Magical School

Magical school stories have been around for a long, long time. They didn’t start with Harry Potter (Tamora Pierce’s Circle of Magic books and Diane Duane’s Young Wizards both come to mind), and they certainly didn’t end there either (Percy Jackson, Children of the Red King, all the books I’m going to talk about today, and so so many more). . I think these books are so popular because school and the experiences we have at school can be so universal, so what better way to connect with kids and explore the possibility of a magical world. In the last few years, I have read a number of new magical school books and absolutely loved them, and since I hope to write a magical school story of my own someday, I thought it might be fun to pick apart what all these books are doing that’s similar to each other and what each is doing that is unique. So buckle up. This post is going to get long, but hopefully fun.

First, I want to note that I will be talking about Harry Potter in this post. I absolutely do not condone J. K. Rowling’s bigotry, but it would be weird to write a whole post about magical school stories without mentioning Harry Potter and the impact its had on the subgenre. It’s also such a huge cultural touchstone, even now. You might not have read any of the new books I’m talking about today, but odds are you know something about Harry Potter. So I’m not going to dwell, but I am going to talk about it. Onward!

When I say a magical school book, I mean a book where the main character receives a magical education. Many of these books involve the main character discovering a magical world hidden within their own everyday world. Many of these books also involve the main character leaving home to receive their magical education. There are books where the main character already knows or is already part of the magical world in some way before beginning their magical education, and there are also books where the main character doesn’t leave home. In the Children of the Red King series, Charlie Bone knows of the existence of the magical powers that some people have (including his formidable grandmother and great-aunts), and when Charlie goes off to Bloor’s Academy to begin his magical education, he still goes home on the weekends. In The Marvellers, Ella is already well aware of Marveller society and can’t wait to attend the Arcanum Training Institute, and in Witchlings, Seven never leaves home because her education and adventures occur right in her community. Finally, sometimes magical education books don’t take place during the school year but instead during summer camps (Percy Jackson and Amari and the Night Brothers both are primarily set during summer camps where the kids receive their magical education).

Now that we’ve talked about what a magical school book generally is, let’s talk about the five magical school books I’ve lined up for this post.

Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend: Morrigan is a cursed child, destined to bring bad luck and misfortune to everyone she comes into contact with and then to die on the last night of the age. Except then an eccentric redhaired man named Jupiter North appears, mere moments before her death, and proposes an alternative: Morrigan can live. She can live and try out to enter the Wundrous Society in the city of Nevermoor. Morrigan has never heard of Nevermoor or the Wundrous Society, but she doesn’t want to die. So she goes with Jupiter, narrowly escaping her own death and entering the fantastical world of Nevermoor, where she’ll befriend giant talking cats and dragon riders, leap off hotel roofs with only an umbrella to break her fall, and face a series of challenging and terrifying trials to join the Wundrous Society. If Morrigan makes it into the Wundrous Society, she’ll have a place where she belongs, a real family, for the first time in her whole life. If she fails the trials, she’ll have to return to her parents’ home, where the death of a cursed child lies in wait for her.

There’s so much more good stuff in this book, and I don’t want to spoil it, but this series has rapidly risen to be one of my all time favorites. I love the unique, intricate, and incredibly fantastical world building. I love all the characters, who are so vivid. I love the heart in this book. I have been dying for the fourth book for months, and I still have months to go. If you haven’t read the Nevermoor books yet, you really have to.

Amari and the Night Brothers by B. B. Alston: Amari’s older brother is missing, and no one will do anything about it. The police insist he must have been into something illegal, but Amari is certain there’s more to it. Then hse finds a ticking briefcase in her brother’s room addressed to her. Amari’s brother has nominated her to join the secret Bureau of Supernatural Affairs. Amari is certain this bureau has something to do with his disappearance, but to dig deeper into what h appened to her brother, Amari will have to pass three trials to be accepted into the bureau. She has a lot to learn: mermaids, yettis, dwarves, and magicians are all real and the labyrinthine layout and methods of the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs for starters. It doesn’t help that Amari is competing with wealthy kids who have known about the supernatural world their entire lives to get into the Bureau and discover its secrets. To make matters worse, everyone has a talent that is enhanced to a supernatural ability, and it turns out that Amari’s talent is illegal in the supernatural world.

I adore Amari’s voice in this book, and the deeply personal struggle she faces. The world is also really fun, and Amari makes so many great friends. The second book is just as fantastic, and I can’t wait for the third book to come out.The themes of class and racial inequality the book explores are also really important and well-done. This is another series that I wholeheartedly recommend.

