Diana Renn

Mysteries that Matter

Author

World Read Aloud Day 2023

by | Feb 2, 2023 | Uncategorized

I had such a wonderful time celebrating World Read Aloud Day with students and educators this week. What a delight to meet so many energetic students and their teachers. I was struck by how many young people are genuinely excited about reading, and prepared thoughtful, fascinating questions for these events. I was also moved by how many of these students care deeply about animals and the environment. I had as many questions about turtles and how to help them as I did about books and writing.

I met a class of fifth graders who are headstarting turtle hatchlings in their classrooms, in the same Zoo New England conservation program that inspired the writing of Trouble at Turtle Pond. (I had to chuckle at this picture of tiny me next to the ginormous turtle slides — a complete reversal of real-life scale!) That was an especially fun visit since these students knew a lot about Blanding’s turtles (the stars of my book) and are having some of the same experiences as the characters in Trouble at Turtle Pond – minus the poachers and the peril!

After the visits, I had to marvel at technology and how far we have come. It’s incredible be able to zoom into another state, to talk to multiple classrooms across a school district on Google Meet, while still feeling a personal connection to every individual student who comes up to their camera to ask a question or offer a comment.

I’m also in awe of the logistics of hosting WRAD at schools. I am grateful to the teachers and librarians who put these events together. Whether they’re organizing one classroom or fifteen, it takes time and effort to reach out to authors, pace out the visits, get kids into classrooms and into listening mode, facilitate Q&A sessions.

World Read Aloud Day doesn’t just have to be on February 2! It occurred to me that I tend to inhale books these days, making my way through a large reading list and across devices. I listen to audiobooks at faster speeds, and note my percentage progress on my kindle. But reading aloud forces me to slow down, to savor, to experience the words and ideas differently. So I plan to make time to read some passages aloud this year, especially when I’m reading poetry and essays, and carry some of the spirit of World Read Aloud Day into my regular reading life.

 

Weekend Reads

by | Jul 1, 2022 | Uncategorized

I’m beginning to chip away at my towering TBR pile of amazing new books that launched in the first half of 2022. Dayna Lorentz’s WAYWARD CREATURES came out in January, and while I’d started reading as soon as the book arrived – I’d been eagerly anticipating her new book after I read OF A FEATHER last year — I soon got busy with my own launch preparations and a deadline. I reluctantly had to put my reading on hold.
.
I had some rare stretches of uninterrupted time last week, and again WAYWARD CREATURES called out to me. I devoured it in two days. You guys. THIS BOOK. Wow. It’s about a twelve-year-old boy named Gabe who tries to impress some friends and get attention, so he sets off some stolen fireworks in a woods near his house. This sparks a forest fire! The fire impacts many people and animals, and chars acres of land. One of the impacted creatures is a coyote named Rill, whose voice we get in alternating chapters; he is badly burned and trapped in a crevice, but Gabe discovers him, brings him food, and then advocates for his release after he is captured by wildlife officials. Gabe also makes amends for his actions through his participation in a restorative justice program. The connections between Gabe and the coyote are brilliantly rendered. Both receive negative attention and judgment, especially the coyote who snapped at a small child. Both are angry. Both have disconnected from their “packs” for various reasons. But as their paths cross, and they begin to heal, we learn to view both of them with greater compassion.
.
As someone who grew up on the west coast, with an awareness of fires, this story stoked a lot of fears that I have. I learned new things about how destructive forest fires are, but also felt some hope about how land can heal (even soil, beneath what is burned) and eventually may regenerate – especially if humans like Gabe and his community service mentor can nudge things along. Without funding and human effort, though, the process is slow indeed. I also learned a lot about coyotes, creatures I certainly have judged negatively; I hear them at night and fear them when I walk in the woods, but I think I will view them differently now.
.
As the parent of a boy not much older than Gabe in the story, I also felt the family dynamics and the interior life of a seventh grader were spot-on. It’s great to find stories that deal with the inner lives of boys, and even show boys having some meaningful discussions to overcome conflicts and repair damaged friendships. The language felt real, with moments of genuine insight punctuated by awkward humor and fierce ambitions, as Gabe’s friends eventually join him in working toward a common goal.
.
A must read for animal lovers and budding conservationists, as well as anyone interested in restorative justice (which should be all of us) – highly recommend!

