Contemporary Authors

• Some Girls ( poetry) White Pine Press (Buffalo, NY), 2015

https://lccn.loc.gov/2014960007 McNally, Janet. Some girls / Janey McNally. Buffalo, NY : White Pine Press, 2015. pages cm ISBN: 9781935210702 (alk. paper)

• Girls in the Moon - November 29, 2016 HarperTeen, https://www.amazon.com/Janet-McNally/e/B01M6VAL04/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1

• Janet M McNally - http://janetmmcnally.com/about.html

  ​Thanks for stopping by! A little bit about me: I've wanted to be a writer since I was tiny, and I've always read everything in sight. I earned an MFA in fiction from the University of Notre Dame, where I never attended a football game (sorry) but had fantastic professors and classmates. I've twice been a fellow in fiction with the New York Foundation for the Arts (in 2008 and currently, in 2015), and my stories and poems have appeared in publications including Gettysburg Review, Boulevard, Mid-American Review, Ecotone, Crazyhorse and Best New Poets 2012 .

  In 2014 my book of poems Some Girls was chosen by Ellen Bass as winner of the White Pine Press Poetry Prize, and the book was published in August 2015. My young adult novel Girls in the Moon was published by HarperTeen (HarperCollins) in the fall of 2016. (Yes, I seem to have a thing for using the word "girl" in titles. What can I say? Girls are great). Girls in the Moon will also be translated into German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish.

  I live in Buffalo, New York, with my husband and three little girls, and I teach creative writing at Canisius College.

• Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/Janet-McNally/e/B01M6VAL04/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1

  Though her family is not rock and roll royalty, Janet McNally has always liked boys in bands. (She even married one.) She has an MFA from the University of Notre Dame, and her stories and poems have been published widely in magazines. She has twice been a fiction fellow with the New York Foundation for the Arts. Janet lives in Buffalo with her husband and three little girls, in a house full of records and books, and teaches creative writing at Canisius College. Girls in the Moon is her first novel, but she’s also the author of a prizewinning collection of poems, Some Girls. You can visit her online at http://www.janetmmcnally.com.

• The Sweet Sixteens - https://thesweetsixteens.wordpress.com/2016/11/30/the-debut-club-an-interview-with-janet-mcnally-author-of-girls-in-the-moon/

  The Debut Club: An interview with Janet McNally, author of GIRLS IN THE MOON
  posted in Contemporary, Interviews, The Debut Club, Young Adult Authors by kathymacmillan
  Swanky Seventeen Carlie Sorosiak recently interviewed Janet McNally about her debut novel, a contemporary YA just published by HarperTeen.

  About the Author:

  Janet McNallyThough her family is not rock and roll royalty, Janet McNally has always liked boys in bands. (She even married one.) She has an MFA from the University of Notre Dame, and her stories and poems have been published widely in magazines. She has twice been a fiction fellow with the New York Foundation for the Arts. Janet lives in Buffalo with her husband and three little girls, in a house full of records and books, and teaches creative writing at Canisius College. Girls in the Moon is her first novel, but she’s also the author of a prizewinning collection of poems, Some Girls.

  Find her online at janetmmcnally.com or on Twitter or on Facebook.

  About GIRLS IN THE MOON:

  Girls_in_the_Moon_Crop jpegEveryone in Phoebe Ferris’s life tells a different version of the truth. Her mother, Meg, ex–rock star and professional question evader, shares only the end of the story—the post-fame calm that Phoebe’s always known. Her sister, Luna, indie-rock darling of Brooklyn, preaches a stormy truth of her own making, selectively ignoring the facts she doesn’t like. And her father, Kieran, the cofounder of Meg’s beloved band, hasn’t said anything at all since he stopped calling three years ago.

  But Phoebe, a budding poet in search of an identity to call her own, is tired of half-truths and vague explanations. When she visits Luna in New York, she’s determined to find out how she fits in to this family of storytellers, and to maybe even continue her own tale—the one with the musician boy she’s been secretly writing for months. Told in alternating chapters, Phoebe’s first adventure flows as the story of Meg and Kieran’s romance ebbs, leaving behind only a time-worn, precious pearl of truth about her family’s past—and leaving Phoebe to take a leap into her own unknown future.

  GIRLS IN THE MOON is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and IndieBound.

  ‘GIRLS’ TALK

  Carlie: In Girls In The Moon, Phoebe is a budding poet, and the whole story has such rich, beautiful language. How did your experience as a poet translate into writing for young adults?

  Janet: I love poetry because it allows us to say things in a totally different way from prose. It’s spare and minimal, and leaves space for us to think. That said, I’m a storyteller first, so even in my poetry, I’m always telling stories. I think poetry finds its way into my prose on a word level and a line level. I use a lot of imagery, a lot of figurative language, but at the same time I want to make sure I’m reaching the reader in a way that is very tied to the physical world. Poetry is good for teaching a writer how to do that. Phoebe is a person who is trying to figure out the world and her own emotions, and she does that (like I do) through language.

  Carlie: One of my favorite aspects of Girls In The Moon is how gorgeously you incorporate New York. Do you have any history with Brooklyn, and why’d you choose it as the setting for your novel?

  Janet: I lived in Brooklyn Heights for a short time (actually in the apartment where Luna lives!) and I loved it. I certainly left part of my heart in New York when I left. I still visit pretty regularly as I have good friends there, and I have a lot of vivid, place-based memories of NYC. It was so important to me to create an accurate picture of what it’s like to be in New York, especially when you’re just getting to know the city, like Phoebe is. I wanted to make sure that my book didn’t end up like a movie where you’re getting some idealized and untrue version of the city. That said: in reality, NYC is pretty magical, so I wanted to express that. Phoebe is only there for a week, after all. If she lived there much longer she’d start complaining about the subway like everyone else. 🙂

  Carlie: Girls In The Moon features many different voices and personalities. Which one came first in the writing process and why?

  Janet: Phoebe came first. I saw her really clearly because she’s a lot like me (though my parents are not ex-rock stars). I empathized a lot with Meg, too, though, as a mother, even though my own daughters are really small. My editor Kristen Pettit was the one who suggested incorporating Meg as a voice, and I couldn’t get that idea out of my head once she suggested it. It was so much fun to write those chapters.

  Carlie: Phoebe grows up in a family of storytellers and musicians. Are you the biggest storyteller in your family, and do you have any musical talent?

  Janet: I’ve always been the storyteller in my family, back to when I was making books out of the computer paper my dad would bring home from work. I don’t have any musical talent, really (I played the flute and supposedly had good vibrato, but I never practiced because I didn’t like to). My husband is a musician, though, and a huge music lover, so I’ve learned a lot from him. Spent a lot of time at shows, both when he was playing out and just going to see bands I love. Sometimes I think I do my best thinking at live shows, because I can’t do anything else but watch and think. My talent is with words, like Phoebe, and though it would be fun to be Luna for a while, I’m perfectly happy to be a writer.

  LIGHTNING ROUND!

  Character in a novel who you’d most want to be friends with?

  Anne Shirley.

  Salty snack or sweet snack?

  Salty, but I also must have my daily ration of dark chocolate.

  Outlander or Game of Thrones?

  Neither! Orphan Black.

  Quiet night in or fun night out?

  Lately I’m so busy that what I really want is to stay in and read a book cover to cover.

  Tea or coffee?

  Green tea. I worked in a coffeehouse when I was in college and loved that job, but never got into drinking coffee.

  Writing with music or in silence?

  With music! I need a soundtrack for everything.

• Poetry Foundation - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/janet-mcnally

  Janet McNally is the author of Some Girls (2015). She earned an MFA from the University of Notre Dame. She won the 2014 White Pine Press Poetry Prize and was a New York Foundation for the Arts fellow in fiction. She teaches creative writing at Canisius College.

• Spine - http://spinemagazine.co/articles/janet-mcnally

  NET MCNALLY ON WRITING GIRLS IN THE MOON
  SUSANNA BAIRD
  Author Janet McNally on Writing Girls in the Moon
  Editor's Note: The following is part one of a two part series on the process of making the novel Girls in the Moon, published by HarperTeen. Part two details how designer Jenna Stempel created the cover.

  Janet McNally's first two books were born of whirlwinds, written during the blurry, bleary early days of her daughters' lives via creative journeys she can't quite remember, centered around concepts whose origins she can't quite pinpoint. And yet they are there, these books, strong words, bound and covered, attended by praise and a poetry prize.

  “I don’t remember much of the early part of writing Girls In the Moon, because I started when the twins were ten months old and those months were all a blur.”
  In the wake of her first daughter's birth, McNally wrote Some Girls, a poetry collection focused on myths, fairy tales, and what it means to be female. Her second book, Girls in the Moon, is a coming of age novel set in a summertime New York City and was published last fall. McNally, who teaches creative writing at Canisius College, wrote it after the birth of her twins.

  "I don’t remember much of the early part of writing Girls In the Moon, because I started when the twins were ten months old and those months were all a blur. Maybe that was good for me! … I can’t remember much about where the ideas came from, but that’s what happens with many of my projects. I’m almost a believer in the Muse—some things just come to me, and they turn into something larger in a way that I can’t track later."

  The books share a common titular "Girls" as well as strong narrative hearts, and both were run past the discerning eyes of McNally's husband and a few trusted friends. "I do think that it’s important to get writing out of your own brain and in front of other people’s eyes, though it has to be ready when that happens," McNally told Spine. But from there, the processes diverged.

  Nonprofit, indie lit publisher White Pine Press published Some Girls after McNally won their annual poetry prize. "My poetry press, White Pine, didn’t have much of an editorial role in the process," McNally said. "I did, however, work with the judge of the contest, the poet Ellen Bass, to revise my poems. That was a great experience, as I was really energized by the fact that this would be an actual book. I also wrote a bunch more poems after I won the contest and some of those made their way into the book."

  HarperCollins imprint HarperTeen published Girls in the Moon and played a large role in transforming the book from first draft to final. The story follows budding poet Phoebe Ferris, daughter of ex-rock stars. McNally's original version featured the story told from Phoebe's point of view, but the end version also includes sections in her mother's voice. "My editor was the one who suggested writing chapters from Meg’s (Phoebe’s mother) perspective, so all of those came after we sold the book," McNally said.

  "If we had sold it to one of the other editors who wanted it, it would have been a different book without her voice. I’m glad to have her in the book directly because it let me say something about the way we can never totally understand the people we love (especially our parents), but that there are reasons for the things they do."
  Some Girls, White Pine Press
  Some Girls, White Pine Press
  The cover design processes were also very different, with McNally more heavily involved with the poetry cover. White Pine uses a template for its prize-winning titles, but authors choose the image. McNally worked with her friends Jodi Bryon and photographer Brett Essler to bring her vision to the cover.

  "Since the book deals with fairy tales, the idea was to have a Little Red Riding Hood figure standing at the edge of the forest," she said. "Thankfully Jodi had a red coat. The two of them went up to Inwood Hill Park in Manhattan—which is such a wild place, wilder than you’d expect in NYC—and took a bunch of pictures."

  Harper designer Jenna Stempel created the cover of Girls in the Moon, after McNally offered up a selection of book covers she liked. "I was so nervous when I opened the file from my editor containing the cover, and so thrilled when I saw it. It really made purple into my favorite color in some ways (it was already my five-year-old’s favorite, so that helps)."

  McNally is currently at work on a third book, related to Girls in the Moon, about lost sisters, ballet and fairy tales.

