Chris Baty's Blog, page 16

30 Covers, 30 Days 2022: Day 21

It may still be November, but looks like Christmas is coming early for day twenty one! Mainstream novel Twelve Cookies of Christmas by Kelly J Erickson shows us just how chaotic the holiday season can get! This cover was designed by Amelia Nash.

Twelve Cookies of Christmas

As their annual Christmas cookie exchange approaches, the twelve families on Evergreen Circle face trials, triumphs and a few life-changing events while trying to bake. Each story is inspired by a line from “The 12 Days of Christmas”. There will be a cancer scare, a surprise proposal, an unexpected pregnancy, a school concert, and a food fight over the last box of butter. Recipes are included. Shhh… Even Grandma’s top secret Triple Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe.

About the Author

Kelly J Erickson was born and raised in a small ranching town surroundedby a big family and many animals. She now lives in a small house in a big city with a big dog. She started telling stories while in preschool,where she discovered how to decipher those magic squiggly black symbolsin books. Many years later, she still believes in the magic of the written word. After writing many short stories and books for kindergartners to middle schoolers, she is beginning to try her hand at books for adults.

About the Designer

Small-town, Canadian-born and always seeking to immerse herself in as much creativity as possible, designer and creative strategist Amelia Nash now works and lives in New York City. After over a decade of design and marketing experience in Canada, Amelia made the move to the Big Apple to earn her Masters in Branding degree from the School of Visual Arts. She currently works as the Brand & Marketing Manager for the Masters in Branding program and relishes any opportunity to thread design, art, branding, culture, illustration, and strategy into compelling work. She is currently on the hunt for New York’s best hot dog and enjoys exploring all the niche corners the big city has to offer.

See more of Amelia’s illustration work on Instagram @wwut_the_faq, connect with her on LinkedIn, and check out her website.

Pro Tips from a NaNo Coach: How to Keep Writing When it Feels Impossible

NaNoWriMo can seem like a daunting task sometimes, for NaNo newbies and veterans alike. Fortunately, our NaNo Coaches are here to help guide you through November! Today, author Shameez Patel Papathanasiou is here to share her advice on how to set yourself up for noveling success:

National Novel Writing Month is almost over. Some authors managed 50K In A Day (my wrists scream at the mere thought), some are steadily hitting that 1667 daily word goal, and others have fallen behind—and that’s when writing starts to feel impossible. 

Don’t. Give. Up! 

Even if you’re under 50,000 words by the end of November, you’ll come out with something: perhaps 20 000 words, exciting characters, or at the very least, a new idea. 

Keeping at it when you’re juggling a full-time job, parenting, and surviving a pandemic is tough, but you can do it. Here’s how: 

1. Sprints

This concept is not foreign to any seasoned WriMo. My personal favorite is a 10-minute sprint because regardless of how busy I am, I can find 10 minutes, be that after I inhale my lunch or the 10 minutes I usually spend creating stories in my head before falling asleep. 

With some practice, you can write between 250 and 500 words in a 10-minute sprint, and if that is all you’re doing every day, that’s okay. Consistency is key. 

2. Writing-On-The-Go

For years I thought I had to set up my space and get in the zone, but one night, after years of being stuck in bed beside a sleeping toddler, I stopped doom-scrolling and opened a Google Doc on my phone instead. Within months, I had an 80,000-word first draft. 

While I realize that some of you use Word or Scrivener to draft, it would help to keep a Google Doc handy for those days you find yourself waiting at the bank, outside your kid’s school, or even for when you’re lying in bed a little bit too cozy to get up and fetch your laptop. 

Trust me, you won’t remember the idea you’re promising yourself you’ll remember. Write it down or send it to yourself in a voice note. Your phone is a powerful tool, use it!

3. Writing Buddies

This is another thing that NaNoWriMo has blessed me with. While writing is often seen as solitary, it doesn’t have to be. Having a close group of friends who write not only means they’re there to encourage you and keep you company, but they’re also there to critique your work and to cheer for you on the days you doubt yourself. 

4. Don’t Compare

Don’t compare word counts, don’t compare the time taken to get published, don’t compare the number of awards, don’t compare anything. Your writing journey is your own for more reasons than even you know. It will happen when it happens in the way that it is meant to happen. If your writing buddies are succeeding before you, remember that there are also others behind you. 

