Change My Life - Maybe

Hi everyone! 

I am Young Adult and Middle Grade author Barbara Binns, writer of contemporary and realistic fiction for adolescents and teens. As my tagline says, I write Stories of Real Boys Growing Into Real Men - and the people who love them.  

Welcome to July at Romancing The Genres. Can you believe the year is more than half-over?

This month I get to talk about getting a do-over for my life. What, if anything, would I change? Oh for the magic wand that would let me do a complete do-over. Whoever said we regret most the thing we did not do and the choices we did not take was talking about me.

Now let me see:

WORK?
I don’t regret taking early retirement. I retired almost twelve years ago and feel like I should have left even sooner. My time with myself has been heavenly.

LOVE LIFE?
Nope, I do not regret the guy I dumped when I was thirty even though I never came close to marriage after him.  I mostly regret having stayed with him as long as I did. But the ones before him, the ordinary men who were okay but no prince charming. I think I do regret not taking a longer, harder look at a few of them.

FAMILY?
My father was a dreadful man and when he left my mother and my siblings and me, I literally washed my hands of him. My brother and sisters still hung around with him because he gave away money. I, being stubborn, decided if he didn’t think I wasn’t worth hanging around for, I didn’t think his money was worth enduring his presence. (I have been known for mounting my high horse, another thing I don’t regret.) Relatives, even my mother, told me I needed to forgive him. That I would regret having no relationship with him after he died.

Well, it’s been over thirty years and I’m still waiting to feel any of that regret. But maybe that’s why so many of my stories are family dramas, estranged family members learning to reconnect and love each other. Even more than a romance, I like to write about families getting an HEA.

The book I am reading now, leaving time, is by Jodi Piccoult (yes, her again, I can't help it, she's my favorite).  Like most of her novels, the story is all about families and relationships. I can’t give out spoilers. I really can't, I am still only on chapter 3, but as always, she deals with an issues for our time, in this case, abortion. We open with a man who had no good father figure when growing up, no one to model being a good husband. While he has failed at the husband thing, he is grimly determined to be a good father. Which leaves him inside the clinic with a gun he won’t hesitate to use.

Readers also get another father, a dedicated policeman stuck outside the clinic under siege. He's a hostage negotiator who is good at his job, even when his fifteen year old daughter is stuck with the gunman. As much as I love romance, and romantic suspense, these are the kinds of dramas that leave me glued to the page. (Or in this case the audio book) Never a screen, I have never found reading from a screen enjoyable or engrossing.

The middle grade novel I am revising now is yet another family drama. Yes, there is a romance subplot, although they are in high school, so readers can only expect a HFN. But mostly it is about two families reconnecting after being torn to pieces by events outside their control.

BTW, I’m in the middle of looking for beta readers now to see how others view the story. If interested, let me know.

P. S. - followup to last month:

I am a part of KidLitNation (KLN) and we are about to begin a mentoring program (http://kidlitnation.com/home/own-your-voice/mentorship-program/). I am one of three established authors who will provide six months of mentoring to three aspiring authors of color in the Picture Book, Middle Grade, and Young Adult areas. Final selections will be announced later this month, with mentoring beginning in August. I’m all set to work with a new author, and hope I will be able to guide them and help them fine-tune their talent.