Jessie Mullins, YA Author

I'm working on two novels. The first one is the book I've been writing, querying, and revising since 2010. I recently took a long break from that book for reasons I'll explain in a different post. In the meantime, I started a sequel to that book, which is the best friend's story and the most fun character I've ever made. She speaks her mind, is spirited, wears fun wigs because she wants to, and is an artist. She sees the world in a much more colorful way than the protagonist from the first book, so when I started writing the sequel, I realized how sorely lacking my setting was. These books take place in San Diego, but from the first book, you'd think it took place in Small White Town, USA. So as I'm fleshing out the first draft of book two, I'm researching San Diego. Which meant, I even looked up round trip plane tickets just to entertain the thought of traveling there from my little Michigan city. But nope. Totally out of the question for me. Sin

My husband AKA my high school sweetheart recently pulled out my old high school diary and read excerpts to me from when we were dating. We both had a good laugh. I cringed a bit. Okay, a lot. But my teen self reminded me how intense it was to fall in love as a teenager.  I blog over at YAtopia , and recently shared some advice on writing teen love because I feel like some of that intensity can get lost when authors focus too much on passing the Bechdel Test  and making strong, independent characters. Those things are awesome! But not at the expense of authenticity. We need badass independent young women with passions of their own...who also kind of lose their minds when they fall in love. You know?  Here's an excerpt from that post: "This one goes out to all the YA writers, the creators of teens, and especially the writers who aren't, well, teenagers anymore. If your teen character is going to fall in love, you need to remember what it's like to fall in love a

A long time ago, in this galaxy, I made a blog for my personal writing news. But...that blog is kind of embarrassing now because I had no idea what I was doing. Source: giphy.com So voila! All new blog, fresh start. This blog ( and my Facebook page ) will be about my adventures as a YA writer. It'll be about books for teens, teenager-y things (Even though I'm in my late twenties, okay? OKAY?), and just a solid love for words on paper. I hope this blog will push me to work on my own manuscripts and dive into the wonderful world of already published YA so I'll actually have something to write about. I want to connect with other lovers of YA because, hey, you guys have good taste. YA is the best. Thanks for reading! Please stick around and introduce yourself in the comments by sharing your favorite YA book with me. (Or if you can't pick just one, your top one hundred will be fine.) -Jessie