The Mystwick School of Musicraft by Jessica Khoury: Musical magic is one of my great loves, right up there with found family and outer space and books about books. So I was really excited about Mystwick before I even picked it up, and it really was a great read. Amelia Jones has always dreamed of attending Mystwick, where she can learn to use her flute to create music like the mother she can’t remember. Her audition goes horrificly wrong, but a mixup with some forms lands Amelia at Mystwick, and they agree to let her stay on a trial basis. As Amelia struggles to keep up with her more advanced classmates, prepares for the audition that will decide if she can stay at Mystwick, makes friends, and contends with a ghost that seems determined to get her kicked out of school, a magical storm is brewing that not even the powerful musician instructors at the school can stop. But maybe Amelia can.

I listened to the audiobook edition, which I highly recommend, because it actually included the music the students were playing, which really added to the experience in my opinion. But amazing audio edition aside, I really enjoyed this book. I had some issues with the way the school was run and the way lessons were taught and such, but on the whole, the book was just full of so much heart. I laughed, I cried, I got the sequel the minute it came out and then life happened and I haven’t read it yet but I can’t wait.

The Marvellers by Dhonielle Clayton: The Arcanum Training Institute is a magical training school in the sky, but until now conjurors have never been allowed to attend, because their magic is seen as dangerous and unnatural. But a new law has changed all that, and Ella Durand is going to be the first conjuror to attend the ATI. She’s eager to make a good first impression, make new friends, and learn new magic, but it’s hard to be the first, and most kids and even teachers don’t really trust Ella. She’s finally starting to make friends when a notorious criminal escapes from prison, supposedly with conjuror help, and Ella’s favorite teacher goes missing, and everyone thinks Ella is to blame.

It took me a bit to get into this book, but once I did, it was really phenomenal. The magical school was so diverse and fun. I loved all the characters. I loved the little epigraphs at the beginning of each chapter which really added to the story, and getting the point of view of the villain was super creepy. I really felt like I was piecing the mystery together along with Ella. My one big hangup with this book was that I would definitely not recommend the audiobook. I had a lot of trouble with the narrator, which is very rare for me. But on the whole, this was really great, and I’m super excited for the next book in the series to come out.

Witchlings by Claribel A. Ortega: Seven is a witchling who can’t wait to be placed in the most powerful coven of Ravenskill along with her best friend and come into their power as full-fledged witches together. Seven’s friend gets their wish, but Seven is not chosen. In front of the whole town, Seven isn’t placed in any of the five covens: She’s a spare. Spare covens have fewer witches and are less powerful, and so the town generally looks down on them. Worse, Seven and the other two spares fail to seal their coven, meaning they won’t ever become full witches. Seven invokes their only option: the impossible task. Now, Seven and her two new coven sisters need to hunt down a monster that’s been terrorizing Ravenskill. If they succeed, their coven will be sealed and they’ll come into their full powers as witches. If they fail…well…the last spare coven to try an impossible task got turned into toads. Permanently.

This book was so fun. It has a really exciting adventure, but it also has really important themes about friendship and how not everything is as it seems. I love that this is a book that takes place in Seven’s hometown. Seven and her friends never leave home, and their families and the other adults in the town play a big role in the story. The fact that the kids stay home reminded me of So You Want to Be a Wizard by Diane Duane, which I also really enjoyed. It’s different from the other books I’m talking about in this post because the kids don’t go off to school or summer camp, but they’re still training to use their magic, so it made sense to include it. This is another one where I’m really excited to read the sequel.

These five are by no means the only magical school books to come out in the last few years, but these are the ones I’ve read and enjoyed and feel most qualified to talk about. And there’s lots to talk about here. (Honestly there might be too much to talk about!) I’m fascinated by the elements that all these books have in common both with each other and with older magical school books. There are also some interesting new trends I’ve noticed among these books that weren’t always present in older magical school books. And finally, each of these books brings a unique twist of their own to the magical school story.

The sorting: Every book seems to have some manner of dividing the students. This is an aspect of the magical school story that seems pretty evergreen to me. In Harry Potter, the kids were divided into houses based on their personalities. In the Charlie Bone books, the students were in music, art, or theater sections of the school, though that had little to do with the plot. In Percy Jackson, the demigods are sorted based on who their godly parent is. While the sorting continues in current books, I’ve noticed it generally has more to do with the characters’ talents and interests rather than their personality traits (Witchlings may be the exception to this). This focus on grouping characters based on their type of magic is I think partly because in a lot of these new books, everyone has different magic and everyone is learning their own magic, rather than everyone learning the same skills as in some of the older books. Nevertheless, there’s a big emphasis on sorting characters. In Amari, it’s about what talent everyone has and then which department they choose to join in the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs. In Mystwick, the musicians are sorted, quite naturally, into sections. In the first Nevermoor book, there’s a huge emphasis on what knacks everyon has, particularly because Morrigan doesn’t know what hers is, and in the later books, we get the different schools within the Wundrous Society. The kids in The Marvellers are sorted into paragons of the five senses based on their individual marvel. Another interesting difference I’ve noticed is that in a couple of these books, the sorting does not occur right at the beginning of school. In both Nevermoor and Amari, the kids need to try out and be placed where they belong, and in The Marvellers the kids spend the whole school year learning how to harness their marvels and aboutall the different kinds of marvels before they discover exactly what kind of power they have.

