Given the continued rarity of seeing LGBTQ protagonists lead these books, it marks something of a breakthrough moment.
I grew up a gay kid in rural South Carolina, and my mother was my world.
My mother actually passed when I was very young.
Credit: Jamie Wright
I was kind of lost without her.
There werent any explanations from the adults around me.
You didnt talk about that kind of thing in the South.
It was pretty traumatic for me.
They were photographs or stories from adults; that kind of thing.
I spent a lot of time by myself, exploring the words behind our house.
In this story, I wanted to explore how that grief affected me as a child.
It was fun to get them down on paper and explore what I was going through back then.
This book was the subject of quite an auction.
What was that experience like on your end?It was exciting and crazy at the same time.
I didnt really know I was going to end up in a publishing auction!
[Laughs] That wasnt in the plan.
So this is quite different.
I didnt know how itd be received.
I think you should finish this.
And I just did.
I wrote it from my heart and poured everything into the story.
Then when she started sending it out, we started getting this crazy interest.
It was very exciting.
I just really felt like I needed to finish it for my own personal healing and exploration.
So I just moved forward with it and finished it.
And then that publisher was interested in it!
[Laughs]
Theres not a ton of gay representation in middle-grade.
This is certainly not the first, and theres a lot in young-adult.
Like I said, Im not the first.
But theres not been a lot of coverage of those kids in a Southern rural setting.
In those country-rural tweaks, they still feel alone and erased from society.
They dont see themselves a lot in books.
I couldve gone on without putting my heart and soul into a book like this, exposing family secrets.
[Laughs] I wanted to reach those kids.
I talked to kids a lot that age.
Its one thing that I loved about the book, knowing that.
Because you dont see this kind of story told in middle-grade very often.Right.
And it did scare some of those publishers.
Some of them were just like, Im a little too worried about how this will be received.
Luckily there were enough that really wanted to put it out there.
What kinds of things did you hear, along those lines?Teachers themselves are fearful for their jobs.
His job might be in jeopardy.
I will say Ive found that librarians themselves are a pretty progressive group of people.
They tend to rally around the more progressive books.
We live in such precarious times that not only are adults weary and desperate, but kids are too.
