Teens Doing Great Things-- Rhema's Reality

When we hear about something bad that's happening to someone else we may feel sad, we may sympathize with them, we may wish we could help them, but how many of us would actually decide to do something about it? And what if that person was almost a complete stranger?

When Jacob Johnson heard about Rhema Butler, a girl who was the same age as he was and who was suffering from a rare form of cancer, he decided he had to do something. It didn't matter that he was only fourteen or that he had just met Rhema. Together, he and Rhema founded Rhema's Reality, a non-profit organization to raise money for childhood cancer research.

Here, in his own words is what happened.



I met this amazing teen at Rocking for Rhema, a fundraiser for Rhema's Reality. It was a well-organized event that featured local bands, local businesses, and community members, coming together to raise money for cancer research. Sadly, just a few days before this even, Rhema had lost her battle with childhood cancer.

As I talked with Jacob and Rhema's other friends and family members, I was impressed with the vibrant spirit that Rhema had projected onto all of them. I was impressed with the way Rhema and Jacob had come together to make a difference for other sick kids. I was impressed with how two kids who were so young and one so sick could do so much in such a short time.

Even though Rhema is gone, Jacob continues his fund raising efforts in her name. To find out about upcoming events or to donate to the Rhema's Reality fund go to the Rhema's Reality Facebook Page.

You can also see more about Jacob and Rhema's journey together at the Rhema's Reality youtube channel.

Jacob is a great example of everything that's good in kids and teens. He saw something that was hurting his friend and he did everything he could to make it better. He didn't let anyone tell him he was too young or that it was too hard to make a difference. He just did it.

Thank you Rhema for leaving behind such an amazing legacy. Thank you to Jacob and everyone who has helped him with Rhema's reality. You are a wonderful example of the great things that teens or anyone else can do when their heart is in the right place.

Jacob and Rhema on their way to the
Starlight Children's Foundation Prom

Back to Life

I'm ba-ack!

First I would like to announce the randomly chosen winners of my cover reveal contest. (I asked two of my children to give me numbers between 1-47, the number of comments I received, and those numbers they chose were the winners. Random, if not scientific)

Drum roll please...

The winner of the 11 x 14 print from my husband's website is KIKI HAMILTON!

The winner of the Barnes and Noble gift card is ZORAIDA CORDOVA!

I will be in contact with the winners so they can receive their prize.

Now back to reality...

I had a fantastic vacation home to Idaho. We went camping in Teton National Forest, drove through Yellowstone National Park, attended a hometown Fourth of July parade, and watched the rodeo and fireworks in Jackson. (In a past life I was somewhat of a cowgirl.)

As I put in my last post, it was a good time for mining memories and for resting my brain. I came home with a head full of new story ideas, characters, and settings that I can't wait to get written down. (As soon as I finish my WIP. No new projects that one's done, I promise.)

As usual, my precious, (my laptop) made the journey with me. Some of the places I wrote on my trip included a tent, a hotel room, while we were driving, and the bathroom at the campground. It was the only place that had an outlet and I needed to recharge my batteries. (Yes, I got some strange looks.)

I had planned to get a lot of writing done, but I didn't. Most of the time, my laptop was put away so I could look, listen, interact, and ENJOY my family and the places we went. I thought about feeling guilty about it, or sneaking away to get some writing done, but I decided what I was doing was more important.

I love to write. It's easy to get caught up in my own stories and forget about the rest of the world and just write. But that's not really conducive to being a good mom and I don't think it's conducive to being a good writer either. If the first rule of being a writer is "Write always" maybe the second rule should be "look, listen, observe, and live." If you're living in your head all the time, it's hard to write a character or story that's relateable to anyone but yourself.

I had a great vacation, I wrote, I observed, I mined my memories, but mostly I just enjoyed the people I was with and the places we went. Writing is an adventure, but it's important to take time out for real adventures too. You can always write about them later!

Minning Memories

I'm vacationing with my family (if you can call going anywhere with four kids a vacation), so blogging will be spotty. Once I get back, I'm working on a "Teens Doing Great Things" post about an amazing 14-teen-year-old. Stay tuned for that, I will be worth it. And I promise my contest winners will be announced, contacted, and prized soon. (That means they will receive their prize.)