• Pub Crawl - http://www.publishingcrawl.com/2016/11/28/author-janet-mcnally-on-writing-about-music/

  AUTHOR JANET MCNALLY ON WRITING ABOUT MUSIC

  Julie Julie
  Nov 28 2016
  Posted in:
  Giveaways, Interviews, Speakeasy Sharing, Writing Life
  Hi PubCrawlers! Today I’m sharing an interview with my friend and fellow Sweet 16 debut author, Janet McNally. Janet’s debut, Girls in the Moon, releases tomorrow, November 29. I was lucky enough to read an advance copy, and I fell in love with this lyrical coming-of-age story with a rock and roll backdrop. I’m so happy to have Janet here to talk about her debut. She is also sharing a giveaway, so enter with the Rafflecopter below!

  Here’s a summary of Girls in the Moon:

  Everyone in Phoebe Ferris’s life tells a different version of the truth. Her mother, Meg, GirlsInTheMoon_CoverRevealex-rock star and professional question evader, shares only the end of the story—the post-fame calm that Phoebe’s always known. Her sister Luna, indie rock darling of Brooklyn, preaches a stormy truth of her own making, selectively ignoring the facts she doesn’t like. And her father, Kieran, cofounder of Meg’s beloved band, hasn’t said anything at all since he stopped calling three years ago.
  But Phoebe, a budding poet in search of an identity to call her own, is tired of half-truths and vague explanations. When she visits Luna in New York, she’s determined to find out how she fits in to this family of storytellers, and maybe even continue her own tale—the one with the musician boy she’s been secretly writing for months.
  Like the tide being pulled to the shore, Phoebe is drawn back and forth between her magnetic family members and her own fresh start. Phoebe’s first adventure flows forward as Meg’s romance unspools in reverse, leaving behind only a time-worn, precious pearl of truth about her family’s past—and leaving Phoebe to take a leap into the unknown of her own future.
  Welcome Janet! Thank you for being here. Girls in the Moon is about two sisters whose parents were once in a famous rock band together. The book shows us glimpses of the parents’ past in the rock limelight, but most of the action is set in present-day New York City, where one of the girls is just getting her own music career started with her own band. What made you choose to write about music, and about the world of rock in particular?
  Janet McNallyI love music and I always have, so it just seemed natural to me. To be honest, when I started writing this book I had nine-month-old twins and a toddler, so I don’t remember how it all began. I do think there was something about that wild, sleepless time that let me fall straight into this book, and I probably went toward music because I find it comforting. The music we love is a type of home for each of us, isn’t it? For me, that home is rock and roll and live shows, guitar hum and amp hiss and kick drums. It makes sense that the first novel I finished was in that world. I loved using Phoebe as a main character, too, because she’s an outsider and an insider at the same time. She’s not a musician, but she is a lyricist, and she loves music.

  The arts are all over Girls in the Moon—not just music, but sculpture and poetry, too. Can you talk about your personal relationship with the arts and how it influenced this book?
  I’ve always been a storyteller, back to the time when I was making books out of construction paper and stapling them together. Most of my characters end up being artists of some sort: writers, painters, photographers, dancers. I think it’s because I can’t quite imagine what it would be like not to be driven to create art. My husband and I have this joke we repeat all the time: What do people do if they aren’t artists? How do they spend their time? Some of them probably spend a lot of their time consuming art (shout out to my beloved bookworms out there!) and that’s great, too. I’ve always needed a balance between production and consumption of art. That works for me. So it works for my characters, too, I think.

  My MFA is in fiction, but after my first daughter was born I couldn’t write fiction, so I went back to poetry. I published my first book of poems, Some Girls, in 2015, just after I sold Girls in the Moon. I love poetry, especially the way it lets us say things in this perfect, crystalline, focused way. I haven’t had much time to write it in the last year or so, since I’m writing my second novel, and I miss it. It was nice to write about a budding poet with Phoebe.

  I really enjoyed the flashback chapters. How did that writing choice come about for you? What kind of challenges did it present? Did you have to address the changes in the music world, for instance?
  In the first version of Girls in the Moon, there were no Meg flashback chapters. My editor Kristen Pettit was the one who suggested that, and as soon as she did, I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. It was so appealing to write from an artist mother’s perspective, as an artist mother myself. My girls are tiny, just as Meg’s are in the most recent flashback chapters, and I could imagine what it would be like to want to protect them from fame and from the world.

  I found it really fun to write those chapters. It was freeing to write vignettes that didn’t have to be connected to the chapter previous, to hop around in time. It was a little like writing poetry in that way. You can leave spaces wide open. I was writing about Meg’s life offstage, so I thought I could understand that and render it believably. It was fun, too, to dip into the nineties. Meg is older than me, so I was reaching back before my own experience, but I was a teenager in the nineties so I had some background. There’s something appealing about writing about a time before iTunes and Spotify, when if you wanted to hear a song you had to put on a tape or a record or catch it on the radio. I live in a house with thousands of vinyl records, though, so I guess I’m already living in that world to some extent.

  In Girls in the Moon, music and family are closely intertwined. I know music is a part of your own family. How did your family relationships influence this book?
  My husband is a musician, as you know, Julie, and we’ve been together for a long time. I spent my early twenties in bars and clubs watching his band play (often in the middle of the night—we stay up late here in Buffalo!). So I know what it’s like to be married to another artist, though I think it’s easier in a way when you’re in different fields. I also know what it’s like to raise kids to have music—the songs and artists we love—be a huge part of their lives. My oldest daughter had a bunch of imaginary friends, and the two most important ones were John Lennon and Ringo Starr. I have so many music nerd friends, too, and that became a big part of this book. Phoebe worries about holding her own with the cool music kids, and what she doesn’t realize is that she’s one of them.

  Do you have any helpful tips for anyone trying to write a book where music (or another art) plays a part in the story?
  With music, I think it’s all about listening. For me, a soundtrack was essential, and so was my own experience with live music. You can’t write about New York City or Paris convincingly without spending a lot of time there, or you run the risk of writing about some TV version of the city. Same goes for writing about live music. You have to experience it. The added benefit for me is that I do some of my best thinking at live shows. I think that’s because I can’t do anything else but listen and think.

  Last question—how did writing Girls in the Moon affect your own love of music? Do you find you approach music differently now?
  I don’t know if I approach music differently, exactly, but I do love it even more. I love the way that songs can be time-travel machines, the way they take us back to particular moments in our lives as soon as we hear the first notes. That’s magic, as far as I’m concerned. And now I have a lot of new songs that are memory-stamped with this book for me. I love that.

  Thank you Janet–it’s been lovely to have you! Congrats on the launch of Girls in the Moon! PubCrawlers, look for the book in stores on November 29, and enter the Rafflecopter below!

• Harper Collins Publishers - https://www.harpercollins.com/cr-123748/janet-mcnally

  Janet McNally has an MFA from the University of Notre Dame, and her stories and poems have been published widely in magazines. She has twice been a fiction fellow with the New York Foundation for the Arts. Janet lives in Buffalo with her husband and three little girls in a house full of records and books, and teaches creative writing at Canisius College. Girls in the Moon is her first novel, but she’s also the author of a prizewinning collection of poems, Some Girls. You can visit her online at www.janetmmcnally.com.

• The Cloudy House - http://www.thecloudyhouse.com/2015/10/15/janet-mcnally-on-some-girls/

  Janet McNally on Some Girls
  October 15, 2015 by admin
  McNally photoJANET MCNALLY‘s collection Some Girls won the 2014 White Pine Press Poetry Prize. Her young adult novel Girls in the Moon is forthcoming from HarperCollins in 2016, and her poems and stories have appeared in Gettysburg Review, Boulevard, Ecotone, Crazyhorse, Mid-American Review, and others. Janet has an MFA from Notre Dame and is a 2015 New York Foundation for the Arts fellow in fiction. She teaches creative writing at Canisius College in Buffalo.

  SOME GIRLS COVER FINALBook Title, Press, Year of Publication:

  Some Girls, White Pine Press, 2015

  Synopsis: The poems address what I call “girl stories,” the narratives that define femininity in our culture.

  What do you think makes your book (or any book) a “project book”?

  Some Girls is built around myths and fairy tales, and in writing I tried to transform them. Of course, writers have been retelling these stories since they came into existence, so this is nothing new. That’s okay with me. I believe archetypes beg us to interact with them, and in this book I have my particular angle, my point of entry. I’ve always been obsessed with stories—I’m a fiction writer, too—so Some Girls very quickly developed a narrative arc. I had a sense of the new-mother speaker, who is a version of me, as well as her troubled best friend Maggie, who recently woke from a coma. That plot point sounds like something out of a soap opera, until you consider how many myths and fairy tales have heroines who are unconscious or asleep.

  As I started writing I realized that I wanted to tell maybe fifty little stories as well as one big one, from beginning to end. Writing a book of poems is very different from writing a novel, and that’s attractive to me. I can leave some spaces empty, some dots only loosely connected. But in this case, from the beginning I knew I was working on pieces that would fit together.

  Why this subject (or constraint)?

  I’ve always loved fairy tales and myths, but when I found out I was having a baby daughter, I saw those stories in a different light. They were scarier, somehow, more dangerous. I didn’t know how to raise a girl outside of my own experiences, and I knew my daughter would be born into the framework of stories. When I started to think in particular about all the heroines who are sleeping or unconscious (maybe it was my new-mother lack of sleep?), I was led to the central arc of Some Girls. How could a girl in a coma (or put to sleep by a poisoned apple or bad fairy) come back the same? She’d be different; I just knew it. And the fairy tales don’t really address that.

  I’m rarely interested in writing about things only as they actually happened. Can we really trust our memories, anyway? I have this conversation with my students all the time. I believe there’s as much “truth”—believable human experience—in fiction as in nonfiction. All memory comes with a filter. It’s not pure or unadulterated. So, writing with the story of the speaker and Maggie in mind—as well as that of all the familiar heroines—allowed me to reveal the truth in an off-kilter way. The speaker isn’t exactly me, but she’s mostly me. Maggie is based on some part of my identity, too: the girl who ceased to exist when I became a mother.

  Are you comfortable with the term “project book”?

  I love project books. It’s wonderful when a poet spins all of a book’s poems from a similar thread, and when her passions of a particular period in her life become clear as you read. I’ve been thinking about it, and almost all works of fiction are “project books.” There’s no negative connotation to that term in the world of fiction. I was surprised and interested to learn—and I say this without judgment—that some poets really resist that term. I’ve loved many collections that probably wouldn’t be considered project books, too, of course, but I really enjoy finding a book of poems that feels like a beautiful whole.

  Was your project defined before you started writing? To what degree did it develop organically as you added poems?

  Can I claim exhaustion and say I don’t really remember? I was writing in a frenzy, with all these brand-new emotions and experiences crowding the page. I turned to poetry because it seemed the best way to write at the time, and I needed to believe that I was accomplishing something, that I was still a writer, still me. My best memory is that the book just started to take shape in front of me, and I followed it along. There are times in our lives when we get to reinvent ourselves, and becoming a parent is one of them. This book came out of that experience.

  How important was it for you that each poem could “stand on its own” or that the poems should rely on other poems in the book, or on the premise of the project itself, to succeed? What challenges did this present for you when writing single poems or structuring the book overall?

  I’ve published most of the poems from the book alone or in pairs or trios, so I think they exist as pieces outside of the whole. That’s ideal, because poetry collections are fragmented by nature. The parts should work like individual jewels in a bracelet, or maybe cogs in a machine. Each one should be particular and necessary, but they work together to make the whole. I guess I could go full Hansel and Gretel and say that we’re hoping for a trail of breadcrumbs to lead us someplace, out of the forest or to the candy house, but it’s probably much less deliberate than laying out each crumb. Ideally the project itself and the structure of the book should reveal itself as you write.

  At any point did you feel you were including (or were tempted to include) weaker poems in service of the project’s overall needs? This is a risk, and a common critique, of many project books. How did you deal with this?