Why has the sorting of students into different groups persisted when so many other aspects of the magical school story have changed? I think partly because in middle school, when a lot of these stories take place, kids are naturally beginning to sort themselves based on their interests and activities and making friends within those interests and activities, so this is a way of representing that. Some middle schools also group kids together so they all have classes with the same set of core teachers—my middle school called them clusters—so the sorting feels like a natural part of the school experience, made magical like everything else in the magical school story. Finally, I think it’s just plain fun. Before 2020, how many of us tied our Hogwarts house to our identity? I can just picture kids today talking about what knack or supernatural talent of marvel they would have if they could go to Nevermoor or the Bureau of Supernatural Affairs or the Arcanum Training Institute.

The special main character, with a twist: In older magical school books, the protagonist is so often special in some way, a child of prophecy or famous or well-connected. They come to school with advantages, even if they don’t want those advantages. They are well-regarded because of who they are as a symbol in the world. You get the gist. The characters in newer books are different from their peers too, but at least initially, it’s rarely in a good way. Morrigan Crow has no idea what her knack is, and if she doesn’t figure it out, she’ll be sent back home, where her death awaits. Amari is not only an outsider, poorer than the other trainees she’s competing against, and one of the only people of color, but her supernatural talent is also illegal. Amelia Jones didn’t really get into the Mystwick School of Musicraft, and the only reason she’s here is because she has the same name as a girl who died after the magical acceptance letters were sent out. Ella is the first conjuror to attend the ATI and has to face all the prejudices the Marvellers have against her and her magic. And Seven is a spare witch, so she might never come into her full powers and is generally despised by the townspeople she’s grown up with.

It makes perfect sense that the protagonist of these kinds of stories is going to be special in some way. A story about an “ordinary” kid going to magical school, learning magic and doing homework and making friends and having all the regular trials and tribulations of middle school wouldn’t be super interesting for very long, because it wouldn’t have a story. There wouldn’t be a prophecy or a mystery or an adventure or whatever that forms the backbone of these stories to draw us in. But I’m really interested in this turn that seems to have happened from older books, where the specialness of the main character was generally positive, to the books coming out in the last few years, where the main character is generally special in a negative way, at least at the start of the book. I think part of the reason this is happening is because a protagonist who comes into a situation as an underdog is someone we the readers are going to feel for and get behind naturally. So now we have a character we feel for and a compelling story that we can relate to—going to school, even to learn magic—and then we’re able to get a compelling conflict that our not-so-special main character will need to deal with. The special-in-a-bad-way protagonist is also a great way to illustrate the impact of unjust authority figures, which many of these books do quite well, which unfortunately is pretty relevant to the real world these days, so these stories can be pretty impactful in that regard as well.

The actually supportive adults: Not a ton to say here. With the exception of Mystwick, there are good adults all over the place in these books. And they aren’t just good adults. They’re supportive adults. They’re helpful adults. I love to see middle grade stories where the adults in the main character’s life aren’t dead or absent or oblivious but are instead involved in the adventure in a way that still gives the main character agency in the story. This isn’t to say that all magical school books in the past wer full of negligent adults. Charlie Bone could rely on his uncle, for example. But there are some adults who absolutely should have stepped in sooner (I’m looking at you, Dumbledore). And on the whole I think this emphasis on good adults is a really positive change. We have to remember that the main audience for these books is children, and by including adults the main characters can rely on to actually help and support them, your presenting a very different image to the intended readers of these books—children—then you would be if all the adults are useless or absent.

The diversity: There’s been a big push for more diverse books in the last few years, and these books are exemplifying that. BothMystwick and The Marvellers feature magical schools that take students from all over the world, and the protagonists of both Amari and Witchlings are people of color. Nevermoor is set in a secondary fantasy world, but still has a diverse cast of characters and deals with themes of difference and equality and respect, particularly in the third book. I’m not at all going to claim that all of these books are paragons of diversity. I think some of them are stellar and some of them could potentially do more. But compared to some older books that shall not be named where diversity went only as far as a very stereotypical made-up name, these books are a huge step in the right direction.

The fantastical world building: I’m not here to criticize the worlds of older magical school books. If you want that kind of discourse, it’s all over Twitter. But let’s be honest, the world building in these new books just blows the old ones out of the water. Magical schools in the sky? Public transit where you hook your umbrella onto a moving platform and just hang on for dear life? All the different kinds of magic you can create with a musical instrument? All the creatures from diverse myths and legends and the magic and technology we use to deal with them? All the creatures who are completely original to this world (I love you Fenestra the Magnificat!)? Need I say more? It’s just so good! I love it all!

