Authorpreneur Dashboard – Brian Herberger
Cross Country
Teens
Having her father away in Vietnam wasn't easy for Bets, but she soon discovers having him back home comes with its own set of problems. When a letter from her friend Emmie arrives along with a ticket to the Woodstock Music Festival, Bets has a tough decision to make. Should she stick it out back home or leave her problems behind for a cross-country adventure? There's a lot happening in 1969, and figuring it all out is complicated. The people Bets encounters all have their own perspectives, each changing the way Bets thinks about the war in Vietnam, the problems America is dealing with, and her own problems at home.
Book Bubbles from Cross Country
A New Normal
Books are often about change, and Cross Country is no exception. The people Bets encounters and the events she experiences as she travels across the country have an impact on her. They change the way she views the issues she's wrestling with, and more importantly, they change the way she views herself. The painted VW and the beads and braids are an outward sign of that change, but the real change is on the inside. That's her new normal.
Don't Judge a Guy by His Motorcycle
Early on, I knew Cross Country was going to be a story filled with an interesting mix of characters. My original idea for the book was a road trip where Bets would encounter a variety of people, all with different perspectives on the war, each with their own story to tell. I had fun creating all those characters, and Teddy - the man on the motorcycle - is a favorite. He's only in one chapter, but he's a memorable guy. At first, Bets is mostly figuring out who Teddy is by the way he looks, but once she sees beyond his torn jeans and sunglasses, she discovers that there's a lot more to Teddy than his intimidating appearance. That's a pretty good lesson.
Holding on to a Memory
This is one of my favorite exchanges between Bets and Emmie. Bets's excitement at setting off on an adventure is spoiled by the return of a memory she'd pushed aside. Emmie shows herself to be thoughtful and introspective, and maybe a little bit mysterious. And we definitely haven't seen the last of that broken piece of glass.
Setting the Stage for History
This excerpt comes from an early chapter in Cross Country, titled 1969. While one goal for this chapter was to give young adult readers some background on the time period, mostly what I wanted to do was give readers a sense of what Bets was feeling and how pervasive current events were on her life. For the most part, my approach to historical fiction is to focus on the fiction and leave the history in the background, really just giving the story a time and place. But early on in the book, I felt it was important to show just how much was happening in at the close of the 60s. Assassinations, racial tensions, war in far-away Vietnam, and the impacts of the draft close to home. All of these things weigh on Bets, adding to the anxiety she's feeling at home, and eventually leading to her decision to run away from it all.
Beginning an Adventure
Writing Cross Country was truly an adventure! I was searching for the right way to continue Bets's story into a second book, and once I started thinking about all that could happen on a cross-country trip headed for the Woodstock music festival, I knew I had a perfect fit. I'd driven across the country several times with my family, and I remembered the excitement that came both from planning the trip and from not always knowing where the road ahead would lead. I had the same feelings when writing Cross Country! In this chapter, Bets hasn't even started yet, is still deciding if she's going to go, but already she's excited for the destination, a little intimidated by the size of our country, and hopeful that leaving her hometown will also let her leave behind the problems she's dealing with at home.
Learning to Drive
When I work with students, I like to use this passage as an example of why, as a writer, you need to know your audience. I ask students, "How many of you know how to drive?" If I'm in a middle school, there are usually one of two kids who jokingly raise their hands. In a high school, many more hands go up, but then quickly go back down when I ask a follow-up question. "How many drive a car with a manual shift?" I knew when writing this chapter that I would be describing something that most of my readers had no experience with. I wanted to convey the complexity of working the gas and clutch pedals in unison and the feeling a driver has when you get it just right... or totally wrong. I wanted to put them right in the driver’s seat with Bets, so they could feel her frustration and anxiety. At the same time, I needed to make sure this chapter didn’t end up sounding like a driving instruction manual. Mixing in some calming dialog with Emmie, and Bets’s ever-present inner monologue is enough to keep the story moving and make this scene a lot of fun.
Characters Making Bad Decisions
Miss E. doesn't really have a villain. Bets was struggling with her father being away, issues at school, and her feelings, but no antagonist. So I decided early on that Cross Country would have a villain, a bad guy, someone readers would love to hate. But I had to be careful. Bets is leaving on a cross-country trip with Seth and he turns out to be a really horrible person. Since this is YA lit and a lot of readers would be Bets's age, I wanted to be sure I wasn't sending the wrong message. Getting in a car with Seth (or anyone you didn't know) would be a bad idea under any circumstances, and I needed to make sure the reader understood that. Bets needs to go on this trip or there's no story, but I wanted the reader to know from the start that she was making a very bad choice. So Seth is rude and creepy and horrible from the second he enters the scene. It's a lot like a scary movie. We're sitting there watching and saying silently to the character on the screen, "Don't go in there. No, don't open that door. Don't go into that dark house." But they go in anyway... that makes for a pretty good story.
Miss E.
