L.E. DeLano's Blog, page 13

Writing has changed my life in oh-so-many ways. When I was young, it was an escape. I grew up in a tiny Southwest town. Other than church, I wasn’t allowed much of a social life, so writing became a way to travel to exciting places and speak out about all kinds of issues and interact with people I didn’t have access to in real life.

After high school, I secured my own financial aid and headed off to college where I became (gasp!) a Theatre major. Writing was all about creativity and expression – I journaled, I wrote scenes and plays, and I read freely and voraciously. After college, writing faded into the background as life took over, ending up as a dozen or more partially finished novels that I was going to finish “someday.” I became a parent, then a special needs parent, then a single parent all in the span of a few years. Writing became therapy, and I ended up leveraging that into badly needed income as a blogger and freelancer.

Eventually, I took a good hard look at those half-finished book projects and decided to find some discipline and get writing until something was done. I queried my first YA book in 2014 (TRAVELER), entered it in a YA contest in 2015, and ended up winning a two book contract with Macmillan! TRAVELER was a Keystone State Reading Association Secondary Book Awards Finalist in my home state of Pennsylvania. It’s sequel, DREAMER was one month from release when the world went kaplooey. While visiting family out of state, I ended up in the hospital for a month and lost the use of the left side of my body. Once again, writing became therapy, making my stumbling fingers type and engaging my brain to make those connections. A story came out on the other side of all of that.

BLUE was a labor of love, and a story about resilience and perspective as you work your way through a rough situation – something I can speak to with great authority. Blue makes a journey out of her own bubble of personal misery (with both heart-wrenching and hilarious turns) by making connections and realizing everybody has a story and you don’t know more than a few pages of it.

Thanks for letting me share my story – and Blue’s – with you.

That’s right! Don’t miss your chance to win one of twenty Kindle copies of BLUE – recently named a 2021 NYC Big Book Awards Distinguished Favorite in Young Adult Fiction! Enter here:

Giveaway ends November 15, 2021.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

It’s official! BLUE has been named a 2021 NYC Big Book Award Distinguished Favorite in Young Adult Fiction. Read the full list here.

The competition received hundreds of entries worldwide from traditionally and independently published authors, and from large and small publishing houses. As you can probably guess, I am absolutely over the moon about this. Somebody liked my complicated, layered, quirky little book! Many thanks to the NYC Big Book Awards for this honor.

BLUE is finally out – all except the audiobook, unfortunately.

We had a delay in production (thanks COVID!) and hope to have it out within the next few weeks. I’ll make an announcement when it’s available. In the meantime, you can snatch it up in paperback or eBook. Buy Links Here.

I’m so glad to share my angry, miserable, hopeful and hilarious story with the world. Be sure and let me know if you guess the twist at the end!

It’s Pub Day Eve for BLUE! I’ve been here twice before in YA (and quite a few more times in other genres), but this one means a hell of a lot to me. You see, BLUE almost never was because I quite nearly ceased to be. Five weeks before DREAMER released in 2018, I was battling for my life against a devastating brain bleed in a hospital room far from home.

I survived obviously, but lost the use of the left side of my body. As a single mom with full custody of her two kids (one of whom is special needs), who works full-time and doesn’t have family around her for a thousand miles, it was terrifying. For a writer who typed 94 words per minute and was used to words flowing effortlessly from her brain through her fingers, it was devastating.

I had a great deal of brain fog, mostly from the large levels of muscle relaxers needed to counter the extreme muscle spasticity that cramped and tightened my left arm and leg. My left hand was a useless claw. I remember taking an online typing test to see how much functionality I’d lost, and I could type eleven words a minute with an 81% error rate. Voice-to-text software was frustrating early on, as I had some “mushy speech” and it took a while to get my mouth working properly again. My optic nerve got overworked easily, giving me headaches and blurred vision if I stared at a screen too long. Fatigue was constant and often overpowering.

