How To Forge Your Own Joy

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When you read the word “forge,” what image comes to mind?

It’s probably not someone lounging on white sand beach, sunning and smiling.

Work in a forge is dangerous. It’s hot, heavy, sweaty work. It takes an enormous toll on the body. It takes a long time to learn. They don’t just “let” people into forges to make stuff. You have to be trained.

It’s not easy.

When looking back upon the times I consider most joyful, they came at the expense of hard work.

At age 45, completing a 13.5 hour crucible event conducted by retired Navy SEALs. That took months of mental and physical preparation, and I bawled when it was over (in the car — I’m not cryin’ in front of those guys!). It was one of the most joyful moments of my life.

Writing and staging a one-man show in my backyard for 120 people over two nights, for free. (And the standing ovation my actor got on opening night.) We spent ten weeks rehearsing that show, never mind the time it took to write. A pivotal moment in my life, utterly filled with joy.

Writing a novel (or two, or three), trying to get an agent, selling a book for the first time, bringing it to market, and doing a launch event at my local bookstore. That journey took more than twenty years. And was a complete joy.

There’s no Joy Fairy flying around bestowing joy in your life or mine.

There are happy accidents and twists of fate that can certainly bring a smile to our faces. Sure. There’s joy in “simple things,” like the giraffe I saw at the zoo today who was leaning over its enclosure to eat landscaping trees. We are almost close enough to touch. A simple, joyful moment.

I’m not dismissing those. Not at all.

But if you’re seeking the hard-core stuff . . . those highs of triumph and joy that make you momentarily immortal . . .

That takes work. Laborious, draining, sweaty work.

We forge real joy.

And it’s worth every drop of sweat.

Work for it.

Take care,
~ Tom

P.S.
Are you on Medium? Be sure to follow me there for writing advice and life encouragement! Tap or click: https://tom-leveen.medium.com/

How My Make-Believe Daughter Got a Book Published

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I love all the kids in my debut novel Party, of course. And there is a little bit of me in each one of them. But I feel the most for Morrigan. My heart breaks for her.

I think it’s because she was based on a character I created who was an imagined child of mine.

Yeah. True story.

This is a promo mockup for the Party feature film, now called BUTTERFLIES.

I was dating someone and got to thinking about what our kids might be like. I smiled as I thought about it, and started writing a short little scene. In the scene, our kid–an only child, by the way!–was a teenager. A girl. And she and I were on our back patio having a conversation.

As happens often when I write, I lost track entirely of the story and just surfed the wave of inspiration. I felt invigorated when I was finished, and CTRL+HOME’d back to the top of the doc and started reading.

My jaw slowly dropped.

Our kid was in bad shape. I didn’t even know I was writing it like that. Far from being some tender, bucolic scene of heartfelt emotion, the scene was dark and broody and kind of unpleasant.

Worst — I didn’t come off too well in it.

That was the day I knew the relationship wasn’t going to go the distance. I was right. (Thankfully for both of us.)

So Morrigan was in many ways the first character to come to life in PARTY. When I had the idea to throw a bunch of dissimilar kids into a situation and see what happened, I knew the girl in that scene was going to be a part of it.

None of the actual words in that scene ended up in the published novel, but that’s her, no question.

Fan art commission of Morry.

Morrigan just wants to be seen. In particular by her dad. I know that feeling from both sides of it now. I try to remind myself of what happens to kids who get dismissed by their parents, and work harder at not letting that happen in my house.

Morrigan’s a good kid at heart. She really is.

I’m excited to see where she ends up in my new serialized novel, FADE INTO YOU, in which I pluck the characters from Party and plant them into the world of Zero – early 1990’s Phoenix in stead of early 2000’s Santa Barbara. She won’t be exactly the same — none of the characters will — but she’ll still be Morry, that sassy little brat who desperately seeks a connection to people.

So desperately it gets her into trouble from time to time,

But then, that’s where good stories come from, isn’t it?

If you’d like an e-book copy of Party, just click over to this page of the website, and I’ll email you one right away!

