Susan Vaught’s latest release, Freaks Like Us, recently hit store shelves. Susan stopped by the virtual offices for a chat. Check out what she has to say!
[Manga Maniac Cafe] Describe yourself in 140 characters or less.
[Susan Vaught] Long hair, pacifist, likes chocolate, reads a lot, has parrot, too many dogs, three cats, loves writing, likes football, works in an asylum.
[Manga Maniac Cafe] Can you tell us a little about Freaks Like Us?
[Susan Vaught] Freaks Like Us is a fast-paced mystery, with most of the story taking place in the 24 hours after Jason Milwaukee’s best friend and sort-of girlfriend disappears. To find her, Jason has to battle his mental illness, his self-doubt, and prejudice from other people involved in the search.
[Manga Maniac Cafe] How did you come up with the concept and the characters for the story?
[Susan Vaught] I have been wanting to write through the eyes and voice of a character with schizophrenia for many years, but it took me a long time to develop just the right personality so readers could relate to Jason. The other characters came more naturally, and they all contend with issues I have either faced in my own life/family, or treated in my years of practice as a psychologist. The mystery element of the story unfolded as the story moved along, surprising me at the end of the first chapter!
[Manga Maniac Cafe] What three words best describe Jason?
[Susan Vaught] Brave, Loving, Determined
[Manga Maniac Cafe] What three things will Jason leave the house without?
[Susan Vaught] Three things he wouldn’t leave the house without would be Sunshine’s locket, his house key, and Agent Mercer’s private telephone number. If it’s really supposed to be what he WOULD leave the house without, then the answer would be . . . just about everything else. Jason can get pretty distracted and forgetful. Lunch money, his phone, his homework—all of that might get accidentally abandoned on any given day.
[ED – oops, yes it was a typo. Thank you for the wonderful answer 
]
[Manga Maniac Cafe] If Jason had a theme song, what would it be?
[Susan Vaught] Possibility, by Lykke Li. I think the haunting sound and the words/emotions have real meaning for him.
[Manga Maniac Cafe] What is Jason’s most prized possession?
[Susan Vaught] Sunshine’s gold locket. It means more to him than anything other than Sunshine herself.
[Manga Maniac Cafe] What are your greatest creative influences?
[Susan Vaught] Life, music, and other people’s brilliant art. Whenever I read a great book, hear a wonderful song, look at an amazing painting or sculpture, watch a good film, or encounter good art in any other format, it inspires me to make more of my own—not copy what I experienced or encountered, but try to come up with something brilliant, beautiful, and lasting, to pass on that gift of inspiration.
[Manga Maniac Cafe] What three things do you need in order to write?
[Susan Vaught] A clean house or writing cabin, no distractions, and the exact right song. I absolutely cannot write without good music.
[Manga Maniac Cafe] What is the last book that you read that knocked your socks off?
[Susan Vaught] Daughter of Smoke and Bone, by Laini Taylor. I reviewed it on my website. I love the originality of the writing, and the flesh-and-blood feel of the characters…even those that don’t exactly have flesh and blood.
[Manga Maniac Cafe] If you had to pick one book that turned you on to reading, which would it be?
[Susan Vaught] John Christopher’s Tripod series. The first book in the series was The White Mountains. I remember falling deeply into that world, into the struggles of those characters. I believe it was the first set of books I read where kids were in real jeopardy, and made a difference.
[Manga Maniac Cafe] What do you like to do when you aren’t writing?
[Susan Vaught] When I’m not writing, I’m usually working. My day job is at an inpatient psychiatric hospital. I also help tend the many birds and animals on our farm. What I’d like to do—ha. Be at the beach!
[Manga Maniac Cafe] How can readers connect with you?
[Susan Vaught] Through my website, at www.susanvaught.com . I enjoy hearing from my readers!
[Manga Maniac Cafe] Thank you!
You can purchase Freaks Like Us from your favorite bookseller or by clicking the widget below.