A line from one of my favorite poems comes to mind: If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Which leads me to another line from the same poem: 

5. Be Gentle with Yourself (And Your Work)

First drafts are supposed to be messy. They’re your first attempt at a project, which makes it your worst attempt too. And in every revision, you will create something better and more beautiful. Acknowledge this and allow yourself to play around with characters and worlds, to feel joy in the story you’re writing, to vomit out the roughest form of the story you’ll one day share with the world.

We’re almost there, and no one else can write it the way that you do. Do your best!

Shameez Patel Papathanasiou is from Cape Town, South Africa. She is a civil engineer by day and an author by night. Her literary adventures take her to worlds filled with magic, monsters and someone to fall in love with. Shameez fell in love with fiction at a young age. Her parents fondly recall her first handwritten story completed before the age of ten, titled The Treasures of Zombie Island, which surprisingly featured no zombies at all. She has been writing ever since. Her debut fantasy novel, The Last Feather, is out now—it, at the very least, features a feather.

30 Covers, 30 Days 2022: Day 20

Ever wondered the thoughts of water? For day twenty, Other/Experimental novel Water Does Not Acquiesce by Stacy Boone takes us through the life of a water droplet. This cover was designed by Mitzi Okou.

Water Does Not Acquiesce

Mountains were first, a roar of sound. When the aftershocks settled, pockets for water pooled in a scattered disorganized arrangement. The broad story follows one body of water as it travels from its birth in the mountains and flows into community taps, often hundreds of miles away from its source. POV is from a single droplet. She reports the experience of traveling that distance — sometimes with humor, sometimes with sadness and other moments with a cringe worthy forcefulness. The journey questions: might water be in limited supply.

About the Author

Stacy lives in northern Vermont among dairy farms and corn fields. She writes mostly about water and about what humans are doing to the landscape. When she is not simply trying to negotiate 20 minutes of time to write the fleeting thoughts in her head, she manages a homestead, too many little lives and peers out the front door wondering when the UPS is going to deliver the next subscription of wine.

About the Designer

Mitzi is a UX and visual designer from Atlanta, Georgia who received her Bachelor’s degree in Graphic Design from Savannah College of Art and Design. She currently resides in Boston, Massachusetts where she is working as a product designer for Spotify. As an up and coming designer, she has placed in hackathons put on by companies and institutions such as IDEO, SCAD and MIT that solved for issues ranging from the wealth inequality in the music industry to federal socio-economic injustice.

As a design activist, Mitzi recently organized a free and accessible virtual conference called “Where are the Black designers?” that highlighted and brought awareness to allies within the creative and tech industry about the experiences and struggles of being a black designer within the field. She hopes to use the platform to support black designers throughout their career and help them create their own narrative by connecting them with the established legacy of the black design community, creating a hub of resources, and establishing inclusive spaces within the tech and creative field.

30 Covers, 30 Days 2022: Day 19

Day nineteen of 30 Covers, 30 Days takes star-crossed lovers quite literally as we travel to the stars! Sci-fi LGBTQ+ novel Star-Crossed by Hope McDonald puts a twist on a familiar Shakespearean tale. This cover was designed by returning designer, Rachel Gogel.

Star-Crossed

In this queer sci-fi adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, young trans man Phoenix Hayes falls in love with a precocious daughter of the nearby planet Melora and must contend with the interplanetary conflict that forbids even their friendship.  

About the Author

Hope (they/them) was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest.  They are a queer disability advocate and have been writing for as long as they  can remember.  They are also a classical musician and a music education major and are owner-training a service dog.  When it comes to reading, writing, and podcasts, their favorite genres are sci-fi, fantasy, and horror.  Their philosophy on their “gay space Shakespeare” endeavors is  that “it’s what the Bard would have wanted.”  

