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By E.M. Kokie
for Cynthia Leitich Smith's Cynsations

From the flap copy of Radical by E.M. Kokie (Candlewick, 2016):

Preppers. Survivalists. Bex prefers to think of herself as a realist who plans to survive, but regardless of labels, they’re all sure of the same thing: a crisis is coming. 

And when it does, Bex will be ready. She’s planned exactly what to pack, she knows how to handle a gun, and she’ll drag her family to safety by force if necessary. 

When her older brother discovers Clearview, a group that takes survival just as seriously as she does, Bex is intrigued. While outsiders might think they’re a delusional doomsday group, she knows there’s nothing crazy about being prepared. But Bex isn’t prepared for Lucy, who is soft and beautiful and hates guns. 

As her brother’s involvement with some of the members of Clearview grows increasingly alarming and all the pieces of Bex’s life become more difficult to juggle, Bex has to figure out where her loyalties really lie. In a gripping new novel, E. M. Kokie questions our assumptions about family, trust, and what it really takes to survive.

Determined to survive the crisis she’s sure is imminent, Bex is at a loss when her world collapses in the one way she hasn’t planned for.

Before writing Radical, I had never touched a gun. I had never wanted to touch a gun.

But in the early drafts I was struggling to get to the heart of my main character Bex. Then I realized I hadn't really thought about how Bex would feel about guns. It was a blind spot caused by my own discomfort with guns. Once I had that realization I could see all the ways I didn't yet know Bex.

Bex wouldn't just shoot or possess guns. She would have spent most of her life shooting them. They would be part of her family tradition, part of her social life, and part of her identity. She would love her guns. She would be proficient. She would be responsible in their care and maintenance.

In order to understand Bex, and to write her with any kind of accuracy and credibility, I needed to understand guns.

I started with online and print research -- reading about different kinds of guns, popular makes and models, shooting ranges and training programs, and eventually gun laws and the tradition of gun ownership within families and communities.

Then I moved on to watching online videos about everything from training techniques and amateur shooting videos, to videos about comparing models, and cleaning and maintaining firearms. I was fascinated by the many videos of girls and women shooting guns, and handling knives, bows and arrows, and other weapons.

But reading and video research could only take me so far. I needed to understand the tactile and visceral details of how a gun felt in my hand, the heft, and texture, and kickback. The tang in the air after shooting. The smell and feel of cleaning different models. I needed to have a vocabulary and understanding that gave her character depth and provided context for the plot.

But I also needed to get inside of how she would feel, physically and emotionally, about her guns and while she was shooting.

For Bex, shooting guns would be about more than fun or competition or even defense. It is part of who she is.

I was lucky to connect with some people who let me shoot their guns on their property, in an outdoor setting with a dirt berm and a pond, much as I pictured Bex and her brother shooting in their woods.

We started with a small, light gun that even felt small in my hand, and then worked up to larger and more powerful firearms. Then I got a crash course in cleaning and maintenance, sitting on the side of a porch, much as Bex does in the book.

I left with all these sensory details, insights into how shooting could be fun and cause a sense of competition or accomplishment, and bruises in several places.

Even the ride out to the shooting site on a homemade cart attached to an ATV unexpectedly informed the setting and context for my story.

During the writing process, I also reached out to some firearms experts online to answer questions and to seek input for crafting certain plot elements and scenes. And once Radical was in the last stages of the editorial phase, my publisher hired one of those experts to perform a content read to make sure we got the details right.

The research didn't change my mind about my own potential gun ownership, or how I would feel about having a gun in my home. But it did help me better understand Bex and her world, and, hopefully, helped me craft more organic and believable characters and scenes.

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The Lambda Literary Foundation revealed the finalists for the 25th Annual Lambda Literary Awards. The “Lammy” awards honor the best lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) published works from 2012.

The nominated works in the 22 categories were picked by more than 90 booksellers, book reviewers, librarians, authors, and previous Lammy Award winners. The winners will be announced on June 3, 2013 at a ceremony in New York City. We’ve listed a few of this year’s nominees below.

Here’s more from the release: “Lambda Literary Foundation set a new record in 2013 for both the number of LGBT books submitted for Lammy consideration, 687, and the number of publishers participating, 332. This beats the record-setting numbers in 2012 of 600 titles by over 250 publishers and is the fourth consecutive year of growth in submissions and publishers.”

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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You’ve got your big-time fancy pants New York publishers on the one hand, and then you have your big-time fancy pants Boston publishers on the other.  A perusal of Minders of Make-Believe by Leonard Marcus provides a pretty good explanation for why Boston is, in its way, a small children’s book enclave of its own.  Within its borders you have publishers like Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Candlewick holding court.  The only time I have ever been to Boston was when ALA last had a convention there.  It was nice, though cold and there are duckling statues.

So it was that the good people of Candlewick came to New York to show off some of their finest Fall 2012 wares.  Now the last time they came here they were hosted by SLJ.  This time they secured space in the Bank Street College of Education.  Better location, less good food (no cookies, but then I have the nutritional demands of a five-year-old child).  We were given little signs on which to write our names.  I took an extra long time on mine for what I can only assume was an attempt to “win” the write-your-name part of the day.  After that, we were off!

First up, it’s our old friend and Caldecott Honor winner (I bet that never gets old for him) David Ezra Stein.  The fellow’s been toiling away with his paints n’ such for years, so it’s little wonder he wanted to ratchet up his style a notch with something different.  And “something different” is a pretty good explanation of what you’ll find with Because Amelia Smiled.  This is sort of a take on the old nursery rhyme that talks about “For Want of a Nail”, except with a happy pay-it-forward kind of spin.  Because a little girl smiles a woman remembers to send a care package.  Because the care package is received someone else does something good.  You get the picture.  Stein actually wrote this book as a Senior in art school but has only gotten to writing it officially now.  It’s sort of the literary opposite of Russell Hoban’s A Sorely Trying Day or Barbara Bottner’s An Annoying ABC.  As for the art itself, the author/illustrator has created a whole new form which he’s named Stein-lining.  To create it you must apply crayons to wax paper and then turn it over.  I don’t quite get the logistics but I’ll be interested in seeing the results.  Finally, the book continues the massive trend of naming girls in works of children’s fiction “Amelia”.  Between Amelia Bedelia, Amelia’s Notebook, and Amelia Rules I think the children’s literary populace is well-stocked in Amelias ah-plenty.

Next up, a title that may well earn the moniker of Most Anticipated Picture Book of the Fall 2012 Season.  This Is Not My Hat isn’t a sequel to 4 Comments on Librarian Preview: Candlewick Press (Fall 2012), last added: 4/25/2012