And if you want to learn more about the exclusive serial FADE INTO YOU, head over to patreon.com/tomleveen.

Talk to you soon,
take care,
~ Tom

The Magic of…Gilligan’s Island

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I found myself thinking about Gilligan’s Island this afternoon (for no sensible reason I can discern), and remembering watching the endless re-runs on television as a kid.

Being little, it honestly never occurred to me that they were somewhere on a sound stage in Hollywood. It was Gilligan’s Island; they’d film it on an island, naturally.

Because when you’re that age, whatever is presented to you just is. Just like I never noticed the Brady siblings had no toilet in their awkwardly-shared bathroom.

As a parent now, particularly of my nine-year-old son, I am re-noticing the things that he does . . . well, notice. We have talked more than once (before scary movies, in particular) that everything on screen is just pretend, and he always seemed to accept that. I don’t think he believes that there’s a real King Kong wandering about.

It’s the job of storytellers like me to make our worlds as real to you as that desert island was to me, no matter how old our readers or viewers. It’s no small task, writing and crafting stories well enough that you can get utterly lost in them, lose track of time, or even–from time to time–gloss over a few hiccups. (How did Ginger and the Howells store all their clothes on that tiny boat?)

With every new story, it’s a new challenge. “Worlds” aren’t just about fantasy or science fiction or horror; Zero’s 1990s-era Phoenix is just as much a world as Tanin’s magical, monster-infested land of Kassia. Each time I set out to tell a new story, I’m hoping to create a place and time that feel authentic to my readers. To forget the reality of that sound stage and just enjoy a new adventure.

There are so many more worlds to create. I think I’ll get started!

Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale…

What Would 14-Year-Old You Say?

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Since becoming instructor of writing more than ten years ago, whether that is live at a conference or convention, or virtually, or through a book, has been to tell all of my students, regardless of their age, or experience, that they have stories.

 

That those stories are valuable and worth sharing.

 

When I was 14, I borrowed a VHS video camera from a neighbor friend of mine. I did everything with that camera that one might expect, making stupid short videos starring myself—the kind of thing that would be a low-view YouTube or TikTok video today. It didn’t take long to decide I needed to make a “real movie.”

 

One of my teachers in eighth grade happened to have a beautiful VHS editing system on campus. When I asked him if I could learn to use it, he showed me how. Now all I needed was a story or a script. I remembered some notes that I’d taken a year before, when I was home alone one night during a storm.

 

Yes: it was a dark and stormy night, just accept it.

 

Strange things were happening around the house: cats getting freaked out over things that weren’t there. Huge wind jangling tree branches and rattling wind chimes like bones. Strange, inexplicable noises. Being 13 and a fan of horror. movies and already having read most of Stephen King’s oeuvre up to that point, I naturally started thinking in terms of the supernatural and macabre. I wrote all these things down, and those notes and ideas coalesced into something shaped like a story: THE MOON DAEMON! (You can watch parts of it here.)

 

I asked two friends to be in my movie, and we improvised the film over the course of about three days, dragging the VHS section of the camera around on a skateboard and using a folding card table as our tripod. I edited it at school, and then got to show the final production to one of my classes during a Friday afternoon class. (I still have the original VHS tapes. Hell, I’ve even re-edited the movie once or twice since then.)

 

I tell you all of that to emphasize one crucial thing: If 14-year-old Me knew how much technology and access to viewers I currently possess in 2020, he would be furious at me for not having made a movie every single damn week.

 

“You mean to tell me you’re carrying a video camera in your pocket every where you go?”

 

“Yes, Tom. That is true.”

 

“You mean to tell me make a movie anytime you want to put it out for the entire world to see and it will not cost you any money at all?”

 

“Yes, Tom. That’s pretty much what I’m saying.”