Teens
Being the new kid in town is a way of life for Bets, but moving to California in 1967 is different. Her father leaves for the war in Vietnam, her history teacher gives an assignment that has the whole school searching for clues, and the town’s most mysterious resident shares a secret with Bets that has been hidden away for decades. When a peaceful protest spins out of control, Bets is forced to reconsider how she feels about the war her father is fighting and her own role in events taking place much closer to home.
Book Bubbles from Miss E.
A New Normal
We keep hearing about a new normal. Flipping through Miss E. today, this passage stood out to me as a new normal for Bet's character. She is dealing with a lot of changes in her life - new town, new home, new friends, father leaving for Vietnam. School is often the most stable place for some kids - same teacher, same classroom, same desk. So a teacher totally redecorating a classroom and giving an assignment that doesn't involve solving math problems or writing essays can feel like a big deal. But pretty quickly, those 100 photos on her teacher's wall become a normal part of her day. And at times, one of those photos is all that Bets can think about.
Making Characters Stronger
We're all going through a lot right now. Whether we're worried about a loved one who is sick, doing our best to keep our families safe and healthy, or just concerned about our world in general, we have a lot on our minds. Hopefully in the end, what we're going through will make us stronger. We'll learn better ways to stay healthy, we'll refocus our priorities, and we'll remember how strong we are next time adversity comes along. As much as we’d like our own lives to be free of stress and problems, a character’s struggle makes for a good story. With that in mind, I looked for a scene in Miss E. that made a character stronger. The anti-war protest at City Hall turns into a frightening experience for Bets, but in the end she turns a struggle into motivation and direction, she forms a friendship around a shared experience, and most importantly, she finds strength in herself.
Pulling Together in a Time of Crisis
This morning I sent out an email to our neighborhood suggesting we order takeout from a local restaurant that's struggling due to coronavirus closures. The restaurant owner offered to make a group delivery and suggested we choose a central location to meet and pickup our food. Neighbors who had been in their houses all week emerged and gathered, sharing conversation, thankful for community during a strange time. For some reason, that scene reminded me of this chapter in Miss E. Bet's is pulling together classmates, uniting them around a common cause, and getting them to do something that becomes more meaningful because of the numbers involved. Stay safe, stay healthy, stay connected!
Standing Up and Speaking Out
In 1990, with US soldiers fighting in the Gulf War, I was driving around my hometown in a red 1977 VW bug with a hand-lettered "NO WAR" sign in the back window. The teenager in me had figured it all out - we shouldn't be fighting a war to protect oil interests in the Middle East. This scene from Miss E. is near and dear to my heart. The NO WAR sign is on a notebook instead of a Volkswagen, but the high school gym I picture is the one I attended, and Bets's sentiments are my own. Fast forward thirty years, and my daughter now skips school, hops on the subway to Washington DC, and joins in protests against gun violence and climate change. We all have issues that are important to us, and thankfully we're able to stand up, speak out, and let others know how we feel.
Emergency Landing
Flying scenes in Miss E. are based mostly on my memories of flying with my father in his small single-engine airplane. Take-offs, landings, and the chance to put my hands on the controls all helped feed my imagination while writing. Other than the time we flew through the swirling air left behind by a jet airliner, I don't have any flying stories as frightening as what Bets experiences. But I do remember listening aghast whenever my father told the story of running out of gas while flying over the wilderness in Canada. The knob to switch between the two gas tanks in the wings was jammed. He told my brother to keep the plane level while he wrestled with the unmoving knob. As he tells it, his next step would have been to pick out two tall trees to fly between in order to knock off the wings and leave the flammable gas behind before crash landing. With just seconds to spare, my father somehow got the knob to move and the engine sputtered back to life. Safely back at an airport, a mechanic looked at the plane and was dumbfounded that my father was able to turn the frozen knob with his bare hands - it took a vice grips and all the mechanic's strength to move it.
Creating a Character
Looking back on my original ideas for the main character in Miss E. - a character who grew and evolved as I wrote each page, this chapter stands out. In many of the pages leading up to this scene, Bets is just along for the ride - following her parents when they move to a new town, waiting for letters from her father to arrive from Vietnam, and navigating new classes and friendships in high school. But in this chapter, Bets acts - and reacts! This chapter hints at the person Bets will become, and in my mind is the first sign that Bets won't just sit by while events happen around her, but instead will be moved to stand up for herself and what she believes in.
Dark
All of Miss E.’s chapters have short, one or two word titles. I enjoyed the challenge of finding just the right word, to both hint at what was to come and give meaning to it. Titling this chapter “Dark” was an easy decision. Symbolically, Bets is in the dark. She’s unsure of herself, unsure of things she’d assumed were simple, and right, and true. She’s doubting herself, embarrassed at her childish view of things, and still sifting through new feelings. Then there’s the darkness of what she experienced earlier that day. She’s still wearing clothes streaked and soaked with blood. And literally, Bets is in the dark. There’s comfort, I think, in riding along in that bubble, the world outside the windows is gone in the darkness, and all that’s left is what’s on the inside. That’s the space that Bets wants in this chapter, a place that only she is in, alone with her thoughts. She dreads the approaching teacher, struggles through the conversation that he brings, and then turns back to the window. And the dark.
