Countdown to Breakout is a 23-day blog series about the three-year writing process for BREAKOUT, which earned starred reviews from both School Library Journal and Publishers Weekly. It’s about a small-town prison break and manhunt that change the way three kids see their neighbors and the place they call home. Why a 23-day series? Because this book was inspired by the 2015 Clinton Correctional Facility prison break that led to a 23-day manhunt in June of 2015.

Blue ribbons and point of view

If I’ve noticed anything in talking current events with people from around the country this past year, it’s that sometimes, two people can hear the same speech or read about the same incident and come away with completely different perspectives on what was said or what happened. That was an idea I knew I wanted to explore in BREAKOUT.

When our real-life Northern New York prison break manhunt was underway, people reacted in lots of different ways – with fear and anxiety, with shows of support for the searchers, and in some cases, with a new apprehension about anyone who seemed different. I paid attention to all of that and thought about how people from different backgrounds might view things like a blue ribbon tied on a tree as a show of support for law enforcement…

…or a request to deliver snacks and bottled water for police manning roadblocks.

How might those public shows of support be seen by a kid like Elidee, the sister of a prison inmate, who came from a city neighborhood where community relations with law enforcement were tense?

How might she see this sign, which I saw posted on a lot of social media pages around the time of the prison break?

This one was especially interesting to me, because in a sense, it divides the entire population of a community into three categories: prison inmates (referred to as “monsters”), law enforcement (the “we” of the quote), and “the weak” (everybody else). I understood why relatives of corrections officers would love the saying, especially at a time when their loved ones were facing criticism, even as they put their lives on the line in the manhunt. But I also wondered how those signs might feel to the relatives of prison inmates. I ended up using this as one of the documents that different characters talk about in the book.  I also included the top-secret “Operation Michigan,” which we’ll talk about tomorrow. Here’s your writing prompt for today:

Your assignment: Write for a few minutes, reflecting on the “monsters and the weak” quote.  You can write from your own perspective, or take on the voice of a corrections officer, prison inmate, inmate’s relative, or civilian.

Thanks for joining me on this part of the Breakout writing-process journey! If you’d like to read the other posts in this series once they’re all posted, you can find them here.  

Buy BREAKOUT now:

• IndieBound (find a local bookseller near you!)
• The Bookstore Plus, Lake Placid, NY
• Powells
• Barnes and Noble
• Amazon

 

Countdown to Breakout is a 23-day blog series about the three-year writing process for BREAKOUT, which earned starred reviews from both School Library Journal and Publishers Weekly. It’s about a small-town prison break and manhunt that change the way three kids see their neighbors and the place they call home. Why a 23-day series? Because this book was inspired by the 2015 Clinton Correctional Facility prison break that led to a 23-day manhunt in June of 2015. 

Making Room for Serendipity

I was on an airplane on my way home from the NCTE conference in 2015 when I met a stranger who ended up helping me reimagine my BREAKOUT rewrite.

I was sitting next to my writer pal Linda Urban, talking about how I wanted to start the book over, rewriting it as a collection of documents, and Linda was helping me brainstorm. When we first sat down, the woman on the other side of me was reading a book. But after a while, I noticed that she’d put it down and seemed to be listening, so I turned to let her know why her seat mates were blabbing on and on about school field days and news reports about police searchers.

She was a teacher, coming home from the conference, too. She was excited to hear that we were authors, talking about a novel-in-progress, and asked what it was about. I explained that it was about a prison break, inspired by the real life prison break at Clinton Correctional Facility in Northern New York, which was close to where I lived. When I named the prison, her eyes lit up with recognition, and I said, “Oh! You heard about this on the news?”

“Yes,” she said. “My brother is an inmate at that prison.”

My mouth dropped open. When I regained my composure enough to talk, I shared with her that my character Elidee’s brother was an inmate at the prison in Wolf Creek, too.

“Wow,” she said.

“I know,” I said. And then I took a deep breath and took a risk.

