Writers-Wheel-Magazine-Issue-6-Midsummer-2015

Summer 2015I’ll admit it. I’m a born again writer. When I wasyounger, only about (*ahem*) years ago, I wroteALL the time: bad poetry, melodramatic short stories,and the odd youth theater script. As long as Ihad pen and paper, or a good old-fashioned SmithCorona (*another dated reference*), I’d be as happyas a lizard on a rock.But then real life got in the way. Like all of us, I hadto grow up, get a job, get a life, oh, and somewherein there, a family came along, and a whole bunch offluffy pets. I never meant to stop writing. It happenedaccidentally.One day I foundmyself a middleaged,middle-classmother of two(now, three –we’ve been busy!)And of course themid-life crisis hitbig time. I thoughtabout where I wasand what I reallywanted to do withmy life, finally realizingI’d let writingget away from me.So I started thinkingabout writing anovel, the onething I’d nevertried before, notseriously anyway. Iwanted to enroll inan online writingclass for the flexibilityit offered.Naturally, the literaryfiction course I wanted to take was already fullyenrolled. However, the same institution was offeringa fiction writing class for younger readers. I’d beenreading The Hunger Games and Twilight (yes, I’ll admitthat I developed a penchant for sparkly vampiresfor a while there). I saw that there was a wholenew young readership out there open to all sorts ofnew ideas in their books.I took the class, and then another, and then another,finally culminating in finishing the entire onlinefiction writing certificate programs at both UCLAand Stanford. Even though I continued to work fulltime, those programs gave me the opportunity tobuild up a supportive and encouraging network ofother readers and writers. An eternal student, I’mnow in my final year of the M.F.A. program inWriting for Children and Young Adults at VermontCollege of Fine Arts, anotheramazingly supportive and wonderfulcommunity of readers andwriters.Inside the Palisade, forthcomingin August with Lodestone Books,is my first full-length novel, althoughI’ve also written a bunchof short stories in recent years. Ienjoy writing stories that revolvearound strong female characters,and this book is no exception. Asa woman whose day job happensto be in a male-dominated profession,I often find myself saying(or hear my colleagues saying)things like: “Well, if a woman wasin charge of this project …”Inside the Palisade is an explorationof what would happen ifwomen were, in fact, in charge ofa futuristic dystopian society,having banished men to thewastelands outside a massivestone wall. The society reproducesvia an artificial inseminationtechnique known simply as the Procedure, andwomen raise their children in the Nest. While thestory is a fast-paced action adventure story foryounger readers with a little romance thrown in, it’salso pretty tongue-in-cheek about gender dynamics.21