 

14-year-old Tom looks at me quizzically, perhaps taking a drag of a Marlboro red cigarette, and says, “What the hell is wrong with you? ”

 

14-year-old Tom is right. What the hell am I doing? All this technology, all these people, and what have I chosen to do? Watch TV; reruns I’ve already seen a million time. Read lame stuff on the Internet. Make a ton of plans, but never follow through with them. 14-year-old Me has every reason to be pissed.

 

I don’t deny that 14 can suck, depending on your family and life circumstances. It can be challenging because you’re straddling adulthood and childhood. It’s also a time of wild exploration and dare-deviltry. Of absolutely not giving one solitary f*ck about much of anything if it doesn’t interest you. If you are an American teenager, you still have access to things right now that your parents couldn’t even conceive of when they were 14. But maybe you are in your 40s, or 50s, or 80s. What is stopping you? What’s your Moon Daemon?

 

It can be a true story about you and your relationship with your parents, or your neighborhood, or your country. It could be that terrible break-up story, or the beautiful story of how you met your spouse. It could be the tear-jerking story about your children, or a laugh-out-loud story about what happened when you got the flat tire on the way to get ice cream one night. Maybe it’s a horror story, maybe to superhero comic book, or maybe it’s a romantic web series starring you and your friends from high school. Maybe it’s a poem, or a song, or a one-panel comic strip that you post every day on Instagram.

 

Start now.

 

It’s not about money, and it’s not about Likes, and it’s not about Followers. Put your stuff out there, tell your truth—whatever it is—and people will find you. I will never, ever be one of these get-rich-quick, “How to make $1 million on Kindle!” type of writing teachers. (There’s nothing wrong with making $1 million on Kindle, but I can’t. If I knew how to do that, I would be doing it.) What I can teach you, and encourage you to do, is how to tell your stories.

 

Try multiple formats. I’ve tried most of them. Some come naturally, like novels. Others I have to work on, like comic books and screenplays. I like all of them in some way, shape, or form. Instead of consuming, take your stories out there. Have a sit down with 14-year-old You and explain to them why you are not doing that. This isn’t about being a published author, or a box office hit producer or actor in Hollywood. If that’s what happens, great. But that is not the measure of success. At least, it shouldn’t be. Trust me, I still struggle with those hopes and dreams and desires, too. I do not dismiss those goals. However, the only way to get there in my experience is to authentically tell those stories that burn deep inside you. Don’t think about the outcome, think about the process.

 

The Moon Daemon hasn’t exactly won any film festival awards, or landed me a Hollywood talent manager, or made any money whatsoever. But by God, we had an absolute blast. About two weeks before the pandemic really got underway here in Phoenix, I led a group of about 20  people in making an eight-minute short film based on a chapter of one of my recent novels. It was February, it was freezing cold by Phoenix standards; it was the one day we had rain in months. My wife and I were up and out of the house before dawn, driving across the city, to get set up before anybody else got there. I’ll never forget how cold my feet were, standing in puddles all day while my actors were nice and toasty inside my car as I filmed them.

 

It could have been miserable. It was exhausting, it cost me nearly a thousand bucks, but it got me into a film festival . . . and it was the most fun I’ve had in a while. Not only would I do it all over again, I’m going to do it all over again. We’re already in talks with some of the cast and crew to start a little production company so we can keep shooting films. Because we had a ball. The last time I had conversations like that, two different theater companies formed and ran for 16 years. That’s magic. You don’t dismiss that.

 

I have two children, and they run me ragged, especially during the pandemic. I have a part-time job. All kinds of other responsibilities to attend to. Just like you. But I love telling stories and I’m not going to let anything stop me. You make adjustments, sure. Maybe your life is such that you get one free hour a week. Great; use that hour. Protect that hour. That is your hour. One thing I can guarantee you: someone out there needs and wants your story. Maybe it’s 10 people, or ten thousand, maybe it’s 10 million. That number doesn’t matter. What matters is they need it.

 

You know right now about which stories touched you in the deepest part of your humanity. Probably it was a movie or a book, but maybe it was a comic book. Certainly we all have songs that touch us, and songs or nothing but poems set to music. Someone needs your story to have that impact on them.