I'm back after an awesome summer vacation and I think I did pretty good choosing this week's cutie, if I say so myself. What do you think?
T.J. Holmes is a former CNN anchor and correspondent. In 2011, he moved from CNN to BET. Four nights a week, you can enjoy his gorgeousness...uh, I mean his deep commentary on social issues African Americans face today.
Word to Describe: GORGEOUS!
Patricia Dunn is the author of Rebels By Accident, a young adult coming of age tale that takes place in Egypt during the revolution that recently swept through the country. Patricia dropped by the virtual offices to chat about her book.
[Manga Maniac Cafe] Describe yourself in 140 characters or less.
[Patricia Dunn] I am the tangential queen. When I tell a story I take you around the world to bring you right back to where we started only with some new discovery, hopefully.
[Manga Maniac Cafe] Can you tell us a little about Rebels by Accident?
[Patricia Dunn] It’s the journey of an Egyptian-American teen who in our post 9-11 world is very disconnected from her culture, and how she finally figures out what it means to be Egyptian and American. It’s also a love story. Not just the girl meets boy story, but a story that also includes falling in love with a place and a people, and friends and family. And let’s not forget that it’s about Revolution on the outside and on the inside.
[Manga Maniac Cafe] How did you come up with the concept and the characters for the story?
[Patricia Dunn] It didn’t start off as a choice. I was in a writing class with Cassandra Medley, at Sarah Lawrence College, she’s an amazing teacher and playwright. Through a series of writing prompts, the voice of Mariam started to come through. Someone once said it was like I channeled her. And I must have, because I’d never have consciously written in the voice of a teenager. Teens are tough. But whenever I tried to go back to a more adult narrator Mariam kept fighting her way through and winning. When I finally accepted Mariam as my narrator, I let her tell her story, and there were many variations. After the recent Egyptian revolution, I knew that was part of her story and so with the help of a wonderful editor, and my then publisher Evelyn Fazio, and with the help of my best friend and agent, this version emerged. And like any story I write, revision, revision, and revision, and trial and error, lots of it. The more I worked on this book, the more I learned about my characters and the more the story revealed itself.
[Manga Maniac Cafe] What kind of research did you conduct for this project?
[Patricia Dunn] I’ve been to Egypt many times, so I could visualize a lot of the places I was writing about. But to get the events and the feel for a lot of the scenes at Tahrir square, I spent hours looking at YouTube videos and reading posts on Facebook and Twitter, and asking everyone I knew who was there or who had family there at the time. I also had many readers looking over the book and helping with fact checking. When it came to some of the Arabic translations, I made sure that these were checked and rechecked. I really tried to make sure that the transliteration was true to the way things are said in Egypt as opposed to other Arabic speaking countries. For example, in Egypt a “th” sound is used in a lot of words whereas it’s not used in other Arabic speaking countries. Oh, and I also talked to as many teenagers as I could to get a sense of what felt believable. I was constantly reading sections to my son and asking, "Does this sound like something a teen would say?" Or would your friends do this? Or would they do that? Then there was all the research around social media. It was amazing to me how the youth in Egypt were not only using Facebook to share news about fashion or friends but they were using Facebook to organize, to change the world.
[Manga Maniac Cafe] What three words best describe Mariam?
For the past few years, the topic of establishing healthy habits at an early age has garnered much news, investigation, and governmental action across the nation. As centers for community life and lifelong education, libraries are uniquely positioned to contribute to the formation of these healthy habits in young people. Indeed, given the special role of social responsibility many libraries assume in their charters and mission statements, supporting healthy habit formation may be viewed as a necessity in your library.
