I'm a little behind in sharing this here, but I recently had a personal essay published in the NY Times. A noteworthy first in any writer's career! Also, a huge thank you to everyone who's looked me up after reading the piece and sent such kind messages through this site. They've been truly wonderful to receive.
Things have been wonderfully hectic since the book came out, and I've gotten a wee bit behind with updates. Time to catch up! Here are some of my non-fiction pieces that have found their way onto the internet in recent days.
1. An essay about that crazy-intense wilderness survival trip I went on while researching The Last One:
“I was too hungry to listen, too hungry to care—but then Cat’s line of speaking shifted slightly. She began talking about respecting our food sources. It’s a big deal to take a life, she told us. Your bodies need protein, she told us. My hunger slipped into the background. Knowing glances traversed our circle. We all knew what this meant...”
2. A piece exploring my long road to publication:
“You think about giving up, but you don’t. You don’t know if this is because you’re tenacious or because you’re trapped. The latter is feeling more and more true. When people ask what you do, you still answer “I’m a writer,” but now you’re saying it like “I’m sorry.””
3. A short post including some thoughts on reality television:
“Despite reality TV’s reputation for being vapid and playing to the lowest common denominator, it’s really just another form of storytelling. Any story can have depth or be shallow, can include characters who are well-rounded or lazily conform to stereotypes – those choices aren’t determined by form, they’re determined by the storyteller.”
4. Guest blog on Waterstones.com about a particularly unnerving experience I had during my wilderness survival trip:
“I was on edge, anxious about how I was about to be left alone in the middle of nowhere for forty-eight hours. I would much prefer to have just seen a raccoon than a predator that could snap my spinal cord with one bite.”
Here's a trip back in time to a piece I wrote shortly after selling THE LAST ONE. I've always loved reading and hearing authors' "How I Met My Agent" stories and am so pleased to share my own here:
“I knew I was going to be matched with some combination of top notch agents and editors for a pair of 15-minute meetings, but I did my best to keep my expectations low, reminding myself that I was at least one manuscript overhaul away from being ready to query literary agents...”