Dreamland Burning
Author: Jennifer Latham
Publication Date: February 21st, 2017
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Synopsis: Some bodies won’t stay buried.
Some stories need to be told.
When seventeen-year-old Rowan Chase finds a skeleton on her family’s property, she has no idea that investigating the brutal century-old murder will lead to a summer of painful discoveries about the past… and the present.
Nearly one hundred years earlier, a misguided violent encounter propels seventeen-year-old Will Tillman into a racial firestorm. In a country rife with violence against blacks and a hometown segregated by Jim Crow, Will must make hard choices on a painful journey towards self discovery and face his inner demons in order to do what’s right the night Tulsa burns.
Through intricately interwoven alternating perspectives, Jennifer Latham’s lightning-paced page-turner brings the Tulsa race riot of 1921 to blazing life and raises important question about the complex state of US race relations – both yesterday and today.
Some Nifty Book Links:
Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble
About the Author and Guest Post
ABOUT JENNIFER LATHAM:
I’m a grown-up army brat with two kids, two dogs, and a husband. After working in a morgue, a maximum-security prison, a heroin detox, and assorted middle and high schools, I decided to try may hand at writing. Happily, it stuck.
I love watching people.
And I love writing about the characters who live inside my head—even when they don’t play nice.
Some Nifty Author Links:
Guest Post
What is your typical writing routine like? Do you write at a specific time of day, do you use outlines before starting to write, how do you avoid distractions?
Ideally, I like to wake up before dawn to re-read the previous day’s work and maybe hammer out a few hundred new words. Once my kids roll out of bed, I go on Mom/Chauffeur duty. But after everyone gets where they need to be and I’m back home, I can usually squeeze in a few more hours before moving on to super fun stuff like getting groceries, dragging myself to the gym, walking dogs, and doing housework. Sometimes, if I’m really excited about a scene or a particular section of dialogue, I’ll work for another hour or so before bed. Mostly, though, mornings are my thing.
As for distractions, I’m lucky to have a small garage apartment for my office. My favorite comfy couch is back there (the red one with flowers on it that my husband hates!), plus a bathroom and a fridge and a microwave. Once I close the door behind me, it’s really hard to come up with an excuse to leave. There’s even a yoga mat for doing asanas when my mind starts to wander, and lots of warm blankets and boxes of tea. Best of all, my family doesn’t bother me while I’m “at work.” I might get a text or two if they need my input on something, but mostly, I’m in my own world.
And that’s a good thing, especially since I’m a seat-of-my-pants kind of girl when it comes to writing. I always know the beginning and (basically) the end of a novel when I start writing, but every single time I’ve tried outlining what goes in between, it’s been a spectacular failure of the zero creativity/writers’ block/cursing at the blank computer screen sort.
Just so you know, though, while this all may sound nice and cozy and ideal, I have to say that life rarely hands me days where I’ve got lots of time and inspiration and just can’t wait to sit down and write all the words. In fact, days like that are one in a hundred. And one thing every successful writer knows is that our job boils down to putting your butt in a chair and writing. Even when you’d rather be on Twitter, even when you really want to binge-watch something on Netflix, you put your butt in a chair, you stare at the blank page, and you get to work!
Giveaway!
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