So…I am not one of those writers.  When I find stuff online about my books, I read it.  And more often than I’d like to admit, I build a house and dwell on the negative things.  Sometimes I’d really really like to respond, to rabidly defend the story and characters that are so dear to me.

But as almost any writer will tell you, responding directly and defensively to reviews is NEVER A GOOD IDEA!  Nothing positive will come of it and the whole experience will likely end in despair and/or you getting made fun of on the internetz.

(It’s much more satisfying to rant to friends and loved ones, who are contractually obligated to make soothing noises, pour you a drink and say you’re right and everyone else is wrong.)

However, when Donna at Bites asked me to write a guest post about Albatross, I took it as a chance to explain some of the background to the book.  Why I wrote it in terms of my own life experiences, and also in terms of certain trends and debates I see going on in the YA world about romance and depictions of what I personally consider unhealthy and abusive relationships.

And also in order to explain Tess, the occasionally self-destructive and super-frustrating main character of Albatross, who is doubly unable to defend herself due to A) her own issues with her self-esteem, and B) because, well, she’s fictional.

I knew I would eventually hear frustrated comments about the story. “I don’t understand why Tess didn’t just stand up for herself! Why didn’t she kick Micah to the curb after ten pages? He’s obviously a terrible person!” I get that disgust, I really do. It sucks to watch someone make bad choices. In fact, it’s downright unpleasant. Albatross was a hard book to write for that reason. So many times I wanted to reach into the story and give Tess a good shake and yell at her to give up on this jackass, that she deserved so much better.

But even if I could do that, she wouldn’t have believed me right away. And I had to stick with what I knew was true because I had lived it.

The whole thing is here.  Thanks for the opportunity, Donna!

There’s also this cool interview that I did with the Indianapolis Star where I talk about similar topics…

Why did you choose to write Albatross?

I decided to write Albatross because I had seen depictions in books and movies of obsessive and emotionally abusive relationships with the underlying message that these are positive and even romantic…I found that really upsetting and I wanted to give a counter-argument.

Sometimes the person we fall for does not deserve it.

On that happy note (?), I hope that you all have wonderful weekends, and eat lots of Cadbury eggs if you’re into that sort of thing!

via nataliedee.com

(Sometimes the world just feels like this, right?)

Perhaps you saw that my writerly hero Meg Cabot interviewed me on her blog?  Here it is if you missed it. Fingers crossed the authorities don’t come after me for admitting that I stole a book from my 7th grade classroom.  I was young!  I didn’t know what I was doing!

I’d make grand and sappy declarations about how Meg is the coolest (not to mention the funniest and the nicest and the prettiest), but I think you all already know that!

I met her the day before I started writing Band Geek Love!  Very auspicious.

(Though apparently she hates her haircut here, whatevs, she’s still the best.)

Meg is running a really great contest to give away copies of Albatross…check it out here.  To win, you’ll have to write in and explain how you’d help extricate a friend from an unhealthy, hurtful relationship without making your friend mad and driving her (or him) away.  It’s tough to do!  I know because I’ve been there (on both sides of the ugly equation).

I also want to point out this kickass Albatross review and giveaway over on the book review blog Bites.  The whole thing is so thoughtful and awesome, but I think this is my favorite bit because it talks about something other reviews haven’t really mentioned:

There isn’t a prince that saves Tess’s day. Only Tess did that and that just reiterated the overwhelmingly powerful message this book has. No one else can get you out of it except you. You need the strength to do it. You just need to listen to that inner voice of yours.

Yes.  Sometimes, my friends, you just have to be your own damn hero!

I had a great time at the East Lansing Public Library, where I met some girls who are current members of my old high school marching band (they even have the same band director!).  They gave me the highest praise possible about Band Geek Love – “You got it right”.  Thanks, guys!  Good luck with drum major try-outs!