Celebrating Tokyo Heist’s Ten-Year Anniversary!

by | Jun 14, 2022 | Uncategorized

Wow, I can’t believe it’s been ten years since my debut novel, TOKYO HEIST, entered the world! It seemed important to mark the moment somehow, as ten years in a writing career is an important milestone.
The road from TOKYO HEIST (a YA mystery about missing Van Gogh prints in Japan and a manga enthusiast’s quest to find them while on a business trip with her dad) to TROUBLE AT TURTLE POND (a mystery about wildlife poaching and endangered Blanding’s turtles) seems incredible to me.  I know at my launch ten years ago, if someone told me I’d eventually write a mystery about turtles, and that I’d be consulting with ornithologists and wildlife rehabbers to write the next book, I would not have believed it. And yet mystery has remained my steady path, even as my topics and age market shifted over time. I feel fortunate to have been able to publish two more YA mystery novels with Viking / Penguin Random House, followed by a collaboratively written adult mystery/thriller with Realm (formerly Serial Box) and Adaptive Books, and now my middle grade eco-mystery with Fitzroy Books / Regal House.
.
While two of my YA mysteries did go out of print (though are available as eBooks), TOKYO HEIST has held on in paperback. It pretty consistently hovers in the top 100 teen art fiction novels list on Amazon when I happen to check up on it, occasionally getting into the top 50 or even top 25 there. I think because it has different pathways into it – travel / Japan enthusiasts, art enthusiasts, comics and manga enthusiasts — it continues to find new readers.
.
It’s so fun to hear from some of those new readers who discover this novel these many years later. One recently reached out to me on Twitter to let me know she’d read it after a workshop I gave on mystery writing, and shared the following thoughts: “As an art historian, I can be picky about how art is treated in fiction, but you nailed it. I loved the details around print-making and conservation. Effortless, fluid, well-researched.” Whew! Researching that novel – in Seattle, Boston, and Japan, and shadowing an art conservator to understand their profession – was one of the most fun, fulfilling parts of my journey in writing that book, something I remain proud of to this day. Researching and writing TOKYO HEIST gave me the confidence to write other books about topics outside my wheelhouse (artifact smuggling, international bike racing, wildlife conservation) and to create collaborative partnerships with people in many different professions.
.
By far the most rewarding part of my writing career so far has been the opportunity to connect with young readers and the people who guide them, their teachers. Seeing my books used in classrooms, and getting to enter those classrooms (even virtually) or see student work (research projects, art, creative writing) is such a gift. It makes me realize how books have a life of their own once we launch them, and while we must give up control in so many ways (how they are marketed, received, reviewed, interpreted), we can feel that special spark when we know our book has connected with a certain reader or made an impact in some way.
I looked back on my blog post – on this very blog! – from June 2012, about my launch day and my launch party at Newtonville Books. I had not read it for a decade. These opening words jumped out: “. . .[M]y brother-in-law sent me a video of a NASA rocket launch. I watched the lift-off, mesmerized, a lump in my throat. It was the perfect video for that morning. I felt like I really was sending my book out into the world — with the aid of a highly trained crew — and now all I could do was squint at it in the distance and hope for the best.” Seeing those words again, and the friendly faces celebrating this first book – including some faces of family members who are no longer with us, my brother-in-law who sent me that launch video, and my father-in-law — was an emotional experience. My debut launch post is an important reminder to me of how many people it takes to write, publish, and sell a book, and the readers who help to sustain its journey, often in a flight pattern we simply cannot predict.
.
My favorite TOKYO HEIST launch photo, included here, is the one of the day my books arrived. My cat sniffed atthe box and walked away. My son, then five, practiced a handstand on a nearby chair; you can see his feet in the air. I clearly was so excited about my books that I permitted the chair gymnastics. The picture is an important reminder to me, against the more “glamorous” launch party pictures, that books get written amidst the swirl and chaos of real life. I  do sometimes look at this “feet in the air” book picture to remind myself – when I’m in the middle of a messy draft, in a messy house, with lots going on around me — that books got written before, and I can do it again.
.
Do you have a milestone to mark in your writing life? Is it the one month, six month, or one year anniversary of embarking on a new project? Five years since you put a stake in the ground and decided to call yourself a writer? Seven years since your first writer’s conference? Think back in time on this very day – where were you in your writing journey? Where are you now? Where would you like to be in one year? In ten?

