SATA
ENTRY TYPE:
WORK TITLE: BURY THE LEAD
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://mischathrace.com
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
LAST VOLUME: SATA 342
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Married.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Has worked variously as a librarian, baker, horse trainer, and English teacher.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
SUBMITTED IN SGML FORMAT.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, July 15, 2018, review of My Whole Truth.
Voice of Youth Advocates, October, 2018, Amanda Garrity, review of My Whole Truth, p. 71.
ONLINE
A New Look on Books, https://anewlookonbooks.com/ (August 29, 2018), author interview.
Dana Mele website, https://danamele.com/ (July 27, 2017), Dana Mele, author interview.
Mischa Thrace website, https://mischathrace.com/ (January 24, 2019).
Pop! Goes the Reader, http://www.popgoesthereader.com/ (December 6, 2017), article by author.*
Mischa Thrace is the author of My Whole Truth and Bury the Lead. She has worked as an English teacher, a horse trainer, a baker, and a librarian and has amassed enough random skills to survive most apocalypses. (Except a spider plague – there’s no surviving that.)
Author, I Never: An Interview With Mischa Thrace
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Mischa Thrace
author of My Whole Truth, out October 2, 2018
Author, I Never is a segment in which I interview fellow authors about the writing process, breaking into the industry, and breaking rules. I ask some hopefully novel questions along with some of the old standards, and finish it up with a round of I Never to find out what cardinal writing rules we've broken.
Question the first: Mischa, when did you first know you wanted to be a writer?
Since elementary school. I lived in fiction as a kid, and at ten I was ‘working’ at the local library processing new books, which in those days meant pasting in card pockets and filing Dewey cards. Saying it like that makes me feel ancient, but it was so much fun! In high school I started writing short stories and some novel-length fanfic and promised myself that by 25 I would have a book on the shelves. I’m almost ten years late to that goal, but as they say, there’s the plan and then there’s real life!
That there is! Question the second: What has been your proudest or most exciting moment as an author so far?
Strangely this isn’t connected to my debut, but my proudest moment was typing The End after finishing the first draft of my second book. Everyone always says they have a book in them, so it was completely possible that my first one was just a fluke. Getting the first draft of the second book done convinced me that maybe the first was more than just luck.
I can really relate to that fear. Or possibility, as you put it. Question the third: At what point did you think to yourself "I've made it" or at what point do you think you'll feel that way?
Still waiting for that feeling to kick in!! Imposter syndrome, as much as I personally detest the phrase, is a very real thing. I’m not sure what it will take to convince my brain I’m an actual author, but I’m sure it’ll be nice when it happens!
I’m told there are snacks in the VIP room. Question the fourth: Did any experienced authors or industry people mentor or give you helpful guidance on your journey to publication?
No, because I’m an idiot. I wrote MY WHOLE TRUTH in complete secrecy. There was literally not a single soul who knew I was even thinking about writing a book until after it was sold and announced on Publishers Weekly. (I 100% do not recommend doing it this way!)
I’m glad it worked out! Question the fifth: Have you ever had a time when you've felt like giving up?
Yes, right before I started querying and I impulsively got a Master’s degree to deal to cover up the anxiety. Again, 12/10 would not recommend!!
An advanced degree to help deal with the pressure makes sense only in publishing. Question the sixth: What was the most inconvenient time or place you were struck by inspiration?
The barn, although this is also hands down my best place for brainstorming. One of my day jobs is being a riding instructor, and that means I spend a fair amount of time of engaged in the routine manual labor that goes into caring for horses – cleaning stalls, filling water buckets, hauling hay – and it’s like crack for my muse. Before anyone knew I was writing a book, I’d surreptitiously duck into the feed room to jot notes onto my phone, but now the secret’s out so everyone just assumes stall-cleaning = plotting time.
Question the seventh: Can you give us hint to help us find an "easter egg" or hidden item to look for in one of your books? Maybe an obscure clue if there's a mystery thread, or a reference you threw in to a favorite book or song?
So. Many. Fandom. References. Seelie is an unabashed geek and most of her fandoms are my fandoms. I also have a tendency to use TV character names as placeholders in the first draft, and a couple attached to minor characters slipped through the cracks into the final draft.
Sounds fun! Speaking of fun…
I Never Round
The basic rules of I Never, the kid friendly version- I state a generally established writing rule (or at least a norm). If you've broken that rule, state your guilt for the record.
I never made up a word in my manuscript, and stood by it during copyediting.