 

So write songs, or scripts, or prose. Or just riff online; do a live stream on some topic close to you and share with the entire planet. There is absolutely no reason not to do that.

 

I don’t mean that you should be stubborn about your story. Absolutely learn to take criticism. Absolutely study your craft and practice it and get better and better and better. I have published nine novels with New York publishers and still consider myself an apprentice at this gig. But I’ve learned a lot, and I keep learning, and I hope to improve each time out. I also have started writing in new areas, like video games and comic books and television pilots; formats I am not schooled in, but that I enjoy learning about. I one-hundred-percent take comments and critiques on those formats, because I don’t yet know what I’m doing. So be open to that, but keep going.

 

Ask 14-year-old you, “What do you think I should be doing right now? Where am I falling short? How can I be doing things differently?”

 

I bet 14-year-old you will have some very pointed answers.

Midsommar: A great start that gets gory and infuriating

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A young couple and their friends travel to Sweden to visit a rural mid-summer festival. What begins as an idyllic retreat devolves into a violent and bizarre competition at the hands of adherents to an ancient belief system.

 

I watched director Ari Aster’s Hereditary about a year ago, and it still haunts me. Not everyone had my reaction, and that’s fine, but I’m telling you, that was one disturbing damn film. I say that in a good way.

 

So when Midsommar came out, I hesitated; I wasn’t sure I could handle another Aster outing. The film was released in the golden days of 2019, and I decided to watch at last during October 2020, because, what’s a little horror movie compared to reality, amiright?

 

And to be completely transparent, I have not yet seen it. Not all of it. I stopped about halfway because it was getting dark and my stomach was starting to revolt on me as the film gradually got creepier and more gory.

 

I saw enough of it, though, to issue one blistering critique that ruined the film long before it hit Peak Gore.

 

The script of and performances in Midsommar at the top of the show are hyper-realistic and empathetic. We’ve all been on one side or the other of the opening phone calls. Then sudden grief hits, and it hurts to watch, because we’ve been there, too. Aster knows real grief and trauma isn’t, ironically, “Hollywood.” It is real and discordant and no one is pretty when they cry, not really. At the start, the film does a great job of “talk about anything other than what we’re all thinking,” and is worth studying because it is so thoroughly human (or perhaps so thoroughly American?). The cinematography is fantastic too (or at least, has been fantastic up to half way…)

 

A New York Times review pooh-pooh’d the performance of Florence Pugh, who plays the lead as Dani, a twenty-something suffering from profound depression long before additional trauma crushes her spirit. The review reduces her to a “walking wound” after the terrible tragedy in her family that opens the film. I see the reviewer’s criticism, but disagree—as someone who struggles with depression and PTSD, I felt the depiction was spot-on.

 

So far so good, eh? Wait for it.

 

At about the hour mark, not even half way into the film, things get dark and gruesome. It was appalling and shocking and effective, all the things a sequence like that should be in a horror movie.

 

But the aftermath of this event, which gruesomely kills two people, consists of two of the male leads getting into an argument over their . . . dissertations.

 

I just want you to picture being out of the country on holiday. Hell, let’s even say you’re travelling for school, for a college degree of some kind. One day into your trip, two people are killed and the folks you’re living with all say, “Oh, sure, did we not tell you? Our bad. This is our way.”

 

Would you stick around to “study” this group some more?

 

The scene immediately after these deaths is . . . um . . . unbelievable? That’s seems too gentle a word. Like, no way in hell would these two react the way they do, and the script hasn’t given us any reason to think they would. The motivations here aren’t just weak, they are nonexistent for any reasonable human being

 

Literally: “That was really, really shocking. I’m trying to keep an open mind, though,” one says.

 

Yeah, no, bro. You fucking run like your hair’s on fire.

 

So at this point, it’s kind of hard to stay tuned in. The morbid curiosity of the horror movie fan is about all the juice I have to keep going. I quit watching about twenty minutes later.