But seriously, if you do look at some of those angry Twitter threads, I think there’s a lot of feeling that world building in older magical school books isn’t as creative or original. A lot of it comes from old myths and folklore, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but I think there’s a lot of eagerness for that extra twist of creativity in the worlds of these magical schools. I could be totally wrong here, but whatever the reason, this is a trend I can get behind, because it makes these books so much fun. I’ve also noticed that the world building is one of the main places where these books really demonstrate their uniqueness. Each one has its own take on the magical school and the world that school resides in. And like I said, I love it all!

The pacing: This is more something I’m interested in keeping an eye on than something I have a coherent thought or theory on at the moment. I’ve only read the first book in three of these series, and I don’t know how long those series are going to be. I’m caught up on Nevermoor, and I know Jessica Townsend is hoping it will be a nine-book series. I’m also caught up on Amari, and I’m pretty sure that’s going to be a trilogy, based on the way the plot has escalated in the first two books, but I’m not positive. All that being said, I’m thinking about the overarching plot of these series, when it is introduced, and how it progresses. I have a feeling that we’re getting the overarching plot sooner in magical school books and that it is more present in the early books in the series than the overarching plot in older series. I think that’s definitely true in the Nevermoor books so far, and I’d argue also for Amari, but I’m pretty sure that’s a shorter series so I would expect the level of overarching plot to be exactly what we’re getting. I think we got a fair amount of overarching series plot in The Marvellers, but without knowing what’s coming, I can’t say much more on that. And honestly I could only make guesses at what the overarching plot is in Witchlings and Mystwick, which isn’t a problem, just an observation. So really, I don’t have enough information to make any actual guesses on this theory, and it might turn out that I’m totally wrong. It will certainly be interesting to see though.

So what does all this mean if you want to write a magical school book? I hesitate to call anything I’ve talked about a trend in publishing or a trend in magical school books, because I’ve only talked about five book series here. But to the extent that the patterns I’ve discussed here are trends, like all trends, you shouldn’t necessarily write your book to fit that trend. If all this contemplating magical school books has illustrated anything to me, it’s that genres and subgenres change over time, and you need to read widely in your genre so you know what has been done before and what has not, as well as what the industry may have moved on from. But as always, you need to write the book you want to write, the story you feel in your heart and bones that you have to tell, because otherwise, you won’t love it. And if you don’t love it, your readers won’t love it either.

There’s almost certainly more to discuss here, but I’m going to bring this English essay (I mean blog post) to an end before it becomes even more ridiculously long. I’m really looking forward to seeing how all these series develop and reading more new magical school books to see if my thoughts hold up with a broader pool of books. If you’ve read any magical school books that have come out recently and I didn’t discuss here, I would love to hear about them. If you have read these books, I would also love to know what you thought of them and whether you agree with my analysis.

Until next time! Happy reading and writing!

Duet for a Soloist Is Out!

Hello friends! My short story “Duet for a Soloist” is out today in Electric Spec. This is another story set in my musical Phoenix world, Cantabile. It has a smaller scope than some of my other Cantabilie—focusing on a set of twins trying to find themselves—but it’s full of powerful emotions.

You can read “Duet for a Soloist” here, and find out more about the world of Cantabile, including links to all my published stories, background on those stories, and the music that inspired them, here.

Enjoy!

Some Long Overdo Website Updates and Two New Short Stories Coming Soon

Happy February, friends!

I feel like February always gets flack for being a bad month, but personally I like February. Here in D.C., the days are starting to get a bit longer and there are hints of spring in the air (not today precisely, but in February in general). Best of all, February is short, so before you know it, it’s March, and real spring is just around the corner.

January was a pretty rough month, but I’m crossing my fingers that it was just the remnants of the curse that was 2022, and things will be looking up from here. My knee is getting stronger and stronger every day, and I have lots and lots to look forward to in the months ahead.

So to start out February, I’ve finished up some updates to the website that I’ve been meaning to do for a while. First, I realized that I hadn’t written the story behind the story posts for my last two published short stories. Those are up now, so you can check out the story behind “Roomba Requires Your Attention” here and the story behind “Noa and the Dragon” here.

Next, I have redone the page with additional information about my short stories set in the world where everyone has a magical bond with their musical instruments and they use the magic created by playing their instruments to strengthen the Phoenix who carries the world. I have named the world Cantabile, and you can find more information about the world and links to all the stories set in Cantabile that I’ve had published on the new Cantabile Stories page here. The page is still a work in progress. I plan to add maps, some of the illustrations I’ve done, and links to the playlist I made for this world. If there’s anything else you think it would be cool for me to add to this page, just let me know and I’ll do my best to make it happen.