  Ellen Bass, who chose my book for the prize, was kind enough to give me notes and advice on the manuscript. She said—and I agree—that a leaner book is often a stronger book, and so she suggested I try to cut ten to fifteen percent of the poems. I don’t think her advice was specific to my book alone; it seemed like advice she might give most poets. To look at a collection and actively try to cut poems forces you to consider what’s working and what isn’t, which encouraged me to set my emotions aside as much as I could. I started a Word document called “Deleted Scenes,” much as I do when I’m writing fiction. It’s not as if you have to burn the rejected poems on an enormous pyre. Maybe you’ll use them again for another project or just publish them in magazines. But in most cases after I cut a poem I realized that it just wasn’t working, and I could let it go.

  I also wrote some new poems after I won the prize, because by the time that happened, my feelings about the project had changed a little. By then, I had two more daughters (twins born two years after their sister). I wasn’t a brand-new mom. I had read more, lived more. So I was lucky enough that Ellen was open to my re-imagining the book a bit. She encouraged it. I feel really lucky to have had that second look, but my intention was always to keep the energy of that first experience of writing it.

  Did you fully immerse yourself in writing this project book, or did you allow yourself to work on other things?

  In the past, I’ve often worked on more than one thing at a time. I think it’s good for my brain. When I hit a wall with one thing, I would jump to another. I wrote many of the poems that would become Some Girls soon after my first daughter was born, and for the first time, I couldn’t really write fiction. I didn’t have the attention span for it, maybe. Poetry was so satisfying and appealing because it was shorter and clearer and more direct, and pretty much all of the poems I was writing then were related to this project. I’ve never experienced that sort of focused inspiration before. It made me believe in the Muse. Or the power of exhaustion, maybe.

  After completing a project, how did you transition into writing something new? What are you working on now? Another project?

  I think there’s a mourning period after you finish a project, even if you’re ready to let it go. Especially in this case. Not everything that happens to the speaker happened to me, but the emotions and ideas feel very true to me, and the book is representative of a specific time in my life. One crazy thing is that I was so worried about raising one daughter, and then two years and one week later I had twin girls! You never know what the universe will send you.

  Right now I’m writing mostly fiction. I’m working on my second young adult novel as well as a novel for adults, so we’ll see which one pulls forward in the horse race. I’ve started a series of poems, probably chapbook length, but I don’t know what I’ll do for my next book-length manuscript. I think it would be interesting to write about twins, but I’m not sure exactly how yet. Really I’m just starting to feel like I can write poems again, so I’m waiting to see what will come to the surface.

  What advice can you offer other writers, particularly emerging writers or poetry students who may be using the project book as a guiding principle for their own work?

  Build a house in which you want to live for awhile. Don’t try to force it, but let the walls rise up around you. That sounds dramatic, I know, but I mean it. The stakes can seem higher with a project book because if you write half of it and it flops, that can feel like wasted time. It isn’t. I’d argue that there’s no wasted time in writing; everything leads you someplace. You can learn from every mistake. It’s always been hard for me to commit to longer projects, and in this case I mostly mean novels. I’ve only finished one of those at this point. But Some Girls seemed so right at the time I wrote it that I didn’t really doubt it. I didn’t know if it would find a press or readers, but I knew I had to write it. That seems like the best case scenario: to be compelled to write.

  More practical advice: Be playful. You can write about serious things without being serious all the time. Don’t be afraid to let go of poems that aren’t working or serving the book. This is true for any piece of writing. Cut it and save it, but chances are you won’t want it back once you let go. Let the book evolve; don’t try to force your poems to do things. They’re not puppets; they’re poems. They’re alive, in a way, or they should be.

• Blackbird - http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v15n2/poetry/mcnally-j/index.shtml

  JANET MCNALLY
  Is there any proof that unicorns exist?
  What is the most venomous animal?
  Janet McNally is author of the poetry collection Some Girls (White Pine Press, 2015) and the young adult novel Girls in the Moon (forthcoming from HarperTeen, 2016). Her work has appeared in Gettysburg Review, Boulevard, Ecotone, Crazyhorse, and elsewhere. She has an MFA from the University of Notre Dame, and has twice been a New York Foundation for the Arts fellow in fiction. McNally lives in Buffalo, New York, where she teaches creative writing at Canisius College. end

• Epic Reads - http://www.epicreads.com/blog/how-music-inspired-girls-in-the-moon/

  How Music Inspired Girls In The Moon
  AUTHOR GUEST POSTS, READING PLAYLISTS
  11/30/2016 2:15PM | Posted by: TeamHarperTeen
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  IT’S OFFICIAL… we are over the moon about GIRLS IN THE MOON, the heartfelt and lyrical new novel by Janet McNally! Girls In The Moon is about two sisters with rock star parents who find themselves drawn into the world of music, lyrics, and love. In addition to being an author extraordinaire, McNally is a literal poet and wrote the most beautiful original lyrics to include in her novel:

  Exhibit A: “I’ll stitch the words together, string them like pearls on thread, remember them out of order, and forget what it was you said.”

  Exhibit B: “I’m nothing but a shadow, nothing but a silhouette. I lose all my certainty the farther away I get.”

  We hope it’s clear by now that you’re going to need a bomb playlist to bump while reading this magical masterpiece. Lucky for you, Janet McNally has graced us with the most perfect playlist to pair with Girls In The Moon!

  (But first, watch the book trailer!)

  How Music Inspired Girls In The Moon
  By Janet McNally

  I listened to music all the time while I was writing Girls in the Moon, which makes sense because it’s a book about people who listen to music all the time. Phoebe and Luna and Archer and Meg take music seriously and understand its magic. Songs can be medicine. They can fix things sometimes, if you’re lucky and you choose the right ones. This is the mix that Archer makes for Phoebe near the end of the book, and I have no doubt he would have obsessed over it for hours.

  Here are some highlights:

  “Darling Don’t Worry” by Thrush Hermit
  Songs are time travel machines. They let us go right back to places in our pasts. My husband put this song on the first mix tape he ever made for me, and like all of the songs on that tape, it always feels like it’s dipped in some kind of fairy dust. It felt like exactly the right way to begin Archer’s mix for Phoebe.

  “I’m All Right” by Radiator Hospital
  This is such a brief, spare, beautiful song, and it seems like exactly the message Archer would want to send to Phoebe when he gives her the mix. They’ve both been through a lot with their families, and this is part of the reason they’re drawn to each other. Not all songs in a mix have to be messages, but this one is.

  “Somebody to Anybody” by Margaret Glaspy
  As soon as I heard this song I thought of Phoebe and her sister Luna, and then I remembered that Archer also has a charismatic older sister he doesn’t completely understand. This is another lovely, minimalist song that captures the way Archer—and Phoebe—might feel sometimes, trying to fit in and figure things out.

  “If I Could Talk I’d Tell You” by The Lemonheads
  There are so many things we want to say to each other that we can’t, and this is why we make playlists and mix tapes. We choose songs to say what we want to say. Archer and Phoebe both know this especially well.

  “Universal Heartbeat” by Juliana Hatfield
  “A heart that hurts is a heart that works.” Can anyone really argue with that? Archer, knowing full well that Phoebe’s mom Meg was a 90s rock goddess, would have made sure to include one of the others—Juliana Hatfield—on his mix.

  “Diamonds” by Laura Mvula
  I wish sometimes that life had a soundtrack (which is why I often walk around wearing my earbuds). Archer and Phoebe spend a night wandering around Manhattan after dark, and I can imagine this song playing around them, gorgeous and glittering.

  “Finite=Alright” by David Byrne
  One night while they’re walking around Manhattan, Archer takes Phoebe to see David Byrne’s studio’s doorstep, and the little label by the buzzer that says his name. (Friends of mine did the same for me, but like Archer, I would never think of ringing the bell!) This is a wacky little song that reminds us that life is always changing.

  “Left and Leaving” by the Weakerthans
  As Phoebe says, this is a song that can break your heart. But sometimes we need songs that break our hearts in order to heal them. The Weakerthans are really good at that (which is why I chose a Weakerthans lyric for Girls in the Moon’s epigraph). Try to listen to this song without feeling all the feels. I dare you.

McNally, Janet. Girls in the Moon
Johanna Nation-Vallee
Voice of Youth Advocates.
39.5 (Dec. 2016): p64.
COPYRIGHT 2016 E L Kurdyla Publishing LLC
http://www.voya.com
Full Text: 
4Q * 2P * J * S
McNally, Janet. Girls in the Moon. HarperTeen, 2016. 352p. $17.99. 978-0-06243624-5.
Phoebe Ferris's family is full of stars, with famous rocker parents and her older sister, Luna, also pursuing a musical career. Phoebe feels stifled
among the loud, creative personalities surrounding her, so she secretly begins texting her original lyrics to one of Luna's band mates, Archer, who
encourages her to develop her own voice. The Ferris family guards many secrets, the most important being the untold story of her parents'
breakup following their meteoric rise to fame and the births of the two girls. So when Phoebe has the chance to spend time with Luna in
Brooklyn, she seizes the opportunity to investigate her family's past and claim her unique place within it.
The story is told mainly from Phoebe's viewpoint, with several chapters attributed to her mother, Meg, in her youth. It is a story about mothersister-daughter,
although male characters figure prominently--particularly Phoebe's and Luna's father, Kieran, and Archer. Phoebe gains
confidence throughout the book as she begins asserting her opinions, wishes, and talents; by the end, though, her story still feels dominated by
other characters that come off as more complex and interesting. Detailed imagery, especially of New York City, is prevalent. The author employs
lyrics and poetry to great effect, while her rich musical knowledge propels this realistic novel to its hopeful conclusion. This book may appeal to
readers interested in music or poetry who will enjoy McNally's lyrical and thought-provoking style.--Johanna Nation-Vallee.
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
Nation-Vallee, Johanna. "McNally, Janet. Girls in the Moon." Voice of Youth Advocates, Dec. 2016, p. 64. General OneFile,
go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA474767947&it=r&asid=3c7bcd2bdfb1999678349869aec70b25. Accessed 12 June
2017.
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Gale Document Number: GALE|A474767947

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Girls in the Moon
Publishers Weekly.
263.40 (Oct. 3, 2016): p126.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text: 
Girls in the Moon
Janet McNally. HarperTeen, $17.99 (352p) ISBN 978-0-06-243624-5
Sisters Luna and Phoebe Eerris are struggling under the personal and professional disappointments of their rock-star parents, Meg and Kieran, of
the defunct band Shelter. The girls' mother, Meg, long ago took herself out of the spotlight, refusing to let her daughters grow up in the media's
eye, and turning her focus to sculpture. In a moody and reflective fiction debut, McNally follows Phoebe as she heads from upstate New York to
Brooklyn to visit older sister Luna, who is on the cusp of fame and about to go on tour with her band, interspersing briefer chapters that flash
back to various points during the 1990s and 2000s when their mother was in love, pregnant with each girl, and deciding whether to leave their
father. As Phoebe falls for a boy in Luna's band and reconnects with their estranged father, Luna and Meg try to allow the youngest member of
the family to find her own way. McNally is a polished storyteller, her prose alive with vivid descriptions, the excitement of romance, and an
artist's yearning to create. Ages 13-up. Agent: Jay Mandel, William Morris Endeavor. (Nov.)
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Girls in the Moon." Publishers Weekly, 3 Oct. 2016, p. 126+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA466166691&it=r&asid=72e1038d21e0abd54d4bc990c601e602. Accessed 12 June
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A466166691

