YA Author Barbara Ehrentreu on Writing About Your Own Life, Giveaway

Hello and welcome to the J.Q. Rose blog. 

My collection of pens and writing instruments, but I use a keyboard!!

My friend and YA author, Barbara Ehrentreu, stops by today to talk about writing about your own life. She has also brought along a copy of her newest release, After, to give to a lucky commenter.

I loved this story written for the YA audience, and I think it will resonate with many of you. In After, Barbara portrays a real family with an emotional situation that many of us have experienced. 

Thanks, Barbara for coming in today. We're looking forward to your visit.

Writing About Your Own Life by Barbara Ehrentreu

Many writers think that they have nothing to write about. So they will use a topic that interests them and sometimes this works, especially if what you are writing is non-fiction. But with fiction when you are not invested in a subject it shows. How can you make your writing become part of you without taking away the emotion?

It would seem easy to do if you pick a subject in your life that has either caused you great joy or great pain. However, unfortunately, when you write about events that have affected you emotionally sometimes you can’t show that emotion to other people. I have used a great deal of my life in my second novel, After. But when I was revising this book, with the old title of When My Life Changed, several scenes that I thought would have emotional impact did not convey that emotion at all. I was surprised, because when I was writing the scene I felt all the emotions that had been there during the actual experience. You would think that the emotion would be there in the writing. Funny, though, these scenes had to be rewritten several times until what I had been feeling could be read by other readers. Writing scenes with emotional impact from your own life requires you to step back and observe them as if you were watching yourself during that time. Only when you write with an objective eye can you really show your readers the emotion you felt. 

Getting into the head of your character also helps, because you are actually reliving the scene through their eyes. Many of the scenes in After had to be rewritten in this way, because my critique partners felt there was no emotion. So I developed the ability to walk in my character’s shoes through my own life. This isn’t easy and it can only be done if you are very distanced from the event that caused such emotion. So writing about my own experiences during my husband’s heart attack and his subsequent bypass surgery made me understand my own emotions. Then I was able to see them through Lauren’s eyes as a fifteen year old girl and finally bring the emotion that one reviewer has said made her “sniffle.” 

Deciding about what to use from your own life can be difficult since you are using people who might read the book who are your relatives or friends. So, especially with this book, After, I made sure that my relatives knew that they were in there, though I did change their names. In my first book, If I Could Be Like Jennifer Taylor, my inspiration was my daughter, who was sort of the basis for the main character and also some of Jennifer Taylor. In that case I needed her permission to use her and of course, she said yes. It can be tricky, especially if you are not showing the characters in a good light. But in my case I only used them in a few scenes to move the story along and they were actually honored to be in the book. 

In my own case I started After during NaNoWriMo and didn’t finish it, because I was visiting my husband every day and his condition got a little worse. So I wasn’t thinking about my writing at that time. But a few years later I picked it up again and decided to rewrite it. This book has gone through many rewrites mainly to get the emotional impact right. Since it is about my own husband, who passed away in May of this year, and I was in the middle of editing it at the time, the editing was very difficult for me. However, as I kept working on it I was able to distance myself from this experience. Also having written it made me realize how it helped me to go back over those events and in some ways it was a way to help myself during that time. 

Finally, I hope you will decide to read After, because anyone who has dealt with someone in the hospital no matter your age has gone through what Lauren experiences here. Plus, and I don’t want to give away anything, but there is a beautiful love story here and of course a mean girl.

It shows how despite a life changing experience, someone can be helped by it and go on to succeed in her life. 

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After, YA Romance

After is a story about the struggles Lauren Walstein, a fifteen-year-old girl, has to go through when her father suddenly has a heart attack and undergoes bypass surgery. In one phone call her life changes completely. Lauren is a character with whom most teens will relate. Her best friend since kindergarten, Joey, is going out with her enemy and they have grown apart. Before the phone call all she thought about was getting a scholarship for softball, and the Mets. Suddenly she must deal with both her father’s illness and being in school. The demands on her from both ends complicate the story. In the middle of all this, she finds she is developing feelings for her best friend that are more than friendly. Is he feeling the same or is he just comforting her? In addition there is Joey’s mean girl friend Amber, who doesn’t appreciate Lauren being in the picture. Will Lauren’s father recover? How will Lauren cope with her new feelings for Joey?

