I finished the first draft of THE BOOK OF ESTHER. There are no words for how this makes me feel. Partly because I’m not totally sure how this makes me feel. Writing a contemporary YA redux of a biblical story whose high points involve genocide plans and hanging is a challenge, to say the least. But it’s a really, really fun challenge, and for all the work this manuscript needs (which is hahahahahaha SO MUCH), I’m pretty excited about the way that stuff came out.

The thing is, I like writing cute romances. I like setting stuff in places like college and boarding school and even Hollywood sets. What I don’t usually do is write books that involve bullying, sexual assault, and assorted other pretty terrible realities of high school. The truth is, I kinda suck at it. I cried when I wrote my first bullying scene for this book, and one of my biggest revisions is gonna be to do more showing it and less telling it, because after that first one, telling instead of showing was about all I could handle. Continue reading →