The Indiana State Department of Health summarizes the need for and suggests a direction to library involvement in this issue: “Ideally, population-based, sustainable approaches for changing the weight status, diet, and physical activity of people should include creating environments, policies, and practices that support increases in physical activity and improvements in diet, especially among those disproportionately affected by poor health. Interventions should go beyond people acquiring new knowledge and allow people to build the skills and practice the behaviors leading to a healthy weight. Supportive environments are necessary to sustain healthy behaviors.” [emphasis mine] (Indiana State Department of Health 2011)
What follows is a list of activities young adult librarians can put into practice to stimulate interest in and action towards healthy habit formation with their teen patrons.
- Book displays on healthy habits. (A classic library tactic, and it never hurts to cover the classics.)
- Create QR codes linking to healthy habits websites.
- Distribute dream journals with blurbs on healthy sleep habits printed on the pages.
- Administer an online cooking challenge where teens upload a picture of a healthy meal they cooked.
- Amend the food and drink policy to allow water in the library.
- Serve healthy snacks at TAB events, such as popcorn and juice rather than chocolate and soda pop.
- Display samples of healthy and unhealthy organs (such as lungs, livers, brains, and bones), as supplied by a nearby medical school.
- Start a co-cooking program with teens. (This has been the most popular teen program at my library for two years. We have cooked smoothies, shish kabobs, hummus, baked apples, and more.)
- Host tournaments for Wii Fit and Xbox Kinect. (For lower-tech options, try ping-pong, Twister, and other active games. The teens at my library lit up when I told them we would play Twister with face paint dolloped on the dots.)
- Arrange for your local car insurance company to bring their impaired driving program to the library parking lot.
- Host local experts in demonstrations with audience participation, such as yoga lead by fitness instructors or cooking by local restaurateurs.
- Add library programming with a physical element: a college football boot camp, circus performer experience, etc.
- Arrange a Glee with the Stars program where teens learn a routine performed by your local theatre or high school group. (Granted, this will take a great number of volunteers, a large space, and some very enthusiastic teenagers.)
- Consider adding “healthy eating during pregnancy” and “breastfeeding and childhood obesity” to to your outreach efforts to pregnant teen patrons.
- Work with your local school librarians and physical education and health teachers to limit the junk food and soda pop available to students at school. Perhaps you can even collaborate with these educators to recruit and support a chef for the
In honor of National Poetry Month, we’ve dug up a video of President Barack Obama reading a poetic Dr. Seuss story out loud.
As Obama prepared to read, he announced: “I am going to try to do the best rendition ever of Green Eggs and Ham.”
Do you think he accomplished his goal?
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
It's been an exceptionally crummy day today or so. Yesterday my cell phone/PDA (aka "Mummy's Electronic Brain") died. Of course because I've been in the middle of transitioning from my PC laptop to my new MacBook, I hadn't synced it for a little while. So now I'm freaking out about what appointments I've made that I'm going to forget.
Then today, my daughter's insulin pump went on the blink. While I can do without my electronic brain (at least, kind of) managing without her electronic pancreas is considerably more complex. It required frenzied calls to Yale to figure out what doses of insulin I should use as we resort to injections while waiting for the replacement pump to arrive, and of course because I was in PC/MAC transition I hadn't synced her pump in a bit either. It required a trip to the pharmacy when I realized the Long-acting insulin I had in the fridge was a least a year out of date. Now I've got to wake up to test her at midnight, 3am and 6am to make sure we've got the doses right. Diabetes sucks.
Meanwhile, been busy packing, packing and more packing for the big move.
And watching movies on DVD. Watched "The Queen" Friday evening. Helen Mirren was brilliant as HM the Q. It brought back many memories because I was living in the UK when Diana died. I remember coming downstairs with one of the kids at 6am and turning on the radio. I caught the tail end of the top of the hour new bulletin and couldn't believe my ears - I thought it was an April Fool's joke on the wrong day, it seemed so impossible that she could be dead. The movie captured very accurately the growing anger against the Royal Family.
Tonight watching "The History Boys", which I'm really enjoying. Bit of witty Brit humor after a crummy day.
Yes you did! Intelligent and Handsome...Need I say more!
Nope. No need to say more. Lol. I totally agree!