“Is there any way you might consider talking with me more about this? I’d love to have your perspective on this story.”

She nodded. “Yes, I think I’d like to do that.” She paused, and then said, “I feel like I was supposed to sit next to you today.”

My next question: “How long is your layover in Philadelphia?”

It was long enough that she had time for dinner, so we found a restaurant, ordered, and talked. She told me about her brother’s experiences and what it had been like to grow up with an older sibling who got in trouble with the law, how she’d felt pressure to be extra good to make things easier on her mother. I told her what I’d written so far, including the detail that Elidee and her mom had moved to Wolf Creek to be closer to her brother in the prison. She frowned a little. “Not sure I buy that unless she has another connection there and knows it’ll be okay. Does she know someone?”

She didn’t. But she could. What about a friend from home who’d moved there the year before? My new friend nodded. That would work, she said. And maybe give her a church community, too. That would help.

Eventually, we had to leave for our gates, but we kept in touch, and she offered to read the new version of BREAKOUT when it was ready. I still get chills when I think about how with all those flights home from NCTE, and all those seats on the plane, I ended up sitting next to her. I’m so grateful that she was open to talking with a stranger, to share her story. She provided a perspective I simply didn’t have.

Tomorrow, I’ll share more about my challenges with point of view and perspective in BREAKOUT.  Here’s today’s prompt:

Your assignment: Spend five minutes writing about a moment of serendipity in your life, as it relates to writing or something else.

Thanks for joining me on this part of the Breakout writing-process journey! If you’d like to read the other posts in this series once they’re all posted, you can find them here.  

Buy BREAKOUT now:

• IndieBound (find a local bookseller near you!)
• The Bookstore Plus, Lake Placid, NY
• Powells
• Barnes and Noble
• Amazon

 

Countdown to Breakout is a 23-day blog series about the three-year writing process for BREAKOUT, which earned starred reviews from both School Library Journal and Publishers Weekly. It’s about a small-town prison break and manhunt that change the way three kids see their neighbors and the place they call home. Why a 23-day series? Because this book was inspired by the 2015 Clinton Correctional Facility prison break that led to a 23-day manhunt in June of 2015. 

It takes a village…(of writer friends!) 

No matter what I’m working on, I depend on writer friends and critique partners to provide early feedback and ideas for how to make the project stronger. When I shared my early draft of BREAKOUT, written in first person from Nora’s point of view, one theme emerged over and over. People wanted to hear more from Elidee. She’s one of the three main characters — the one who’s just moved from the Bronx to Wolf Creek, where she’s one of two black kids at the whole middle school. Might I want to think about rewriting the book, not only from Nora’s point of view but from Elidee’s as well?

I thought about that, and the more I did, the more I realized that the different  perspectives different characters had on what was happening in this town were the most interesting part of the story. I wondered what it would be like to start over – to reimagine this not as a story told from one or two points of view but as a collection of documents reflecting many perspectives. I was traveling when I had this epiphany – I’d been attending the NCTE conference and was on the same flight home as my friend Linda Urban. We were supposed to be in different rows but managed to talk a nice lady into swapping places so we could sit together.

“So…” Linda said. “Do you want to talk about the book, or are you too wiped out from the conference.”

“I’m wiped out,” I said. “But I want to talk about it anyway.” I told her what I was thinking, that I might want to start the project over and write the story as a collection of documents.

The very best writer friends listen and ask questions that push you to think harder about your project. Linda is one of those friends.

“So is there a reason that these documents came to be collected together? Who collected them and why?” she asked. “Maybe there’s some story to it. Or maybe not. But I’m thinking of the book Where’d You Go, Bernadette? and how there’s a reason all those emails and notes are together. Were you thinking about that?”

I hadn’t been. But I was now. Linda helped me brainstorm what kinds of documents might be part of the story, with a focus on the kinds of communication that are part of the end of a school year, when this story takes place – morning announcements at school, field day plans, overdue library book notices.  Here’s what that airplane brainstorming looked like by the time we landed for our layover in Philadelphia.

