Guest Post with Kirstin Cronn-Mills

I have a special guest post with Kirstin today on the blog. Kirstin is the author of many YA novel such as The Sky Always Hears Me: And the Hills Don't Mind , Beautiful Music for Ugly Children and Wreck, which released in stores/e-retailer everywhere Tuesday, April 15th. In today's post, Kirstin shares some memorable moments from her career as a published author.

Ten years of being a published author—WHO FREAKING KNEW?

 

Thank you for hosting me!

 

I had no idea I would write young adult novels—I’ve told that story in several places—and now I’m almost ten years (this fall) into being a published author. WHO FREAKING KNEW? Not me, friends. Never me.

And there is no bigger honor in my life (aside from being the mom to an awesome son) than being a published writer. I know the books that mean the world to me, and times I’d faint if I met particular authors. I can’t imagine someone feeling half as excited for my book, or for meeting me, so when that kind of stuff happens, it’s mind-blowing.  

Here are some of the most incredible things that have happened to me in the last ten years (in no real order). These are people-connection things, which are the best parts of being a writer:
• having my first book read on six continents (only missing Antarctica)

• seeing my book in a classroom, with students who are discussing it

• having a reader’s eyes light up when they find out it’s me

• having someone send me a photo of my book in Powell’s Bookstore

• the emails I’ve gotten saying “your book helped me” (so HUGE to me, SUCH an honor)

• seeing my book in a library

• seeing my book in a bookstore

 

 

My four individual favorite moments are as follows:
1) Immediately after Sky was published, I got an email from a woman who lives in Manhattan. She picked up Sky in a Midtown Barnes and Noble because she noticed my name was the same as one of her favorite teachers, back when she was growing up in North Platte, NE (about an hour from where I grew up). She opened the book and realized I had dedicated that book to her favorite teacher—my grandma. 

2) My stepmom was walking through one of her art classrooms (in Papillion, NE) and saw Sky on top of one of the student’s desks. Surprised and pleased, she said, “My daughter wrote that.”  The student said, “It’s my favorite book ever.” My stepmom was dumbfounded.
 3) In Beautiful Music, Gabe buys a prosthetic called a Mango. A therapist in Boston—who happens to be the partner of the trans man who helped me with my initial research for Beautiful Music—wrote me to say that one of her clients (another trans man) is the man who invented the Mango.

4) Some eighth graders in Toronto, Ontario, read Beautiful Music and then made projects about gender, with the help of some teacher candidates from a nearby university. Then some researchers from the same university made a film about the whole process. They invited me to Toronto to see their film and meet some of the kids. All of that was INCREDIBLE, but a mom told me her son’s life was saved by reading Beautiful Music. It helped him understand who he was. There are no words for that.

Career-building stuff (awards, nominations, reviews, stars) is important, but it’s not what I love about this work. My writing life has been one of the ways that I know the Oneness (my name for the Divine) is sending me love, and this work is way I send love into the world. I don’t think I can adequately express how much it means to me that people read my books—whether they adore them or hate them. Despite the bumps and bruises I’ve acquired from publishing industry itself, taking a book from idea to shelf is still a process full of magic, and one I am still surprised to be a part of. When I meet and interact with readers—even though they have no idea I think this way, and they wouldn’t believe it—the honor is, always and forever, all mine.

 

 

 

 

 

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Sometimes loss has its own timetable.
Set on the shores of Lake Superior, Wreck follows high school junior Tobin Oliver as she navigates her father’s diagnosis of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease).

Steve’s life as a paramedic and a runner comes to an abrupt halt just as Tobin is preparing her application for a scholarship to art school. With the help of Steve’s personal care assistant (and family friend) Ike, Tobin attends to both her photography and to Steve as his brain unexpectedly fails right along with his body.

Tobin struggles to find a “normal” life, especially as Steve makes choices about how his own will end, and though she fights hard, Tobin comes to realize that respecting her father’s decision is the ultimate act of love.

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

According to geographers, the American West begins at the 100th longitudinal meridian. Thanks to the fact that this meridian is the main street of her hometown in Nebraska, Kirstin Cronn-Mills grew up six blocks east of the West. Yes, there were cowboys around.

Kirstin is a self-proclaimed word nerd. She learned to read when she was three (according to her mother) and she hasn't stopped since. Her grandmother and her father passed on their love of language to her, and that love became a love affair when she started writing poems in the sixth grade. She still writes poems, but now she focuses on young adult novels. She's pretty sure that teenagers are the funniest, smartest, coolest people on the planet.

In 1992 Kirstin moved from Nebraska to southern Minnesota, where she lives now. She writes a lot, reads as much as she can, teaches at a two-year college, and goofs around with her son, Shae, and her husband, Dan. Her first novel, The Sky Always Hears Me and The Hills Don't Mind (Flux), was a 2010 Minnesota Book Award finalist in Young People's Literature. A short story epilogue to Sky, "The First Time I Got Stranded in the Big Empty," appears in the e-anthology The First Time (Verday and Stapleton, 2011). She also published a middle-grade science book in 2009: Collapse! The Science of Structural Engineering Failures (Compass Point Books). Her short story "Header" will appear on the Young Adult Review Network (YARN) website sometime in the fall of 2012, and a nonfiction book about the lives of transgendered Americans will appear from Lerner in 2014. (via Amazon)

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