It was a long, hard climb to get back to really living my life as well as writing again, and I really hadn’t planned for this complex contemporary YA story that swooped in out of nowhere and ate my brain to become my next book. I guess sometimes life tosses you a curve ball and you swing for it and run like hell.

Tomorrow BLUE makes its way to bookstore shelves, and I’m intensely proud of that. This one isn’t about sales figures, or coveted author invitations, or pictures of my book in pretty tableaus on Instagram. This book, from the words in its pages to the unspoken words of the author fighting to get those words on the pages, is about resilience.

And just like Blue Mancini, I will forever believe in the power of if.

In this excerpt, Blue and Maya are in their first afterschool detention with the school counselor, Mrs. Ramsey, and it’s not going smoothly. Blue is determined to get through this and avoid confrontation, but she has no idea what kind of pressure Maya has being a scholarship student at a wealthy, white private school.

“Nobody ever treats her or her family like they don’t belong.” Maya grumbles.

“So give her an example,” Mrs. Ramsey encourages. “When did you have to deal with someone treating you badly?”

“I’ve been called names. People have asked me if we live with all my grandparents and aunts and cousins in the same house. One of the teachers tried to give me a big bag of her daughter’s clothes. She told me she knew I’d appreciate nice things.”

“How about another time?” Mrs. Ramsey asks. “It doesn’t have to be at school.”

Maya does not want to talk about this anymore. She just shrugs, twirling a pencil in her fingers, back and forth.

“Last week,” she finally says. “At work.”

“In your family’s coffee shop?”

Maya nods, still twirling the pencil. Her eyes tighten with the memory. “I was on my break, sitting at one of the tables. It was my Tia’s birthday so I called her and we were talking in Spanish. Some lady came in and she tells me to speak English because I’m in America. I started to say something but my mom gave me this look like she’d kill me if I did, so I just went outside to finish talking. My mom told me after to just ignore that stuff because we need every customer. Like we have to put up with that shit for her five-dollar latte.” She tosses the pencil down, then picks it back up and twirls some more. “Stuff like that.”

Mrs. Ramsey leans forward. “So your mother was afraid to let you defend yourself?”

Maya shrugs. “She’s always up in my face reminding me I have to always be better, do better, prove I’m as good as the rest of you.” She sucks in a breath, pauses for a moment. Her voice gets softer. “My dad was different. He just let me be me.”

My throat feels tight, and my eyes fill up. I blink hard a few times. My mom is like that too. I think. But instead I say, “At least your dad was involved in your life.”

“And that’s supposed to make me grateful?” She snaps. “That I had a great dad while he was alive?”

Silence hangs between us and I feel her words like the sting of a slap.

“I’m saying I don’t have your kind of father.” I don’t know why this is coming out, but it is. It needs to come out. “I can count on one hand the number of family dinners I’ve had with my dad in the last year. He works all the time. He’s got a pretty high level position at his company, and that’s why we make lots of money. But it’s kind of useless if you barely know each other. It’s like we’re all roommates. Not like we’re family.”

“At least you have a chance to tell him that,” she says.

“I’ll have to email his assistant and see if I can get on his calendar,” I say bitterly. “And I’ll have to get my mother to stop giving orders long enough to let me get a word in.”

Maya just rolls her eyes, like I’m trying to make this a contest. It isn’t a contest. I can’t even begin to imagine what her life is like right now. My dad may be a distant figure, but he’s still my dad. I love him. I wouldn’t want to spend more time with him if I didn’t love him. And if he were gone tomorrow? A shaft of pain hits me in the chest at just the thought. That would be a hundred, a thousand times worse if it was reality.

I don’t have anything else to say. Nothing that would make a difference anyway. So I keep my mouth shut.

Find out more about Blue’s journey and Maya’s secrets when BLUE hits the shelves on Tuesday, October 26th!

In this scene, Blue receives a letter from her brother, Jack, who is currently serving a six- month sentence in a boot camp style program for his part in the accident that killed the father of her classmate, Maya. He asks Blue to come and visit him—something she hasn’t yet been able to make herself do.