I’m still trying to figure out how I want to deal with my book recs page. It’s feeling a bit unwieldy, and I’d like to reorganize, but I haven’t figured out quite how yet. I hope to have it back up soon.

Finally, I’m really excited to share with you all that I got two short story acceptances in January. I’m still waiting on the contract for one, so I’m going to hold off sharing those details just now. But I can definitely tell you now that my story “Duet for a Soloist” will be published in Electric Spec at the end of February. This is my fourth story set in Cantabile to be published, incidentally, and I’m so excited that it’s found a home! I can’t wait for you all to read it, and I can’t wait to tell you more about the second short story I’ll have coming out in the next few months.

More soon!

January 2023 Update

Hello friends! I can’t believe we’re already at the end of January. It feels like this month has flown by, and also like it has moved incredibly slowly. In other words, it feels like it’s January.

I know one of my goals for 2023 was to post more on my blog (a perennial theme at this point), but my January was packed and stressful, so I’m letting myself off the hook for this month. I do have a whole list of things I want to write about, so stay tuned.

So what happened in January?

I had knee surgery.

Turns out knee surgery is a pretty big deal.

I spent the first half of January in a muddle of really bad pre-surgery anxiety. That comes with the territory when you’ve had fifteen eye operations as a kid. But everyone at the hospital was really fabulous at making sure I was calm and comfortable, and the surgery went well.

Then I spent the second half of January in a muddle of recovering. It’s been a lot, and it hasn’t been without hiccups. My stomach objected to the whole enterprise, forcefully and in just about every way a stomach could object. Then I had something that was possibly a blood clot. But I’m improving every day. I started using crutches a week after surgery, and now, two weeks after surgery, I’m down to one crutch and I’ve started physical therapy. Basically, I’m mobile enough to be very frustrated with how far I still have to go. I hope to be back on a bike this summer, but I’d also happily settle for being rid of this giant brace on my leg and being able to walk around without pain and without my kneecap dislocating. I do want to give a huge shout-out to all the family and friends who have stayed with me, taken care of me and my Neutron boy, sent cookies, and just dropped by to hang out and cheer me up.

With all this going on, most of my other regular pursuits have fallen a bit by the wayside. I only read three books in January, partly because I’m busy and partly because I’m still in a reading slump, though I think I might be coming out of it. My favorite book of January was THE AMULET OF SAMARKAND, the first book in Jonathan Stroud’s BARTIMAEUS TRILOGY. It had both a really compelling and humorous voice and really well done tension. I’m halfway through the second book and enjoying that quite a lot too. Perhaps I will write a blog post about the whole series when I’ve finished.

I also really enjoyed THE MARVELLERS by Dhonielle Clayton. This was a really fun, creative, and diverse take on the traditional magical school story, and I’d definitely recommend everyone check it out—though full disclosure, I did struggle with the audiobook narrator for this one, and I usually don’t have problems with audiobook narrators. I’ve been reading a lot of magical school stories in the last few months, so I’m thinking I might do a post on what those stories look like these days.

After a few weeks without much progress on my own work, I am writing again, slowly but surely. This is also helping to improve my mood immensely. I’m one of those authors who gets very cranky when I don’t write for more than a few days. I’ve decided that my writing goal for 2023 is to finish the two manuscripts I’m working on. If I have time, I have a stretch goal of going to look back at one of my older projects and do some work toward reimagining it and/or disecting it for parts, but that’s definitely a stretch goal. Otherwise, I’ve been brainstorming some ideas for fun writing posts for this blog.

Oh, one more thing. I received two short story acceptances in January. The contracts aren’t all signed, sealed, and delivered yet, so I can’t share more details, but watch this spot! I’m really excited for you to read both of these little tales.

More soon! I hope your 2023 is off to a good start and you have a happy February!

Where in the World Was Jameyanne in 2022

Happy New Year, friends!

See? I told you I’d be back.

I’m sorry I haven’t blogged that much in a long time. 2022 was an exceptionally busy year, in both good and difficult ways, and even though long-form blogging is still something I really love, I’m sorry to say it slipped by the wayside for most of the year. One of my goals of 2023 is to be better about that, especially with social media feeling so uncertain these days.

But before I tell you more about my 2023 goals, I want to tell you what I was up to in 2022 that consumed so much of my energy I didn’t update this website for months. The short answer is many, many things.