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Spotlight on first novels
Booklist.
113.4 (Oct. 15, 2016): p54.
COPYRIGHT 2016 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text: 
Older Readers
The Baby. By Lisa Drakeford. Oct. 2016.256p. Scholastic/Chicken House, 517.99 (97805459402761; e book, 517.99 (9780545942843). Gr. 9-12.
Olivia's seventeenth birthday party is everything she wanted it to be; her best friends Nicola and Ben dancing around her; her weird younger
sister, Alice, quietly confined to her bedroom; her boyfriend, Jonty, looming lovingly (if somewhat possessively) by her side. But when Olivia
discovers Nicola in the bathroom giving birth to a baby she didn't even know she was having--Jonty's baby--the celebration comes to a crashing
halt. Over the next few months, Olivia, Nicola, Jonty, Alice, and Ben adjust to life with Nicola's baby, Eliza. Olivia struggles to forgive her friend,
while Alice attempts to make a new one; Nicola takes to motherhood with relative ease, leaning on Ben for his support and constant
companionship; and Jonty initially resists his responsibilities as a father. While relevant issues like domestic violence and autism are woven
gracefully across the narratives, the resulting conflicts are too neatly wrapped up. Written in alternating third-person voices, Drakeford's debut
transforms the stark and grim realities of teen pregnancy into much fluffier fare, complete with a surprising, rom-com-worthy eleventh-hour
twist.--Rebecca Kuss
Everyone We've Been. By Sarah Everett. Oct. 2016.400p. Knopf, 517.99 (9780553538441); lib. ed" 520.99 (9780553538458); e-book, 517.99
(9780553538465). Gr. 9-12.
Before: Addison Sullivan is falling in love with Zach. After: Addison is in a bus accident and keeps seeing a mysterious guy from the crash
wherever she goes. Before: Addison's viola music fills the lonely place inside of her, making her feel whole again. After: her parents' divorce has
ruined the family, and home feels underwater. To finally solve all of her problems, Addison heads to the Overton Clinic for a memory treatment.
This delightfully confusing narrative will have readers thinking they understand it, before it yanks the rug from underneath them. (They'll enjoy
the tumble.) Everett gives readers sweet romance and solid friendships and then sprinkles on a pinch of sci-fi: a procedure that can erase painful
memories. The implications of this procedure will leave readers pondering the way the way their hearts break and how they remember the ones
they lost. Everett's story is an effective look at the kind of love you dream about and the kind you should never forget. --Karen Ginman
Flashfall. By Jenny Moyer. Nov. 2016.352p. Holt, 517.99 (9781627794817). Gr. 9-12.
Orion, 16, has a special ability to locate cirian, a valuable element that prevents radiation sickness--and in their postradioactive, flash-curtain
world, cirian is essential. Subpars (mine workers) like Orion and her fellow Outpost Five residents will spend--and likely lose--their lives mining
it. But if they can gather a total of 400 grams, subpars can escape to the protected city of Alara, though no one has ever lived long enough to do
so. Orion and her mining partner, Dram, however, are close to achieving this goal when Orion discovers the corrupt politics behind cirian and
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realizes revolution is what's needed. Moyer has constructed a cinematic page-turner: there's gore, romance, daring rescues, political commentary,
and a strong message of social justice. Multiple small details of the rituals that sustain subpars in their grim life lend verisimilitude to the world
Moyer has created. Although character development takes a backseat to the nonstop action, the empowering element of a teen-led rebellion
creates its own energy and sweeps the reader along. --Debbie Carton
Frostblood. By Elly Blake. Jan. 2017.384p. Little, Brown, 517.99 (9780316273251); e-book, 59.99 (9780316273268). Gr. 9-12.
Seventeen-year-old Ruby Ottera is orphaned after watching her mother be murdered by the people she had been protecting Ruby from all along,
called frostbloods. Ruby is thereby thrust into a life where friend and foe want to use her fire-wielding powers as a weapon--a fireblood in a
kingdom ruled by frost. Driven by a prophecy, rebel frostbloods save Ruby from certain death, hoping that she will help them break the curse on
their kingdom. Ruby is continuously torn between red-hot anger and a spark of fondness for her instructor, Arcus, a frostblood with a tragic past,
as he trains her to fight for her life and his kingdom. Ruby's thirst for revenge is seemingly thwarted when she's captured again and forced to fight
in an arena where a fireblood has never triumphed, while becoming an object of fascination for the king. This enchanting and fast-paced debut
lights up the page with magic, romance, and action, all of which is expertly interwoven throughout the text. Readers will be eagerly anticipating
the next book in the series. --Meghan Oppelt
Girls in the Moon. By Janet McNally. Nov. 2016.352p. HarperTeen, 517.99 (9780062436245). Gr. 9-12.
Meg and Kieran Ferris were young and famous in the heady music scene of the 1990s. But after an "accident" produced their daughter Luna, and
a "mistake" brought a second daughter, Phoebe, Meg abandoned her music career. Luna and Phoebe grew up far away from the limelight, fiercely
protected by their mother. Now 19 years old, Luna has moved to New York City and started a band. Phoebe decides to visit her sister during the
last bit of summer before senior year. She is curious about the untold story of her parents' fame, resorting to information gleaned from an old Spin
magazine. As Luna seems destined to follow in her mother's talented footsteps, Phoebe finds a soul mate who shares her love of song lyrics. This
is mostly Phoebe's story, with flashbacks from Meg's reluctant stardom. McNally's first novel shows an appreciation of poetic phrasing, as well as
plenty of musical references. Recommend this introspective novel to readers who enjoy stories about music and musicians.--Diane Colson
The Hundred Lies of Lizzie Lovett. By Chelsea Sedoti. Jan. 2017.400p. Sourcebooks/Fire, 517.99 (9781492636083). Gr. 9-12.
When Lizzie Lovett goes missing, Hawthorn becomes obsessed--how could something bad happen to beautiful, popular Lizzie, who always
seemed immune to pain? Hawthorn, who's always coveted Lizzie's seemingly easy existence, goes to desperate, nearly crazy lengths to explain
her disappearance, and in the process of her investigation, she befriends Lizzie's 25-year-old boyfriend, Enzo, who indulges her bizarre quest
(more than he should) and makes Hawthorn feel like less of an outsider. But she becomes so caught up in her search that she finds herself even
more alienated, and when the truth finally comes out, Hawthorn is forced to examine her own choices. Sedoti's debut offers an enlightening look
at the dangers of relying on outward appearances to judge someone's character, and Hawthorn's first-person narrative, filled with obsessive
thoughts and, eventually, meaningful reflection, is a lively, engaging vehicle for the story. A rich cast of secondary characters, including
Hawthorn's family and a caravan of hippies camping in her backyard, adds depth. Fans of character-driven novels will appreciate this.--Sarah
Hunter
Kingdom of Ash and Briars. By Hannah West. 2016.368p. Holiday, $17.95 (97808234365141. Gr. 7-10.
Orphaned and raised as a serving girl, 16-year-old Bristal is stunned to learn that she is one of three elicromancers--immortal, magical beings--in
her kingdom. Bristal is quickly found by the other two elicromancers and trained in their ways. One, Tamarice, is hungry for power and soon
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betrays them all, cursing the royal family and casting the kingdom into darkness. Over the course of the next 16 years, it falls to Bristal to stop
Tamarice's machinations. She uses her shape-shifting skills to secretly raise the cursed youngest princess of the kingdom while helping the hidden
oldest princess attend a ball and discover her heritage. At the same time, she disguises herself as a man to join a group of the king's soldiers and
prepares herself for the coming fight. The inclusion of multiple familiar stories--Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Mulan--gives this plenty of heft,
and the scope of Bristal's adventures, the atmospheric magical elements, and the light touch of romance will enchant fairy-tale fans.--Maggie
Reagan
* Last Seen Leaving. By Caleb Roehrig. Oct. 2016.336p. Feiwel and Friends, $17.99 (9781250085634). Gr. 9-12.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
This truly hair-raising, standout mystery thriller from debut author Roehrig will keep readers guessing until the end. When sophomore Flynn
Doherty comes home to find police vehicles parked outside his house, he finds himself facing plenty of questions about his missing girlfriend,
January. The last time Flynn saw January, she was emotional and desperate to be intimate. When Flynn refused, the two parted on unsteady terms
and January all but accused Flynn of being gay, a truth he has been avoiding for years. With the police hesitant to trust Flynn, he takes matters
into his hands and launches his own investigation with January's coworker, friendly and sexy Kaz. More than just fully realized, Roehrig's
characters feel real. And if Flynn's circumstances are a bit sensational, his struggles with identity and relationships certainly aren't. Though this is
not a typical problem novel, Roehrig gives equal deference to the mystery of January's disappearance and Flynn's coming out and subsequent
burgeoning romance with Kaz. Deftly weaving fast-paced mystery with vivid, affecting flashbacks, Roehrig coaxes readers along at just the right
pace and pulls the rug out from under them in the best way possible with a knockout ending.--Caitlin Kling
* A List of Cages. By Robin Roe. Jan. 2017.320p. Hyperion, $17.99 (9781484763803). Gr. 9-12.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Fourteen-year-old Julian is a damaged boy, taciturn and withdrawn, painfully shy and still bereft from the death of his parents when he was a
child. A poor student with illegible handwriting, he is often the subject of teachers' scorn and classmates' teasing. As a result, he regularly skips
classes to hide in a secret room he has found. His home life is even worse: he is the ward of his uncle by marriage, a cold, distant, dangerous man
who often punishes Julian cruelly, whipping him with a switch and lacerating the skin on his torso. Things begin to gradually change when he
encounters Adam, a teenager who had once been Julian's foster brother before the uncle took custody. Adam, who had ADHD as a child, is still a
restless but exuberant, happy presence, beloved by fellow students and teachers alike. When he unofficially adopts Julian, he brings light into the
boy's hitherto dark existence, though danger still lurks. The two boys tell their respective, affecting stories in first-person voices that perfectly
reflect their characters and rive the story's compelling action. Roe's debut may lack subdety, but it makes up for it with memorable characters and
high drama. A page-turner with a lot of compassion. --Michael Cart
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Of Fire and Stars. By Audrey Coulthurst. Nov. 2016.400p. HarperCollins/Balzer+Bray, $17.99 (9780062433251). Gr. 8-11.
Princess Dennaleia has always been destined to marry the prince of nearby Mynaria. She knows that it will mean hiding some parts of herself:
Denna has a magical Affinity for fire, and in Mynaria, magic is feared and forbidden. But she doesn't count on being taught to ride the formidable
Mynarian warhorses by Princess Amaranthine (aka Mare), the barbed, very unprincesslike sister of Denna's betrothed. Mare wants nothing to do
with Denna, preferring to train horses instead of princesses, but when a sudden assassination throws the kingdom into chaos and fingers are
pointed at a rebel group of the magically gifted, the two are thrown together as they search for the truth, and their antipathy turns to friendship
and then something more. High-fantasy novels with TGBT love stories at their center are few and far between, and this is done in a lovely
fashion; Mare and Denna's relationship blossoms naturally against a high-stakes backdrop and a fully realized world. A worthy debut that
succeeds as both an adventure and a romance. --Maggie Reagan
Saving Hamlet. By Molly Booth. Nov. 2016.352p. Hyperion, $17.99 (9781484752746). Gr. 8-11.
Sophomore Emma, recently introduced to theater, is excited to learn more as the drama club's assistant stage manager for a production of Hamlet.
Her theater-maven best friend Lulu is gunning for the role of Hamlet--so what if she's a girl?--and Emma has a serious crush on student director
Brandon. But then Emma suddenly finds herself running the whole show, she and Lulu have a massive fight, and Brandon actually starts to seem
like a piece of work. Worse, the show is a disaster: brevity may be the soul of wit, but Brandon's version is five hours long. Then Emma falls
through a trapdoor into seventeenth-century London, behind the scenes of the original Hamlet. As she travels back and forth in time between the
two productions, she learns more than she ever thought possible about theater and being herself. Emma is an easy-to-root-for heroine whose
struggles will resonate with teens, drama geeks or otherwise, and her forays into Shakespeare's London add insight into gender identity in the
theater. A fun, imaginative debut. --Maggie Reagan
Snow Summer. By Kit Peel. Oct. 2016. 200p. Groundwood, $16.95 (9781554983575). Gr. 6-9.
Orphan Wyn currently lives with a kindly pastor and his family in a small English village, but she's acutely aware of not fitting in. Climate change
has created a winter without end, which means that Wyn needs to hide the fact that she is never cold, as well as try to ignore her untested
telekinetic powers and strange memories of things that should be impossible, like flying. When otherworldly creatures appear, sparking Wyn's
hidden memories, she realizes her true identity and her responsibility to end winter and save the world. Peel blends current realities like climate
change with a mystical natural world, in which nature's forces are strong enough to fight human destruction. Readers' initial confusion over the
various magical creatures should settle fairly quickly, while Peel's richly detailed descriptions of the landscapes and the creatures that rise from
them create a magic of their own. Though clearly British in origin, the concerns are global. It may not be subtle, but Peel's debut has the
satisfyingly predictable appeal of a fairy tale. --Debbie Carton
Timekeeper. By Tara Sim. Nov. 2016. 368p. Skyhorse/Sky Pony, $17.99 (9781510706187). Gr. 9-12.
Danny, a 17-year-old clock mechanic living in an alternate 1875 London, narrowly escapes death when a clock tower in which he's working is
bombed. It takes some time to regain his nerve, and he is distracted by an impossible romance, his mechanic father's entrapment behind an
impenetrable time-wall, and ongoing attacks on clock towers all over the English countryside. First-time author Sim has constructed a mild
combination mystery, LGBTQ romance, and supernatural tale of clock spirits and sabotage that explores how far people might go for those they
love. Its strongest elements are the time-related mythology and the supernatural gay romance; the mystery is inconsistently developed, and its
resolution seems rushed. There is a hint-dropped and quickly gone--that this is the first of more books to do with young Danny and his friends.