I hold the letter in my hand for a moment, just staring at his familiar scrawl, not really reading the words. There’s an ache in my chest as my eyes begin to focus again and I can hear his voice clearly in my head as I read between the lines.

Eventually, everybody will get tired of talking about this and life will go back to normal for you. So at least one of us gets that.

Life will never go back to normal for any of us. My parents will always be the parents of that kid who killed a man and got off with a slap on the wrist. Sure, their friends would never be impolite enough to bring it up, but just like my friends, they’re all probably thinking it. My parents know that. They carry on like none of it ever happened, like if nobody talks about it, it’ll just go away. And I suppose it will to some degree. Eventually something juicier will happen to somebody else in their circle—an affair maybe, or a business going under. Their friends will all have something new to gossip about, but it’ll never be totally forgotten. Not by them and not by us.

A year and a half from now, I’ll be graduating and going away to college. If I’m lucky, I’ll pick a college nobody from my school is attending and maybe nobody there will know or even care that any of this happened to my brother. A logical part of my brain knows that even here at Audubon, the whole school can’t talk about this forever. It’s already starting to fade a bit on the edges. Not fast enough for me, of course, but it’s fading all the same.

But life will never go back to normal for Jack. He might sound like he’s making jokes and just keeping his head down and getting through this, and that his life will just continue in forward motion when he goes to college and he’s away from here. But he lived that night. He lived it firsthand. He felt his car swerve, heard the squeal of the tires, and watched in horror as the other car tumbled down the incline. He made the call to 911 on his cell phone, knowing full well that he might be over the limit when the EMTs and the cops arrived. He still made the call anyway.

And then he sat there by the car, watching as they used the Jaws of Life to pry the door apart and pull Maya’s father from the wreckage. Jack watched as they worked on her dad right there on the side of the road and continued to work on him as they loaded him into the ambulance.

I was with my brother at the hospital when the doctor came in and told us that Maya’s father had died. I had no idea he was her father at the time—none of us did. We didn’t even know his name. They told us the dead man had a wife and three kids. I watched Jack’s face as they told him that. I watched it crumple, watched as his hands came up, pressing hard into his eyes. Watched his shoulders shake.

Then my dad put a hand on Jack’s head, telling him softly that it was all going to be okay. They’d called the lawyer, and it was all going to be okay.

I was sitting on a chair next to the hospital bed—they were keeping Jack overnight for observation since he had a concussion. I reached across and put my hand on his leg, just to let him know I was there. I was there for him. He dropped his hands, closed his eyes, and then reached down, sliding his fingers over mine.

My mother put her arms around him and told him the important thing was he wasn’t hurt.

I remember thinking, No, the important thing is somebody’s dead. Were just grateful it wasn’t someone we love.

BLUE is out October 26th!

In this scene, Blue and her newly-acquired boyfriend, Devon, are working on a class project that requires them to select a book to preserve for posterity and write a presentation on it. Blue grabs a book from her MLM-loving mother’s bookshelf, and she and Devon brainstorm some talking points until it all takes a turn.

“Mindfulness Over Madness: Your Guide to Self-Realization Through Negation Release,” Devon reads. “This is your book?”

“It’s one of my mom’s. I had to grab something. Should be easy to talk about.”

His brow crinkles in surprise. “You don’t have a favorite book?”

“I have a few,” I say defensively. “I’ve been so busy with school and work. I haven’t read a lot lately.”

“There’s got to be at least one book you can think of,” he says.

I feel my cheeks go slightly red. “I like to read romance.” I drop my voice down so nobody hears me. “Not like, all the time–just as an escape.”

He reaches across and puts his hand over mine. “I don’t know why you’re embarrassed about that. Books are a great escape. You like to escape into love stories. That’s no less valid than escaping into a horror story or a sci-fi story, or a story about a seagull who wants to break the sound barrier before he poops out all the french fries he ate on the beach today.”