Not yet, but I do have a character in my second book who argues vociferously that peanuts, by virtue of being legumes and not nuts, should be called peagumes, and I’ll fight anyone who tries to steal her argument.
Admissible! I never had an amazing idea right before bed, and decided sleep was more important.
Probably guilty, but I’m also known to wake up in the middle of the night to add ideas to the notes app on my phone, so I might not be the norm!
A healthy balance is always a good thing, I think. I never started a story with a character waking up, looking in the mirror, or in a bathtub.
Not guilty. Are bathtub beginnings common?? I had no idea! (I have, however, written in the bath. Twice. Yes, it was awkward; no, I don’t recommend it.)
You know, I was sure “bathtub scenes” were a trope from some online writing class I took a long time ago, and now I’m just wondering about that professor. I never worked on two manuscripts at once.
Guilty! My first two books are contemporary, but I have a sci-fi passion project that I keep playing with on the side.
That sounds awesome. I never went several days or even weeks without writing.
How about years? A full two years passed between finishing my first book and starting my second. I dabbled a bit with some projects, including the aforementioned SF WIP, but other commitments and some mental health stuff made it hard to get anything to stick.
Breaks are good. Short breaks, long breaks. All good. I never wrote "for a long moment."
Guilty, although I’m studiously avoiding it in book2!! The problem is that some moments ARE long and sometimes that phrasing is the easiest way to convey it.
It’s true. I never cheated during NaNoWriMo.
The first time I attempted NaNoWriMo was actually this past July and I was so enamored with Pomodoro sprints, daily check-ins, and the need to get book2 written that it didn’t even occur to me that cheating was an option. (Seriously, how does that work? Lie about word count? Hire monkeys to write your story? Tell me!!)
Good old fashioned lying. Fudging the numbers. Stealing the stickers. Impostering! Thank you so much for appearing in Author, I Never! When and where can we look for, preorder, or buy your next or most recent book, and where can we follow you on social media?
MY WHOLE TRUTH will hit shelves October 2ndand can be preordered from Amazon, BN, and, best of all, IndieBound, which lets readers support their local bookstores.
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You can find me on social media @mischa_thrace, on Instagram, where I mostly post about my dog, tea, and snacks, and on Twitter, where, to be honest, I mostly boost cool stuff for other authors.
Bonus question: If your book had a theme song, what would it be?
The only question I’m worse at than this one is ‘Who would you cast in the movie-version of your book?’ I’m just weirdly not a music person, but if someone knows of an awesome song that fits my book I’d love to check it out!
DJ Spotify, can you do some kind of AI algorithmic magic to find the perfect theme song or something?
Okay, I’m taking that as a no, and Mischa and I are signing off.
Categories: Author Interviews
September 26, 2018 by Dana Mele
Interview With Author Mischa Thrace
Interview With Author Mischa Thrace
Meet Mischa Thrace.
Author Pic.jpg
Hi Mischa! Thanks for joining us today. Tell us a little about yourself.
Mischa Thrace has worked as an English teacher, a horse trainer, a baker, and a librarian and has amassed enough random skills to survive most apocalypses. (Except a spider plague – there’s no surviving that.) She lives in Middle-of-Nowhere, Massachusetts with her husband, a one-eyed dog, and a cranky cat who rarely leaves the basement. She loves tea, all things geek, and not getting ax-murdered on long walks in the woods.
Social Media Links:
http://instagram.com/mischa_thrace
https://twitter.com/mischa_thrace
http://mischathrace.com/
The Interview.
In terms of surviving an apocalypse, besides a spider apocalypse that you mentioned in your bio, what would be the one thing you’d need with you even if it would drag you down?
My dog, no hesitation. I’d like to say she’d be an asset, but she’s 30 pounds of one-eyed-rescue-floof that hates strangers and would absolutely bark at the zombies we’d be trying to hide from. And if that didn’t get us killed, I’d starve from giving her my share of the food.
As a writer, how often do you find yourself people watching and plotting new books?
Always! The problem is when I do it out loud and when it’s for something murdery, which is more often that it probably should be!
Let loose your inner fangirl! Since you mentioned you love all things geek – what is your favorite fandom or longest fandom you have been apart of? Next share a little origin story for that.