An hour into this in-flight brainstorming session, I noticed that the woman sitting on the other side of me had stopped reading her book and seemed to be listening. She was a teacher who was also returning from the conference, I could tell, so it didn’t surprise me that she was curious about what we were working on. But when she and I started talking, I realized that she had more of a connection to the story than I could have imagined. We’ll talk about that – and how this serendipitous meeting helped shape the story –  tomorrow. Here’s today’s prompt:

Your assignment: Choose an article from this morning’s newspaper – a story about something that happened in the news. How might you rewrite that story through a series of different documents, all sharing different perspectives on what happened? Brainstorm a list of documents that you might include.

Thanks for joining me on this part of the Breakout writing-process journey! If you’d like to read the other posts in this series once they’re all posted, you can find them here.  

Buy BREAKOUT now:

• IndieBound (find a local bookseller near you!)
• The Bookstore Plus, Lake Placid, NY
• Powells
• Barnes and Noble
• Amazon

 

Countdown to Breakout is a 23-day blog series about the three-year writing process for BREAKOUT, which earned starred reviews from both School Library Journal and Publishers Weekly. It’s about a small-town prison break and manhunt that change the way three kids see their neighbors and the place they call home. Why a 23-day series? Because this book was inspired by the 2015 Clinton Correctional Facility prison break that led to a 23-day manhunt in June of 2015. 

The Magic of Maps

Most often, we hear the term world building as it relates to creating a fictional universe of fantasy or science fiction, but really, this is an important part of the writing process for any book with a fictional setting, including works of realistic fiction. Fictional towns need to feel real. They need all the things that actual towns have – streets and schools and shops, but also secret places where people hang out and places where you aren’t allowed to go. They need relationships between people and power structures and traditions, and I could go on and on.

One of the ways I like to wrap my head around the fictional towns in my writing is by drawing maps. Sometimes, it’s on a large scale. Here’s the (very rough!) Wolf Creek map I made when I was working on BREAKOUT. I included important places like the school, prison, library, and church as well as where my characters live. And then I added smaller details – like tree forts where the kids play and places where people worried the inmates might be hiding.

Sometimes, it’s helpful to make more specific maps to help keep track of where action is happening. Near the end of BREAKOUT, there’s a relay race, and the course is very important to the story’s plot, so I sketched out a specific map for that, too, and kept it over my desk while I was writing that scene.

The real-life manhunt in Northern New York continued while I was working on all of this. I was about fifty pages into my first draft of BREAKOUT when it finally came to an end.

The story stayed in the news for weeks, though, as I finished my draft. And then…well, then I scrapped it started over. We’ll talk about that tomorrow. Here’s today’s prompt:

Your Assignment: Make a map of your neighborhood. Think about it as a place for stories, marking not only the streets and buildings but also where things happen. Where do neighbors gather to talk on a nice day? Where have the legendary stories of your neighborhood happened?

Thanks for joining me on this part of the Breakout writing-process journey! If you’d like to read the other posts in this series once they’re all posted, you can find them here.  

Buy BREAKOUT now:

• IndieBound (find a local bookseller near you!)
• The Bookstore Plus, Lake Placid, NY
• Powells
• Barnes and Noble
• Amazon

 

My next novel, BREAKOUT, comes out on June 5th, and I have fun news to share, so here’s a quick round-up of what’s happening, including some great links for teachers, librarians, and writers!

Review News

BREAKOUT is about three kids caught in the middle of a small-town prison break and manhunt that change the way they see their neighbors and the place they call home, and I’m thrilled to share that it’s earned starred reviews from both School Library Journal and Publishers Weekly. You can view the full reviews at the links, but here are some quick excerpts:

Narrated by all three girls through letters, recorded conversations, and texts, this is an effective, authentically wrought look at how fear and ignorance can lead people to treat those of different races or from different places with suspicion. Messner (The Exact Location of Home) shines a light on the ways that people are blind to their own privilege while quick to judge others. Though the look at societal racism, as in the prison system, is well explained, it’s the racism Nora and Lizzie discover in themselves, and their desire to change it, that will linger with readers.                 