“I’m not going to talk about a romance story.”

He holds up his hands. “Just a thought. So tell me about Mindfulness over Madness. What makes it worth preserving after civilization falls?”

“It’s going to enable me to step forward confidently into my best life,” I say, with faux fervency. “And if I can empower women to walk a mile in my patterned leggings before embracing their inner boss-babe-radiant-skinned warrior, maybe we can all share a spirulina shake and change the world.”

He gives me an incredibly earnest look as he grabs his notebook and opens it. “I am intrigued by your premise, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter,” he says, placing his hand over his heart.

“This brave new world will be our downline. Write that down.” I tap his notebook with my pen, and then I notice the drawing on the open page. It’s a woman’s face—I think. But in some weird, very colorful pattern.

“That’s interesting. Is it for Graphic Arts?”

“Nope, just for fun,” he says. “It’s your face but you probably don’t recognize it with the pattern. I borrowed the idea from one of those pairs of leggings.”

“You gave me legging face?” I didn’t realize I said that so loud until Mrs. Linza’s head turns in our direction.

“Blue? Devon?” She strolls over as Devon casually flips the notebook page and starts writing notes. “How’s it coming along?” she asks.

“Good,” I lie. “Really good. I’m going to empower what’s left of our fallen civilization, and Devon is going to discuss the psychology of seagulls.”

She glances down at our books. “Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a favorite of mine,” she says to him. He gives me a smug look, riding high on her validation. Then her gaze moves over to my book.

“Looks like you’re interested in self-help,” she says. Her fingers reach out and rest lightly on my shoulder. “That’s a positive step for you, Blue.”

And just like that, my lousy mood that had started to improve goes right back to lousy again. Everybody in the class is looking at me because they were all expecting her to come down on us for goofing off. Instead, she makes it sound like I’m badly in need of my mother’s crappy empowerment book. I want to throw it at her.

“She didn’t mean anything by it,” Devon whispers after she moves away.

“Sure she did,” I grumble. “I’m the psycho sister of the guy who drives around killing people, haven’t you heard? I punch teachers and suppress minorities and I need all the help I can get.”

BLUE is out October 26th!

If you’re anywhere near Central Pennsylvania this weekend, don’t miss the Festival Of Books In The Alleghenies. This year’s festival will be held in Ebensburg, PA, and features dozens of authors – including yours truly. I’ll be on the mainstage at 10:45am reading an excerpt from BLUE. And don’t forget to stop by my table at tent #5 afterward and enter to win an advanced copy of BLUE.

It’s going to be a great day, with all kinds of fun for the kids, food trucks to gorge yourself on, and best of all, lots of books to buy!

The mission of the Festival of Books in the Alleghenies is to promote authors, celebrate reading, and build community spirit while supporting literacy programs. The Book Festival is held yearly, rotating between the communities of Bedford, Somerset, and Ebensburg, connecting people through the imagination of literary artists, and the innovation of storytelling. The festival will unite people who enjoy reading with those who enjoy writing while providing the spark for future authors and poets. The Book Festival will use monies raised to support community endeavors focusing on literacy, such as libraries, literacy councils, and schools.

Hope to see you there!

One of the great regrets of my writing career is that TRAVELER and DREAMER never got published in audio. That decision wasn’t up to me, of course, it was up to Macmillan Publishing. I was a debut author and audiobooks are frightfully expensive to produce, so a good many authors on my particular imprint got no audiobook.

I vowed to push for one with BLUE, and my wish came true. BLUE will be released in audio!

My narration will be done by the amazing Alison Maglaughlin, who has the absolutely perfect voice for Blue, and all her supporting characters. Even more than that, she gets this story – this multi-layered, sometimes heart-ripping, often hilarious story. Alison is an accomplished Audiobook narrator and podcaster, and working with her has been an outstanding experience.

So get ready for BLUE: the audiobook – coming October 26th!