Meet Betsy
Welcome to my virtual studio. As both a writer and designer, I’m driven by a curiosity about the world. In my studio, I take that curiosity and use it to create new worlds. I write for kids and adults as well as a good deal of freelance non-fiction. Explore to find out more about me, my books, and my thoughts on writing as well as the thoughts of friends who stop by the studio. If you’ve got something you’d like to share reach out to me through the contact form. I’d love to hear from you. Scroll down to read what’s been happening in the studio.
BOOK LAUNCH: Annah Torch: That Gutshot Smile
A comatose prep-school girl is found in a locked room. Across her lap lies a smoking, sawed-off shotgun. Across the room is the smiling, gutshot corpse of her roommate. The beautiful, brilliant, at times brutal Anna Torch must dig out the truth and prove the girl’s innocence.
AMY CHU & JANET K. LEE, BRINGING SEA SIRENS TO LIFE
Last year, graphic novel sales drastically outpaced the growth rate of other print publishing. More and more readers are drawn to the marriage of art and storytelling that goes into books like Sea Sirens, a new middle-grade novel about a Vietnamese-American surfer and her water-loving cat. Spine sat down with Eisner Award-winning illustrator Janet K. Lee as well as writer and co-founder of Alpha Girl Comics Amy Chu to talk about bringing their graphic novel to life. . .
Pick Any Direction
“It doesn’t matter what you pick, just choose a definite direction and go with it until you realize it’s wrong. Then go in a different definite direction.”
If the idea of picking a direction seems obvious, consider the hours you’ve sat staring at a blank screen trapped between whether your main character opens the door to the basement or not, says yes to the date or slaps the guy, breaks down into tears or throws a plate at the wall. Maybe you try to do both and end up with something middling and half-baked. Maybe you chose, then waiver. You write a page, second guess, delete back, make the other choice, waffle, delete, go back to the first. Then you think of a third choice and the cycle begins again.
Pitch Practice
Some advice I often give on queries is to practice by writing a query for some recent books you've read and loved or even a movie or tv show. Imagine how you'd pitch it to a friend. Another suggestion is finding a group of writers who have not yet read your book and form a query critique group. - Jessica Faust, BookEnds Literary Agency
Wise Words
When you are following your curiosity, no matter where it takes you, it never feels like work. Where is your curiosity leading you?
Horrorstör
Besides keeping me awake late into the night the comedy-horror novel, Horrorstör, by Grady Hendrix made me laugh out loud at the best integration of graphic design with narrative ever done in horror paperback. There is a lot to love, most especially that the novel is a masterclass in the use of setting.
The book feels and looks like an Ikea catalog. Before readers crack the cover they are primed for the setting. The novel . . .
Your Hero’s Journey
For her recent webinar, Kendra Levin used the Hero’s Journey as a way for creatives to keep their creativity alive through intense times like now. With pandemic, elections, remote-learning, job insecurities and so much more it is easy to undervalue our writing projects and ourselves as writers. Levin says . . .
Weather to Write
Does your muse pull the blankets over her head and give you her most confident you-don’t-tell-me-what-to-do-dearie sneer at the sound of a driving rain hitting the window panes? When the sky is the perfect summer cloudless blue and warm sun is streaming down, does your muse blow you off and head to the beach?
Weather affects our moods. Weather affects our productivity and our creative flow. It only makes sense that the weather can also affect our muse.
How do you entice her back you ask? There are . . .
The Dutch House
I could chose a lot of things to talk about when it comes to The Dutch House by Ann Patchett. It has layered characters, a compelling story, and a setting that is as much a character as the narrator. Nothing stood out for me more, though, than the way Patchett takes readers with her moving back and forth through time.
As the story builds, we jump between the narrator’s childhood, teenage years, middle and late adulthood in the natural way of someone recalling their life. But Patchett uses very few obvious sign-post statements. Instead of highlighting each transition by saying something like ‘It was 1969 and I was twelve,' Patchett keeps you with her simply by referencing whether or not the characters are still smoking, what school the narrator is coming home from or whether he and his sister are inside or outside the Dutch House in their car. This style of transition feels organic, but it also sets readers up so when they eventually learn why the narrator went to those schools, is sitting in that car or even why he smokes it’s like discovering something about a good friend. The result is a narrative that feels organic and effortless. The skill to pull it off is masterful.
Spencer Hyde, Drawing on Personal Experiences for Waiting For Fitz
“Everything we do is an absurd ritual unless you understand the meaning behind it.” — Spencer Hyde
From wedding ceremonies to hand washing, if society understands the reasons behind an action, it is considered "normal." In his new book, Waiting for Fitz, Spencer Hyde tells the story of Addie, a teenage girl struggling with OCD. She is admitted to a psychiatric ward where she finds friendship with a schizophrenic boy named Fitz. Together the two learn . . .
The Iceberg
Culture is like an iceberg. There are cultural markers like holidays, food, clothes, etc. that stand out as the the small tip of the iceberg obvious above the water’s surface. What we need is work that represents the mass of details, nuances, and variety that truly define a culture. No culture is a monolith, nor is any culture explained simply by their most obvious difference from mainstream white society, but these details are concealed below the surface. Writers have to do the work to get at the base of the iceberg if they want to portraying authentic minority characters.
- From an SCBWI panel discussion with David Bowles, Linda Sue Park, and S.K. Ali
This idea was attributed to a talk Park attended by Leah Henderson. A perfect example of the goal of Words Unbound: share in the community, share the wisdom and we all grow together.
Welcome to the Studio
Welcome to the Words Undbound Studio. Though a lot of people have suggested I start a website over the years, I resisted. I am a self-confessed webinar junky, a lover of critique groups and conferences. I have a lot to say, but I thought a blog would steal time from my own works in progress.
Then pandemic.
Isolation helped me realize how much I relied on my writing community. My writing is not a solo act, so why should my blog be. When a few of my best writing pals agreed to add their voices I realized what I wanted to create wasn’t a blog but a studio: a creative (virtual) space for writers to come together, practice their craft, share their knowledge and find inspiration. We’ve got a lot of great stuff lined up. We hope you’ll come back again and again to read, comment, and maybe even add your voice to the studio.