 

Listen—sometimes people do stupid shit, thus, it’s okay for your characters to do stupid shit. An astute reader, as I like to call them, pointed out that in my novel Sick, for instance, which is entirely set inside a high school where a small group of plucky survivors (sound familiar?) try to escape to a Safe Place during a Zombie Apocalypse . . . not a single one of them ever thinks to make a try for the nurse’s office.

 

That’s sort of a mistake, I suppose. If so, it’s a mistake based entirely on the fact that in four years of high school, I never once went to the nurse’s office. I assume we had one, but I swear to God, I don’t know for sure. So yeah, maybe an oversight on my part as the author, but it could be argued in context of the story that there was no need for them to try such a risky gambit. Still . . . yeah, someone should have at least pointed out the option.

 

So that was an oversight on my part. Granted.

 

The choice made at 1:23:00 of Midsommar is not a mistake.

 

It’s a choice, and it falls so flat that I can barely stand it. It’s infuriating, really, because I’m a big fan of Hereditary (in that it freaked me out so much I’ll never watch it again. That’s high praise). While the script sets up that our intrepid Americans are in fact doctoral candidates, it in no way emphasizes the great lengths to which they’ll go to get their “scoop” story for that dissertation. Furthermore, even if the script had tried to emphasize such a thing, the fact that their reaction to the horror unfolding before them is to argue about those dissertations rather than saying, “Bro, where’s the key to the car?!” is unforgiveable from a character-development standpoint. I would be happy to go along with this premise if the script had established just how critical obtaining these degrees was to the characters, but it doesn’t.

 

Of late, and I may come to regret this, I’ve tried as much as possible to insist on realism in my horror. When I’m writing or building an outline, I try to stop frequently and ask, “Now what would someone really do here?” You can motivate a character to do just about anything, and then come up with a really fun way to prevent them from getting their goal—that’s the whole point, in fact. Midsommar does not take this approach at all. It pits graphic violence against, of all things, academia, and it just does not sell for me.

 

Let your characters be real people who have real reaction commensurate with their background. Jack Bauer and Rambo and whoever else aren’t going to have a panic attack when they shoot someone. But I would. You would, too (one hopes). Those reactions are commensurate with our experience. So if you’re going to do something that would strike most people as odd, be sure it’s backed up in the character’s backstory somewhere.

 

Don’t be afraid to ask open-ended questions of your characters when you come to these choices. You may discover some rich gems hiding. I am working on a novel that I can’t talk about right now, but: in the story, this main character was knowingly entering into a situation where she may be called upon to take a life. Maybe several. How the hell do I motivate that? What would make a person do that? What has happened in her past to make her . . . ohhhh! GOT IT!

 See what I mean? I made a brand new discovery about her history that gives the novel a whole new resonance.

Do this, please, whenever your can. I don’t mind mindless horror from time to time, it has its place. So does mindless YA, mindless romance, mindless mystery. Swell. But if you’re setting out to make something else, which Midsommar is clearly trying to do, then for God’s sake, motivate those characters to justify the stupid shit they do on the page.

Halloween Horror Review: Train To Busan

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Train to Busan pits a band of survivors against a speeding train full of zombies.

 

I mean, really, what else is there to know?

 

The film goes on as most zombie films that have taken a class or two in pacing, letting the opening build relationships and lay out the scenario before the horror begins. By 13 minutes in, we’ve seen this all before, but the script and performances do their job, endearing us to a businessman Dad, his daughter, and their family plight, which is the couple’s impending divorce.

 

But then right around 15:00, shit gets real.

 

Suddenly the passenger train is filled with infected undead, who merrily and bloodily go about creating more of themselves as they feast on the passengers. The great physical performances by the infected deserve recognition. These impressive acrobatics are accentuated wonderfully by the music, sound effects, and cinematography.

 

There’s not much we haven’t seen before — lots of hair-raising near-misses and escapes, and wondering which of the rag tag group of spunky survivors will be next to go. (I will say when the last of them clocks out, it is pretty tragic.) The addition of the train as the primary setting gives the goings-on a nice sense of, pardon me: momentum.