~Publishers Weekly

An accessible format and a unique focus on contemporary issues of criminal justice and racial bias make this an essential purchase.

~School Library Journal

And I’m thrilled that independent booksellers chose BREAKOUT as one of their Top Ten titles for the Summer 2018 Kids’ Indie Next List!

Podcast & Interview News

BREAKOUT is also featured on one of my favorite podcasts, The Yarn! I talked with Colby Sharp about my writing process and the power of books with unconventional structures.

And here’s an interview with School Library Journal where we talk about how teaching informs a writer’s work, the power of stories with multiple points of view, and working with sensitivity readers.

#CountdownToBreakout – A Writing-Process Blog Series

In the days leading up to BREAKOUT’s release, I’m sharing a series of blog posts called #CountdownToBreakout, a detailed look at the writing process behind this novel, from brainstorming and research to revision. There will be revision charts and marked-up manuscript pages galore, and I hope that you’ll check it out if you’re interested in writing and teaching writing. It will be a great one to share with student writers, and every post ends with a writing prompt! Clicking here will bring you to a list of the posts published so far. 

BREAKOUT Sneak Preview!

Want to start reading BREAKOUT now? You can download a sneak preview of the first 40 pages or so here.

Pre-Order BREAKOUT

Finally – if you haven’t already, I’d love it if you’d pre-order your copy of BREAKOUT now. Here are some ways to do that:

PRE-ORDER SIGNED COPIES OF BREAKOUT FROM THE BOOKSTORE PLUS

If you’d like a signed copy, you can call my local indie booksellers at The Bookstore Plus at 518-523-2950 or order online here and note in the comments field how you’d like your book signed. I’ll personalize and sign it for you, and it’ll be mailed out on release day!

PRE-ORDER BREAKOUT FROM ANOTHER FAVORITE BOOKSELLER

You can also order from your own favorite bookseller, either online or in person at the store. (Indie bookstores are always my favorite because that way, you can buy a great book and support a business in your own community. You can find your nearest indie bookseller here.)

Bloomsbury is offering a great incentive for pre-orders, too – a free poster and set of bookmarks to share. Details about that are here.

And if you live near one of the cities where I’ll be on book tour this June, please come by and say hello!

Countdown to Breakout is a 23-day blog series about the three-year writing process for BREAKOUT, which earned starred reviews from both School Library Journal and Publishers Weekly. It’s about a small-town prison break and manhunt that change the way three kids see their neighbors and the place they call home. Why a 23-day series? Because this book was inspired by the 2015 Clinton Correctional Facility prison break that led to a 23-day manhunt in June of 2015. 

Seeing through middle schoolers’ eyes

On my drive to Dannemora one day during the prison break, I ended up stopped at a roadblock in a long line of cars and trucks. Up ahead of me were a couple of school buses, and that got me thinking about how this manhunt must be affecting the kids in town.

Were the officers actually boarding the bus to ask questions? How might that affect kids who were anxious and already afraid?

I was reading lots of articles about the manhunt and talking with real kids who lived near the prison as well. One of my daughter’s figure skating friends missed the Saturday ice time one day because when she and her mom opened the door to go to the car, police standing guard on her road told them to go back inside because it wasn’t safe; the search was too close, and they were worried they might flush the inmates out of the woods and into their front yard. I saved this photo on the NPR website as a reminder of how this all felt to kids. It became the inspiration for Nora’s little brother Owen’s story, and for the tree fort on BREAKOUT’s cover.

While the manhunt was going on, kids found that their June schedules were turned upside down. Area schools cancelled outdoor activities and field trips. Some had state troopers stationed outside for several days.