About the Designer

Rachel Gogel
Independent Creative Culture Officer
rachelgogel.com
@rgogel (on IG and Twitter)
Rachel Gogel (she/her) is a Paris-born, San Francisco-based queer creative director and designer whose skills range from branding, strategy, and design management to art direction, editorial, and product design.  She runs her own small consultancy as an independent creative culture officer where her approach is informed  by experiences both in-house and agency side. Over the last fifteen years, Rachel has continued to use design as a tool for change — from launching story-driven initiatives at Departures and Godfrey Dadich Partners to building multidisciplinary teams at The New York Times’ award-winning T Brand, GQ, and Meta. In 2022, some of her main projects included supporting internal brand work at Airbnb, advising on Jeff Staple’s new magazine MYLES, and building a brand identity for Jacqueline Novogratz’s latest passion project, Anew. Outside of her studio practice, she is also the Women in Leadership & Design (WILD) Chair on the AIGA SF Board of Directors and an Adjunct Professor at the  California College of the Arts (CCA) where she teaches classes called  “Leadership by Design” and “Designing Your Career” for graduate students completing their Master’s in Interaction Design. As a passionate design leader and experienced people manager, Rachel believes in fostering  inclusive spaces that unlock human potential.

5 Tips to Getting to 50k Words

It’s the middle of NaNoWriMo, and the race to the finish may start to feel daunting!NaNo Participant Lori Chick has a few tips on staying motivated so you reach your word count goal.

So, you’re a few weeks into NaNo, and you have just realized that 50k is a lot of words. It seems interminable and impossible and it’s stressing you out. Don’t. Don’t stress. NaNo is for fun and to challenge us and I can promise you, outside of real life (stupid real life ruining everything) issues, you can ABSOLUTELY hit your 50k. Honestly, your biggest obstacle is probably the anxiety and stress about writing 50k words in a month.

Thing is, the best way to hit 50k words is just to sit down and write. JUST write. Don’t edit, don’t look back at what you wrote, or research anything. Yes, I know, it means that what you’re going to end up with will be messy and contradictory and have plot holes a mile wide. But you know what?

That doesn’t matter.

Your challenge isn’t to complete a publisher worthy novel in one month — It’s to write 50k words in a month. I promise you, there are no authors, no matter how amazing and talented, who have a publishable novel in one month. NONE. It’s impossible. So you need to breathe and let that utterly absurd idea go.

You’re not here to write the next great novel. You’re here to put the words on the pages. That’s it, that’s all. Just write words, one after another, until you hit 50k.

Alright: now that we have that foolish expectation that was gnawing at you and destroying your word count dealt with — how do we get those words?

1. Stop Editing, Stop Researching
Don’t do anything that isn’t putting words on the page. When you finish a sentence, write the next one. If you have to pause and think, then do that. Think about what happens next and write that. Or go off on a tangent  who knows, maybe there’s gold off in those unknown hills. Explore, have fun, give yourself permission to write whatever comes into your head. Remember this is a novel — but it is not a finished and edited novel. This is your first draft. I might even say it’s your pre first draft. You’re writing down your ideas and fleshing out your characters and your world. Hell, you can have a full 50k just about your world. That’s okay too.

2. Kill your criticism.
Bonk it over the head with the Traveling Shovel of Death and have Mr. Ian Woon bury it in your backyard. Mary Sue/Gary Lou? Who cares? Plot holes? Those are just opportunities to fill in with whatever weird crap you want. Stuck? Throw in a murder, some aliens, ninjas, pirates or whatever your heart desires. It doesn’t have to make sense. It just has to be fun. You can break ALL the writerly rules and I’ll let you in on a secret: almost every author who gets published breaks them ALL the time. Writing rules aren’t even rules (more like a vague guide), and they absolutely should not be walls.

3. Destroy distractions.
You love your family, your friends, but tell them to buzz off for the month. If they really want they can run errands for you, but no, you don’t need to watch a crappy movie, or drink overpriced coffee in a noisy crowded franchise, you have 50k words to write. The only function of family and friends during NaNo is support staff to keep your butt in the chair and hold you while you sob uncontrollably after hitting a wall (while making sure you somehow eat, drink and sleep — at least some of those three). If they’re NaNo-ing with you, they’re your friendly challengers, make good use of that. All in all, family is a wonderful source of support, but distractions are the enemy.

4. Get a writing buddy (or more!)
It is a huge help to write with other people. There’s a reason NaNo has Liaisons, it’s because it’s a LOT easier to hit 50k when you’re in a group who are all cheering each other on. Racing against a friend is great motivation, and the bonus is, even if you are racing, it still isn’t a cut throat competition, because you’re hoping that everyone hits 50k. So gather a group, challenge each other, go to the forums and get an adoptable NPC, plot twist or other. Ask for advice when you get stuck, and if your stress gets too high, vent. Yes, I know I said you should only be writing, but let’s be honest, that’s as likely to happen as you eating right and getting more active after a doctor’s visit. Do the best you can.

