I could understand my draw to the setting. Having been trained as a social worker in upstate Vermont I’d seen my fair share of rural mountain towns. What struck me was the clarity which I could hear her voice, see the dirt pummeled into her faded blue jeans, or smell her father’s whisky-laden breathe. It was as if I was sitting there, hovering just out of sight watching her life play out around me.
So, at the advice of a trusted friend, I put what was reeling through my mind down onto paper, literally just closed my eyes and wrote. Six weeks later, Cedar was born – a YA Crossover Novel that drops the reader into a part of America that many refuse to believe even exists.
Once complete, Cedar passed from my hands to those of three trusted beta readers. They red-penned it, picked apart my inconsistencies, even pointed out the occasional but unforgivable comma splice. Thanks to them and their willingness to sift though pages, sometimes entire chapters of . . . well crap, I emerged with a manuscript that I’m proud of, one that I was not afraid to query, and one that I am thrilled to say is represented my Jessica Sinsheimer of the Sarah Jane Freymann Literary Agency.
So my fellow scribblers . . . where did the idea for your book stem from?