 

Like many zombie flicks, the ultimate cause of the zombie outbreak is left pretty vague, although it is somewhat addressed in a quick phone call just past the halfway mark.

 

It feels, though, that mostly the filmmakers are simply building on what others have done before without adding anything particularly new to the canon. The rules are the same: don’t be seen, don’t be heard, don’t get bit, keep going like a bat outta hell for the One Place That’s Safe while Protecting Those You Love . . . with a splash of Who Are The Real Monsters?! mixed in.

 

It is not a bad thing that these tropes are well-worn. They are well-worn for a reason. If you pick up a film like Train to Busan after seeing the trailer, it’s because you have genre expectations. Those expectations are met well in Train. So while there’s nothing new here, the film is a hell of a lot of fun for fans of the genre.

 

The math is simple: If you like zombie movies, you will like Train to Busan.

 

Happy Halloween!

Book Review: ARARAT, by Christopher Golden

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tl;dr? watch here instead

Christopher Golden has constructed a place you never want to go but that you cannot stop reading about.

The novel Ararat takes place on the mountain of the same name, where Noah’s Ark is reputed to have come to rest. That’s exactly what the novel seems to be about, when an earthquake unearths what appears to be remnants of a giant ship. But when scientists ascend the mountain to study the discovery, they quickly find that there’s something in there that should not be. Whether it’s Noah’s ark at all becomes secondary to survival as the team squares off with a chilling and brutal entity that will feed off the reader’s worst fears!

As a horror writer, I have many different tools available to scare you. One of those tools is dread, which is not the same as horror, terror, or the gross-out. Dread is a tough one to do, because it requires patience and precise words and pacing. Golden has done that here. He doesn’t hide his monster, it’s in plain sight the entire story, yet the dread just builds and builds until you are forced to stay up long after dark, reading to see when things will finally burst.

The author and I were both nominated for the Bram Stoker Award the same year in different categories, and Ararat won that year. I have not met Christopher Golden, but I have met Joe Hill and other horror authors who speak highly of him and there’s no question he’s at the top of his game when it comes to dread. So whether you are a reader who loves horror novels or a writer who’s looking to sharpen that particular tool in your toolbox, I highly recommend reading this Bram Stoker Award winner.

Book Review: BUTTER, by Erin Jade Lange

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tl;dr? watch instead here

 

“Butter” is the name of a high school boy who once, allegedly, ate an entire stick of butter. That’s not the entire story, of course, but we may not even learn Butter’s actual name until after he eats himself to death live on the internet in a bid to not only take his own life but achieve total internet fame.

Author Erin Jade Lange has crafted an all too realistic portrait of “influencer” culture and the impact it can have on lives on both sides of a computer screen. Butter himself, the main character, is dangerously overweight, so much so that his literal life may be in jeopardy even before he decides to commit suicide and broadcast his death to his local high school. The problem is, once his intentions get out, Butter becomes the opposite of everything he’s ever been: cool, desired, and talked about. But his popularity is predicated on the idea that he’s going to kill himself, so the book dives deep into asking its readers, just as its main character does: what price is too high to pay to be quote-unquote “popular”?

Now, be warned – Butter is not an entirely likable character when we first meet him, and in fact he makes a dozen choices over the course of the novel that may not endear him to readers. But that’s exactly the thing about great contemporary young adult literature – a willingness to show protagonists with all their flaws. These characters last so much longer in the imagination and compel much greater discussion.

Butter is a great read for schools and families needing to open some doors about popularity and using the internet, although it definitely not for most readers under the age of about 12. But it is fantastically written with a very realistic protagonist who inhabits a space all of us do when we’re sixteen: how the hell did I get into this mess and how the hell am I going to get out of it?

Don’t Lose It

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5 a.m.

Kid Noisestm wake me up. I can’t quite fall back to sleep. Start obsessing over this novel I really want to write. Something new and different for me. But the more I study it, the farther away it gets. The character’s all wrong, the plot won’t work, the structure is wonky.