5.  Have Fun.
NaNo isn’t supposed to destroy your mental health or your life. It’s meant to be a fun challenge, something to be proud of and to join with people around the world in a fevered ambitious attempt to fill up the ever yawning gap of digital space with words and ideas. Life is sometimes hard, we have mental health issues, many have children or financial issues. If you can’t make that 50k, don’t feel awful. Cut yourself some slack and admit that maybe it isn’t happening this year, and that’s okay. While your word count is important, YOU are more important. After all, you can’t hit 50k next year if you’re burned out this year.

Lori Chick is a Freelance Games Journalist who’s been reviewing, criticizing and ranting for four years for different outlets and a beta reader who’s seen two novels into publication. She lives with her husband, four adult chosen family and three cats of varying degrees of floofiness.

Photo by Prateek Katyal on Unsplash

30 Covers, 30 Days 2022: Day 18

Day eighteen of 30 Covers, 30 Days is a fight for survival! Thriller/Suspense novel Final Girls Fight Club by E. March Anderson puts horror movie survivors to the test. This cover was designed by Randy Gregory II.

Final Girls Fight Club

Seven girls who were the sole survivors of their own horror movie serial killers are brought together by a weekly support group. However, things take a dark turn when a new murderous threat begins to target the women one by one. Now, they are forced to confront their own pasts and make tenuous alliances, all while once again aiming to be the last girl left standing.

About the Author

Emma is a lifelong bookworm and an eternal optimist with a deep love for green tea and Autumn rain. She has been participating in NaNoWriMo since 2013, with varying levels of success (but unwavering amounts of enthusiasm!) When she is not writing or daydreaming about her novel, she can be found procrastinating by baking, kayaking, or binge-watching reality television.

About the Designer

Randy Gregory II is a designer & creative living in Austin, Texas. When he’s not spending his days as a principal product designer for Meta, he’s indulging in creative hobbies, from putting on bad movie nights, Geocaching, painting Dungeons & Dragons miniatures, cooking meals, or sewing elaborate battlevests for Austin FC games. You’ll probably find him at one of Austin’s many dive bars or at a metal show. Follow his shenanigans @randygii on Instagram.

30 Covers, 30 Days 2022: Day 17

Day seventeen of 30 Covers, 30 Days takes us on a magical adventure about confronting your past. Fantasy novel And the World Grew Stilli by YWP participant Thistle Lyndeth is a story full of magic and found family. This cover was designed by returning designer, Lauren Vajda.

And the World Grew Still

After running away from home, the ice spirit Viffi meets a mysterious child newly unfrozen from time, a screech owl named Solee. As both spirit and owl travel across the wilderness in search of fireflies, Solee opens up to Viffi about their guilt over the actions that led them to this point, and Viffi shares their own fears of abandonment and betrayal with Solee. Slowly, the two of them begin to heal, moving on from their pasts and learning to love again.

About the Author

Thistle is an OSDD-1b system who constantly seeks to find avenues of self-expression. In their writing, they hope to share their love of the world around them, especially in nature, and use fiction as a vehicle for communicating more effectively. Besides writing and worldbuilding, they enjoy drawing, singing, biking, spending time with their birds, and thinking about their current interests. You can find Thistle’s art here.

About the Designer

Lauren Vajda is a designer living in the San Francisco Bay Area and a third-time contributor to NaNoWriMo. She is the founder of the studio Verso Design, but began her career at HarperCollins, so there’s a big piece of her heart in publishing. In her downtime, she is likely hiking with her family, attempting to become the next Star Baker, or escaping into a good book (or three).

Using Kindle Vella for NaNoWriMo Motivation

Every year, we’re lucky to have great sponsors for our nonprofit events. Kindle Vella, a 2022 NaNoWriMo sponsor, is a publishing platform for serialized stories. Today, the folks at Kindle Vella are here to share some tips from author Kimberly Titus on how to get some extra noveling motivation:

Anyone can pen their next great novel if they put their mind to it, but having the support of a community to cheer you on makes all the difference, especially in those moments where you feel impostor syndrome creeping in. Like NaNoWriMo, Kindle Vella makes reading and writing a fun and interactive experience.

