Quick Update

Here's a quick update, just to let people know that I haven't died or anything…

It's been a busy month. I'm juggling a variety of projects: trying to finish a parent involvement workshop on online safety. I read a memoir by Ann Best that's being published by WiDo, and provided a publicity blurb for that. There's another editing project I have waiting in the wings, helping someone with a book on the history of mechanical creativity. And other paid work projects, plus a few additional miscellaneous projects on the side, such as coordinating the AML blog, Dawning of a Brighter Day. And a sacrament meeting talk (on testimony). Plus trying to do my bit to keep my family fed, clothed, and (relatively) sane.

At the same time, I'm in the early stages of working on a novel about a teenage empath (someone who feels other people's emotions). Earlier this week, I settled on a tentative setting for the story (Manhattan, Kansas, which I'm renaming Halifax to cover any errors and/or allow for creative license). I'm still in early stages of plotting and trying to get my tone right, which includes a mix of writing, brainstorming, research, and mental juggling to try to get the pieces to fit together. I have, however, high hopes for this project.

Meanwhile, no real action on No Going Back this past month. At one point there was a jump in my ranking at Amazon.com, so someone somewhere probably bought a copy or two. I hope it was a real person, and not a reseller. I also got another positive mention courtesy of last year's Whitney Awards, from LDS author Michele Paige Holmes at her blog. In talking about Whitney Awards judging, she wrote (in part of course):

As I mentioned previously, there are no specific guidelines given to judges of the Whitney Awards. First, to answer Stephanie Black's question about the process, what it comes down to is having a ranked list (from 1-20 in romance this year) of the books from best written to, well, the not best written. It would be more gentle, perhaps, to say favorite to least favorite, but the Whitney Awards are not about favorites—regarding authors, subject matter or anything else. Case in point being the general category last year. Jonathan Langford's book, No Going Back, dealt with a subject matter—a teen boy's struggle with same sex attraction—that I didn't particularly want to delve into. As a mother of a teenage boy, this pretty much sounded like one of my worst nightmares. Based on that, one would think that there was no way this book was going to be my "favorite" or anything close. I began reading, and I wasn't very far into the story before I found myself really caring about the main character and his plight. I'm happy to say I was one who voted it into finalist status. It was well-written and very deserving. And while I don't count it as one of my favorite books—the subject matter just isn't something I want to dwell on—it was definitely one of the best general fiction nominees last year.

So there's some evidence that the book did part of what I was hoping for from its readers.

More to come (hopefully) this coming month, as I do more writing. Meanwhile, best to all of you.