Tea Time: My Heart and Other Black Holes

**Warning: Spoilers May Abound**

My Heart and Other Black Holes, Jasmine Warga

Sixteen-year-old physics nerd Aysel is obsessed with plotting her own death. With a mother who can barely look at her without wincing, classmates who whisper behind her back, and a father whose violent crime rocked her small town, Aysel is ready to turn her potential energy into nothingness.

There’s only one problem: she’s not sure she has the courage to do it alone. But once she discovers a website with a section called Suicide Partners, Aysel’s convinced she’s found her solution: a teen boy with the username FrozenRobot (aka Roman) who’s haunted by a family tragedy is looking for a partner.

Even though Aysel and Roman have nothing in common, they slowly start to fill in each other’s broken lives. But as their suicide pact becomes more concrete, Aysel begins to question whether she really wants to go through with it. Ultimately, she must choose between wanting to die or trying to convince Roman to live so they can discover the potential of their energy together. Except that Roman may not be so easy to convince.(source:goodreads)

Narrative-Told from the first-person POV of Aysel, MY HEART AND OTHER BLACK HOLES is a smoothly-told story about Aysel's attempts - first - to plan her own suicide, and - second - to beat her depression. The voice is  incredibly conversational, which is what I think made it so easy to read, and the additions of Aysel's passion for physics in the form of metaphors gave it its own flair, a series of details that are easy to latch onto and helpful to really understand Aysel's perspective on the events of the novel.

★★★★★

Plot-Aysel wants to commit suicide because she's terrified of becoming her father; she manages to find a suicide partner who lives in a town fifteen minutes away because she's certain that if she had a partner, maybe she'd actually go through with it. Enter Roman/FrozenRobot.

Aysel's journey through what was supposed to be her final month of life is a long one; while she tries to convince herself that she's going to go through with the suicide pact she made with Roman, she also starts finding reasons to live. She finds her strength through time spent with Roman: learning about him and his past and his reasons to kill himself, and the interesting development was that as much as Roman started to doubt Aysel's commitment to their pact, his growing feelings for her inspire him to try to spare her, even as he accuses her of flaking from the very beginning of their relationship.

MY HEART is about learning to live even while planning to die; the stasis of relationships is disproven as Aysel's perception changes, and it's this change in perception that ultimately drives the novel. Even if the pacing is uneven and bumpy at times, Aysel's story is largely told through a lens that's unafraid to dive into an analysis of depression (Aysel eventually calling it the "black slug"); even more, it's told through a lens that paints an image of the strength it takes to fight that depression.

★★★★☆

Characters-Aysel is a girl struggling to overcome the shadow of her father's violent deed; Roman is a boy cracking under the guilt he feels over his sister's death. Both characters are struggling, and while one of them has fully committed to the idea of committing suicide, the other slowly starts to change their perception and think that maybe there is a way to live with their pain, even if it never goes away, and a large part of this new perception begins with the idea that it's okay to let others in, and to give other people a place in your life to help or at least be a hopeful presence.

It's largely this idea that disappointed me. Aysel has a step-father who's mentioned, but who we never see; her half-sister is mentioned numerous times but only gets a few scenes of page-time; her half-brother is mentioned, but only gets a few scenes; even her mother doesn't get a lot of page-time. Aysel's assigned a group project, and her partner is a boy who we only see maybe two or three times out of the whole book.

What disappointed me was the fact that the lack of physical presence for these characters was extremely glaring. I wanted so much more, to really see how their influence on Aysel - even if their relationship is one-sided or rocky - really affected her. I simply felt like they were stretched too thin, and thus fell into sort of contrived or stereotyped roles, even though I know there's a lot more to them than I was able to see. Their lack of flesh stalled my understanding of Aysel's development as a character. Which made me really sad, even if I loved Aysel and her character to death.

★★★☆☆

Final Answer: 4 / 5 stars

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MY HEART AND OTHER BLACK HOLES @jasminewarga is fearless. Read @Rae_Slater's review (Click to Tweet)

Things My Characters Learned (the Hard Way) #6

That's right. Every Friday, I'm going to share with ya'll a lesson my characters have learned sometime earlier that week while I wrote their story. Because we all know that sometimes the best lessons are ones learned in a more painful way than not (usually). It also serves to act as a way to share vague plot devices: what are the many ways you can get your characters into trouble? Read on to find out.

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Project: UNTITLED (Hansel + Gretel retelling)

Genre: Short Story

Lesson Learned: Always be sure of your way, or at least make sure the person in charge is sure of their way. And if you still don't trust their sense of direction, take some initiative and bring something to mark down your path? Or at least a map? Because getting lost is a sure-fire way of getting into sticky situations.

Really, you never know who you might run into when you can't find your way home. Thieves, beggars, a witch or two...there's troublemakers of all kind in unfamiliar territory.