First, in 2022, I worked on five different books, all in different stages, from outlining to revision. I completely rewrote the middle grade fantasy, only for my revisions to reveal some deeper problems with the main character’s motivation and the stakes of the story which I’m still considering how to fix. I did a ton of research and then began rewriting the novella I wrote for my senior honors project in college to be a historical fantasy set in WWII Italy. I was really happy with what I was doing, but started to feel like it was just too depressing for me at the time, so I set it aside (I think I have a plan to make it less depressing though). I made some subtle revisions to my middle grade space adventure which I think really helped bring it to a new level. I outlined and started drafting a middle grade contemporary paranormal project about a girl with vampire parents who starts a club for kids with one foot in the supernatural world, and so far that’s been a delight. And all year long I’ve been plugging away at a novel set in the same world as my musical phoenix stories. I think I’m almost finished with my first draft, and while I love it more with every word I write and every discovery I make about these characters and this world, I also see how much revision this is going to need, which has made moving forward with the first draft feel really difficult. This has without a doubt been the hardest thing I have ever written, but I am also super proud of it, incredible flaws and all. I hope, when I’m done, it will be brilliant.

There were times this year, particularly when I set projects aside for the moment, when I felt like I was just spinning my wheels or even moving backward. But looking back at all the writing I’ve done and how hard I worked, I can tell that just isn’t true. No, I haven’t finished as many projects as I would have hoped in 2022, and yes, the rejections continue to come in, but I can also see that my writing has improved by leaps and bounds—my ideas, my plot structure, my characters, my world building, even my sentence to sentence writing feel like it’s at a much higher level now than at the beginning of 2022—and that’s because of how hard I worked this year.

Last spring, I also made good on something I’d been wanting to do since I moved to the D.C. area: I joined a tandem cycling group. I’ve been tandem biking with my family since I was a kid, and it was great to take my skills to the next level and bike all over the city and make new friends while I was at it. One thing led to another, and I’m now a member of two tandem cycling groups. From April to October, I was biking 20-30 miles twice a week most weeks.

Except when I wasn’t. Because I got covid from one of my tandem captains in July and was down for about six weeks. I’ve been sick before, but it was nothing like this. I have never experienced such profound fatigue. Most of the time I couldn’t hold myself up in a sitting position, and just taking my dog outside and back in left me out-of-breath and completely exhausted. This disease is no joke. If you’ve managed not to get it so far, do everything you can to keep it that way. If you’ve gotten it once before, do everything you can to make sure you don’t get it again.

Another unfortunate side effect of all the biking I did is that I somehow managed to reinjure my right knee. I twisted my knee in the past, and at first I thought I’d just aggravated the old injury, because it really didn’t hurt that much, but then I noticed my kneecap was going way out to the side whenever I bent my knee. A long saga of doctors visits and physical therapy later, and it turns out I need surgery. I tore the ligament that’s holding my kneecap in place, and it’s fully dislocating whenever I bend my knee, and this isn’t something that will heal on its own. I have been incredibly anxious about all of this, because honestly surgery is pretty much the one thing in the world I am absolutely terrified of, so it’s been a rough couple months to get to this point. My surgery is next week,and I’m looking forward both to getting on the road to recovery so I can get back to the activities I love and also just not having the prospect of surgery dangling over my head.

Back on the good side of 2022, I’m still loving my job licensing satellites at the FCC, and I’m now in charge of my office’s intern program, so it’s been a really busy time at work, but I love everything I’m doing. I’ve also been doing some work presenting at conferences and working with blind teens on how to find a job as a blind person, and that’s all been a wonderful experience.

Looking back on 2022, I can see there’s so much I did that I’m really proud of and really excited about, but at the same time, I’m hoping 2023 is a bit quieter, because I’m tired. I would like to get back to blogging more. I would also like to try more new recipes, since cooking fun new things was something else that fell through the cracks a bit this year, and I miss it.

Otherwise, I’m trying not to set too many concrete goals for myself in 2023. Yes, there are specific projects I’d like to finish, but right now I feel like it’s more important for me to challenge myself simply to keep moving forward and keep doing my best for everything I try. We’ll see what this year holds, but as long as I’m moving forward, whatever I accomplish is something to be proud of.

My Favorite Books of 2022

Hello friends! I know I haven’t been posting a lot this year, and I promise I have lots of plans for new posts in 2023, but in the meantime, here I am, rolling back in with my annual list of favorite reads.

My reading goal for 2022 was different from my reading goals in the past. In previous years, I’ve made goals to read a specific number of books, usually around 100, with no preference to new rereads or rereads. In 2022, I set a goal to read 50 books that I haven’t read before.

I read 67 new books in 2022. I also reread 18 books, for a grand total of 85 books in 2022. It’s not as many books as I’ve read in past years, but 2022 was also quite a year (more on that in a future post).