Kindle Vella is a serialized reading experience in the Kindle app where authors receive immediate feedback on their story as they publish one episode at a time! Readers can champion their favorite stories leaving a review or giving a ‘thumbs up’. Additionally, authors can interact with readers by leaving notes or teasers at the end of each episode, as well as create polls to get feedback on what should happen next in the story.

Whether you’ve got a couple of novels under your belt or you’re a first time author, Kindle Vella welcomes all NaNoWriMo authors. Kimberly Titus started writing her first of several Kindle Vella stories, Top Faved Murder, Marriage, and Macarons, during NaNoWriMo in 2020. She spent 25 years working in finance before transitioning to writing. Several novels later, she hasn’t looked back!

Kimberly was kind enough to share with us about her experience publishing her NaNoWriMo story with Kindle Vella:

“Kindle Vella has taught me a lot about writing… it has improved how I pace my writing, develop characters, and create tension within the plot. By setting a cadence of publishing an episode a week, I have increased my writing production overall.”

Kimberly noted how an ongoing conversation with readers helped her process.

“My favorite part of using Kindle Vella is the reader engagement. Readers have the opportunity to follow the stories they want to read, ‘fave’ the stories they like the most, and give a thumbs up to episodes that they enjoy. At the end of each episode, most authors leave a personal note to the readers. This gives the readers more of a connection to the author than traditional publishing. The Kindle Vella format has helped me build up my reader base and has increased my social media platform. I have also enjoyed meeting other Kindle Vella authors and learning alongside them.“

She also offered some tips to fellow authors looking to draft or publish their work on Kindle Vella.

“It is important that episodes are moving the plot along with compelling characters, plot twists, and cliffhangers that bring readers back to read the next episode. The concept of publishing one episode at a time allows the author to publish as they edit. This also gives the author time to experiment with their writing. It is a great way to engage with your readers and tweak plot lines. There is a polling option that authors can add to the end of an episode to ask the readers questions. I have found that reader engagement increases the loyalty of the readers on this platform.”

We can’t wait for the conclusion of the latest story in Kimberly’s latest cozy mystery: Murder, Motherhood, and Magnolias. All of Kim’s stories are currently available to read on Kindle Vella.

Writing together is better than writing alone! Why not publish your NaNoWriMo novel on Kindle Vella as you write to help keep you accountable and motivated with the help of enthusiastic readers? Kindle Vella is a great place to test your stories in front of an audience.

Any story completed during NaNoWriMo this year is eligible to be featured on Kindle Vella. Be sure to include the tag #KVNANOWRIMO22 when you publish with us! You can begin your publishing journey here.

We hope to read your new work soon. Happy writing, and good luck!

Kindle is introducing a new storytelling option: Kindle Vella. With Kindle Vella, U.S. based authors can publish serialized stories, one short episode at a time. Start your story today!

30 Covers, 30 Days 2022: Day 16

Day sixteen of 30 Covers, 30 Days brings us some more eerie tales. Let’s take a trip down south for Horror/Supernatural novel Rooted by Z.G. Emerson. This cover is designed by returning designer, Sean Childers-Grey!

Rooted

As our protagonist finds his way in the world, he finds himself stuck inhis small southern hometown. Ghosts and rumors plague him equally as hetries to make sense of a changing world while growing up on a small horse farm. Sometimes secrets run as deep as the roots of the family tree.

About the Author

Z.G. Emerson was born and raised in the mountains of North Carolina, but is currently working and residing in sunny Tampa Bay, FL. He went to school for and is working in the entertainment industry. Writing has been a passion of his for as long as he can recall being able to pick up a pencil. And, no, he is unfortunately not descended from Ralph Waldo.

About the Designer

Sean Childers-Gray (he/they) Designer | Educator | Transgender Advocate - Sean has spent almost two decades working in the field of graphic design. This is his 4th 30 Covers 30 Days participation and a designer, and is grateful for the opportunity in participating each time. He is a freelance designer, seeking a great team to become a part of full-time.

He earned his MFA in Media Design from Full Sail University. He and his wife spend their free time volunteering for the LGBTQ+ community and he serves as the President and Marketing Director for Ogden Pride, creating festival materials, branding, environmental graphics, and more.

