The Eleventh Trade

While I was getting my post-graduate degree, I was given an assignment to draft a short story for a book I'd never ever actually write. A book that would be soooooo far out of my comfort zone, I'd never do it. At the time, I was working on a Young Adult project about mermaids and magic -- so I figured the opposite of that would be a contemporary story for 8-12s! I thought about books I enjoyed reading in that age range, and then blended those ideas with themes I'm passionate about (like refugees and family) and topics I wanted to learn about (like trauma and healing). At the end of the assignment, I had the basic bones of the story that would become The Eleventh Trade!

There were a lot of aspects of this book that were far out of my comfort zone, including but not limited to: I'm not Afghan, I'm not a Muslim, I didn't go to public school, I never played soccer, I'm not a boy, I've never lived in Boston... The list goes on and on. As I wrote, I had to constantly fight fear that I wouldn't be able to capture these experiences well. But in those places where I didn't have firsthand knowledge, I was able to reach out to a huge community of friends all around the world. They stepped in as the experts, and my job was merely to learn from them and work their knowledge into this story.