The Sky Always Hears Me

***THIS BOOK IS NOW OUT OF PRINT***(But send me an email! I’ll send you a signed copy! Or you can buy it for your Kindle!)

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Here’s the trailer for SKY.  Fun facts:  my dad took most of the photographs in the first section, and my brother is the singer/songwriter you hear in the trailer–both songs!  I love that this trailer is a family effort.  : )

Here’s an essay I wrote for the Children’s Literature Network about how SKY came to be:

Frenemies to Friends

About ten years ago, I received a phone call.  Before the caller finished saying, “Can I speak to Kirstin?” I knew who it was.   Her voice had been embedded in my brain long ago.   She wasn’t an enemy, but she wasn’t someone I ever expected to hear from again.  “Frenemy” was the closest description I had for her.

The caller was a high-school classmate, and I hadn’t talked to her since our graduation, 10+ years in the past.  Small talk ensued as we caught each other up on our lives.  Then there was a pause.

Frenemy: “Do you know why I was mean to you in high school?”

Me: “No.”

Frenemy: “I had a crush on you.”

Me: “Oh.  OK.”

The conversation continued after that, and once we hung up, I didn’t stop thinking about it.  When she’d made her confession, two things arrowed through my brain: “wow, that explains a lot” and “wow, that would make a great novel.”  SKY was born in that instant.  The character of Tessa is loosely based on my frenemy, and one of the central storylines in SKY is how the main character Morgan navigates Tessa’s crush.  While I wrote, I had to imagine my reaction had Real Tessa told me the truth in high school.  Would I have pushed her away? Tried to be a better friend? How would we have coped with homophobia in our small, rural town (how did she cope with it every day)?   What about our classmates?  What about my boyfriend? All of those questions generated important plot points for SKY.

Real Tessa didn’t leave my life after the phone call.  We didn’t talk for several more years, but then she joined Facebook, and now my frenemy is my good friend.  We aren’t teens anymore—we know much more now that we did back then, and we talk about anything and everything, good stuff and bad.  In fact, we laugh a lot about how we misunderstood each other way back when.  Instead of two high school girls caught in an uncomfortable situation, we are two women who appreciate each other.  Who could have guessed such a thing would happen?  Not me—but I’m glad it did.

Real Tessa follows along with SKY’s happenings, and I let her read its epilogue before it was published**.  She likes what I’ve written, but more importantly, she heard the message I tucked into my writing just for her:  we would have been OK if she’d confessed way back then.   I’m glad she knows it now.