And then I visited Haslett High School, where we had a fun talk about bad relationships and boy drama and throwing off albatrosses.  It was not nearly as traumatizing to hang out in a high school as I thought it would be, though I definitely still have a Pavlovian response to the class-change bells.  Not in the form of drooling, at least, but definitely some panic.

And THEN I had a wonderful reading/signing at Schuler Books.  It involved my favorite question of the weekend.  A woman in the audience asked me what are my favorite themes to write about and I answered “A girl finding her inner-badass”.  Then she asked me if I had found my inner-badass yet, and someone else interjected, “Sure she has…look at her boots!”

Me explaining my Badass Boots.

This was a valuable lesson, as it turns out.  Whenever you are anxious and nervous about something, try wearing Badass Boots.  I swear they’ll make you feel ready to take on the world.  Or at least take on public speaking.  Truth.

Here is a great write-up and interview from the Lansing State Journal wherein I admit to printing out IM conversations in high school because I thought they might be useful material someday.  (They ARE.)

Thanks everyone for a wonderful visit!  And for those who I missed this time around, I promise I’ll be back!

The other night I was looking through my old journals for research purposes, and found the entry I wrote on Valentine’s Day when I was sixteen. It got me thinking about Albatross because it a) involved Solo & Ensemble Festival (me = band geek, of course) and b) was about angsty, unrequited love.  Both of these are experiences I blatantly stole from myself for Albatross.

I totally made up the part about having a hot accompanist, though.

Long backstory short, on Valentine’s/Solo & Ensemble Day in 1998 I was ENTIRELY smitten with this guy who had recently told me “oh I just want to be friends because you’re really cool and I don’t want to ruin our awesome friendship blah de blah lamesauce” and my feelings about that development were demonstrated by how I noted the date:

(I still can’t spell February without spell-check)

I’ll let 16 year-old me take it from here:

With all this upheaval in my life, I still managed to get it together for solo and ensemble. My solo went okay, by no means my best playing, but I got a one.  The duet was supposed to be a joke, and we thought we wouldn’t get a rating, but the judge was so into it he didn’t care.  He gave us a one! So the day, so far, has been a triumph.

But if today will be all around wonderful remains to be seen. I’m going over to [Name Redacted to Protect the Semi-Innocent]‘s house tonight, where I suppose I’ll find out if my heart is to be totally broken, or sewed up at the tears. Your guess is as good as mine.

In any case, if my heart is to be ripped apart, the last few days have convinced me I’ll be able to recover. I don’t need his love to keep on living. I don’t need to be certain of his devotion to become an adult, and succeed. In any case, he is just a nice little detour on the road to real loves.

Just need to remember that.

I think that slightly-over-dramatic 16 year-old me would be pretty excited about the concept of Interplanetary Be Yourself Day.  And that’s what older-and-wiser current me is going to celebrate in 2010.

Have a lovely weekend, wherever and whoever you are!

It contains exciting things, such as my new flickr account, where you can look at pictures of me slobbering on my own books and my parents’ Border Collie, Ripley, begging to drive a boat (we tell him it’s illegal, but he refuses to listen).

Ripley: “PLEASE?  There might be some sheep out on the lake that need HERDING!”

Many thanks to my talented Web Guru, who slaved over this site so much he didn’t have time to work on his own site.  Alas!  I’m sure it will be lovely when it does go up.

Also, check out how cool and easy it is to read the first chapter of Albatross over on its page.  It’s almost like looking at a real book!

Lastly, yesterday I found THE song that perfectly captures, for me, the essence of Albatross…it’s called “Cosmic Love” by Florence & the Machine.  Listen to it…so lovely and desperate.  I wish I had it while I was writing the book.

The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out
You left me in the dark
No dawn, no day, I’m always in this twilight
In the shadow of your heart.

Micah, Daisy and Tess insist that it totally is quite real.

I’m going to go on a quest to find a copy in the wild, and then I’m going to sit around with my friends, allow them to buy me beverages, and make them read my favorite passages out loud (I am especially fond of chapter 17).  What?  It’s like it’s my book’s birthday, and on your birthday you get to do whatever you want, right?