The books I read mainly fell into three genres this year: fantasy, with a big emphasis on middle grade fantasy; historical fiction focused on WWII; and historical nonfiction focused on WWII. I was trying to refresh my research to venture back into rewriting my college honors thesis into a historical fantasy novel set in WWII Italy. I did get pretty far into that revision before turning to something else, because WWII is really depressing friends, and there was enough bad stuff happening in the world this summer and fall that I needed a minute. But this project really drove what I read this year.

So without further ado, I give you my favorite books of 2022

The Bone Shard Emperor by Andrea Stewart: epic fantasy; a gripping sequel to The Bone Shard Daughter, which I read at the end of 2021.

Redemptor by Jordan Ifueko: another epic fantasy; also another sequel; a fabulous conclusion to the Raybearer duology.

Night Owl by Sarah Mlynowski, Emily Jenkins, and Lauren Myracle: a heartfelt conclusion to the Upside-Down Magic series.

Sal and Gabi Break the Universe and Sal and Gabi Fix the Universe by Carlos Hernandezz: a middle grade sci fi duology full of so much humor and heart. I just adored these books!

The Night Crossing by Karen Ackerman and The Butterfly by Patricia Polacco: I’m putting these two together because they were the first historical fiction books I ever read about WWII. I was glad to discover they held up all these years later, and it was fascinating to revisit books I’d read so long ago and see what I remembered and what I was surprised by all over again. (And before you say anything, I’m not counting books I read more than twenty years ago and haven’t seen since as rereads).

The Problim Children by Natalie Lloyd: another fun middle grade adventure/fantasy novel. I was so impressed with how Natalie Lloyd handles such a large cast with such finesse. I can’t wait to read the next book in this series.

Across the Greengrass Fields and Where the Drowned Girls Go by Seanan McGuire: The next two installments of the fantasy Wayward Children series I started in 2021. These books are about what happens to children who have adventures in other worlds after they come home, and I was really intrigued and excited by the turn in the series these books took. Looking forwart to the next one, which should be out in early 2023.

We Must Not Forget: Holocaust Stories of Survival and Resistance and We Had to Be Brave: Escaping the Nazis on the Kindertransport by Deborah Hopkinson: both of these books should be required reading. They tell the true stories of young people living through, escaping, and resisting the Holocaust, in their own words. Nothing I can say here can express the power of these too books.

All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman At the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler by Rebecca Donner: in this nonfiction book about WWII, the author tells the story of her great aunt who worked in the heart of the German resistance. Definitely worth a read.

One Jar of Magic by Corey Ann Haydu: a heartwarming middle grade fantasy about struggling to meet parental expectations, escaping abuse, and finding your own family and your own magic. Loved this!

All the Impossible Things by Lindsay Lackey: a middle grade fantasy that combines so many of my favorite things. There’s found family and discovering your own quiet magic.

The Firebird Song by Arnee Flores: a beautiful middle grade fantasy quest about what it costs to save the world and what true friendship means.

A Place to Hang the Moon by Kate Albus: A historical fiction middle grade set in WWIIabout three orphans with no relatives and a large inheritance who are sent into the English countryside fleeing the Blitz and also in the hopes of finding a family who will adopt them. This was another book that touched my heart.

The War that Saved My Life and The War I Finally Won by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley: a middle grade historical fiction duology about a disabled girl fleeing the Blitz and her abusive mother and discovering independence and freedom, safety and family, and horses.

Lisa’s War by Carol Matas: Another middle grade WWII historical fiction, about a gJewish girl in Denmark joining the resistance against the Nazis. This one was really powerful.

The Boy on the Wooden Box by Leon Leyson: The true story of the youngest person Oscar Schindler saved from the Holocaust. This one made me cry so much. So moving.

The Librarian of Auschwitz by Antonio Iturbe: This book was absolutely incredible. It’s a novelization of the true story of a school on the children’s block in Auschwitz, and the illicit library run in that school. It is an emotional, heart wrenching story, and I think absolutely everyone should read it.

Between Shades of Gray and Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys:These two historical fiction novels are related standalones. I loved them because they dealt with areas of WWII history I didn’t know anything about. The writing is also stellar. Highly recommend both these books, and I’ll definitely checking out this author’s other work.

Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein: I’m late to the party on this one, but this book was absolutely breathtaking! If you haven’t read it, you must.

Witchlings by Claribel A. Ortega: A delightful middle grade fantasy adventure about discovering magic and friendship and defeating some very bad bad guys. Really looking forward to the second book.

The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik: Naomi Novik’s Scholomance series has been getting better and better with each book, and this finale made the whole series just incredible. It definitely was everything I wanted and more.

Amari and the Great Game by B. B. Alston: A delightful sequel to Amari and the Night Brothers, which I read and loved in 2021. And OMG that ending! When does the next book come out?

If you’ve read any of these books, I’d love to talk about them with you. And if you decide to pick any of these up in 2023, let me know. Finally, if you have any recommendations for books you simply couldn’t put down, books that grabbed you and wouldn’t let you go from beginning to end, please give them to me.