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An author's note indicates changes to real historical London of 1875 and addresses technology and inventions, the role of women, and
homosexuality. Try this with A. J. Hartley's Steeplejack (2016) for the unusual occupation angle.--Cindy Welch
Under Rose-Tainted Skies. By Louise Gornall. Jan. 2017.336p. Clarion, $17.99 (9780544736511). Gr. 8-11.
Imagine this: your groceries have been delivered to your home, because you don't go shopping. Inconveniently, they have been left just outside
against the house, where they sit in the sun. If you are Norah, this is a catastrophe, since venturing out of the house alone is terrifying. Luckily,
however, she gets unexpected help from Luke, the new guy next door. Normally, she wouldn't be welcoming, but Luke is interesting. When her
mother ends up in the hospital, leaving her temporarily in charge of battling her demons on her own, Norah and Luke, who has his own issues,
take realistic baby steps toward each other. Debut author Gornall, who based Norah's illness on her own experiences, allows readers open access
to Norah's tormented mind. Describing anxiety, Norah observes, "It's the brassy bitch at school that I don't like, but being her BFF makes me
popular. ... I don't know how to be safe without it." Pair this with John Corey Whaley's Highly Illogical Behavior (2016) for a complementary
story about a teen boy experiencing agoraphobia.--Diane Colson
Middle Readers
The Crystal Ribbon. By Celeste Lim. Jan. 2017. 352p. Scholastic, $17.99 (9780545767033): e-book, $ 17.99 (9780545767057). Gr. 4-7.
Eleven-year-old Li Jing adores her baba, but she doesn't understand why he sacrifices precious crops to the Great Golden Huli Jing, the village's
tutelary fox spirit, or why he doesn't prevent her from being sold to the Guo family as a tongyang xi (nursemaid-wife) for their three-year-old son.
Although Jing attempts to be a dutiful daughter-in-law, the Guos and their bratty daughters treat her as a servant. One evening, a spider jing asks
for help rescuing her egg sac from Jing's sister-in-law's bedroom. As a token of gratitude, the spider weaves a crystal-like ribbon that can be
burned as a call for help. And Jing desperately needs help after the Guos sell her to a chinglou, or courtesan house. Jing is a compassionate
character who shows spirit in resisting unjust treatment. As often happens with child narrators, she seems a bit too articulate for her age. This
minor criticism aside, this is a delightful debut featuring lovely prose and a refreshingly unique setting of China during the Song dynasty.--
Michelle Young
The Friendship Experiment. By Erin Teagan. Nov. 2016. 256p. HMH, $16.99 (9780544636224). Gr. 4-7.
Ever since Maddie's scientist grandfather died, she's been carrying on his traditional approach to problem-solving: there's a standard operating
procedure (SOP) for everything. Maddie writes down her step-by-step solutions in her trusty science notebook, and they're for everything from
"How to Survive a Needle" (she and her sister, Brooke, have a hereditary blood disease that requires plenty of trips to the doctor) to "How to Be
Friendly" (Maddie's best friend switched schools, leaving Maddie alone at lunch). But these days, the SOPs aren't doing their job. Brooke isn't
taking their illness seriously, and Maddie doesn't know how to convince her. Then there's Riley, the new science-obsessed girl who just moved to
town and is trying to be Maddie's friend--if only she weren't so annoying. Practical Maddie has a lot to learn about other people, and her journey
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will be an eye-opening one for many. Science-minded readers will cheer to meet their match in Maddie as she conquers her demons and learns
what exactly it means to have--and be--a friend.--Maggie Reagan
* The Infinity Year of Avalon James. By Dana Middleton. Oct. 2016. 224p. Feiwel and Friends, $16.99 (9781250085696). Gr. 4-6.
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
Now that they're 10 years old, hot-tempered Avalon and even-keeled Atticus believe that, as longtime best friends entering their "Infinity Year,"
each will be granted a special power for a time. Avalon, whose father was incarcerated last year, is hoping for a skill that will help her deal with
Elena, a dagger-tongued bully at school. Fifth grade doesn't start well, but for every negative (enduring a messy, upsetting Halloween prank),
there's a positive (earning a place at the regional spelling bee), and Avalon can always count on Atticus, who helps maintain a delicate emotional
balance. When she inadvertently hurts him and he withdraws, though, Avalon feels wretched and knows that she can't count on magic to put
things right. Revealing her negative traits as well as more admirable qualities, Avalon's first-person narrative is forthright and engaging. Easy for
readers to forget but always a background factor, her thoughts about her father and their relationship resurface to the fore from time to time. This
offers a number of realistically drawn characters, both kids and adults, portrayed as complex people who interact and cope with their troubles in
individual ways. A well-knit first novel with an involving, affecting story.--Carolyn Phelan
Kyle Finds Her Way. By Susie Salem. Oct. 2016. 256p. Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine, $16.99 (9780545852661); e-book, $16.99
(9780545852685). Gr. 5-8.
Navigating middle school on day one is daunting for any incoming sixth-grader, but Kyle Constantini is off to a particularly terrible start. She is
in a different section than her two best friends; gets lost and is almost late for her first class; punches a class bully for nearly stepping on her new
friend Marcy's hearing aids; is assigned by the principal to participate in the school's NAVS (Negotiating Actions and Values for Solutions) team;
and rides Marcy's bus rather than her own. Of course, she gets in trouble with her parents for these faux pas, and as new dilemmas crop up, she
can't seem to explain her way out of them--no matter how honorable or naive her intentions have been. Resolutions are reached, and with each,
Kyle matures. Sixth-grade female angst rings true in this debut novel. Salom has Kyle tell the story and uses fantastic dialogue to let this comingof-age
tale shine. Middle-grade readers will relate to Kyle's missteps and the frequently overwhelming environment of middle school.--J. B. Petty
Like Magic. By Elaine Vickers. Oct. 2016. 272p. Harper, $16.99 (9780062414311). Gr. 3-5.
Right from the start of this endearing debut, readers will feel the heartache and the exhilaration of what it means to be 10. Shy poet Grace is
dreading starting fifth grade without her best friend. Outspoken painter Jada, meanwhile, uprooted from New York City, is trying her best to make
a new home in Utah with her dad, while secretly searching for the mother who abandoned her. And sensitive musician Malia anxiously awaits the
arrival of her new sister, worried that the baby will take her place in her mother's heart. When the girls discover a treasure box at the local library
and anonymously begin to share treasures of their own, they also begin to find comfort and friendship. Told in alternating chapters, Vickers gives
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each girl a unique and engaging voice, allowing each character's artistic passions to play a key role in overcoming her personal struggles. The Salt
Lake City setting and gracefully embedded ethnic differences add freshness to a story with a message that will stand the test of time: friendship is
like magic. --Rebecca Kuss
Midnight without a Moon. By Linda Williams Jackson. Jan. 2017.320p. HMH, $16.99 (9780544785106). Gr. 5-8.
It's 1955 in Mississippi, and 13-year-old Rose has a dream: to leave the cotton fields, follow her mama to Chicago, go to an integrated school, and
then head to college to become a teacher or doctor--thereby having the means to take care of her family. But then her harridan of a grandmother
decrees that Rose won't be going back to school, even though she's only finished seventh grade. So much, it would seem, for her dream.
Meanwhile, the larger world intrudes when a young neighbor is murdered for registering to vote and then a 14-year-old boy visiting from
Chicago, named Emmett Till, is also murdered. Will the deaths be meaningless or will they presage change, both for Mississippi and for Rose?
Jackson's debut does an excellent job dramatizing the injustice that was epidemic in the pre-civil rights South and capturing the sounds and
sensibilities of that time and place. Her sympathetic characters and their stories will make this thoughtful book especially good for classroom use.
--Michael Cart
Rebel Genius. By Michael Dante DiMartino. Oct. 2016.384p. illus. Roaring Brook, $16.99 (9781626723368). Gr. 5-8.
Giacomo is a 12-year-old orphan who lives in the sewers of Renaissance-inspired Virenzia. His prized possession is a sketchbook, though
drawing is risky as the Supreme Creator, or dictator, has outlawed art. When his personal Genius--a birdlike creature that enhances artistic
abilities--finds him, he is dangerously marked as an artist. Shortly thereafter, a trio of other artistic children find him and take him to a safe house
where they are allowed to flourish. There they are taught sacred geometry and how to use their creative energies as weapons. When an evil artist
begins hunting for the three Sacred Tools of the Creator, with the intent of destroying the empire, Giacomo is called upon to lead his new
compatriots on a quest to stop him. This debut novel, by the cocreator of the animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender, is the first in a planned
fantasy series. While some of the combined magic and geometry falls flat, there is action and adventure galore, including narrow escapes,
surprising twists, and stunning turns.--Jeanne Fredriksen
Ryan Quinn and the Rebel's Escape. By Ron McGee. Oct. 2016.368p. Harper, $16.99 (9780062421647). Gr. 5-8.
Ryan Quinn's life in New York is interrupted when his father is reported missing and his mother is kidnapped. Left with one message--his father
must deliver Myat Kaw or else his mother dies--Ryan is left to trust Tasha, an associate of his parents, and his friends Danny and Kasey to rescue
them. Turns out Ryan's parents have been working for an emergency rescue organization, and they have secretly been training Ryan his whole
life. McGee s debut has many hallmarks of the middle-grade espionage thriller genre--a fake international location, a young boy who suddenly
can do extraordinary things, the friend who can hack into anything, and so on--and it is a solid volume for readers looking for a fast-paced,
nonstop adventure of derring-do. Ryan is a likable character, Danny is hilarious, Kasey is more than the dumb blonde everyone assumes she is,
and his bully turns out to be a pretty decent guy with a soft spot. While many loose ends are neatly tied up, this bound-to-be-popular volume
leaves plenty of room for a sequel.--Lindsey Tomsu
The Secrets of Hexbridge Castle. By Gabrielle Kent. Oct. 2016.336p. Scholastic, $16.99 (9780545869294); e-book, $16.99 (9780545881807).
Gr. 4-7.
Alfie Bloom is more than a little puzzled to learn that he's inherited a castle. For one thing, he's never heard of Orin Hopcraft, the druid who left
him Hexbridge Casde. The biggest surprise, however, is the castle itself, full of hidden rooms and other wondrous magic. Alfie and his twin
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cousins have great fun exploring, but danger comes with a two-headed dragon terrorizing the village and a pair of horrendous headmistresses at
Alfie's new school. Kent's debut has undeniable shades of that other magical boy who finds himself unexpectedly in a magical castle--Alfie
receives letters by raven, he's helped by an enigmatic man in a high tower, he's the sole bearer of powerful magic, and so on--but Kent carries it
off well, neatly interweaving backstory, hints about Hopcraft's tasks for Alfie, comical interludes, and plot threads about friendship and family
that help keep the narrative firmly grounded in reality. This well-paced, engaging fantasy is tailor-made for Harry Potter fans, who will be pleased
to learn there are more adventures in the works for Alfie. --Sarah Hunter
Snakes and Stones. By Lisa Fowler. Nov. 2016. 240p. Skyhorse/Sky Pony, $15.99 (9781510710313). Gr. 3-6.
It's 1921, and Chestnut Hill has been traveling with her father and her younger triplet siblings--Hazel, Mac, and Filbert--since the day he took
them away from their mother. Together, the siblings help sell their father's snake oil elixir, but Chestnut is tired of having to lie to people every
day about its powers. While traveling, Chestnut leaves handmade signs behind showing their next destination, in the hope that her mother will
track them down. When she finally can't take it anymore, Chestnut steals money to buy a ticket home, which leads to a series of troubles that
result in a reunion with her mother. But when she witnesses an argument between her parents, she learns a heartbreaking truth about them. Fowler
includes some period-appropriate instances of racism, including some targeting the Hills' friend, Abraham, although the Hills are not depicted as
racist themselves. Chestnut's first-person narrative, in an old-fashioned, rural dialect, might be a struggle for some, but the fast pace and intriguing
secrets in this debut will keep the pages turning. --Selenia Paz
A Tail of Camelot. By Julie Leung. Illus. by Lindsey Carr. Oct. 2016.304p. Harper, $16.99 (9780062403995). Gr. 3-6.
Like most mice in Camelot, young Calib Christopher dreams of becoming a knight, but when his name is mysteriously entered into the annual
Harvest Tournament (to determine his eligibility), his nerves threaten to get the best of him. Shortly afterward, an assassination interrupts the
competition, and the creatures grow convinced that the forest-dwelling Darklings are to blame. Calib is sure they are wrong and taps into
unknown stores of courage to unite the animals and face the true, and much more dangerous, enemy. Leungs debut is a charming blend of
Arthurian legend and Brian Jacques' Redwall series. A subplot involving Galahad's arrival as a boy in Camelot parallels Calib's struggles--and
eventual heroics--while integrating key characters from the legend. Exciting battles join suspenseful animal alliances, such as Calib's diplomatic
excursion to the owls, all while Calib tests the limits of his bravery and learns what being a knight truly entails. With likable characters and a
classic spirit of adventure, this is a satisfying story of small heroes accomplishing great things.--Julia Smith
YA RECOMMENDATIONS
* Young adult recommendations for adult, audio, and reference titles reviewed in this issue have been contributed by the Booklist staff and by
reviewers Poornima Apte, Michael Cart, Laura Chanoux, Joan Curbow, Kristine Huntley, Eloise Kinney, and Mary Ellen Quinn.
* Adult titles recommended for teens are marked with the following symbols: YA, for books of general YA interest; YA/C, for books with
particular curriculum value; YA/S, for books that will appeal most to teens with a special interest in a specific subject; and YA/M, for books best
suited to mature teens.
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Spotlight on first novels." Booklist, 15 Oct. 2016, p. 54+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA468771357&it=r&asid=6d1a49cf438d2ee50bf7813d173d386c. Accessed 12 June
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http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1497292595163 12/12
2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A468771357