Music in Miss E.
Like most high school students, music is important for Bets and her friends. Their teacher has other reasons for taking the class on a field trip to San Francisco, but for Bets in 1967, the trip is all about the chance to catch a glimpse of some of her favorite singers. They drive right through the Haight Ashbury neighborhood, where people like Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, and Jerry Garcia were not only performing, they were living and hanging out. Music was an important part of writing Miss E. as well. When I found myself humming the melody to "San Francisco" or quietly singing the words to "Long Time Gone," I knew it was time to write! Working with a story that takes place in San Francisco of the 60's, it was the perfect way to put myself in that time and place. And my earbuds were in my ears before my fingers ever touched the keyboard, playing a selection of music that Bets and her friends would certainly enjoy.
Ending Up in the Spotlight
Ending up in the spotlight is a theme that pops up throughout Miss E. Like many high school students, Bets would rather make it through her days at school without attracting too much attention to herself. Early on in the book, she's glad her time in the spotlight doesn't last very long, but as her character evolves, Bets eventually turns the spotlight on herself and takes advantage of the attention she gets to start shaking things up in her small town.
Research Then and Now
As a former English teacher who always tried to find creative ways to teach research skills, I enjoyed imagining Mr. Flynn's students working on his assignment. And in this age of Google and smart phones and information at our fingertips, it was fun to consider how their research methods in 1967 would be different from ours today. Bets and her friends head to the bibliography section of the library and sift through their parents' old magazines. We might have flashier research methods today, but Mr. Flynn's assignment remains just as challenging - identifying someone by only their picture, and somehow summarizing their importance in only twenty words. One teacher remarked after reading this chapter, "I'm totally stealing this assignment and doing it with my class!"
Climbing In
Bets discovers a lot about herself through her friendship with Miss E. She finds opinions she didn't know she had and learns to consider different sides of issues that she thought were black and white. But in this chapter, Bets gets an entirely new prescriptive - literally - by putting her trust in Miss E. and taking to the air.
The Best Sort of Teacher
I think everyone has a favorite teacher who they will always remember. That one teacher who turns a boring subject into something interesting and makes you wonder what's going to happen in class each day. The sort of teacher who makes you think and who often leaves you with more questions than you had before you came to class. For Bets, Mr. Flynn is that teacher. He answers questions with more questions and challenges his students to find their own answers while they learn something about themselves in the process. Most important, he shares who he is with his students. From his anti-war poster to his raised peace sign, Mr. Flynn's students know him, not just as a teacher, but as a person. I secretly hope I was just a little bit like Mr. Flynn when I was a teacher.
Solving a Puzzle
As Bets settles into her new home, Miss E. is a puzzle for her to solve. Who is she? Where did she come from? Why is she so interested in Bets? Once Bets discovers the answers, she realizes the questions she had about Miss E. don't really matter. The important questions - the ones she really needs answers to - are the questions she has about herself.
Stepping Back in Time
Miss E's red pickup truck finds its way into many scenes. This is it's first appearance and Bets' first encounter with Miss E. The town and Miss E. exist at a distance from each other, not talking or interacting. In writing this scene, I wanted Bets to be drawn in from the start, so that while her friends choose to ignore or gossip about Miss E, Bets immediately feels a connection to this strange old woman.
Skipping Ahead to the Good Parts
Most of Miss E. was written sequentially, one chapter after another. Sometimes my motivation for writing a chapter was to find out what happened next, and I was often pleasantly surprised by the turns the story took and the events that unfolded themselves around the characters. But this excerpt comes from a chapter that I skipped ahead to write. I had replayed it many times in my mind, I knew is was an essential part of Bets' story, and I was excited to write it. But I admit, I also used it as a way to take a break from a section I was struggling with. Once it was written, it became a goal to work toward, and each time a wrote I could feel the story winding its way closer to Bets standing on the steps of City Hall, watching things catch fire.
What I (Don't) Know
People say, "Write what you know." I'm not sure how that applies to me writing about a teen-age girl growing up in a military family in California during the 1960's. I was born in 1972, I've always lived on the east coast, and my father was a carpenter, not a soldier. While I might think that having a daughter would give me some insight into the teen-age mind, she would likely argue that I'm hopelessly clueless. But I had fun getting to know Bets as I wrote her story, and whether you're a parent or child, daughter or father, this scene is universal. We can all understand what it feels like to say goodbye.
Starting With an Idea
This is the first page of Miss E. so it seems like a good place to remember my first ideas for this book. Driving home on a Friday afternoon, looking forward to the weekend, letting my mind wander, and an idea drifted into my head. I turned off the radio, afraid of losing the thought! A young girl moves to a new place and meets an extraordinary person, someone no one in her small town seems to know much about. And who that woman is... well, the idea gave me goosebumps, and I nearly had to pull over to the side of the road. I didn't start writing that day, but the idea stuck with me, and over the next month my thoughts kept coming back to the girl, the small town, and the mysterious woman,.
