HATING HEIDI FOSTER by Jeffrey Blount

Mae McBride and Heidi Foster were the very best of friends. Tied at the hip from early elementary school, their relationship was the stuff of storybooks, legendary even, in the minds of their high school classmates.

Unshakable.

That is, until Mae's father died while saving Heidi's life. When Mae finds out, she blames Heidi. She blames her father for putting Heidi ahead of her. She blames her friends for taking Heidi’s side. She begins to unravel amid that blame and her uncontrollable and atypical anger.

At the same time Heidi is beset by guilt, falls into depression and stops eating properly; wasting away physically and emotionally while waiting for Mae to let her back into the friendship she misses so dearly.

Mae, consumed by her hatred of Heidi, the confusion regarding her father’s motives, the perceived desertion of her friends and her mother’s grief, loses more and more of herself.

What could possibly bring these two old friends back to each other? A miracle?

Hating Heidi Foster, is a young adult novel about the place of honor true friendships hold in our lives. It is about suffering and loss and the ethics of grief. It is about a deep and painful conflict, the bright light of selflessness and sacrifice and the love that rights the ship and carries us safely to port.

First line:
"I've never been very good with faces."

If you have ever lost someone close to you, this book might be helpful for you. Mae McBride has lost her father in a tragic fire. Her father is a hero, saving her best friend, Heidi but the pain of losing her father sends Mae into a depression that she takes out on everyone around her, including Heidi. How Mae learns to deal with her grief is told in this story by Jeffrey Blount.
This is a short and sweet story, easily read in one setting.
This is more of a book to help with death and grieving than a YA story. There's a lot of nicknames is this book, which can be distracting but it is a good book about friendship.


Rating: PG
L: No
V: No
S: No

Liked:
This book helping others with grief
 Value of a good friendship

Disliked:
Nothing

2 1/2 STARS

Guest Author Post~ Jeffrey Blount

-->

The Trouble with Writing

Jeffrey Blount

The trouble with writing is that it requires a lot of time and much effort.  I always have the desire and effort is not an issue, but finding time is indeed a dilemma.  I have a full-time job and an amazing family that I love to spend time with.  I like tennis too.  I play at least twice a week.  And don’t stand in front of my television during football season!

Over the years, I have tried to put my writing aside because there was just no space in my life, and the game of agents and publishing got tiresome.  I put the desire and the dream up for adoption.  But the kid just kept finding his way home and pretty soon, I just had to let him stay.  I had to find a way to make it right between the two of us.

I set aside some time.  In the morning, after dropping off my son and daughter at school and my wife’s departure for work and also late at night, after everyone was in bed.  But the times weren’t absolute.  Changing family schedules and work demands often imposed themselves.  The question arose, how do I link the erratic moments together to create some kind of flow or rhythm to my writing which I believe is so very important when trying to maintain an even voice throughout a novel?  In the end, I found I had to link them together by keeping the characters alive and with me at all times so that when I did find the time to sit down and write, they didn’t have to be conjured up.  They were already with me.

They lived in my head all day long, growing, changing, reacting, failing and succeeding.  As I drove, whole scenes developed.  On my lunch hour and while in the carpool line, new characters appeared and plot lines came to fruition.  When I first started, I carried notecards with me or I wrote on napkins and the corners of newspaper pages.  Then I got smart and realized my smartphone had apps for this.  After a while, it seemed like I was always writing.

When I finally found the time to sit down and physically write, transferring the notes from the phone to the computer became part of keeping that flow alive.  Also, because time was short, meaning I didn’t have time to walk around the block and commune with myself to create the proper mood for writing; I had to find ways to get my head immediately into the process in order to maximize the use of the time I had set aside.

After transferring my notes, I always read the previous chapter before moving on.  Then I turned on the music.  Music has always been a part of my moods, both good and bad.  Certain songs make me happy, certain songs make me sad and certain songs make me contemplative.  So if I was planning to write about a very sad event, I would listen to appropriate music while reading the previous chapter and many times I would continue listening as I began a new scene or chapter of my book.  Sometimes one grouping of songs could take me through the whole manuscript.  For instance, much of Hating Heidi Foster was written while listening to the soundtrack from the movie Road to Perdition. 

Also, if your writing time is short, enhancing focus can be critical.  I write in a darkened room with only the light from my laptop and a desk lamp.  Everything else around me falls away.   No visual distractions lead to great moments of concentration.

And finally, I leave each writing session with an idea of where I want the story to go next.  It gives my characters places to go while I’m going through the daily business of my life.

Bio

Jeffrey Blount is an Emmy award-winning television director and an award recipient for scriptwriting on multiple documentary projects.  Born and raised in rural Virginia, he now lives in Washington, DC with his wife, Jeanne Meserve. They have two children, Julia and Jake.