Release Day Reflections & Five Fun Facts

KEEPING PACE is on shelves today!

Today’s the day! Keeping Pace is now on shelves and available for purchase!

I’m taking the day off from school so that I can revel in the release day joy. Release days haven’t always been pure joy for me, to be honest. There are a lot of emotions and a lot of opportunities for comparison and disappointment (even though there’s also always a feeling of deep gratitude and wonder that comes along with publishing a book). But for a variety of reasons that have to do with the chaotic-but-mostly-happy fullness of my life now that I’m back to teaching and the resources I’ve put into launching Keeping Pace in the way that felt best to me, today feels absolutely joyful, and I’m trying not to take that for granted.

I had an incredible time doing a panel at Books of Wonder on Sunday, a couple of days before launch, and I’m still holding onto that glow this morning. I’ve also been replying to lovely messages on social media this morning, and later I’m going to do some planning for my in-person launch party on Sunday, meet writer friends for lunch, pick up a celebratory treat and some Prosecco to enjoy during my Instagram Live book launch party with Mae Respicio (tonight at 8pm EST!), sign preorders at Children’s Book World, and hopefully spend some time outside on this beautiful spring day. But for now, I wanted to commemorate the day with you wonderful newsletter readers by sharing a few release day reflections and five fun facts about Keeping Pace.

Release Day Reflections

It’s a complicated, exhilarating, terrifying thing, to send a book out into the world and wait to see how people will feel about it. In order to write the kind of honest, intimate stories I strive to write, I can’t really get too far outside myself and think about an audience along the way. But on some level, I’m never only writing for myself. I want readers to read my work. I want readers to love my work! I want my stories to help readers see themselves and other people in a more compassionate and nuanced light. I want my stories to entertain and delight and move people! But I can never really tell, while I’m writing, how anyone else will respond. 

So far, I’ve been delighted with how people have responded to Keeping Pace–and I know these responses contribute to my feeling of joy today, even though I also know that writers are supposed to somehow free themselves from focusing too much on reader reviews. Almost exactly a year ago, after I’d turned in a revision of the novel, I wrote a newsletter post exploring what the process of completing a seemingly “minor” developmental edit had been like, and here’s part of my post: 

“As much as I love making strategic revision plans, there’s something special and unplannable that happens sometimes with a story, when the emotions strike an especially deep chord and the characters and their relationships are especially captivating. There’s a hard-to-explain quality some books have—reading them reminds me of that spark I feel when I really, really click with someone. I don’t know how to describe it and I have no idea how writers achieve it, but when a book has it, I can feel it as I read. It’s kind of like—a book has charisma, if that makes any sense? Based on my own gut sense and the responses I’ve gotten from a few people who’ve read it, I think this running book has some of that unplannable, resonant magic . . .”

I’m happy to say that I still think this running book has some of that unplannable, resonant magic. That isn’t to say that any book is for every reader. But I can sense, from the trade reviews, the messages I’ve received, and some beautiful, passionate reviews I’ve been tagged in, that people are connecting with this story in a way that feels special to me, and I’m just thrilled about that.

I hope you’ll read it, and I hope you’ll feel that magical spark of connection and resonance, too. And I hope it will reach all the kids who need (or just want!) a story like Grace’s.

Five Fun Facts

And now for some fun facts! Here are some behind-the-scenes tidbits about my writing process and the inspiration for various aspects of Keeping Pace!

1. The nature trail where Grace does many of her training runs at made-up Hempstead College is modeled after the nature trail I used to run on during my college days at Haverford College.

2. The award plaques that Grace and Jonah both want to see their names on were inspired by award plaques that hung in the cafeteria at the school where I went from kindergarten through eighth grade. I recently went back for an author visit, and the plaques are still there, though the woodworking teacher had updated them and carved new ones. They looked beautiful and he showed me where he’d carved in my name. I had a lot of complicated feelings, and you might be able to guess some of them if you’ve read the book.

3. There are text message exchanges, to-do lists, and training plans interspersed throughout the book. In an early draft, I was determined to include one of these interstitials before every new chapter, but I eventually realized some of them felt forced, and adding extra stuff was going to make for a higher page count at a time when lots of people are looking for shorter books. There was also a time when I thought the book was going to be a dual POV story, with both Grace and Jonah getting their own chapters, but Grace’s voice was much stronger and I decided to stick with her for the whole novel. Still, writing some from Jonah’s perspective deepened his character, and it’s a creative goal of mine to write a novel with two POV characters and one with more (perhaps all?) texts, lists, journal entries, and other mixed media materials that tell the story. 

4. I came up with the title, Keeping Pace, as soon as I realized the book would feature distance running. I did consider two other possibilities–Keeping Pace with You and Grace Under Pressure, but plain old Keeping Pace was always the forerunner, and it never changed. The first chapter, on the other hand, did have to change in revision. I almost always have to write a new first chapter in revisions because I never start in quite the right place! Coming Up Short is my only book that was published with the same basic first chapter I began with. I also had to change a lot of character names in Keeping Pace–and you can read more about that process—as well as the process of writing an upper middle grade romance—in the interview I did with Afoma Umesi for Reading Middle Grade!

5. As I was struggling to figure out what shape this story would take, I read Save the Cat Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody, and I used a very Save the Cat structure as I outlined. It worked so well I thought I’d return to Save the Cat for every novel I write from now on! But the one I’m working on now is forcing me to follow a different process. So once again, I’m disappointed to report that what works for one book never quite seems to work for the next, and therefore writing novels remains extremely hard. (But also exciting and challenging and fun in a way that it might not be if it were any easier?!)

I have lots more to say about how my own marathon training days impacted the story and the way babysitting (and interacting with her babysitting charge’s mom–who is also her dad’s girlfriend and someone who has read the advice of many of the same Instagram parenting experts I have turned to in desperation) fits into Grace’s journey. But I wrote longer essays about those topics that I hope I’ll get to share soon!

So for now, thank you so much for reading my newsletter and being a part of this happy day! If you want to support Keeping Pace, you can:

• Buy a copy at your favorite independent bookstore, at Children’s Book World where I can go sign it, or anywhere else books are sold.

• Request that your local library carry it.

• Write a review on Goodreads, Amazon (you don’t have to buy it there to review it there!), Barnes & Noble, and/or on social media.

• Take a picture and tag me if you get a copy or see one at a bookstore or library.

• Join me for one of my events, including my Instagram Live launch at 8pm EST *tonight!* (4/9) or my in-person launch party at The Philadelphia School garage (with Children’s Book World selling books) this Sunday, 4/14, at 2pm EST.

With gratitude and love,

Laurie