Nation-Vallee, Johanna. "McNally, Janet. Girls in the Moon." Voice of Youth Advocates, Dec. 2016, p. 64. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA474767947&it=r. Accessed 12 June 2017. "Girls in the Moon." Publishers Weekly, 3 Oct. 2016, p. 126+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA466166691&it=r. Accessed 12 June 2017. "Spotlight on first novels." Booklist, 15 Oct. 2016, p. 54+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA468771357&it=r. Accessed 12 June 2017. "Pure poetry: Voya's poetry picks 2016." Voice of Youth Advocates, Apr. 2017, p. 12. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA491949438&it=r. Accessed 12 June 2017. "Spotlight on first novels." Booklist, 15 Oct. 2016, p. 54+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do? p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA468771357&it=r. Accessed 12 June 2017.

• Project Muse
  https://muse.jhu.edu/article/636974
  Word count: 17

  Review is a PDF and unable to copy - please follow the link for access.

• YA Books Central
  http://www.yabookscentral.com/blog/featured-review-girls-in-the-moon-by-janet-mcnally
  Word count: 676

  Featured Review: Girls in the Moon by Janet McNally
  Friday, 24 March 2017 Kayla King, Blog Manager Latest Staff Reviews News & Updates 483 Hits 0 Comment
  Featured Review: Girls in the Moon by Janet McNally
  About this book:

  An exquisitely told, authentic YA debut about family secrets, the shadow of fame, and finding your own way. Everyone in Phoebe Ferris’s life tells a different version of the truth. Her mother, Meg, ex–rock star and professional question evader, shares only the end of the story—the post-fame calm that Phoebe’s always known. Her sister, Luna, indie-rock darling of Brooklyn, preaches a stormy truth of her own making, selectively ignoring the facts she doesn’t like. And her father, Kieran, the cofounder of Meg’s beloved band, hasn’t said anything at all since he stopped calling three years ago. But Phoebe, a budding poet in search of an identity to call her own, is tired of half-truths and vague explanations. When she visits Luna in New York, she’s determined to find out how she fits in to this family of storytellers, and to maybe even continue her own tale—the one with the musician boy she’s been secretly writing for months. Told in alternating chapters, Phoebe’s first adventure flows as the story of Meg and Kieran’s romance ebbs, leaving behind only a time-worn, precious pearl of truth about her family’s past—and leaving Phoebe to take a leap into her own unknown future.

  *Review Contributed by Rose Tomasto, Staff

  Reviewer*

  A Dreamy, Beautiful Read

  “Secrets, my mother told me once, are just stories turned inside out.”

  Girls in the Moon stands apart from most books. The words flow so effortlessly and beautifully, that taking a break from it is practically impossible [not that you’d want to]. It is yet another one of the unique books of 2016 that is absolutely unforgettable.

  At the start of the book, I immediately felt a connection with all the characters. Their actions and their conversations felt so real that I couldn’t help but feel like I knew them in real life. Their emotions and reactions to everyday things felt so relatable, yet I couldn’t possibly explain it if I tried. It just felt like reading about real people experiencing real ups and downs, which is something most books don’t always give us.

  The story mainly revolves around Phoebe and Luna. Both are daughters of parents who were in a once-famous band. It’s about this moment in time, where they have more questions than answers and are simply trying to navigate through their worlds. Each girl had many things to focus on, as well as their relationship with each other and relationships with those around them. I think through this we got to see who the girls really were.

  The book also goes back and forth between the past and the present, but never in a way that could be confusing for the reader. The flashbacks only enhanced the story, and provided us with more background information on the characters. It only made them feel that much more real.

  One thing I absolutely adored about this book was that the descriptions in this book were like ART. Everything was described so beautiful, so clearly, that my mind could create the most vivid pictures. It really made the experience of reading this book such an interesting, and incredible one.

  Final thoughts?

  Girls in the Moon is an intimate, poetic, and real story. Reading it felt warm and comforting, because it was a story that anyone could find relatable, yet it also had subtle messages that felt hopeful. This is not an easy book to describe, mainly because it is all about feeling. I really enjoyed it, and I think anyone who is looking for realistic characters and a beautiful story, would enjoy this one as well.

• Mom Egg Review
  http://www.themomegg.com/themomegg/Book_Reviews/Entries/2016/4/27_BOOK_REVIEW__Some_Girls_by_Janet_McNally._Review_by_Meg_Reynolds.html
  Word count: 872

  Winner of the 2014 White Pine Press Poetry Prize

  SOME GIRLS blends of contemporary and ancient story. McNally bends time on purpose, lending myth into women’s stories and humanity to myth. McNally remembers what is worth remembering and offers luminous characters to do the telling. With smart, witty, rich imagery she makes heroines of all of us and feeds the hungry in-between spaces in the stories we’ve been told. Here, we find Eurydice listening to the Rolling Stones, Eve experimenting in ornithology, and a contemporary mother feeling a whole ocean move as her child grows. McNally tells these stories and more with keen insight and agility.

  McNally’s poems primarily concern themselves with femininity. This book is an artifact and exploration. The stories are laid down one after another, not unlike tarot cards, to reveal elements of the book’s subject without ever revealing a complete picture. In fact, the exploration is incomplete but intimate; it offers almost physical accounts of character’s lives and possesses both an emotional urgency and imagistic quality. Poems are traversed like dreams or paintings strung together with flowers, gems, music. McNally’s consistent voice and balance between narrative and image serves and strengthens. Throughout, the reader runs the risk of losing footing in lush images but then is adeptly grounded—evidence of McNally’s dexterity and deep knowledge of even her most inventive of narratives.

  McNally’s often places mythical figures in unexpected, contemporary settings. In “Eurydice and Orpheus Stay Up Late” the reader finds these figures in a diner eating French fries. The focus of the narrative stems from Eurydice’s interior. Everything she does has both concrete and intuitive reasons. McNally offers her characters a radical wholeness and a dreamlike nonsense that delineate a creative development of identity. In the concluding lines, “The railing waits, wearing/ a filigree of rust, but she holds on to him,” there is a deep satisfaction in the beauty and authenticity of the words (25).

  Another poem, “Leda in my Kitchen,” expresses a more complex view of a mythical character and greater empathy for her. Here, McNally uses wrenching detail to describe the impact of Leda’s assault by Zeus. “She held the curve/ of her belly and I saw her fingers/ were skin and bone again…” and “We pretended/ the egg in front of us had lost its terrible promise/ cradled no life in its calcium shell” (27). This telling echoes not only the past but, undeniably, the present where women support one another through experiences of assault and the ramifications. McNally’s book balances this against other experiences of the feminine. She prioritizes a sisterhood between women. Figures like Leda, Demeter, or Rapunzel are in direct relationship with the reader. McNally suggests that we are not only nurtured by them but that we may, by telling their stories, nurture them in turn, offering the support we wished they had received.

  Certain questions are implied in her McNally’s poems. Namely: What do stories do to us? How do they do it? One poem, “Trompe L’oeil,” suggests an illusory set of answers. Trompe l’oeil is a painting method used to trick the eye into seeing a painted subject as three-dimensional. McNally has said that her desire to revise these stories came, in some part, from raising a daughter. What three-dimensional characters would her daughter have when building her view of the world? Without the sort of complex telling McNally does in her poems, there are only two-dimensional fairytale heroines more like paper dolls than individuals. This internal division between what is expressed, historically, and what is unexpressed effectively splits a character in half - a status quo as exhausting as it is frustrating. This poem closes: “you can saw a girl in half/ but then you’ll have two half-girls, and/ what the hell good is that?” (45). McNally wants more and, here, she writes it.