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Do you write? Can your characters relate? Have your characters learned an important life lesson this week? Leave me a note in the comments! 

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TMCL: looking to get your characters into trouble? You never know who they'll run into when lost... (Click to Tweet)

Navigating the Twitter-sphere: Getting Started

So, random note: I registered for Fall 2015 classes this morning. My last semester at college. It's so weird and nostalgic and freaking wow. Which is probably why I figured I'd talk about Twitter, since I get nostalgic thinking about when I started using it (and i can easily compare that feeling to when I started college, so, see? Connection!).

Anyway, I know. Posts about how awesome Twitter is for writers and readers have been done over and over again. But I'm going to do another one because Twitter's just awesome, only I'm going to address a different thing about Twitter: getting started.

Once upon a time when Rae was but a lowly college freshman, she wanted to see what the big deal about Twitter was. She made an account in October 2012. Then she didn't use it for a year and a half. Come April/May 2014, she said, "I'll give Twitter one more chance."

I've kind of been hooked ever since.

For me, the most intimidating thing about Twitter was the sheer volume of tweets, and the large number of intelligent people sending those tweets. Where do you begin, and who's the best people to follow? And how do you actually find those awesome and intelligent people? Here's some steps to getting started on Twitter as a reader/writer (or both):

• Add a bio on your profile. It's just kind of nice to let people know that you're not a robot. Say a little something about yourself! You'll be surprised how that can help you make new acquaintances.
• Add a picture to your profile. Again, people like to know that there's a face or a person of some sort behind the computer screen.
• If you have a blog or a website, add it. I don't know about others, but I am a notorious link-clicker. I look at any websites people have on their profiles before even deciding to follow them, just to see who they are and/or the kinds of projects they're working on (yeah, I'm nosy like that).
• Follow your favorite authors. No-brainer, right? Just follow your favorite authors. So many of them are so quirky and fabulous. They talk about their books, their writing, their lives. Some of my personal favorite author-tweets come from Maggie Stiefvater, Lauren DeStefano, and Ksenia Anske. Of course, that's an extremely shortened list. Moral of this point: follow your favorite authors. You won't regret it.
• Follow bloggers. There's a bunch of awesome blogs on writing; there's even more awesome book blogs. Coming from a writer's perspective, this has been invaluable because bloggers are a great way to find out new things: writing tips and processes, new books, author interviews, giveaways, etc. Basically: it's an awesome way to find different perspectives on basically anything. Of course, finding a place to start with bloggers is a little more complicated than simply looking up your favorite authors, so I'll give you a heads-up: every writer should follow Ava Jae's blog, Writability. Ava's got great insight to the writing world, both hints and tips of the craft, maneuvering social media, maneuvering editing and publishing. Start there. I also recommend Kristen Kieffer, who runs She's Novel, and Christine Frazier, from Better Novel Project. Also take a look at the right side of my screen, under "Notable Blogs" - that's a short list of some of my favorite writing blogs, in case you need a place to start. Awesome book bloggers that I like checking in on include Bookish Broads and Book Nerd Reviews; again, though, there's far too many of either of these blog types to list out all of them. Explore, and see what happens!
• Follow publishers, agents, editors, etc. Here's something awesome: the kind of general advice you can find from people actually working in publishing right now (and publishing the books that you read) is kind of awesome. Not only can you get updates on the books that you enjoy, but if you're interested in delving deeper into the writing world as a career (writing, editing, agenting, etc.), you'll find fantastic insight and advice from the people who are currently there. Some agents will tweet about what's currently on their MSWL; editors will tweet about some of the most common mistakes they find in manuscripts. If you need a place to start, try agencies: P.S. Literary and New Leaf Literary are two of my favorites to check in on, and from there you can research the individual agents who might also have a Twitter account where they talk about bookish things.

If that all looks a bit daunting...well, I'm not going to lie to you: I was daunted. I think what you'll find, though, is that once you have a place to start, you'll see all of the threads that reach out to different corners of the reading/writing world. What you'll find is that it's actually incredibly easy to find people you can connect with on some level - personal or professional. If you're active, you'll even find like-minded people in the same place in your career that you are (for example: there's a handful of other blogger/writers out there that I've connected with and that will never be able to get rid of me, no matter how hard they try. I'm like a leech, only in a non-weird and non-blood-sucking way).

So there's my extremely simplified version of how to get started on Twitter. Have any questions? Recommendations? Other comments? Ya'll know the drill by now; leave me your thoughts on how you got started navigating on Twitter!

**Note: I can talk about general Twitter etiquette at a later date; if I put it in this post, then I'd be writing a miniature novel, and nobody wants that.**

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Twitter can make your head spin. Blogger @Rae_Slater talks a few general tips on getting started for readers/writers (Click to Tweet)

Navigating the Twitter-sphere: a few tips for readers/writers who want to make the most of Twitter (Click to Tweet)