Buy Links for After - MuseItUp Publishing,  Amazon, Nook

About Barbara:

Barbara Ehrentreu grew up in Brooklyn and moved to Queens. She has lived and taught in Long Island, Buffalo, NY and Westchester, NY as well as a year in Los Angeles, CA. She has a Masters Degree in Reading and Writing. Currently she is retired from

YA author, Barbara Ehrentreu

teaching and living in Stamford, CT with her family. If I Could Be Like Jennifer Taylor won second prize in Preditors & Editors as Best Young Adult Book for 2011. It was inspired by Paula Danziger for her children's writing workshop at Manhattanville College. Her second book, After, considers what can happen to a teen when her father becomes ill with a heart attack. It is based on her own experiences when her husband had a heart attack and the aftermath of what she and her family experienced. She is preparing the sequel to If I Could Be Like Jennifer Taylor. Barbara also writes poetry and several of her poems are published in the anthologies, Prompted: An International Collection of Poetry, Beyond the Dark Room, Storm Cycle and Backlit Barbell. She has a blog, Barbara's Meanderings, and she hosts a radio show on Blog Talk Radio, Red River Radio Tales from the Pages once a month.

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Don't forget to leave a comment to enter the drawing. Winner will be chosen after 9 pm on Tuesday evening.

This Week:

Wednesday, Feb. 4--Insecure Writers Support Group blog hop.

Thursday, Feb 5-- Romance and Mystery Authors on Writing series features Heather Haven with writing tips on "Getting One's Novel Out There."  You're invited to join the discussion and enter the drawing for a free ebook of Book Four of the Alvarez Family Murder Mysteries, Dead...If Only.

Book Tour Winding Down--You Can Still Enter the Contest

The Girls Succeed Book Tour is drawing to a close. I want to thank my friends and authors who so graciously allowed me space to introduce readers to the e-book and the stories of the awesome women inside the pages.

Girls Succeed: Stories Behind the Careers of Successful Women is a project close to my heart. Girls have so many circumstances to deal with in today's teen lives. In fact, life is different for them compared to my life as a teen. There was no Internet, cell phones, emails, Facebook, and hey, not even microwaves. The problems of body image, availability of huge amounts of fast food and snacks filled with sugar and salt, bullying (well, yes, we did have bullies, but not on the Internet too!), and a life so full of activities the girl never gets to come down to spend time just dreaming big dreams.

I hope this book encourages big dreams and guides a girl toward making a plan for her life and working hard to achieve it. 

There is still time to leave comments here and on the other blogs I visited so you will be entered into the drawings for a $10. amazon gift certificate, free Girls Succeed e-book with format of your choice, and inspirational notepads and gel pens. The link to the blogs are listed below. Winners will be announced at 9 pm Sunday evening.

Thanks for following. Best wishes!

Nov.

5		Barbara Ehrentreu
7		Pat McDermott
9		Marva Dasef
12		Conda Douglas
14		Lisa Haselton
15		I.B. Nosey
16		Penny Estelle
18		Announce winners

Recipe: Barbara Ehrentreu's Homemade Chicken Soup

Welcome author Barbara Ehrentreu to Good Eats, Great Reads. I learned something new about Barbara. She cooks with her nose. I am sure the delicious aroma of Homemade Chicken Soup will fill the house, not only the kitchen, and tease the taste buds as it cooks all day. Please read all her great tips on how to make this tummy warming soup as well as an excerpt from her young adult book, If I Could Be Like Jennifer Taylor. Oh, my goodness, my stomach is rumbling just thinking about a huge bowl full of chicken soup....How is that possible after that huge Thanksgiving dinner yesterday??

Good Eats:

Barbara’s Homemade Chicken Soup

Ingredients:

Water to fill pot three quarters full

5 large stalks of celery with the leaves on them

6 large carrots unpeeled

2 medium onions

6 cloves of garlic

parsnip (optional)

bunch of parsley chopped

dill (optional) 

salt and pepper to taste

Utensils:

Large stockpot

Large wooden spoon

Large metal spoon

Mesh strainer

Large bowl

Directions:

It's a whole day experience and usually I make it for holidays. It's probably the longest and most tedious dish I have ever made. I think it's the constant skimming of the stuff on top. My mother taught me to cook the vegetables first without cleaning off the skin. So you're putting in washed, but unpeeled celery and carrots with raw onions and garlic and cover with water to just cover the vegetables. The foam comes to the top and you skim that. Then when the vegetables are soft you put in the chicken, add water to cover it until it is three quarters full in the pot, just covering the chicken, and let it boil again. When it comes to a boil you keep skimming off the fat until large globules become smaller and then you add more vegetables. Sometimes I add some parsnips if the soup isn't sweet enough. Then you go by the smell. It should smell like cooked chicken with a blend of the onions, garlic, carrots and celery. It's kind of hard to explain that unless you were with me, but there's really no other way. When the chicken is completely cooked I start tasting it and then add the seasonings. Then you cover it partially and just leave it to simmer, simmer, simmer. When the meat starts coming off the bones, the soup is probably ready. Then you must strain the soup. In the meantime you are constantly skimming the fat as the soup is simmering. Some people keep that fat and let it get cold and hard. Then they use it as a spread or as fat in food, like chopped liver. I don't. :)  

The important thing to remember with Jewish chicken soup is that there are also varieties that include dill, etc. I never put dill in mine. I do use parsley, though. After you are finished straining the soup then you need to put it back in the pot and keep the strained chicken and vegetables. When I was younger my mother used to put in the undeveloped baby chicken eggs that look like hard boiled yolk and my grandmother used to make her own thin noodles (lukshen) I usually go through and take out the bones before I serve it. You can serve the boiled chicken or use it in other recipes. Or you can put some of the chicken back into the pot and warm it. Taste the soup and add salt and pepper if necessary. 