Picking a single favorite fandom is like asking a reader to pick a single favorite book! Inconceivable! But to go with longest-running, it’s definitely Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which I started watching when it premiered in 1997. I’ve lost count lost count of how many times I’ve rewatched it, and can recite a disturbing amount of the dialogue, and have given it has the most real estate in my fandom-themed tattoo. I would even go so far as to crediting it with teaching me how to write. In high school I wrote novels’ worth of fanfic and the repeated viewings of the series have definitely helped me internalize the principles of story and character arcs, along with Whedon’s dictum to “Make it dark, make it grim, make it tough, but then, for the love of God, tell a joke.”
Self-defense and characters that are wholly human. What was the hardest scene or character to come to terms with in My Whole Truth?
Ooh, this is a bit hard to answer without getting spoiler-y, but Seelie’s mom was probably the hardest character to write because she’s the person who we’d like to assume would be most in Seelie’s corner and she’s just… not – and anyone who has worked with kids and teens knows that this kind of poor parenting is far more common than it should be. There already a few books with similar themes to My Whole Truth that feature strong and supportive parents in the face of trauma, so I wanted to remind people that not everyone is lucky enough to have that. Tragedy can strike anyone, not just those with ideal support systems.
Did your perception of the importance of sharing the uglier sides of life in YA change throughout writing and editing My Whole Truth?
No, I’ve always been a firm believer in the importance of having books that represent the whole of the human experience, not just the Disney versions, and the harder books are often the most important. Readers of all ages deserve to see themselves reflected in the pages of their favorite novels, but it’s equally important to read about characters who are vastly different from you. The character that one person is able to completely relate to may be another reader’s first glimpse into a world they know nothing about. Books let people experience their wildest dreams, but also their worst fears, and I will never stop believing in the need for stories that span the entire spectrum.
Is there anything else you’d like to share with the readers today?
Remember that there is no one “right way” to be a victim. Responses to trauma are as varied as the people who experience it, and what’s ‘normal’ for one person may seem inconceivable to the next. Everyone has secrets and stories they don’t share with the world and you can never know what war someone is fighting while they serve you coffee, sit in your class, or bag your groceries. Be cognizant of that and wary of placing value on only certain types of responses or certain types of victims. The world can be a scary place, but a bit of compassion can go a long way to making it better.
Bonus Fun
Mischa Thrace shares 10 fun facts!
The Weird, Not-Third-Person, Stuff
1. I can sculpt cool things out of chocolate. A useless but tasty talent!
2. I’m a big fan of recreational violence – I studied mixed martial arts and would love to try roller derby.
3. I can quote disturbing amounts of Joss Whedon’s oeuvre.
4. I have a plethora of extra internal organs.
5. My favorite random fact is that the center of our galaxy tastes like raspberries and smells like rum.
6. I have specific mugs dedicated to certain drinks during certain activities. It’s a problem.
7. I love bats and opossums
8. I could happily live on carbs and cheese.
9. I hate having my picture taken more than anything in the world.
10. Despite being cameraphobic, I would love to ‘play’ a corpse on crime show.
Thank you Mischa!
Thrace’s book, My Whole Truth, comes out October 2, 2018!
Are you ready?
Thrace, Mischa BURY THE LEAD BHC Press (Teen None) $22.95 6, 10 ISBN: 978-1-64397-219-0
An aspiring journalist investigates the urban legend surrounding mysterious disappearances of students at her school.
After losing out on an internship to fellow classmate Emma Morgan, high school senior Kennedy Carter looks for the next great exposé that will earn her the New England regional Excellence in Emerging Journalism Award. She dreams of getting out of her little Massachusetts town and becoming an investigative reporter. For their final project in journalism class, Kennedy and her best friend, school photographer Ravi Burman, decide to profile members of their school community and probe the curse haunting Maplefield High. Kennedy begins by researching students who disappeared in recent years—but everything takes a turn for the worse when Emma goes missing and is later found dead, supposedly by suicide. Certain that Emma was murdered, Kennedy and Ravi risk everything to uncover the truth behind the curse threatening Maplefield students, a truth which is contained in the anonymously authored side story, “The Making of a Monster,” that is interspersed throughout the novel. Kennedy’s self-righteousness is tempered by Ravi’s levelheaded understanding, but asexual Kennedy fears their budding romance could ruin years of friendship. This mystery in the vein of Holly Jackson's A Good Girl's Guide to Murder (2020) is well paced, but the resolution may strike readers knowledgeable about mystery conventions as not playing fair. Most characters are cued as White; pansexual Ravi’s mother is White, and his father is cued as a British immigrant of Indian descent.
Sufficiently thrilling. (Mystery. 13-17)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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"Thrace, Mischa: BURY THE LEAD." Kirkus Reviews, 15 May 2021, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A661545881/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=b9976d6a. Accessed 16 Oct. 2021.
