Thankfully, when I hit college I was able to embrace my geeky-girl self and feasted on graphic novels (for college credit!!), SciFi movies and long discussions questioning why anyone would make Highlander 2.  For some reason, it didn’t matter that other people didn’t think it was cool anymore. And back in the 90s, geek was not chic. ComiCon was still about comic books, and not a pop-culture mecca.  But, hey, I also wore flannel. Youthful transgressions, right?

Over adulthood I’ve developed a love of all things science-fantastic. My husband and I see most of the big geek fest movies (we even went to see the Star Trek: TNG movies…in the theater). We’re unrepentant (if newly converted) Browncoats. We watch Torchwood and plan to stop by Cardiff when we visit the UK in a few years. Our top bucket list item? San Diego ComiCon — oh the splendor and the wonder!

Now I’m raising a pair of geeks. My nine-year-old daughter–who’s really quite girly–was given her choice of musicals to watch on Girls’ Night. She picked Captain America. That was a proud parenting moment. My son watches shows like  Mythbusters, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and Iron Man. As a family we enjoy staying in to play Rock Band together more than going out. And I love it!  But I still wonder if my kids’ geek-proud attitude will carry into high school, or if they’ll put it in a box like I did. I hope not, but if they do, I’ll understand…and try not to embarrass them (too much) when I tell their friends I’m planning on hitting the midnight showing of Avengers 2.

How about you? Any guilty geeky pleasures you like to indulge in? Or were you like me, and had to hide a secret identity during high school (or at work, for that matter!)?

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m devising a plan that will enable me to see Star Trek: Into Darkness sometime this weekend. Priorities, people! Priorities.

That had me FREAKING OUT, I tell you.

Pshaw, you say…a five-minute talk? That’s not so bad.

Normally, I’d agree. Piece of cake, bread! I don’t mind public speaking, especially in a business setting when I’m armed with three PowerPoint slides and the truth. But this time, the talk was a little different. And much scarier.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever heard of TED™ Talks or TEDx™ ? Funny enough, I’d only heard about them in passing, and volunteered to do a similar style of talk without knowing what I was getting into. Once I found out that it would take at least four hours of prep and rehearsal to deliver my five-minute “talk,” and that I had to share something deeply personal to make my point, I seriously thought about leaving the country.

This sounds kind of ironic, doesn’t it? I write books. I can tell stories. It’s just…they asked me to talk about my writing journey, at work.

People in my department know I write, but it’s not something I broadcast or talk about much outside my immediate team. I like to keep those parts of my life separate from each other. But now I was going to have to tell an extended audience how one night several years ago, after an extremely difficult few months at a previous employer (in which I had to lay off 20% of a certain workforce), I went home, opened my laptop and words started pouring out of me like blood and tears. And because this would be a work presentation, I had to relate this life-changing moment back to something that pertained to the corporate environment.

Ultimately, I decided to talk about how creativity fuels innovation and how the analytical nature of school and work stifles that creativity, which in turn suppresses innovation in the workplace.  It was a fascinating subject to explore…but I still had the problem of speaking about something that was deeply meaningful and personal to a room full of professional colleagues.

I went about it two ways. First — with humor. I showed off my favorite T-shirt (it reads: “Writer’s Block: When your imaginary friends won’t talk to you). After that, I opened up the scab and talked about what drove the stories that had been hanging around inside my head for years onto the page. I let myself be a little vulnerable in front of the audience. Once I put this part of my life out there, the rest of the talk was easier. Especially when I saw nods and encouraging faces in the crowd.

In the end, ten people presented that day. All of us agreed it was one of the hardest presentations we’d ever had to deliver. We also agreed it was one of the most rewarding. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive and I lost track of how many people asked about my “other life” afterwards.  So what if my knees shook for an hour after I spoke, or if I went to bed exhausted–all for a mere five minute presentation?

I’d told a good story, and the audience heard me.

But, I’ve had another dream: seeing some of my books traditionally published. Pursuit of this dream began in 2008 and there have been a ton of highs and lows associated with the process. But I had hope that one day, the dream would come true.

Which is why I’m absolutely thrilled to share that my contemporary YA, SIDELINED, is going to be published by Entangled Publishing later in 2013!!! You can find out more about the story here.

UPDATE: Here’s the Publisher’s Marketplace announcement!

Digital: Young Adult
Kendra Highley’s contemporary YA debut SIDELINED, in which an eighteen-year-old high school basketball sensation’s dream of playing at the collegiate level is shattered when she breaks her leg at the state tournament, spiraling her into a world of prescription drug addiction that jeopardizes her new relationship with her longtime crush, her crumbling family, and her life, to Heather Howland at Entangled digiTeen, in a nice deal, for publication Summer 2013 (World).

SIDELINED is truly the book of my heart. Every author has one: the book that kept you up at night, that raked your soul and held on to you even after you wrote “the end.” I loved every moment I spent with this manuscript. So, I’m humbled that this is the novel Entangled has agreed to publish. I’m eager to work with Heather Howland and the rest of the amazing staff at Entangled as we bring Genna’s story into the world.