I made a phone call to ask if I could visit one of those schools and talk to a 7th grade English class. I explained that I was working on a novel inspired by the manhunt, offered to share that process with the ELA students, and asked for permission to interview them about their experiences during the prison break.

The kids were amazing, as kids always are. They asked lots of questions about my writing process, and then they told me stories. They told me how the officers at the roadblock did, in fact, board their school bus to ask if anyone had seen “strangers in the woods.” One girl who was on the track team said she was frustrated because her mom wouldn’t let her outside, so she had to run on the treadmill. She hated the treadmill. One girl told me that she and her siblings had been allowed to play out in the yard that weekend, but only while their dad was standing on the porch with a shotgun. Many kids had relatives involved in the search – dads and aunts and uncles – who were corrections officers or state troopers, and they shared the fears they’d brought to school with them that day, worried about what might happen out in the woods.

Their stories helped to inspire Nora’s narrative as well as the perspectives of her classmates at Wolf Creek Middle School. My next job was making sure that Nora’s  neighborhood felt real, and tomorrow I’ll talk about the role of map-making in brainstorming the setting for a novel. But first, today’s prompt:

Your assignment: Imagine that you’re one of the kids on a school bus, stopped at a police roadblock, and an armed officer comes on the bus to ask if anyone has information about the inmates. Write a few lines about what happened and how it affected your school day.

Thanks for joining me on this part of the Breakout writing-process journey! If you’d like to read the other posts in this series once they’re all posted, you can find them here.  

Buy BREAKOUT now:

• IndieBound (find a local bookseller near you!)
• The Bookstore Plus, Lake Placid, NY
• Powells
• Barnes and Noble
• Amazon

 

Countdown to Breakout is a 23-day blog series about the three-year writing process for BREAKOUT, which earned starred reviews from both School Library Journal and Publishers Weekly. It’s about a small-town prison break and manhunt that change the way three kids see their neighbors and the place they call home. Why a 23-day series? Because this book was inspired by the 2015 Clinton Correctional Facility prison break that led to a 23-day manhunt in June of 2015. 

Collecting real-world details for a fictional setting

When I started working on BREAKOUT, I knew that my book was going to be fictional – about a made-up prison break in a made-up town that I named Wolf Creek, NY. But fictional settings need to be grounded with real-world details, and I spent my days in Dannemora collecting all sorts of notes that I knew I might use as I was building the town of Wolf Creek.

Each day as I drove into town, I’d see how the manhunt had changed a usually quiet place into a community buzzing with police activity. I took notes, not just on what I observed but on how I thought it would look and feel from the perspective of a middle school student who was excited about the end of school before all this happened.

This meant collecting not only details about the manhunt but details about everyday life in a small mountain town, too. In those three days I spent at the market and coffee shop near the prison, I made it a point to notice things. How the best sellers in the deli case were hot dogs and macaroni salad. How people from out of town were the only ones who bought the Adirondack Moose t-shirts. How the lady behind the counter couldn’t really keep up with slicing all the tomatoes they needed for subs and looked like she was ready to cross tomatoes right off the list of options.

I also paid attention to how the prison break affected that one small market in particular – how the manager had the police scanner turned on while she made subs, and how she paused every time there was a report that someone thought they may have spotted the inmates at the ice cream stand or worried that the escapees had broken into their attic.

Also…it was community garage sale day while all this was happening. One lady came in so excited that a CNN producer in town for the prison break had bought curtains at her yard sale. I jotted that down in case it was a detail I might want to use later.

Writers are expert eavesdroppers. And listening to the conversations of a place can be so helpful when you’re working to ground a fictional place in those specific, tiny details that make it feel real.

There were more settings and perspectives I needed to explore, and tomorrow I’ll talk about how a school visit helped with that. But for now, here’s your prompt of the day:

Your assignment: Go somewhere with your notebook – a coffee shop or diner or a kids’ soccer game. Collect as many tiny, unexpected details as you can. What kind of shoes is your waitress wearing? Does he have a quirky way of talking or a funny way she greets everyone? What are the kids who aren’t in the game doing over there on the bench? And listen in, too – what snippets of conversation can you collect?

