Dreams and the Inevitability of Change

Abigail's funeral gown, our angel, our princess

I can hardly believe it's been a year since my enthusiastic Hermione-esque post about starting my Neuroscience program at BYU. So much has happened.

BOMBS AWAY! is published in paperback and as an ebook. No audiobook yet, but I hope my readers will forgive me for being slow on that front. We've had some unexpected financial reversals due to the very unexpected arrival of our daughter Abigail in the manner she chose to come to our family. 

Abigail was diagnosed at around 22 weeks gestation with amniotic band syndrome and acrania/anencephaly. This is a life-limiting condition, so we knew we weren't going to get to raise her and we didn't even know if we would get to meet her while she still breathed. Some babies die before they are born, with these conditions. Thankfully, miraculously, we did get to meet her and she breathed like a champ for nearly 24 hours (it was 22.5 hours officially). Her beautiful face, though interrupted with a facial cleft around her nose and mouth, was our joy to kiss and touch and see. 

She was completely unique. Her hands were each different. The left one was normal, and the right had a miniature pinky finger where it had been tied up by the amniotic bands that give the syndrome its name. Development was also hampered in her left foot, which we called her baby doll foot. It was so darling, still with five tiny toes. Her right foot was normal except for some syndactyly, a fancy word for webbing between two of the toes. My oldest brother actually has a similar effect on his right foot, same foot as Abigail's, but different toes. We have always called them "kissie toes" in our family. Abigail was born three weeks early by C-section, because her head was sewn into the placenta with the amniotic bands. Incredibly, she was a chubby, hardy baby girl, weighing 7 1/2 lbs. That's how much I weighed when I was born, too.

I am so thankful that I got to meet her, that I got to caress her sweet cheeks while singing her the Angel Friends lullaby my mother sang to me, and that I got to hold her hands and talk to her while she still breathed. We were able to have a beautiful funeral service for her the Saturday after her birth and passing, because coronavirus hadn't yet arrived in America in any large numbers. I am so thankful that my family were almost all able to travel from Arizona and southern Utah to help us celebrate her brief but impactful life.

Abigail Reileen is our first daughter and we will always cherish her and wish she could have stayed. Her body wasn't built for this world, but her spirit was tenacious and beautiful. She died in my arms in a way that echoed both my dreams and my nightmares. I know she is just where she was meant to be and that somehow this was her destiny. I am so grateful to be her mother forever. You can read more about my family's experiences with Abigail on our blog all about her: www.abigailstocking.blogspot.com.

Because we learned of Abigail's diagnosis in the middle of my first semester back on campus, I struggled a bit to stay focused on my schoolwork. I managed to get every assignment and test done, but it was far from my best work. I passed both classes, getting an A in Neurobiology and a C+ in General Chemistry 1. I deferred winter semester so we could focus on Abigail's birth and funeral. It was all planned by the time she was ready to arrive in late February 2020.

We had been home recovering from all of this for a few weeks when Covid-19, the coronavirus that halted the world, began to be a household name and suddenly closed all American schools. Because we already homeschool and my husband already works from home, our routine didn't change much at first. It felt like a moment of silence fitting for our beloved daughter.

Now, as government officials talk of gradually re-opening the economy, we see life around us starting to go on as normal (well, new normal). It's a strange feeling. We are grieving. My arms feel empty. But even we have plans for the future, plans with dates that are fast approaching.

I have a deadline to finish my work for Ensign Peak Academy, the private school where my oldest son has been completing eighth grade this year. I am starting to feel the push to hurry up and write the third installment of The Drats Universe, PREPARE TO BE REPAIRED! And my next class at BYU will go on, even though it will be taken online instead of on campus. I'll be taking the Neuroscience Advanced Writing course, reading tons of academic papers about neuroscience and writing my own. I'm looking forward to it and dreading it at the same time.

Change happens whether we are ready for it or not. It is inevitable. The most we can do is make plans and dreams and shoot for the stars. As writers, that's what we are best at. The biggest change in me since last year is that my perspective feels bigger. It's like someone lifted me up from the cracks in the mud and showed me how small my ant hill was. From my view above, I see just how big the yard is. I can't claim to see beyond the yard, but I am definitely not as worried about the ant hill as I used to be.