But seriously, I am a million different kinds of happy and grateful that Albatross is out, that I got to tell this story, and that (hopefully) people will read it.  And (borrowed from the acknowledgments page) there are many awesome people who made this possible…

Endless thanks go to my agent, Kate Schafer Testerman, and my editor, Brian Farrey, and everyone at Flux who made this book-of-my-heart possible.

Deepest gratitude goes to my family, who have always made me feel loved and supported, and to my amazing and talented friends, both old and new.

And special love and appreciation go to my mom, who tells me “don’t have a wishbone where your backbone ought to be” whenever I need to hear it.

My joy is perhaps best summed up by one of my favorite songs:

Happy Birthday, book-of-my-heart.

Also, I’m excited to share this happy-making review from Kirkus:

Music geeks walk the fine line between love and unhealthy obsession. Despite her friends’ warnings about his creepy behavior, Tess falls for intense, pretentious Micah. From the start of their relationship, Micah never fails to let Tess know that she is second to his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Daisy. Micah ignores Tess, makes remarks about her dumb, shallow friends and bites her hard enough to leave a mark, but Tess can’t get him out of her head. Her tolerance of Micah’s behavior echoes the way her mother handled her distant, critical father. Once she finds the bravery to stand up to her dad, she also finds a way to break off from Micah. Bloss shows the ways that emotional bullying can affect a supposedly loving relationship and how one teen repeats—and breaks—the cycle of abuse. Though some moments of Tess’s growth in strength are rendered heavy-handedly, her story will wrench hearts. Girls who believe in the swept-off-her-feet romance may see that a “perfect” boy’s veneer can hide an ugly, domineering personality. (Fiction. YA)

I’m very pleased that the words “heart” and “wrench” have been applied to this book multiple times.  It’s my favorite verb to inflict upon one of my favorite nouns!  Especially if it’s inflicted for the purposes of something Good…namely, my belief that no one has the right to belittle, manipulate or make another person feel bad about themselves.  Not a parent, not a friend, not that dreamy dude/tte who seems to be otherwise perfect and alluring in every way.  Albatross is my tribute to that belief as well as to one of my mom’s most helpful sayings, “Don’t have a wishbone where your backbone ought to be”.  Word.

And on a lighter note, take a look at this badass trifecta:

Stand back or these girls will CUT you.  With PAPER.

I hope you all had wonderful holidays.  I know that I did…especially that time around New Year’s when I basically became nocturnal.  Nothing says “a mature and healthy start to a brand new year” like staying up all night three times in a row.  Oh well.  At least it involved a lot of karaoke!  (My rendition of “Mamma Mia!” was inspired, I can assure you.)

So, the most exciting thing happening around here is that Albatross is out on February 1st…which is somehow only 25 days away!  I’m happy and antsy and have been biting my nails entirely too much.

There’s a cool interview with me about Albatross over on the Flux blog.  I overshare for a bit about why I wrote this rather sad and painful book after writing the two relatively cheerful Band Geek books:

FLUX: The tone in Albatross is more serious than your previous two books. Here, you’ve chosen a far darker story and style. What inspired this change?

JB: Though the story is darker, I think the themes of a girl finding her voice and her inner strength are quite similar to the Band Geek books. Honestly, this is a story that called to me and demanded to be written. I was going through a tough time in my personal life and when my world is upside down, it can be difficult to think or write about anything else. I borrowed significant parts of my own experiences for this book. In some ways, Albatross was my therapy and my method of productively processing these difficult experiences . . . and it’s a fist-bump to other people dealing with similar situations. Sometimes you just need to hear that you’re not alone.

You can read the whole thing here.

The interview also includes an excerpt of Albatross, or you can read the whole first chapter right here.  The first chapter will be up here on this site soon in a pdf as well.  The Web Guru is currently hard at work whipping up a whole NEW site for me, so I don’t want to harass him too much right now.  Stay tuned for a very pretty redesign!  It will involve purple.