I hope everyone had a wonderful year of books in 2022 and I wish you all even more great reads in 2023!

Roomba Requires Your Attention Published in Kaleidotrope

Hello friends. I know it’s been a while since I posted. It’s been a pretty rough few months, honestly, but I have a few posts lined up I’m really excited to share with you in the end of 2022.

In the meantime, I wanted to share with you all that my short story “Roomba Requires Your Attention” was published in Kaleidotrope last month. You can read it here.

This little story means a lot to me, because it actually got me out of the serious writer’s block I was struggling with in my second year of law school. That writer’s block, and this story as the key to overcoming it, taught me a lot about how I need to treat writing goals and take care of myself as a writer so I can keep telling the stories I love. Also, this story might be one of the funniest things I’ve written, and it was a lot of fun to marry the stress of what I was studying in law school with a near-future AI apocalypse.

I really hope you enjoy reading “Roomba Requires Your Attention” as much as I enjoyed writing it.

More soon!

January and February Update

Hello friends, and happy spring. Warm weather seems to have finally arrived in the D.C. area after a winter which was long and cold, and then not cold, and then cold again. The last couple months in particular, where we’ve swung from almost summery conditions back to the depths of winter weather have been a bit rough. But the warm weather has arrived, and the Covid numbers are a bit better, at least for now, so I’ve been tentatively stepping out of my apartment again to see friends and go to in-person barre classes (the barre requires vaccinations, and I’m testing before seeing friends).

January and February were pretty hectic months, which is why I haven’t posted recently. I moved to a bigger apartment at the end of January. I was just moving to a new apartment in the same building, so it wasn’t the hardest move I’ve ever done, but most of the month was still taken up with packing and getting through the administrative work of moving. And then I’ve been unpacking and organizing my new space throughout February. It’s been a lot of work, but I have a den now that I’ve set up as my cozy writing space, and the rest of my apartment is bigger too, so it’s overall a lot more comfortable. I also have more windows, so it’s even sunnier than my old apartment, which was an unexpected bonus.

I had so much going on in January and February that I hit a bit of a reading slump, which for me means I read about six books each month, for a total of twelve books by the end of February (I’m not exactly sure how much I read each month). Eight of the books I read were new, and four were rereads. I know this still sounds like a lot of books for two months, but I also didn’t really enjoy many of them until the end of February. A lot of them were fine, but not as special as I wanted them to be.

Of course, there were a few standouts. First was The Bone Shard Emperor by Andrea Stewart, sequel to The Bone Shard Daughter. This series, The Drowning Empire, is so rich and creative, and I adore the characters. It follows a number of very different people, the emperor’s daughter, a wanted smuggler, a woman with amnesia (best description I have), the daughter of an island governor, and a resistance leader. There’s also strange and wonderful and terrifying magic. I’m being vague because first, it’s hard to describe, but second, it’s such a joy to discover and I don’t want to spoil it. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend, and if you have, I would love to talk about it.

The second book that really stood out to me was Sal and Gabi Break the Universe by Carlos Hernandez. This book is about Sal and Gabi, two seventh graders at a school for the arts in Miami who, well, break the universe. Literally, Sal can create wormholes, and he keeps accidentally reaching into alternate universes to, say, put raw chickens in bullies’ lockers, and to bring alternate versions of his dead mother back into his universe. Everything about this book was just so vibrant and fun and loving, and it gave me so many feelings. This is another one you simply must read!

While I didn’t feel like I got a lot of reading done in the last couple months, I did get a lot of writing done. At the beginning of December, I gave my middle grade fantasy book to a set of totally new beta readers, and I got their feedback at the end of January. It was all super useful and really helped me crystallize what the problems were with the project. I have since taken all their comments, broken it down into categories, come up with solutions to the problems identified, created a revision outline, and started revising. These haven’t been easy revisions: I’ve rewritten my opening, cut a number of characters, reordered a number of plot events to streamline the events and fix pacing issues, added some new stuff to fill in some missing pieces, and I still have to rework my climax and ending. But I’m so far really happy with what I’ve done, and hopefully I’ll wind up with an even stronger book.

Otherwise, work has been busier than ever. I’m being given a lot more responsibilities, and I’m really enjoying it. It’s hard to believe I’ve been at this job for two and a half years, and two of them have been during the pandemic. I’m definitely looking forward to getting back into the office and getting to know my coworkers again, but at least with the bigger apartment, I’m enjoying teleworking more. Who’d have thought extra space would help that.

I hope everyone’s keeping well. I’m planning to post again soon with some thoughts on researching historical fiction, assuming, of course, that I can wrangle those thoughts into something coherent. In the meantime, enjoy the start of spring.