In my writing, this change has come through as a desire to write more than an entertaining story for middle grade readers. I still want it to be fun, but I also want it to be meaningful. I like to think that DRATS, FOILED AGAIN! and BOMBS AWAY! each had a thread of deeper meaning behind the entertaining tale of two twin brothers with opposite goals and a common enemy. But I'm not as content with just a thread of meaning now. I can't say for sure how this will change the tone and breadth of the third book, PREPARE TO BE REPAIRED. I only know that it will change them.

To my younger readers, I would say, keep on dreaming. Life will throw you some curve balls, for sure. But that is the stuff literary masterpieces are made of. Les Miserables was written on the battlefield over decades of a life lived, not just written about. And Jane Austen's many beloved stories were born out of her own experiences navigating a woman's world in late eighteenth century England.

If you don't live, you won't write anything worth reading.

I hope you do live, and live BIG. Make dreams worth pursuing. If the world ever comes crashing down around you, don't let it stop you for more than a minute. Share what you've felt, what you've come to know in your bones through the trial by fire. It will be worth it.

Back in the Saddle: New Releases and Querying Again

Phew! After two crazy back-to-back semesters of university life, I am happy to be taking the summer off from my studies. Next Fall 2019, I'll be back at BYU, diving straight into my new major, NEUROSCIENCE! To be honest, I'm feeling totally Hermione about it. 

The Hermione we love, doing advanced magic in the girls room.

I already bought my textbook for Neurobiology and, I kid you not, all the reviews on Amazon are raving about this textbook. Apparently, it's a real page-turner! It's called Neuroscience: Exploring the Brain, 4th Edition, in case you want to pick it up for a bit of light reading...

Books on my desk right now... all the light reading you could wish for

I know you're dying to know what I'm up to now that school's out for the summer! Well, aside from pre-reading my Neuroscience textbook for fun, I'm writing again.

Phew again! I have missed this!

I recently published my first adult self-help/inspirational book, The Healing Bucket: How to Invite the Power of Intentional Growth into Your Life this Year! It's available as an ebook wherever ebooks are sold, and in paperback through Amazon. The audiobook will be available later this year.

A Christian inspirational journaling aid

This past winter I hired an incredible voice actor, Jay Spaulding, to narrate Drats, Foiled Again!, my first middle grade superhero novel. He did an enviable job! Seriously, I wish I could do voices half as well as he does. We've listened to him perform my characters half a dozen times already!

The most adventurous audiobook ever, fun for the whole family!

My sweet little almost-seven-year-old thinks audiobooks are an automatic thing. As I've been working on finishing up Bombs Away!, the evil twin's version of the story, I read a little bit of Chapter 1 to my three oldest kids. The seven-year-old didn't mind my reading too much... "But," he asked, "can I listen to this book tonight on your phone?"

What do you think, Jay? Want to read my kids to sleep from an unpublished manuscript? You're not too busy for that, right? Right?

My kids are totally into audiobooks. The donation I received to allow me to hire Jay is definitely my biggest blessing all year. It has been surreal to hear my story retold in such a dynamic, living way. I'm grateful--through the roof grateful--for the opportunity.

Bombs Away! will be available digitally in June 2019, and in paperback about a month later. So long as Jay agrees to voice it, and I wouldn't have it any other way, you can expect that to happen (hopefully, fingers crossed) by the end of 2019.

Pre-order here

Since the name of this series is The Drats Universe, people have asked me just how many installments they can expect. Well, the truth is I'm not sure yet. I know for sure there will be at least three books because I have another plot cooking right now in the back of my brain. (It gets hot in there!) 

My Van-Gogh-inspired rendition of the active brain: Alive and Awake

The uncertainty comes about mainly because of time constraints. I'm officially a junior at my university, so there's really only a couple years left of material for me to learn before I earn my bachelor's degree. 

Buuuut...

Since I am the doting mother of five children whose education and upbringing is my number one priority, I will only be able to attend classes/labs part-time. 