And in this half-asleep mode, this near-darkness . . . I see my protagonist. I see her dad, then her mom.

I see the weapons.

Now I’m at a critical juncture: burrow deeper into the covers and let sleep take over, or get up and at least take some notes?

I get up.

Two single-spaced pages later, I have the intro to my new novel. Everything I need is now in place, and I can begin writing in earnest. I’ll probably have a draft by the end of February.

When that Thing comes to you early in the morning or in the middle of the night . . . don’t lose it. An idea for an improved golf club, the next great Widget, the opening to your novel. Whatever it is, get up and don’t lose it.

Because we both know if you say, “I’ll remember,” you won’t. Get up or stop whatever it is you’re doing and get that thing down.

Stephen King talks about The Muse in On Writing. The Muse is not something you wait around for; you just do the work. But when you just do the work, sometimes The Muse does show up and gives you a little gift. Like two single-spaced pages.

Don’t lose it.

Thanks for being here! Take care, and may you be happy.

~ Tom

 

Book Review: Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee by Mary G. Thompson

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Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee may appear at first glance to be a YA thriller along the lines of my own novel, Shackled. That’s certainly what I thought I was getting into when I picked the book up in preparation for the World Fantasy Convention where I was going to meet the author, Mary G. Thompson. Mary is a brilliant woman who holds about eighteen different degrees including a J.D. and an MFA. While I’m sure some of that education played a role in the crafting of Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee, there are some aspects of storytelling that are harder to learn than others, some things that just sort of have to come naturally. One of those things is Voice, and that’s an aspect of fiction writing I’m constantly trying to hone in my own novels and in the work of the students I have in various writing classes or critique groups.

Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee is about one girl once named Amy, then named Chelsea, and now trying to reclaim her identity as Amy again after escaping from the kidnapper who took her and her beloved cousin Dee. The kidnapper, a disturbing man with a doll fetish, re-named both girls during their six-year-long incarceration with him in the forests of Oregon. How Amy came to escape is not something I can share without spoilers, but it drives the central plot of the book and explains why, after returning to her old life as a teenager, Amy is now plotting to go back to that scary cabin in the woods.

Overall this is an emotional journey through severe trauma, and I think it has great value for those who are sort of bystander-survivors: those family and friends who did not experience the victim’s trauma personally and therefore may have trouble fully understanding what the victim suffered. There’s great value in the story for that reason alone.

But again, one thing Mary has here in abundance is Voice, and for me that’s really the defining line between great contemporary YA and cheap knock-offs who got into the market when it was hot. Not to name any names, but, you’d recognize them. There is not a lot of external, physical action in the story, although what action Mary does write is handled very well. It’s the internal action that gets the lion’s share of the pages, and that’s good. It works. I start and do not finish a ton of books these days, as my friends at my book club can attest, but I came back to Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee again and again to find out what would happen next. Mary does an outstanding job of capturing inner turmoil and symptoms of what is most likely PTSD, though a diagnosis is never actually given. As someone who still struggles with some of those symptoms, I felt that Mary did an excellent and considerate job of handling Amy’s trauma and recovery.

As it pertains to writers, I recommend this book for the same reason I recommended The Girl With All The Gifts by M.R. Carey — there is no predicting what is going to happen. Even after one of the biggest reveals in the book, the story’s not over, and there is just no guessing how things will turn out from page one until the very end. Like The Girl With All The Gifts, it is not fast paced, but it is deliberately paced, and our attachment to the characters is such that we have to find out how all this tragedy is going to resolve. So for you writers, I recommend studying how Mary constructs this novel in such a way that readers can only keep reading to find out the resolution. This is well worth looking into.

So, grab a copy of Amy Chelsea Stacie Dee, and then let me know what you thought of it. Did the author keep you guessing? Did you feel for the protagonist? Am I way off base on this one? Let me know on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Bookbub, Goodreads…wherever! And be sure to follow Mary G. Thompson for more of her work as well.