  Throughout the book, there is a relationship between the speaker and a troubled friend, Maggie. Maggie is a vibrant figure who goes in and out of coma throughout the book. She is equal parts friend, martini-drinker, kid at summer camp, and Sleeping Beauty, burning awake against dull, debilitating slumber. The speaker is her friend and witness, staying with her and with other mythic figures to breathe life into their stories as she creates life as a new mother. Finally, that is what these stories do - they make room on the page for new life, new and bristling awareness. These are not just SOME GIRLS. They are all us, more imaginatively and clearly rendered, worth reading and seeing fully.

  Meg Reynolds is a teacher, writer, and artist living in Burlington, Vermont. She holds her BA in Art and English from Bates College and MFA in poetry writing from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine. Her work has been published in Est, The Salon, Prelude, and Prime Number Magazine. She is the co-director of writinginsideVT, an organization that offers supportive writing instruction at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility as well as the co-founder of Pine Street Poets whose self-titled chapbook was recently published through Honeybee Press.

• Sweet Sixteens
  https://thesweetsixteens.wordpress.com/2016/11/30/the-debut-club-an-interview-with-janet-mcnally-author-of-girls-in-the-moon/
  Word count: 1142

  About the Author:

  Janet McNallyThough her family is not rock and roll royalty, Janet McNally has always liked boys in bands. (She even married one.) She has an MFA from the University of Notre Dame, and her stories and poems have been published widely in magazines. She has twice been a fiction fellow with the New York Foundation for the Arts. Janet lives in Buffalo with her husband and three little girls, in a house full of records and books, and teaches creative writing at Canisius College. Girls in the Moon is her first novel, but she’s also the author of a prizewinning collection of poems, Some Girls.

  Find her online at janetmmcnally.com or on Twitter or on Facebook.

  About GIRLS IN THE MOON:

  Girls_in_the_Moon_Crop jpegEveryone in Phoebe Ferris’s life tells a different version of the truth. Her mother, Meg, ex–rock star and professional question evader, shares only the end of the story—the post-fame calm that Phoebe’s always known. Her sister, Luna, indie-rock darling of Brooklyn, preaches a stormy truth of her own making, selectively ignoring the facts she doesn’t like. And her father, Kieran, the cofounder of Meg’s beloved band, hasn’t said anything at all since he stopped calling three years ago.

  But Phoebe, a budding poet in search of an identity to call her own, is tired of half-truths and vague explanations. When she visits Luna in New York, she’s determined to find out how she fits in to this family of storytellers, and to maybe even continue her own tale—the one with the musician boy she’s been secretly writing for months. Told in alternating chapters, Phoebe’s first adventure flows as the story of Meg and Kieran’s romance ebbs, leaving behind only a time-worn, precious pearl of truth about her family’s past—and leaving Phoebe to take a leap into her own unknown future.

  GIRLS IN THE MOON is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and IndieBound.

  ‘GIRLS’ TALK

  Carlie: In Girls In The Moon, Phoebe is a budding poet, and the whole story has such rich, beautiful language. How did your experience as a poet translate into writing for young adults?

  Janet: I love poetry because it allows us to say things in a totally different way from prose. It’s spare and minimal, and leaves space for us to think. That said, I’m a storyteller first, so even in my poetry, I’m always telling stories. I think poetry finds its way into my prose on a word level and a line level. I use a lot of imagery, a lot of figurative language, but at the same time I want to make sure I’m reaching the reader in a way that is very tied to the physical world. Poetry is good for teaching a writer how to do that. Phoebe is a person who is trying to figure out the world and her own emotions, and she does that (like I do) through language.

  Carlie: One of my favorite aspects of Girls In The Moon is how gorgeously you incorporate New York. Do you have any history with Brooklyn, and why’d you choose it as the setting for your novel?

  Janet: I lived in Brooklyn Heights for a short time (actually in the apartment where Luna lives!) and I loved it. I certainly left part of my heart in New York when I left. I still visit pretty regularly as I have good friends there, and I have a lot of vivid, place-based memories of NYC. It was so important to me to create an accurate picture of what it’s like to be in New York, especially when you’re just getting to know the city, like Phoebe is. I wanted to make sure that my book didn’t end up like a movie where you’re getting some idealized and untrue version of the city. That said: in reality, NYC is pretty magical, so I wanted to express that. Phoebe is only there for a week, after all. If she lived there much longer she’d start complaining about the subway like everyone else. 🙂

  Carlie: Girls In The Moon features many different voices and personalities. Which one came first in the writing process and why?

  Janet: Phoebe came first. I saw her really clearly because she’s a lot like me (though my parents are not ex-rock stars). I empathized a lot with Meg, too, though, as a mother, even though my own daughters are really small. My editor Kristen Pettit was the one who suggested incorporating Meg as a voice, and I couldn’t get that idea out of my head once she suggested it. It was so much fun to write those chapters.

  Carlie: Phoebe grows up in a family of storytellers and musicians. Are you the biggest storyteller in your family, and do you have any musical talent?

  Janet: I’ve always been the storyteller in my family, back to when I was making books out of the computer paper my dad would bring home from work. I don’t have any musical talent, really (I played the flute and supposedly had good vibrato, but I never practiced because I didn’t like to). My husband is a musician, though, and a huge music lover, so I’ve learned a lot from him. Spent a lot of time at shows, both when he was playing out and just going to see bands I love. Sometimes I think I do my best thinking at live shows, because I can’t do anything else but watch and think. My talent is with words, like Phoebe, and though it would be fun to be Luna for a while, I’m perfectly happy to be a writer.

  LIGHTNING ROUND!

  Character in a novel who you’d most want to be friends with?

  Anne Shirley.

  Salty snack or sweet snack?

  Salty, but I also must have my daily ration of dark chocolate.

  Outlander or Game of Thrones?

  Neither! Orphan Black.

  Quiet night in or fun night out?

  Lately I’m so busy that what I really want is to stay in and read a book cover to cover.

  Tea or coffee?

  Green tea. I worked in a coffeehouse when I was in college and loved that job, but never got into drinking coffee.

  Writing with music or in silence?

  With music! I need a soundtrack for everything.

• Pub Crawl
  http://www.publishingcrawl.com/2016/11/28/author-janet-mcnally-on-writing-about-music/
  Word count: 1593

  AUTHOR JANET MCNALLY ON WRITING ABOUT MUSIC
  Julie Julie Eshbaugh
  Nov 28 2016
  Posted in:
  Giveaways, Interviews, Speakeasy Sharing, Writing Life
  Hi PubCrawlers! Today I’m sharing an interview with my friend and fellow Sweet 16 debut author, Janet McNally. Janet’s debut, Girls in the Moon, releases tomorrow, November 29. I was lucky enough to read an advance copy, and I fell in love with this lyrical coming-of-age story with a rock and roll backdrop. I’m so happy to have Janet here to talk about her debut. She is also sharing a giveaway, so enter with the Rafflecopter below!

  Here’s a summary of Girls in the Moon:

  Everyone in Phoebe Ferris’s life tells a different version of the truth. Her mother, Meg, GirlsInTheMoon_CoverRevealex-rock star and professional question evader, shares only the end of the story—the post-fame calm that Phoebe’s always known. Her sister Luna, indie rock darling of Brooklyn, preaches a stormy truth of her own making, selectively ignoring the facts she doesn’t like. And her father, Kieran, cofounder of Meg’s beloved band, hasn’t said anything at all since he stopped calling three years ago.
  But Phoebe, a budding poet in search of an identity to call her own, is tired of half-truths and vague explanations. When she visits Luna in New York, she’s determined to find out how she fits in to this family of storytellers, and maybe even continue her own tale—the one with the musician boy she’s been secretly writing for months.
  Like the tide being pulled to the shore, Phoebe is drawn back and forth between her magnetic family members and her own fresh start. Phoebe’s first adventure flows forward as Meg’s romance unspools in reverse, leaving behind only a time-worn, precious pearl of truth about her family’s past—and leaving Phoebe to take a leap into the unknown of her own future.
  Welcome Janet! Thank you for being here. Girls in the Moon is about two sisters whose parents were once in a famous rock band together. The book shows us glimpses of the parents’ past in the rock limelight, but most of the action is set in present-day New York City, where one of the girls is just getting her own music career started with her own band. What made you choose to write about music, and about the world of rock in particular?
  Janet McNallyI love music and I always have, so it just seemed natural to me. To be honest, when I started writing this book I had nine-month-old twins and a toddler, so I don’t remember how it all began. I do think there was something about that wild, sleepless time that let me fall straight into this book, and I probably went toward music because I find it comforting. The music we love is a type of home for each of us, isn’t it? For me, that home is rock and roll and live shows, guitar hum and amp hiss and kick drums. It makes sense that the first novel I finished was in that world. I loved using Phoebe as a main character, too, because she’s an outsider and an insider at the same time. She’s not a musician, but she is a lyricist, and she loves music.

  The arts are all over Girls in the Moon—not just music, but sculpture and poetry, too. Can you talk about your personal relationship with the arts and how it influenced this book?
  I’ve always been a storyteller, back to the time when I was making books out of construction paper and stapling them together. Most of my characters end up being artists of some sort: writers, painters, photographers, dancers. I think it’s because I can’t quite imagine what it would be like not to be driven to create art. My husband and I have this joke we repeat all the time: What do people do if they aren’t artists? How do they spend their time? Some of them probably spend a lot of their time consuming art (shout out to my beloved bookworms out there!) and that’s great, too. I’ve always needed a balance between production and consumption of art. That works for me. So it works for my characters, too, I think.

  My MFA is in fiction, but after my first daughter was born I couldn’t write fiction, so I went back to poetry. I published my first book of poems, Some Girls, in 2015, just after I sold Girls in the Moon. I love poetry, especially the way it lets us say things in this perfect, crystalline, focused way. I haven’t had much time to write it in the last year or so, since I’m writing my second novel, and I miss it. It was nice to write about a budding poet with Phoebe.

  I really enjoyed the flashback chapters. How did that writing choice come about for you? What kind of challenges did it present? Did you have to address the changes in the music world, for instance?
  In the first version of Girls in the Moon, there were no Meg flashback chapters. My editor Kristen Pettit was the one who suggested that, and as soon as she did, I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. It was so appealing to write from an artist mother’s perspective, as an artist mother myself. My girls are tiny, just as Meg’s are in the most recent flashback chapters, and I could imagine what it would be like to want to protect them from fame and from the world.

  I found it really fun to write those chapters. It was freeing to write vignettes that didn’t have to be connected to the chapter previous, to hop around in time. It was a little like writing poetry in that way. You can leave spaces wide open. I was writing about Meg’s life offstage, so I thought I could understand that and render it believably. It was fun, too, to dip into the nineties. Meg is older than me, so I was reaching back before my own experience, but I was a teenager in the nineties so I had some background. There’s something appealing about writing about a time before iTunes and Spotify, when if you wanted to hear a song you had to put on a tape or a record or catch it on the radio. I live in a house with thousands of vinyl records, though, so I guess I’m already living in that world to some extent.

  In Girls in the Moon, music and family are closely intertwined. I know music is a part of your own family. How did your family relationships influence this book?
  My husband is a musician, as you know, Julie, and we’ve been together for a long time. I spent my early twenties in bars and clubs watching his band play (often in the middle of the night—we stay up late here in Buffalo!). So I know what it’s like to be married to another artist, though I think it’s easier in a way when you’re in different fields. I also know what it’s like to raise kids to have music—the songs and artists we love—be a huge part of their lives. My oldest daughter had a bunch of imaginary friends, and the two most important ones were John Lennon and Ringo Starr. I have so many music nerd friends, too, and that became a big part of this book. Phoebe worries about holding her own with the cool music kids, and what she doesn’t realize is that she’s one of them.

  Do you have any helpful tips for anyone trying to write a book where music (or another art) plays a part in the story?
  With music, I think it’s all about listening. For me, a soundtrack was essential, and so was my own experience with live music. You can’t write about New York City or Paris convincingly without spending a lot of time there, or you run the risk of writing about some TV version of the city. Same goes for writing about live music. You have to experience it. The added benefit for me is that I do some of my best thinking at live shows. I think that’s because I can’t do anything else but listen and think.