The worst part of this is cleaning up your stove. The soup gets everywhere and you usually have to clean the entire stovetop.:) Wow, did I just give you my secret recipe for chicken soup? Oh yeah, you won't be able to duplicate it unless you have me and my nose there.<G>

About Barbara:

Barbara, a retired teacher with a Masters degree in Reading and Writing K-12 and seventeen years of teaching experience lives with her family in Stamford, Connecticut. When she received her Masters degree she began writing seriously. If I Could Be Like Jennifer Taylor, Barbara’s first YA novel, was published by MuseItUp Publishing, September 16th and was inspired by Paula Danziger. In addition, Barbara has a story in the anthology, Lavender Dreams, also published by MuseItUp Publishing. All proceeds from this anthology go to cancer research. Barbara also writes poetry and three of her poems are included in the soon to be published anthology, Prompted, a collaboration of members of The Anthologists.  Her blog, Barbara’s Meanderings, http://barbaraehrentreu.blogspot.com/, is networked on both Facebook and Blog Catalog. She hosts RRWL Tales from the Pages (Red River Writers Live Tales from the Pages) on Blog Talk Radio every 4th Thursday. In addition, her children's story, “The Trouble with Follow the Leader” and an adult story, “Out on a Ledge” are published online She has written book reviews for Authorlink.com. and several of her reviews have been on Acewriters and Celebrity Café. She is a member of SCBWI. Writing is her life!

Blurb:

Carolyn Samuels is obsessed with the idea of being popular. She is convinced that the only thing keeping her from happiness is her too heavy for fashion body and not being a cheerleader. Hyperventilating when she gets nervous doesn’t help. When she is paired for a math project with the girl who tormented her in middle school, Jennifer Taylor, she is sure it is going to be another year of pain. With Carolyn’s crush on Jennifer’s hunky junior quarterback, Brad her freshman year in high school looks like a rerun of middle school.

When Jennifer is the only student who knows why she fell in gym class, Carolyn is blackmailed into doing her math homework in return for Jennifer’s silence. Jennifer takes on Carolyn as a pity project since she can’t be seen with someone who dresses in jeans and sweatshirts. When Jennifer invites Carolyn to spend the night to make her over and teach her to tumble, Carolyn learns Jennifer’s secret and lies to her own friends to cover it up. Will Carolyn become a cheerleader and popular? Does she continue to keep Jennifer’s secret? Or will she be a target of this mean girl again? 

Excerpt:

I spot him walking toward my locker with a small box in one hand and a plastic fork in the other. My Crush! He hands me the box, and I open it. Inside is a piece of luscious chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. I look up into his blue eyes and give him the box so I can touch his cheek as I smooth his dark hair. “You always know just what I like.” He smiles and feeds me a forkful of cake. I don’t have to worry about eating it because I can eat anything I want and not gain weight. He places the cake box in my locker so he can put his arms around me. The first bell rings in my ears. I ignore it because I’m thin and blonde and floating in the arms of my dark- haired crush. The other cheerleaders run up to us laughing and kidding around, and I’m about to speak. The ringing gets louder.

The dream evaporates, and I realize it’s the darn alarm piercing my sleep. Slamming my fist onto the snooze button, I get this nagging feeling. Then I remember. I have something to do. Worse luck, I have to do it, not as the slender blonde beauty in my dream, but as the real Carolyn Samuels with my brown curly hair hanging like shriveled spaghetti, mud brown eyes, and a body too large for fashion.
I see my new book bag is packed and ready by the door with the initials C. S. in blue, my favorite color. Suddenly it hits me, and I get this dizzy let-me-plop-on-the-pillow feeling. Freshman year of high school—first day. My brain is ready, but my body isn't. Jennifer will be there. Math class and Jennifer; gym class with Jennifer. My body curls into a fetal position, and I throw the covers over my head. Don’t faint Carolyn, I tell myself, panting.
Dangling over the chair are those size twelve jeans, clown pants—hardly a fashion statement. I groan. Paired with the red long-sleeved T-shirt, they looked so good on the mannequin; I’ll look like a stoplight. What was I thinking? How could I possibly go to school looking like such a freak?
Actually, the real reason I can’t go is Jennifer, with her long straight blonde hair, perfect body, and clothes from magazines like Teen and Seventeen. Yuck. I feel sick, sick with Jenniferitis. I hear Mom's footsteps on the stairs. “Why are you still in bed?” She comes upstairs and peeks into my room with a puzzled look on her face.