BYU Eyring Science Center
The Neuroscience Center is on the bottom floor

Therefore, what could take two years will likely take four. The good news is that my oldest will be dipping his toes into the AP testing universe, so the fact that I'm taking all these science and math courses now will enable me to be a killer (I mean, not killer because we don't kill in our family) AP tutor.

No killing. Srsly.

Writing again for the middle grade audience is like coming back to my childhood playground and finding the swings empty and waiting. I am enjoying it immensely!

However, that part of me that is brimming with picture book ideas is still alive and well, too. So today I sent my first query letter in years! I sent it to a children's book publisher with whom I would absolutely love to work! I can't divulge too much about the picture book project, but it's about dragons and it draws on what I've been studying about neuroscience and behavior as I prepare to enter the program at the Y. All the studies that have been done on how to manipulate your own biochemistry and maintain a peaceful, productive mental and emotional state really need to be made available to children and families in ways they can understand and use. The family is where children receive their first instruction in emotion management. If parents never learned effective emotional management techniques, then the automatic dysfunctional habits they learned from their parents end up being passed along to the rising generation. 

The boys helping me pick up my St. George Marathon packet - 2018

As a mother, I speak from experience. Kicking my own bad habits and teaching effective emotional management is a personal mission for me in my own family. They say this generation deals with more anxiety and depression than any generation before it. There's much work to be done, and I believe we can usher in an era of optimism and health when people who care work together to raise awareness and teach mental hygiene skills.

As I continue to learn, I hope I'll have opportunities to share the useful tips and tricks of the trade with readers everywhere! That's the dream!

Tell me, what are your dreams and projects this year?

                                                                                                

A Different Kind of Cover Reveal: DRATS, FOILED AGAIN!

After six years of sitting on this manuscript, I've decided--with plenty of encouragement from those closest to me--to self-publish DRATS, FOILED AGAIN! and let it find its readers!!

The book and I are really excited about this.

So yesterday I sat down with some paintbrushes and a lot of yellow and green paint, and made my own cover art. Right now, I have some dear friends and family reviewing the latest revisions of the manuscript for readability and consistency. Early next month, I'm having a freelance editor copyedit it, and we have a tentative release date of April 20, 2018!! This has been a long time in coming.

Without further ado, I give you the cover art for DRATS, FOILED AGAIN!

Robert Gilbrinkle is blind in one eye, which makes dodging punches in his Anti-Hero Maneuvers class especially difficult, but his lack of depth perception is the least of his troubles. Nox Academy’s senior project deadline is fast approaching, he's failing three classes, and, naturally, his evil twin Rupert keeps trying to kill him every chance he gets. 

But the real trouble begins when Robert’s pathetic superpower--a very unwicked superwink that fixes anything broken--starts to evolve. The kids at Nox used to laugh and call him "Rob Repairman" but nobody is laughing now. His wink threatens anyone who threatens him. 

Robert has always known where he stands - on the other side of the hall from Rupert. What haunts him the most is the revelation that maybe he and Rupert aren't as different as he thought. Battling a common enemy brings them closer than either twin can handle, but the lives of their friends are at stake and the thirst for revenge is strong. Maybe even stronger than their disdain for each other.

With the playful cartoonish style and broad crossover appeal of Disney’s SKY HIGH, and the coming of age heroic drama of Matthew Cody’s POWERLESS, Robert’s story will resonate with kids from 8 to 14 who love to escape to that comic book world of good vs. evil and often wonder where in the midst of that universe they fit in.

What was the clincher? And why six years later? Well, here's the exciting and perilous story behind the non-publishing and eventual self-publishing of DRATS, FOILED AGAIN!

