I'm very happy to be a part of the Blog Tour for the special edition cover reveal for Karen Schreck's novel, While He Was Away! Take a look below, everyone!
One year--he'll be gone for one year and then we'll be together again and everything will be back to the way it shoulder be.
The day David left, I felt like my heart was breaking. Sure, any long-distance relationship is tough, but David was going to war--to fight, to protect, to put his life in danger. We can get through this, though. We'll talk, we'll email, we won't let anything come between us.
I can be an army girlfriend for one year. But will my sweet, soulful, funny David be the same person when he comes home? Will I? And what if he doesn't come home at all?
And now, I give you a guest post from author Karen Schreck on how to find inspiration!
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How Inspiration Can Come From Anywhere:
Even a Trip to the Grocery Store and a
Handful of Long-Lost Photographs
By Karen Schreck
I sometimes wonder what my
mother would say if she knew that her story—one of the saddest, sweetest love
stories I’ve ever heard—was retold in a new way in my young adult novel, While He Was Away.
Now Sourcebooks Fire is
sharing the story yet again, in a second, exclusive edition, released nation-wide
at Walmart. The fact that Sourcebooks
believed enough in While He Was Away
to bring it to life the first time felt like a much-needed confirmation of
years of hard work. The fact that they
are standing behind my book again in this way . . . well, it feels like a
miracle. I’m truly grateful.
I wonder what my mother would
say to this incredible news? I like to think she would be grateful too. I like to think she would be happy. She wanted her story heard after all. So much so that it was one of the last things
she told me, just before she died.
One rainy night when I was
fourteen, right before cancer left her to ill to talk, let alone drive a car,
my mother said, “Come with me. We’re
going shopping.” We drove to the little
local market and wandered up and down the aisles, as she threw in a can of
tuna, some dishwashing soap, and other little things we didn’t need. We paid for these little things. She looked anxious and tired, still she
hadn’t said a thing; we hadn’t spoken a word.
It was only when we were
parked in our driveway again that my mother said, “I was married once before
when I was very young. He died a hero in
WWII.”
And that was that. Soon after, she died.
I thought about my mother’s mysterious
love story for many years. I talked to
relatives, found long-lost photographs.
The story took seed in me. It
flowered into a novel about a young women whose boyfriend leaves for the Iraq
War. In her loneliness, she seeks out a
grandmother she’s never met, whose first husband died in WWII. She seeks out a character inspired by mother.
A late night drive, a few
words spoken in the dark. Even things as
simple as this can inspire a novel.