For today, I want to talk about Mining Memories. This is a concept I just read about today in Orson Scott Card's CHARACTERS AND VIEWPOINTS. It means going back to a specific place or time in your memory and seeing what you can glean for your writing. Since I'm visiting the town I grew up in, I thought this would be a perfect time for some memory mining.

I had a few minutes to myself today, so I decided to take a little detour down memory lane.

I went by my old grade school and saw the big rock fire place on the playground. I remembered third grade after my best friend moved away. I was so lonely. One day I took a branch and swept the leaves into a little path up to the fireplace. Then I made circles of leaves and pretended the rock fireplace was a castle with a beautiful garden all around it. In the middle of my pretending, two girls asked me what I was doing. After I told them the three of us played with the magic fireplace castle every recess until the leaves all blew away and the snow started to fall.

Then I drove by our rival high school to remember my first kiss. It was late at night, and we'd spent the evening dragging main in the back of a pick-up with a guy I had a crush on. (Small town, lots of pick-up trucks, liberal seat-belt laws.) Dragging main basically means you drive up and down main street, wasting a lot of gas, hanging out with your friends, and meeting new ones. (This was before texting or Facebook.) Anyway, we traded cars in the parking lot of his school, our rival high school. I had to leave fast because I was late for my curfew. He walked me to my car. After I got in, he leaned in the window and kissed me. As soon as he turned around my friends were squealing, "Did he kiss you? Did he kiss you?" I was stunned and trying to drive, and trying to act nonchalant, like it wasn't my first kiss. I couldn't answer them until we were half-way home.

I drove around the farms near my mom's house and remembered floating the canals, swimming at the swimming hole, and bridge jumping in the summer. I remembered long horse rides and bike rides on the dirt trails in the fields.

I drove by the farm that used to be my grandpa's and saw that the field where we once kept the milk cows is now a housing development. I remember all the hours I spent working beside my dad and my grandpa, and thought about how those fields had eventually claimed both of them.

Then I went to the little cemetery where my dad and my grandpa, and even my great-great-grandpa are buried. A place where so many of the last names are familiar.

All of these bits and pieces of my life are the sum of my experience and the basis for my imagination. I sometimes get scared when I hear the phrase "write what you know," because as a small-town Idaho farm girl, what do I know that would be of any interest to anyone?

Orson Scott Card says the process of mining memories isn't about taking the same exact situation and telling it the same exact way. It's putting new characters into the situation, or twisting the situation into something totally new. It's all about playing the "what if?"game.

So maybe one of my characters will get her first kiss in the parking lot of a rival high school, or maybe a lonely little girl will create her own world out of leaves in the playground. Or maybe one of my characters will witness a murder in the parking lot of a rival high school, and maybe a lonely little girl will discover a porthole to another world in an old fireplace that's shaped like a castle.

As I sat down to write this post, I realized I was sitting next to the old Royal typewriter that I hammered out stories on when I was eight or ten. As I type away on my laptop, I can't help but think of how far I've come since then. A part of me will always be that lonely little girl on the playground, or the girl a hurried first kiss in the parking lot, or the even the girl who just realized the most gorgeous guy at school is standing by the barn and she's wearing her milking clothes, (that's an entirely different story).

And even if I will never be the girl who lives in the big city, or if I never go to a fantasy world, I still have me and all of my experiences. I know a piece of myself will go into every character I create. And thanks to Orson Scott Card, now I know that will be okay.

What I Learned from an Author Visit by Brandon Mull

Last Thursday I got to meet one of my hero authors, Brandon Mull, who wrote the FABLEHAVEN series. Brandon isn't one of my hero authors just because he's on the New York Time's Bestseller list, but because he's one of the authors whose stories got my kids into reading. I think my sons have read just about every book Brandon Mull has written.

I've been to school author visits before, but this time I was watching not just as a fan or as a mother, but as a to-be-published author. I was watching to learn what makes a great author visit. I was impressed, Brandon kept a whole gym full of 3rd-6th graders interested and engaged while he talked for over a half hour. (I sometimes struggle to keep my church kids engaged for ten minutes.)

Here are some of the things I learned watching Brandon Mull's presentation:

1) Be real. Brandon Mull engaged the students by telling them things about himself, even a "most embarrassing moment" from his childhood. He showed them pictures of his family. He was himself, and the kids could see that he was a real person. He said later that one of the reasons he does author visits is so kids can see that authors are normal people and that writing is something they can do.