First, the reason I finally decided, the CLINCHER for my self-publishing decision, was my eight-year-old son, Layne James. Oh, he's adorable, and he loves comic books more than life itself. He is often found with a stack of white paper and a pen, drafting his own hero-vs.-villain stories. I wrote DRATS, FOILED AGAIN! when he was only two years old, and his big brother was five. I had always intended to share it with them, but they were a little young for a readaloud this thick at the time. Trust me, I tried reading WHERE THE RED FERN GROWS with Sam, the big brother, and all it did was put him to sleep (which is in itself its own kind of win!). But somehow it came up this year and I started reading it with Layne James. That fun bonding experience led me to pick up the old manuscript and finally see what it needed. The rest is history, and here's that story for those who desperately want to know:

DRATS, FOILED AGAIN! got the most attention from literary agents, out of all of my work. One agent optimistically referred me to another agent she thought might really dig it, and the feedback was flatteringly positive, except for one thing: THEY DIDN'T KNOW WHERE IT FIT IN THE MARKET. I was advised to rewrite the whole story to make it so the characters weren't in high school, but in some sort of junior academy for villains instead. And I did!

It was painful to go through and make the changes, and at the end, the story felt like an empty shell of its former self. I couldn't understand why changing the age made such a difference until I thought a good, long while about it. The answer was obvious, and I don't know why I didn't see it before. DRATS, FOILED AGAIN! is primarily a coming of age story. While there are great coming of age stories written with an MG-age protagonist (A WRINKLE IN TIME and THE GIVER, to name a few of my favorites), this particular coming of age story is about that scary, exciting, and confusing year between senior year of high school and the big wide world that awaits after graduation. That inner conflict of "Where will I live, and how will I make my mark on the world?" is absolutely central to Robert's struggle between good and evil (and Rupert's, in the companion novel coming soon).

Given this disconnect between my story and the traditional publishing scene, I guess the question really is, why did I wait so long to go it alone? The answer is that I have a lot of faith in the traditional publishing route. It's what I know, having worked with literary agents, authors, and editors on writing conferences and pitch contests at Operation Awesome. I have become very comfortable with my vision for my own success story, and it always involved, in my mind 1) get represented by awesome agent, 2) shop my novel to awesome editors at awesome publishing houses, 3) get picked up for a huge advance, and 4) celebrate!

My faith was strong in the traditional publishing route, and honestly, I still think it's a good idea to go that route in a lot of cases. It provides you with a team of people, some marketing resources, and often a nice little chunk of change in advance. But, and it took me a long time to accept this, DRATS, FOILED AGAIN! is just the type of story that agents and editors are hesitant to take on because of what they see as a marketing challenge. If it isn't straight-up middle grade and it isn't straight-up young adult, then what is it?

The characters are all teenagers. Some of them are middle grade age (Star and Shepherd, for instance), but the main characters are young adult age, almost adults. And unlike the very distinct differences between contemporary MG and YA, where young adults are dealing with very adult stuff and middle graders are dealing with bullying and fitting in, DRATS, FOILED AGAIN! has characters of all ages all dealing with the same big thing: the ongoing battle between good and evil. Because of its very playful MG tone and plot, and characters with a YA age, DRATS, FOILED AGAIN! actually has a broad crossover appeal. In fact, like Disney's Sky High, it could appeal to all the kids in the family as a readaloud (that's how we roll at my house), or kids 8-14 years old reading alone. When I queried it, I categorized it as middle grade, and that's still where I'd place it in the market.

BUT WHAT I'M REALLY EXCITED ABOUT with self-publishing is that you, the readers, get to decide! There isn't a big hullabaloo about which shelf to put it on, or just what type of cover art will express both the high stakes and the playful tone. And all that's left is just to read the story and, with any luck, fall deeply in love with its characters.

I hope you'll enjoy the twins, Robert and Rupert, their goofy insatiable dad, Famine Mouth, the mischievous tech genius Patsy Spendlove, and the heroes on the other side of the forest: Everest, Morphea, Star, and Trueblue. I hope you'll relate, whatever your age, to Robert's struggle to find where he belongs on that spectrum between good and evil, and to choose for himself where he wants to be.


RELEASE DATE: APRIL 20, 2018


(It will be available on Amazon Kindle and as a paperback.)


More pictures from the cover art process:

Weekend to-do

I'm going to be working hardcore on plotting and outlining this weekend. I've got a middle grade treasure to refine.

What will you be working on this weekend?