  Last question—how did writing Girls in the Moon affect your own love of music? Do you find you approach music differently now?
  I don’t know if I approach music differently, exactly, but I do love it even more. I love the way that songs can be time-travel machines, the way they take us back to particular moments in our lives as soon as we hear the first notes. That’s magic, as far as I’m concerned. And now I have a lot of new songs that are memory-stamped with this book for me. I love that.

  Thank you Janet–it’s been lovely to have you! Congrats on the launch of Girls in the Moon! PubCrawlers, look for the book in stores on November 29, and enter the Rafflecopter below!

• Kirkus Reviews
  https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/janet-mcnally/girls-in-the-moon/
  Word count: 237

  KIRKUS REVIEW
  During a week in New York City, a white teen explores family secrets and a forbidden romance.

  Phoebe and her older sister, Luna, both share their mother Meg’s ivory-skinned beauty, musical talents, and complicated relationship with their father, who has been absent from their lives for the past three years. So when Meg sends Phoebe to NYC for a week in order to talk Luna out of leaving school to tour with her band, Phoebe instead secretly meets her father, Kieran. While clearly baffled by the responsibilities parenthood requires and regretful about past decisions, he’s also unsure how to move forward. Contrasting Kieran’s unease with parenthood are brief vignettes, interspersed throughout the novel, narrated by 1990s Meg. They show her love for Kieran but also her growing unease with the intersection of fame and parenting. Meg’s melancholic overtones explain how her own regrets manifest themselves in her parenting. Sharing Meg’s affinity for writing lyrics, narrator Phoebe also excels at capturing a moment’s emotional nuances. While she may occasionally go a bit overboard with figurative language, her reflections on independence and acceptance of people’s flaws are genuine. And her romance feels gentle and true. Not all conflicts are resolved, but there’s a sense that Phoebe has initiated improvements.

  Understated but astute narration makes this family snapshot a worthy read. (Fiction. 12 & up)

• BookPage
  https://bookpage.com/reviews/20680-janet-mcnally-girls-moon#.WUqjWesrIak
  Word count: 264

  To strangers, growing up the daughter of rock stars Meg and Kieran Ferris seems like a life of fame and adventure. But high school senior Phoebe, who would rather write a lyric than carry a tune, feels both caught in the middle and left out of the talent and drive of her musical family. In Janet McNally’s debut novel, Phoebe searches for her place within her broken family and the world beyond.

  Finding out the truth about herself is difficult, however, when her mother remains silent on why she left the rock world and notoriety to raise children in Buffalo, New York; she hears her father’s new songs on the radio but hasn’t seen him in three years; and her older sister, Luna, appears to be following their mother’s footsteps, dropping out of college to tour with her own band.

  Just before school starts, Meg sends Phoebe to New York City to try to convince Luna to return to her studies. Instead, Phoebe spends this time reconnecting with Kieran and trying to figure out love, loss, family and friendship. It’s all great fodder for lyrics, which the teen’s secretly sending to the bassist—and potential boyfriend—in Luna’s band. Periodic chapters told in Meg’s voice further reveal that Phoebe may be more like her mother than she ever considered.

  In this beautifully layered story with understated imagery, McNally’s biting realism leaves readers with hope and resilience to ponder rather than solve all of Phoebe’s unanswered questions.

• Cloudy House
  http://www.thecloudyhouse.com/2015/10/15/janet-mcnally-on-some-girls/
  Word count: 2042

  Janet McNally on Some Girls
  October 15, 2015 by admin
  McNally photoJANET MCNALLY‘s collection Some Girls won the 2014 White Pine Press Poetry Prize. Her young adult novel Girls in the Moon is forthcoming from HarperCollins in 2016, and her poems and stories have appeared in Gettysburg Review, Boulevard, Ecotone, Crazyhorse, Mid-American Review, and others. Janet has an MFA from Notre Dame and is a 2015 New York Foundation for the Arts fellow in fiction. She teaches creative writing at Canisius College in Buffalo.

  SOME GIRLS COVER FINALBook Title, Press, Year of Publication:

  Some Girls, White Pine Press, 2015

  Synopsis: The poems address what I call “girl stories,” the narratives that define femininity in our culture.

  What do you think makes your book (or any book) a “project book”?

  Some Girls is built around myths and fairy tales, and in writing I tried to transform them. Of course, writers have been retelling these stories since they came into existence, so this is nothing new. That’s okay with me. I believe archetypes beg us to interact with them, and in this book I have my particular angle, my point of entry. I’ve always been obsessed with stories—I’m a fiction writer, too—so Some Girls very quickly developed a narrative arc. I had a sense of the new-mother speaker, who is a version of me, as well as her troubled best friend Maggie, who recently woke from a coma. That plot point sounds like something out of a soap opera, until you consider how many myths and fairy tales have heroines who are unconscious or asleep.

  As I started writing I realized that I wanted to tell maybe fifty little stories as well as one big one, from beginning to end. Writing a book of poems is very different from writing a novel, and that’s attractive to me. I can leave some spaces empty, some dots only loosely connected. But in this case, from the beginning I knew I was working on pieces that would fit together.

  Why this subject (or constraint)?

  I’ve always loved fairy tales and myths, but when I found out I was having a baby daughter, I saw those stories in a different light. They were scarier, somehow, more dangerous. I didn’t know how to raise a girl outside of my own experiences, and I knew my daughter would be born into the framework of stories. When I started to think in particular about all the heroines who are sleeping or unconscious (maybe it was my new-mother lack of sleep?), I was led to the central arc of Some Girls. How could a girl in a coma (or put to sleep by a poisoned apple or bad fairy) come back the same? She’d be different; I just knew it. And the fairy tales don’t really address that.

  I’m rarely interested in writing about things only as they actually happened. Can we really trust our memories, anyway? I have this conversation with my students all the time. I believe there’s as much “truth”—believable human experience—in fiction as in nonfiction. All memory comes with a filter. It’s not pure or unadulterated. So, writing with the story of the speaker and Maggie in mind—as well as that of all the familiar heroines—allowed me to reveal the truth in an off-kilter way. The speaker isn’t exactly me, but she’s mostly me. Maggie is based on some part of my identity, too: the girl who ceased to exist when I became a mother.

  Are you comfortable with the term “project book”?

  I love project books. It’s wonderful when a poet spins all of a book’s poems from a similar thread, and when her passions of a particular period in her life become clear as you read. I’ve been thinking about it, and almost all works of fiction are “project books.” There’s no negative connotation to that term in the world of fiction. I was surprised and interested to learn—and I say this without judgment—that some poets really resist that term. I’ve loved many collections that probably wouldn’t be considered project books, too, of course, but I really enjoy finding a book of poems that feels like a beautiful whole.

  Was your project defined before you started writing? To what degree did it develop organically as you added poems?

  Can I claim exhaustion and say I don’t really remember? I was writing in a frenzy, with all these brand-new emotions and experiences crowding the page. I turned to poetry because it seemed the best way to write at the time, and I needed to believe that I was accomplishing something, that I was still a writer, still me. My best memory is that the book just started to take shape in front of me, and I followed it along. There are times in our lives when we get to reinvent ourselves, and becoming a parent is one of them. This book came out of that experience.

  How important was it for you that each poem could “stand on its own” or that the poems should rely on other poems in the book, or on the premise of the project itself, to succeed? What challenges did this present for you when writing single poems or structuring the book overall?

  I’ve published most of the poems from the book alone or in pairs or trios, so I think they exist as pieces outside of the whole. That’s ideal, because poetry collections are fragmented by nature. The parts should work like individual jewels in a bracelet, or maybe cogs in a machine. Each one should be particular and necessary, but they work together to make the whole. I guess I could go full Hansel and Gretel and say that we’re hoping for a trail of breadcrumbs to lead us someplace, out of the forest or to the candy house, but it’s probably much less deliberate than laying out each crumb. Ideally the project itself and the structure of the book should reveal itself as you write.

  At any point did you feel you were including (or were tempted to include) weaker poems in service of the project’s overall needs? This is a risk, and a common critique, of many project books. How did you deal with this?

  Ellen Bass, who chose my book for the prize, was kind enough to give me notes and advice on the manuscript. She said—and I agree—that a leaner book is often a stronger book, and so she suggested I try to cut ten to fifteen percent of the poems. I don’t think her advice was specific to my book alone; it seemed like advice she might give most poets. To look at a collection and actively try to cut poems forces you to consider what’s working and what isn’t, which encouraged me to set my emotions aside as much as I could. I started a Word document called “Deleted Scenes,” much as I do when I’m writing fiction. It’s not as if you have to burn the rejected poems on an enormous pyre. Maybe you’ll use them again for another project or just publish them in magazines. But in most cases after I cut a poem I realized that it just wasn’t working, and I could let it go.

  I also wrote some new poems after I won the prize, because by the time that happened, my feelings about the project had changed a little. By then, I had two more daughters (twins born two years after their sister). I wasn’t a brand-new mom. I had read more, lived more. So I was lucky enough that Ellen was open to my re-imagining the book a bit. She encouraged it. I feel really lucky to have had that second look, but my intention was always to keep the energy of that first experience of writing it.

  Did you fully immerse yourself in writing this project book, or did you allow yourself to work on other things?

  In the past, I’ve often worked on more than one thing at a time. I think it’s good for my brain. When I hit a wall with one thing, I would jump to another. I wrote many of the poems that would become Some Girls soon after my first daughter was born, and for the first time, I couldn’t really write fiction. I didn’t have the attention span for it, maybe. Poetry was so satisfying and appealing because it was shorter and clearer and more direct, and pretty much all of the poems I was writing then were related to this project. I’ve never experienced that sort of focused inspiration before. It made me believe in the Muse. Or the power of exhaustion, maybe.

  After completing a project, how did you transition into writing something new? What are you working on now? Another project?

  I think there’s a mourning period after you finish a project, even if you’re ready to let it go. Especially in this case. Not everything that happens to the speaker happened to me, but the emotions and ideas feel very true to me, and the book is representative of a specific time in my life. One crazy thing is that I was so worried about raising one daughter, and then two years and one week later I had twin girls! You never know what the universe will send you.

  Right now I’m writing mostly fiction. I’m working on my second young adult novel as well as a novel for adults, so we’ll see which one pulls forward in the horse race. I’ve started a series of poems, probably chapbook length, but I don’t know what I’ll do for my next book-length manuscript. I think it would be interesting to write about twins, but I’m not sure exactly how yet. Really I’m just starting to feel like I can write poems again, so I’m waiting to see what will come to the surface.

  What advice can you offer other writers, particularly emerging writers or poetry students who may be using the project book as a guiding principle for their own work?

  Build a house in which you want to live for awhile. Don’t try to force it, but let the walls rise up around you. That sounds dramatic, I know, but I mean it. The stakes can seem higher with a project book because if you write half of it and it flops, that can feel like wasted time. It isn’t. I’d argue that there’s no wasted time in writing; everything leads you someplace. You can learn from every mistake. It’s always been hard for me to commit to longer projects, and in this case I mostly mean novels. I’ve only finished one of those at this point. But Some Girls seemed so right at the time I wrote it that I didn’t really doubt it. I didn’t know if it would find a press or readers, but I knew I had to write it. That seems like the best case scenario: to be compelled to write.

  More practical advice: Be playful. You can write about serious things without being serious all the time. Don’t be afraid to let go of poems that aren’t working or serving the book. This is true for any piece of writing. Cut it and save it, but chances are you won’t want it back once you let go. Let the book evolve; don’t try to force your poems to do things. They’re not puppets; they’re poems. They’re alive, in a way, or they should be.

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