2) Make it a two-way communication. Instead of just talking for the full time, he asked the kids questions and encouraged them to participate. He brought a few kids to the front and they worked together to come up with a magical world:

How do you get there? (A secret door at a hospital.) What kind of creature do you see? (Cyclops.) What does the world feel like? (Bouncy.) What does it smell like? (Pancakes.)

3) Be funny. I'm not sure this is something that can be taught, but one thing the kids I talked to remembered was that he said the witch on the German cover of FABLEHAVEN made him think it was Yoda's awkward cousin. (Maybe I can practice telling jokes with my kids.)

3) Visuals are Important. Just about everything Brandon talked about had a slide to go with it, from a map where arrows crisscrossed the country, to his book covers, to a picture of himself with a dog sled team. He ended with a fantastic book trailer for his new book and new series, THE BEYONDERS, and I know that left an impression on everyone who was watching.

4) Teach something. Don't just try to sell books. One of my favorite slides was his comparison between what he had originally written and what his editor said about it. (I can relate to that.) He talked to the kids about how a teacher making corrections on a paper was like an editor helping you to tell the best story possible. His core message was for the kids to stretching their imagination and be creative in whatever they liked to do.

5) Build a connection with each kid/reader that you meet. This was my favorite thing that Brandon Mull did and the thing that impressed me the most. Every kid that came through for an autograph got his complete attention. (Even the adults had to wait their turn.) He asked the kids about what they were interested in. He looked them in the eye. He took a few minutes to answer their questions. I don't think any kid felt rushed or slighted when they came to have their book signed. He got down on their level and showed them that he cared.

I enjoyed listening to Brandon Mull's presentation and I know the kids at South Bay did too.

COVER REVEAL (And the Outside Story)

YAY for today!

I'm so excited because FINALLY I get to show you the cover for BREAKING BEAUTIFUL.

First I'd like to say thank you to Kari at A GOOD ADDICTION for helping me with my reveal.

AND NOW (with absolutely as much ado as possible) HERE IT IS...

TA DA!!!

Isn't it beautiful!

Besides being the very first cover for my very first book, (and in so many ways my dream come true), let me tell you why this cover is so near and dear to me...

MY HUSBAND WAS THE PHOTOGRAPHER!!!

Didn't he do a great job? Isn't he awesome? Check out more of his beautiful work at David Wolf Photography.

I was very fortunate to have so much say in what went on the front of my book. If you aren't in publishing, maybe you don't realize that an author doesn't get to pick their cover. They can give some input, but ultimately it's the publisher's/art department's/marketing people's call. I was lucky, my editor and the art department at Walker/Bloomsbury was willing to let me (us) take a shot at coming up with my cover image.

This is how it happened...

THE OUTSIDE STORY

In the beginning, my editor, Mary Kate Castellani, sent me some pictures that were beautiful, but didn't exactly work with the book's setting. She said, "This is the basic idea that we're looking at, but we have to find a photo that will fit."

My answer was, "We don't have to look for a photo that will fit, just tell David, (my amazing photographer husband), what you want and he can do it."

Her answer was, "YES!"

So... We got marching orders from the art department, I borrowed a fabulous pair of red shoes from my friend Susan, we packed up the photography equipment and some really big umbrellas, and went for a drive along the coast--searching for the perfect spot. (We have the advantage of living near the area where BREAKING BEAUTIFUL is set.)

To get the right shot, we had to deal with our crazy, unpredictable, (and by unpredictable I mean totally predictable, because it rains all the time,) Northwest weather. Of course, we got rain when we didn't want it, but we also got sun (amazingly enough), when we didn't want it. And then there was this HIDEOUS recreational vehicle that was parked in the exact spot we wanted to shoot from. (Seriously, this thing gave new meaning to the phrase "big rolling turd" from the movie RV.)

Two trips later we had a whole bunch of photos for the art department at Walker/Bloomsbury to look at. Luckily, they liked what they saw. YAY!

They picked a photo, worked their magic with cropping and adding titles and voila! I have a cover that is gorgeous and represents the story inside beautifully.

Thank you thank you thank you to my amazing editor Mary Kate and my publisher, Walker/Bloomsbury, for trusting us enough to do this.

It means the world to me that my husband; the love of my life, my soul mate, and my biggest supporter through all of this, gets to put his mark on my book as well.