THRACE, Mischa. Bury the Lead. 270p. BHC. Jun. 2021. Tr $22.95. ISBN 9781643972190.
Gr 7 Up-High school senior Kennedy has always wanted to be a journalist. She and her best friend, Ravi, run the school newspaper and blog, the Maplefield Monitor. In their advanced journalism class, they decide to do a report on the urban legend of the "senior curse." Each year, a senior either goes missing, runs off, or dies by suicide. They want to investigate where the curse started and how many people have been its victims. Soon, Kennedy's rival, super popular mean girl Emma, goes missing. Kennedy and Ravi are involved with the search and are there when her body is found. Her death is ruled as a suicide, but was it? Kennedy, who loves Sherlock Holmes, investigates some suspicious circumstances surrounding the death and remains skeptical about it. As Kennedy and Ravi get nearer to the truth, readers will find themselves guessing and second-guessing, as the plot twists, turns, and plants red herrings. While the ending feels slightly abrupt, mystery fans will enjoy the teenage sleuthing. Kennedy is white and asexual and Ravi is brown-skinned with a British father. VERDICT A great choice where mysteries are popular.--Megan Huenemann, Norris H.S., Firth, NE
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/
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Huenemann, Megan. "THRACE, Mischa. Bury the Lead." School Library Journal, vol. 67, no. 6, June 2021, pp. 65+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A663599668/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=19e7b9a1. Accessed 16 Oct. 2021.
Thrace, Mischa MY WHOLE TRUTH Flux (Young Adult Fiction) $11.99 10, 2 ISBN: 978-1-63583-024-8
A white 17-year-old deals with the aftermath of killing her attacker in self-defense.
Seelie knows that she had to kill Shane when he ambushed her in a hayloft, choking her and brutally stabbing her face and leg, but her small Massachusetts town vilifies her. The loudest faction sides with Shane, an older, presumably white boy whose father is an esteemed judge. Thrace's debut chronicles the fallout, centering on a court case against Seelie. If some technical details about the legal process are brushed over, it's in service of the fast-paced narrative. Overwhelmed by what happened, Seelie conceals a key detail about the attack, a component that she doesn't want to face. It's markedly convenient that no one asks her questions regarding this secret, but the plot depends upon it going unmentioned. Seelie's school peers harass her, labeling her a murderer, while her manipulative single mother treats the entire situation as an inconvenience. However, Seelie can rely on Cara, a young black lawyer defending her pro bono, and her tightknit friend group. Among her friends is her crush, Lyssa, a protective, pugnacious biracial (Japanese and French Canadian) girl. As more details about the attack come to light, the group's dynamic is jeopardized. Seelie's intimate first-person account invites readers in as she empowers herself to acknowledge the full truth of what happened.
Engaging and honest. (Fiction. 14-18)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Thrace, Mischa: MY WHOLE TRUTH." Kirkus Reviews, 15 July 2018. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A546323039/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=01b269f4. Accessed 16 Oct. 2021.
Thrace, Mischa. My Whole Truth. Flux, October 2018. 320p. $11.99 Trade pb. 978-16358-3024-8.
After seventeen-year-old Seelie kills her assailant in self-defense during a vicious attack, she finds herself caught in the whirlwind of a legal system facing a murder charge that could decide the rest of her life. Shane, the attacker she killed, was a well-connected local boy, a former high school basketball star and the son of a judge. Though most of the town is decidedly not on her side, Seelie finds a trusted confidant in Cara, a young lawyer who not only fully believes her, but also offers to defend her free of charge. Throughout the lead up to the trial, Seelie must lean on her impeccably strong group of friends, as the support she receives from her mother is self-serving and distracted at best. Seelie's secret--her "whole truth"--is shocking and threatens to upend the proceedings of her trial, but the situation is handled in a manner that does not upset the forward momentum of the story.
Though the story is weighty in nature, the powerful bonds of friendship between Seelie and her crew, and a light romance side plot, provide a necessary distraction from the grisly subject matter at hand. This brutal, fast-paced debut from Thrace will captivate older teens seeking justice in an unjust world.--Amanda Garrity.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 E L Kurdyla Publishing LLC
http://www.voya.com
Source Citation
Source Citation
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Garrity, Amanda. "Thrace, Mischa. My Whole Truth." Voice of Youth Advocates, vol. 41, no. 4, Oct. 2018, p. 71. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A560013624/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=ac3d247f. Accessed 16 Oct. 2021.