Logline Blogfest

I'm doing Steena's LOGLINE BLOGFEST just a little late because of the Mystery Agent one-line pitch contest that went down today. Still, for the evening crowd, here's my logline:

Genre: MG Adventure
Title: Prepare to be Repaired


In a town where the heroes are all villains, Robert is the benign twin, the proverbial black sheep with white knight tendencies, do-gooder super powers, and dust allergies--but he's everyone's last, best hope against the beasts dragging both heroes and villains into the woods, one at a time.

Gee, those are hard. I'm glad we usually get a whole query to pitch our story!

Do you have one? Join the blogfest. (It's totally not too late! Well, maybe a little.)

Feedback-man Saves My Novel: Prepare to be Repaired!

Okay, that last part of the title is an inside joke for those of you who have read my manuscript. :-) But the rest of you can easily understand the first part, right?

I am just floored by how helpful the feedback has been on my recently finished middle grade novel. And I haven't had access to a bunch of professional readers, either. It's mostly been family and friends, with a few near-strangers I met through www.absolutewrite.com/forums. 

But their suggestions and comments have been invaluable to me! After all the tweaking, revising, and proof-reading you do of your own work, there comes a moment in time when you can't see the trees for the forest anymore. Seriously, your WIP becomes this massive muddy forest that feels completely uncrossable. There's no path, no distinct tree-line. It's just words. Words that sound good to you...or not. But you've been looking at them that way for so long, you have no idea how to change them to sound better. 

At least this is the way it is for me. 

So when somebody says, "Hey, this part confused me. Is it meant to be a miniature rocket, a bomb, or a rocket-ship?" that's when I finally realize that they didn't get my "clever" ending AT ALL! 

Time to rewrite.

When Tall Bright & Handsome points out a logistical discrepancy in a fight-scene, my palm meets my forehead. Duh! Why didn't I notice that? 

But there are also those golden moments, like when my sister says there were passages she couldn't believe I wrote. Or when a complete stranger says they would give it to their twelve-year-old friend/cousin/nephew because they loved it and think he will, too. 

Those are the moments that make my head feel like it's filled with glitter. 

It's the criticism, however, that really saves a novel. Tonight, I'll go back into my word document, which has had about a week to rest now, and I'll implement the suggestions I've received so far. This won't be the end. (I feel like Boneclaw, spewing out catch-phrases: "You haven't seen the last of me, Repairman!)

There will be more work ahead, but I know that each step will only make the novel better. And that's exciting.   

I can almost hear Robert--see him winking: "Prepare to be Repaired!" You, Typos and Plot Holes, are no match for the Repairman. 

WOOHOO! I'm done! Drats! Foiled Again! is complete!

Ah, the joy of completing the first draft. It is sublime... transcendent.... peaceful.

Even though I want to shout from the roof, "I'M DONE!"

The stronger feeling is one of resolution and serenity. "Ah....I'm done."

Of course, there will be redrafts, revisions, torturous rewrites. But I don't have to think about those right now. I get to bask in the glow of seeing a project through to completion. I get to revel in the joy of birthing an idea that grew to full fruition.

I get to relax and feel free to play with other ideas without feeling like I'm cheating on my WIP.

I can play with the idea of a sequel: Foil Me Twice, Shame On Me

or a companion from the evil twin's POV: Bombs Away!

or go in a completely different direction and play with some of the fairy/spy/ghost-hunter/ordinary romance ideas floating around in my head.

This afternoon, there were ideas for the conclusion of my book spinning around and around in my mind, making me dizzy--incapable of remembering anything my husband or kids tried to tell me.

Now, my head is clear.

At last.

This, my friends, is why it is worth it to finish that novel.

I did it. You can, too!

Wordle Word Cloud Fun

Here's my middle grade novel, Drats! Foiled Again! summed up in a wordle blurb.




Guess who the main character is. :-) I guess I'm saying his name quite often, so as not to confuse him with his evil twin. I love writing paranormal superhero stuff!

And here's this blog summed up in wordle, as well (in pink, of course):



Pretty easy to see my main topics here!

Alright. I'm off to butcher another brilliant idea in its execution! Wish me luck!

Blissful reading, and happy writing!