His most recent personal project was recently selected to be included in PRINT magazines Creative Voices series, your can read and subscribe to his work The Shape of Our Dignity on his Substack. Be sure to check out his Behance Portfolio for more book covers!

Pro Tips from a NaNo Coach: Getting Through the Muddy Middle of Your Novel

NaNoWriMo can seem like a daunting task sometimes, for NaNo newbies and veterans alike. Fortunately, our NaNo Coaches are here to help guide you through November! Today, author Peng Shepherd is here to share her advice on how to set yourself up for noveling success:

Welcome to the middle stretch of the NaNoWriMo challenge! Whether this is your first NaNoWriMo or you’re a seasoned, ink-stained veteran, and whether you started strong right out of the gate or it took you a little bit of time to warm up, we’re well on our way with this journey now—and reality might be starting to set in. 

Beginnings are the easiest part of a novel, I’ve always thought. It’s just you and the blank page and your excitement. Anything is possible! You can do whatever you want! It’s easy to lay down words in a frenzy because you’re building from nothing, so nothing has to make sense, nothing has to pay off, yet. You’re just trying to get from “zero” to “something” as fast as you can. 

And then eventually, far in the future, the ending of the novel will come. And at that moment, even if you’re exhausted, you’ll have so much momentum and you’ll know your characters and story so well that you’ll be hurtling toward that finish line—possibly even faster than when you started the story, full of inspiration and still unsinged by the first flames of burnout.

It’s the middles the are the hardest.

Those meandering, saggy, slow middles.

The problem with middles is that by this point in the manuscript, your draft actually might be starting to look like a book-shaped thing. And while this is great in terms of progress, it’s also really tough in terms of morale. Because for the first time, there’s finally enough material that you can see how messy, confusing, and seemingly unsalvageable what you already have is… and also how much farther you still have to go. 

Then, life gets in the way. You miss a day or two, and fall behind on word count. A work emergency happens, or your laptop goes on the fritz. Friends need help, you realize you have to delete ten pages, then the roof starts leaking. And your plot still doesn’t make any sense, your characters won’t behave, and you have no idea how to fix any of it. You’re lost, you’re exhausted, and you’re still nowhere near the finish line—how did you think you were ever going to write something as gigantic as entire novel? It’s impossible!

There’s a little piece of advice I give myself at overwhelming moments like these:

When the goal or the pressure feels too big, go small. Really small.

A book is a huge thing. It’s way too big to hold in your head like that! Trying to face a goal of that size every single day you sit down can crush you.

So, don’t think about the whole picture. I like to tell myself, I’m not writing a book today. Or, I’m not writing a first draft today. Or even, I’m not writing a chapter today. Instead, I tell myself, I’m just writing this next scene, or, I’m just changing her location from Chicago to San Francisco. 

Or, in this case, I’m just writing 1,667 words today (or whatever your session goal is).

This advice helps me remember that I indeed do not have to write the entire book in one day. I just have to write a single scene, or fix a single thing. I’ll worry about tomorrow, tomorrow. And I’ll worry about whether the draft any good or not, or how to revise it, even later than that.

So, if you’ve been struggling lately or feeling crushed under the weight of your goal, I invite you to try this tactic. Right now, or after work, or later tonight, find a few minutes and open up that laptop or notebook. Don’t reread what you wrote last time and start tinkering to make it better, don’t review your outline to confirm things are still making sense, don’t take stock of your progress to see how much you have left. Don’t think about the rest of the manuscript and how it all has to connect. Just think about the part that’s right in front of you. The scene that you’re in right now.

Remember, you’re not writing a whole book today. You’re not writing a whole chapter today, even. 

You’re just writing this one small scene.

Now, onward! Because the only way out of a middle is through it.

Peng Shepherd was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, and has lived in Beijing, Kuala Lumpur, London, New York, and Mexico City. Her second novel, The Cartographers, became a national bestseller, was named a Best Book of March by The Washington Post, and received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her debut, The Book of M, won the Neukom Institute for Literary Arts Award, and was chosen as a best book of the year by Amazon, Elle, Refinery29, and The Verge, as well as a best book of the summer by the Today show and NPR’s On Point.