Weekend Reads

by | Jun 3, 2022 | Uncategorized

         Welcome back to my (Mostly) Weekly Reads feature!
          I took last week off in light of the tragedy in Uvalde, Texas. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t have the bandwidth or, frankly, the will to write a bookish blog post last week. I became, like so many people, consumed by news media, especially by the portraits of those who were lost, yet again, to gun violence. I couldn’t find words to articulate my deep dismay, and still struggle to.
          But I will share a couple of things I have done in the past week before we dive in to the weekly read, in the hopes that others may feel motivated to do a couple of things too:
         I joined Moms Demand Action and donated to Everytown. Moms Demand Action has an app you can put on your phone, and they make it very easy to do some actionable steps, like contacting senators or signing petitions.
                I donated copies of TROUBLE AT TURTLE POND to 600 BOOKS OF HOPE: COMPASSION THROUGH STORY. This initiative seeks to collect at least 600 new children’s books with hopeful messages to ensure that every child at Robb Elementary School would receive one new book, “one tangible thing they can take with them that might shine a ray of promise in their unbearable darkness,” according to organizer e.E. Carlton-Trujillo. The goal is also to collect 1,300 more books to gift to the town’s other schools, from K-12. You can read more about the initiative here, and if you are a children’s book author, illustrator, editor, or publisher, please consider signing up to donate new books!
            And finally, as I work on my new mystery novel (which also took about a weeklong hiatus while I processed the news), I revisited an essay I wrote for the Huffington Post back in 2014: “Unarmed and Dangerous: On Writing a Thriller With No Guns.” Sadly, this essay often gets dug up and circulated on the Internet after school shootings. But if you’re writing a book for young readers and contemplating whether or how much to include guns, this might be worth reading and thinking about. It describes my attempt to avoid guns in my second YA novel, which was harder than it sounds.
         And so, on to this week’s Weekly Read, which is, fittingly in many ways, a survival narrative. I’m almost done listening to Megan Freeman’s marvelous middle grade novel in verse, ALONE. The premise immediately grabbed me, as I can well remember the feeling of being a child or even a young adult, and finding that a morning seems particularly quiet, the streets emptier, even the birds subdued, and wondering: Where is everyone? Did they evacuate and forget to tell me??
        That’s pretty much what happens in ALONE! Maddie, age 12, is scheming to have a secret sleepover with friends, capitalizing on the shuttling she does back and forth between divorced parents and the occasional times when logistics slip through the cracks. But plans change, she sleeps at her grandmother’s empty house on her own, and wakes up to find herself completely alone; her town has been evacuated and abandoned overnight, for no clear reason. Is the thread environmental? Invisible? Potentially under attack from an enemy? The messaging about “relocation” and transport, with the tone of vague threats, was eerily relatable. Maddie must learn to survive on her own in a town that seems to have every creature comfort, but in fact has no infrastructure — no cell phones, no electricity — and the isolation she feels is one of the hardest challenges to overcome. Fortunately a dog named George and a library full of books provide companionship.
       This book is Home Alone on steroids. Maddie’s plight is a scary prospect to contemplate, but also a powerful reminder of how resourceful we can be, and how impactful the written word can be, as Maddie turns to all kinds of reading material for insight, instruction, and inspiration.
     I’d love to know what you’re reading, and how words sustain you through difficult times; feel free to drop a note in the comments!