Can you tell I’m totally gobsmacked right now? Wow. There are a ton of people to thank, so please bear with me a minute:

The editorial staff at Entangled, especially Heather and Sue, for taking a chance on Genna and me.

My cousin, Kary Rader, for all her support as a fellow writer, for her prayers, and for asking haveyousubmittedSIDELINEDalreadyorwhat?!!!

My amazing critique partners/beta readers: J.R. Hochman, Lindsay Buroker, Jeanne Haskin, Jenny Martin, Teresa Frohock and Ladonna Watkins. A special thank you goes to Ladonna for validating the emotional journey of an athlete.

Two of my oldest friends from middle/high school, both of whom gave me invaluable help and inside information about the sport of women’s basketball, the types of injuries you can sustain from such a high-impact activity and how you might rehab one of those injuries: Andrea Guizec and Robin Ellis Wright.

My family, especially my husband Ryan, who gave me the gift of time and encouragement which enabled me to write.

And finally, one of my writing idols, Laurie Halse Anderson, who I met in the summer of 2011 right about the time I started writing this manuscript. She gave me a piece of advice I held onto while writing SIDELINED:

I can’t wait to see what the finished product looks like, and to hear what y’all think of the story. It’s going to be a busy eighteen months, finishing off the Matt Archer series, debuting SIDELINED and starting a few other new projects. I get a little dizzy thinking about it, but what a rush!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go breathe into a paper bag for a while.

I was watching this pretty cool show with my husband last night called What Is That? on the Science Discovery Channel. Basically, it’s a show full of what I call “visual riddles” in which they display objects in extreme close-up and you have to guess what the object is. They ranged from cool (a football) to disgusting (the digestive tract O.O). It’s funny how little context you have for an object, though, when you are stuck in an extreme close-up. The football was exceptionally hard — the divots in the leather, the edge of the lace, the points at the end. I’ve thrown many a football, and love watching the sport, but I just could not figure out what it was until the very end when the camera zoomed out.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that writing a novel can be like that. You are so immersed in the extreme close-up with your characters, in the moment with them, that sometimes you miss the macro story for the small moves. The devil is in the details, or so the saying goes, and the sign of exceptional writing is in the details. But there’s a danger, too. I’ve gotten lost in there, and I’ve beta-read novels by fellow writers who did as well. Every so often, you have to pull yourself out of the scene, the moment, and take a hard look at how the story is moving as a whole. I wrote about my plotting issues last week: a classic case of getting lost in the details. To fix it, I had to crack the plot open like an egg, delete some darlings and move certain scenes to the next book. Then I had to add new scenes that pushed the story in the right direction.

This “extreme close-up” issue can impact more than writing though. You see it in movies sometimes, or long-running, intricate TV shows caught in their own mythology.

You see it in life, too. Even been so caught up in a moment that you failed to see the impending train derailment? Yeah, me too.

I guess what I’m saying is that it’s healthy to take a step back every so often and assess the big picture, whether that’s your life or your manuscript — or both! Close-ups are very helpful and meaningful, but not at the expense of the larger story.

How about you? Ever get caught in an “extreme close-up” moment?

“Gasp!” you say. “How novel.  Heh, get it?”

Yes, quite well, thank you.

Typically I don’t talk about my writing for fear my blog readers will die of boredom, but after spending the better part of a month (and an intense two hours last evening) wrestling with the plot for my third Matt Archer book, it’s on my mind and spilling out for the world to see.

When you write a contemporary YA, everyone expects the characters to “feel their feels,” so you have some leeway in exploring their lives in small moves. But, when you write YA action/adventure, the expectation is “here a monster, there a monster, everywhere, kill a monster.”  True…but I wanted to write a paranormal series that kept my characters real, raw and flawed. To allow relationships to be as important as the hunt. Only time (and reviews) will tell me if I’ve been successful, but that’s why I’ve been struggling with MA3. There’s so much to do to get ready for the big finish (and at this rate, I’ll either have a really long book 4, or have to split it into two books, although I kind of hate myself for even thinking it…), that when this book cried out to be about Matt’s journey as a, dare I say it, human being, I ignored him.

And the book suffered a major identity crisis as a result.

So now, having written what my husband so eloquently called “a really good book without a central plot” I had to take a big step back and look at it with fresh eyes. Armed with index cards, Sharpies and Save the Cat, I cranked out the storyline, looking for my lost themes. It was hard…and a big ego bust when I figured out the plot had been staring me in the face. In fact, Matt himself told me exactly what the book was about in the first two paragraphs of the book — and reinforced it in the second chapter. Wow.

So now I start rewriting. It’s not going to take a bulldozer and guys in hardhats to fix the plot, but it will take some restructuring and a new ending. And that’s okay. At least now I know, right? And one of my goals is to getting better about outlining, especially for Matt 4 (or Matt 4 and 5…oh, man ::cries::), to make sure all those little threads come together in a gnarly, unexpected, beautiful bow.

While it might feel like I’m the only author who’s ever had this happen, I imagine I’m not. Anybody else run into a muddled/hiding plot issue? What did you do to resolve it?  I’d love to hear your suggestions.