Thanks for joining me on this part of the Breakout writing-process journey! If you’d like to read the other posts in this series once they’re all posted, you can find them here.  

Buy BREAKOUT now:

• IndieBound (find a local bookseller near you!)
• The Bookstore Plus, Lake Placid, NY
• Powells
• Barnes and Noble
• Amazon

 

Countdown to Breakout is a 23-day blog series about the three-year writing process for BREAKOUT, which earned starred reviews from both School Library Journal and Publishers Weekly. It’s about a small-town prison break and manhunt that change the way three kids see their neighbors and the place they call home. Why a 23-day series? Because this book was inspired by the 2015 Clinton Correctional Facility prison break that led to a 23-day manhunt in June of 2015.  

It starts with curiosity…

On June 6, 2015, I was at a book festival in the Thousand Islands, and my husband and daughter were driving in that morning to meet up with me. A few hours before they were due to arrive, I got a text message.

It was huge news. That prison, Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, is famous for being among the toughest in New York State, and the most secure. Everyone was sure the inmates would be captured within hours, but the next morning, they were still on the run, and it was front-page news.

Searchers poured in from all over the state. Surely they’ll be caught today, we all thought. Right?

Wrong.

When I arrived home from my book festival, I returned to a community on edge. My neighbors were glued to their police scanners, listening for news. People who never worried about safety in our quiet town double and triple locked their doors and windows. We went to bed at night with police helicopters circling overhead. Even the usual night noises — rain on the roof, raccoons in the garbage cans —  somehow sounded sinister.

Many of my readers know that before I was a full-time writer, I was a middle school teacher, and some know that before that, I was a TV news reporter. That’s what I went to college for, and journalism will always be in my blood. That week, I was chatting online with a college friend who asked if I was missing the news business, given all of the excitement, and I had to admit that I was pretty envious of the reporters out at the prison.

“So why don’t you take your notebook and go out there?” he said. “Do you have somewhere else you need to be today?”

I didn’t. And I know from experience in my writing life that when I feel curious about something – whether it’s animals living under the snow or coral reefs or what really happened in Viking Age Iceland – it’s good to follow that impulse. So I drove through the police roadblocks to Dannemora, where network TV trucks were already lined up outside the prison.

I attended that day’s news conference and then settled in at a coffee shop across the street from the prison.

The place was mobbed. It seemed like everyone in town was there, and everyone had a story. There were police officers who came in for lunch, covered in mud and ticks after a morning out searching the woods. There were neighbors who talked about how they couldn’t get their kids to sleep in their own beds at night. And there were relatives of inmates who’d come to town to visit, only to be told that the prison was on lockdown, and they wouldn’t be able to visit for a long time. I hung out at that coffee shop for the better part of three days, just talking with people and listening to their stories.

Somewhere near the end of the second day, a story started to take shape in my imagination, written in the voice of Nora Tucker, a prison superintendent’s daughter. This is the scribble that would become the first line of my first draft of BREAKOUT.

From there, it was a matter of collecting more ideas, more details, discovering more about Nora’s voice, and making my way through a first draft. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about setting and how a fictional town can be crafted from tiny specific details of real-world places.

But first – I’m finishing each of these posts with a quick writing prompt for readers who are also writers, or want to be.

Your assignment: Take five minutes today and write about something you’re curious about. What might you do to feed that curiosity and learn a bit more? 

Thanks for joining me on this part of the Breakout writing-process journey! If you’d like to read the other posts in this series once they’re all posted, you can find them here.  

Buy BREAKOUT now:

• IndieBound (find a local bookseller near you!)
• The Bookstore Plus, Lake Placid, NY
• Powells
• Barnes and Noble
• Amazon