Weekend Reads

by | May 20, 2022 | Uncategorized

Welcome back to Weekend Reads, my attempt at sharing something about books I’m reading or intend to read, roughly every Friday! 
.
.
A Song Called Home - Kindle edition by Zarr, Sara. Children Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.      This weekend I hope to finish up an audio book that I’ve been immersed in lately: A SONG CALLED HOME, the new middle grade novel by award-winning author Sara Zarr.
        I’m a longtime fan of Sara’s YA novels as well as her This Creative Life podcast (and her more recent mini series podcast, The Launch Pad – a must-listen if you are anywhere in the book launch process!) And I had the pleasure of editing one of Sara’s short stories once, years ago, when I was the Fiction Editor at YARN (Young Adult Review Network). When I heard she was moving to middle grade for her next book, I was immediately excited to get my hands on this book!
       Well, I got my ears on this book — I’ve been listening to more audiobooks lately for a variety of reasons. And I’ve been trying to find times outside of driving to listen to audiobooks, and wean myself off news and social media. As an experiment, I have been starting my days with story, and am trying that out with this book. I have a golden half hour in the morning before my own writing time, when I’m helping my kid get ready for school, getting his lunch together, taking care of the dog and cat, doing a few chores, all while this beautiful book is pouring into my ears.
                I look forward to my mundane morning chores now because I want to get back to this novel.
                Sara Zarr is well known for stories about family dynamics, and I am completely immersed in this particular family. Set in San Francisco – one of my favorite cities – A Song Called Home is about a fifth-grade girl named Lou who is going through some massive changes. An alcoholic father who’s not really in the picture, a mother remarrying, a new stepdad to get used to, a move, and a kind of mystery — a guitar that shows up at her front door, a guitar she has no clue how to play. The dynamic with her older sister Casey is also changing, as Casey deals with the family’s changes in her own ways, and both girls are growing up. Friendships shift around them too, especially with the move. These are such finely drawn, nuanced characters, every single one of them. All of their reactions to one another and to certain events feel totally organic and real. This is a contemporary novel, but I relate to it powerfully as an 80’s child of divorced and remarried parents. Although I admire so much about this novel’s craft and enjoy reading it on that level, there’s something very healing and validating about reading, as an adult, middle grade novels that deal with divorce. The honest portrayal of kids’ inner lives – confusing and conflicting feelings, a range of emotions — is fully on the page. And I love how some adults make mistakes or say the wrong things, but sometimes they say just the right things at the right time. This is a great book for understanding how parents have their own complex lives, as well as pasts and futures.
               So immersed am I in this novel that when my library loan ended mid-week, and my book abruptly left my account, I felt like it had been snatched away from me, and I was totally grumpy! I was also dying to know what happened next to Lou! There’s a long wait to get the book again, since it’s in such high demand. So I bought it on Audible, which I should have just done in the first place, because, honestly, why would I not want to own this beautiful book??
                My library loan lapsed because I was listening in short bursts of available time, but also because I was lingering, deliberately, in the language and the characters, and in Lou’s entire world. Normally I speed up my audio books, but not this one. I love the narrator’s voice (narrated by Ferdelle Capistrano), which conveys different characters and emotions so beautifully, and I love the pace of the book. It’s not slow. It just . . . unfolds. If you listen to the audio version, let it simply unfold. I think the pace of this book is so important. Don’t tamper with it.
                 I will likely finish the book this weekend, so I’m including it here in my new “Weekend Reads” post. I hope this book finds a wide audience, and highly recommend!

Weekend Reads

by | May 13, 2022 | Uncategorized

This week I’m kicking off a hopefully weekly series on the blog, featuring my “weekend reads.” These are books I’m hoping to dig into over the weekend or am currently reading. Or just plain excited about.

Authors Rebecca Caprara and Nicole Lesperance celebrating sequels!

Lately, I am excited about brave people saving the world, for probably obvious reasons. That’s why I love Rebecca Caprara’s Mission Multiverse books so much, as they feature middle grade marching band misfits, a.k.a. the Space Cadets, saving not just our world but many worlds: the multiverse. I loved Book One for its fabulous ensemble cast of unlikely heroes, as well as some of the most creatively rendered extraterrestrials I’ve ever met in fiction. Book 2 came out this week, Mission Multiverse: Doppelgänger Danger, in which our intrepid Space Cadets are now trapped on an alternate version of earth and learn that a doppelgänger is among them. In full disclosure, Rebecca is a dear friend and critique partner, so I’ve been in on the multiverse from its earliest inception, when it was more space dust ideas then book. It’s been such a fun ride to see both of these books take shape.

Rebecca explains the multiverse.

Publishing takes a long time, and while her stories are familiar to me, I have forgotten some details. (Or maybe I am somewhere in the Multiverse still reading some other version?!) Also, i know Rebecca has revised over time, with her editor. Also, I love doppelgänger and double stories, so there’s no harm in reading this twice.

Delicious stacks of books at the Silver Unicorn Bookstore panel on middle grade sequels, featuring Rebecca’s Mission Multiverse series, Nicole’s Dream Spies series, and Gregory Mone’s Atlantis series – can’t wait to dive into all these fascinating worlds!

And I am eager to see how the final version turned out. It is always such a joy to hold a friend’s finished book in my hand and know the journey it’s been on . . .  in Rebecca’s case, an interplanetary, intra-dimensional one! I’m happy to have been a part of that ride in some small way and was honored to read her earliest pages.

I highly recommend this book and series for kids who love Space adventures, band culture, friendship stories, and adventurous kids with lots of heart.

 

Click here to order a SIGNED copy of the Mission Multiverse series at Silver Unicorn Books!