Hot Topic Tuesday: When to Say When?

This week, we're spotlighting Emily Wing Smith's Back When You Were Easier to Love! 
Emily and I were in the same MFA program, and she was even in my very first workshop, so I've been a fan since before her first contract. 


What's worse than getting dumped? Not even knowing if you've been dumped. Joy got no goodbye, and certainly no explanation when Zan - the love of her life and the only good thing about stifling, backward Haven, Utah - unceremoniously and unexpectedly left for college a year early. Joy needs closure almost as much as she needs Zan, so she heads for California, and Zan, riding shotgun beside Zan's former-best-friend Noah.



Without giving any plot away, let's talk about Joy's cross-country quest for Closure. Haven't we all been in a relationship that ended against our own preferences? 


(No? Just me? Come on, people - I know you're holding out!)


Speaking personally, I can recall one relationship in particular that I was reluctant to let go of. Maybe more reluctant than I should have been: my ex was a shameless flirt, constantly getting caught cheating when we weren't out together. Unfortunately, I was too hooked to kick him to the curb, like I should of. I stuck around...and in the end, he broke up with me!


Unlike Joy, I got my Closure...for better or for worse. But in a crappy situation like the one I was in - why bother? Does Closure really make a crappy situation better? In my case, methinks not. 


But let's hear from YOU - can you think of a time when you've held on or held out - when Closure has become this all-encompassing thing? Have you ever had a problem knowing when to say when? 

HOT TOPIC TUESDAY: Death And Dealing With It In YA Fiction

Tomorrow we’ll be spotlighting ALL UNQUIET THINGS, an intense, heartbreaking YA murder-mystery by Anna Jarzab. The victim? Carly, a bright, beautiful girl who spirals out of control and winds up brutally murdered. The sleuths? Neily, Carly’s ex-boyfriend, and Audrey, Carly's cousin—and the daughter of the man convicted of her murder. They’re determined to find out who really killed their friend.

Death and loss is a theme in YA lit-- as teens, we all feel it to one extent or another. That’s one of the weirdest parts of death to me. We all grieve, but society tells us how much is acceptable, depending on certain conditions. In ALL UNQUIET THINGS, Neily is “allowed” a long mourning period because everyone knows he’s always thought of Carly as his soul mate. Audrey? So what if she was family, and Carly’s best friend at the time of her death? Her dad killed Carly—Audrey doesn’t get to feel bad.

I love the way my friend and fellow author Jean Reagan put it: “We seem to assign acceptable degrees of grief based on proximity to the loved one… Grief shouldn’t be a competition between severities of loss or proximity to loss, but rather a chance to connect with others and heal together.”

As a teenager, I moved to a new city. It was only a half-hour’s drive from where I’d lived before, but it might as well have been on a different planet. The local high school was cliquish to an extreme I thought only existed in movies.

The summer before I moved in, a guy my age died on a Boy Scout hiking trip. As I tried (mostly unsuccessfully) to make friends, I’d meet people who had known and loved him. In a world with such strict social boundaries, I was amazed by their diversity—Bad Boys, Good Girls, and everyone in-between. Which ones were his bffs and which were only acquaintances? I’d never know. That’s when it hit me: it didn’t matter. Everyone was allowed to hurt. The idea inspired my YA novel THE WAY HE LIVED (Flux, 2008).

Other contemporary YAs I love that give a twist to dealing with grief: WHAT HAPPENS HERE, by Tara Alterbrando (MTV Books, 2008), IF I STAY, by Gayle Forman (Dutton, 2009), TWENTY BOY SUMMER, by our own Contemp Sarah Ockler (Little, Brown, 2009)…there are too many to name.

What are your favorites?