AND THANK YOU to the my husband, David Wolf for his patience and support and for being such a talented photographer!

And now for the giveaway! Drum roll please... (I did say "with as much ado as possible")

Simple, simple, simple, leave a comment on this post and you will be put into a random drawing to receive: 1st place, a 11x14 poster print of any photo from the "Artistic" section of the David Wolf Photography website, and 2nd place a $10 gift card to Barnes and Noble.

Thank you for helping me celebrate!

Exciting News and Contest Winners!

Every once in a while I need to deviate from my usual blog format to talk about me! (C'mon, it is my blog.) So instead of a book review I'm going to spend today's post announcing some

EXCITING NEWS!!!

This Friday I will be revealing the long awaited (at least for me,) cover for BREAKING BEAUTIFUL.

In Friday's post, I'll give you the inside or "outside story" on how my cover came to be and let you know a little about the photographer who worked so hard to please me, my editor, and the art department at Walker/Bloomsbury. AND I may even have a GIVEAWAY!

Book blogger Kari at A GOOD ADDICTION will be helping me with my reveal. The cover will be posted here and on her blog at 8:00 am CST. In the meantime, check out her blog for some fabulous book reviews and contests.

Next, a bit of housekeeping. A while back (I won't say how long ago,) I held a blurb contest. I would FINALLY like to congratulate the winners.

Sarvenez (She wins Kirby Larsen's THE FRIENDSHIP DOLL)

Her Blurb:

Matilda's parents -- like the adults in most of Roald Dahl's books -- are nasty, villainous and altogether dastardly. Which, of course, makes them a joy to read.

Taffy (She wins a signed copy of Angela Morrison's CAYMAN SUMMER)

Her Blurb:

The governess falls for her eccentric and rich employer, who has a dark secret which threatens not only their love but their lives as well

.
And Katrina (She wins a signed copy of Janette Rallison's MY UNFAIR GODMOTHER)

Her Blurb:

Anne Riley's THE CLEARING left me daydreaming about powerful Druids from throughout the loops of time, and had me weeping over the personal tragedies of family death and schoolroom bullying. From life-and-death to daily trials, Riley's new world feels real and sometimes all too close to home. You'll cheer at the end and clamor for a sequel.


Thank you ladies! I will be contacting you so I know where to send your prize.

Everyone else come back and visit me on Friday!

Firefighters Doing Great Things

I'm standing in the school parking lot and I hear sirens, I see flashing lights, and then a fire truck pulls in. My heart beats faster and I get a lump in my throat. I don't know about you, but one of my nightmares is some kind of disaster at my kids' school, so every time I see an emergency vehicle heading towards the school, I panic a little bit.

But in this case, my heart was beating faster out of pride, not out of fear. Thanks to the South Bay Fire Department, my son, and several other kids from South Bay Elementary got to ride to school in a fire truck as a reward for READING.

The program is called Blazing a Trail for Reading. For two weeks the students kept track of their reading minutes. The results were tallied, and winners from every grade got the chance to ride to school on a firetruck. Because my son was the second highest reader in the 4th grade (YAHOOO) he was one of the kids who had a red flashing lights, sirens wailing, trip to school. He also got a certificate of commendation from the firefighters and a signed poster from the band Glorianna.

Let me take a side trip to tell you a little about my fourth grader. He's the nicest kid you could meet; sweet, funny, and smart, but because he struggles with fine motor skills his handwriting is very bad and he's had a few tough school years. Then, thanks to authors like Rick Riordan and Brandon Mull, he discovered reading.

(MOMMY BRAGGING MOMENT) During this year he has read more than any other kid in his class. His teacher actually had to add more paper to the reading chart on the wall of his classroom. The line that measures his reading minutes now stretches onto the window. Possibly as a result of his mass amounts of reading, his confidence has grown by bounds, his spelling has improved, and even his writing is much better. (OKAY, MOMENT OVER).

I love that the South Bay firefighters and Gloriana are celebrating reading. I love that the students, parents, and teachers all stopped and cheered each kid as they came off the firetruck. I love that my son was able to be a part of this.

I got a lump in my throat and my heart beat faster every time I heard those sirens coming into the school parking lot. I was proud of every one of the kids who earned the trip, and I'm so proud to belong to a community where heroes like our firefighters take the time to support literacy and make a big deal out of reading.

Thank you South Bay firefighters!