Life Imitates Art (and not in a good way)

By now, those of you following along undoubtedly know the premise of LEAGUE OF STRAYS–a shady character pulls together a group of misfits, introverts, and loners, organizes them into a band with a catchy name and a singular purpose, then gradually pushes them into doing bad things for his pleasure and benefit. It is a tense and dramatic story, in which the reader wonders when or if Charlotte will get the strength to escape the dangerous sociopath before she is in too deep to redeem herself.

The story carries important messages about the dangers of peer pressure, temptation, bullying, and the desire for revenge. But I want to talk about something else here. About the ease with which someone can fall into this trap if the shady character happens to be smooth enough, charismatic enough, and deeply sinister enough.

It is a cautionary tale about how easily life can imitate art.

It is a dreadful little real-life  horror story I like to call:

Let me take you back two years. To the very beginning. To right about this time of year in 2010, when both L.B. and I were eagerly awaiting the completion of our debut book deals. This is a nerve-wracking, email-checking, nail-biting time for a writer. A vulnerable time. A times when a person feels desperate for a connection.

Desperate.

And thus, I set my plan into action.

“Hey, L.B. I hear you’re about to have a book under contract. What would you think of joining me in a debut author blog,” I enthused innocently.

“Gosh, Jeannie,” she expounded, “It’s a little creepy that you know such secret information about me.”

“Never mind that,” I laughed lightly. “Join me. It will be great.”

“Okay,” she agreed. “Hey, I know. We can call it EMU’s Debuts.”

I smiled at how well the plan was coming together, and let her believe she had come up with the name, while meanwhile I gathered others to me:

Michelle Ray, burning for revenge because Shakespeare not only copied her story idea, but killed off her favorite character

J. Anderson Coats, the promising young scholar of medieval history, surrounded by fools who didn’t understand a word of Latin

Lynda Mullaly Hunt, wrestling daily with the pain of an abused child in foster care

Natalie Lorenzi, alone in a foreign land, with little but gelato to comfort her,

Cynthia Levinson, a lonely non-fiction specialist in a sea of fiction writers.

One by one, I reeled them in, promising them camaraderie in their lonely author’s journey.

Then, Mike Jung’s deal with this dream editor Arthur Levine came through. At once, I pounced.

“Hey Mike,” I crooned in my sultriest voice, “Wouldn’t you like to join us?”

“Gosh, I don’t know,” Mike hesitated. “I have young kids, a day job, a lot on my plate.”

I batted my eyelashes in a way he could not ignore, even though we were communicating via email.  “But Mike. EMUs NEEDS your masculine, manly touch.”

“Golly, gosh, gee-whiz!” Mike exclaimed. “Count me in!”

(Yeah. When I bat my lashes, I’m that hot.)

And so I had them, and could set my master plan into motion. None of them suspected my true intent; my desire to exhaust them creatively and humiliate them publicly until my book–MINE I TELL YOU–would dominate at the expense of all others!

What’s that you say? You think I am making all this up? Exaggerating, to make our EMU’s journey sound just like LEAGUE OF STRAYS? You don’t believe I would push them all to humiliating extremes?

Need I remind you of this?

J Anerson Coats bares it all (nearly) in her big girl panties.

Or this?

“Sure,” I said. “Have another drink. Don’t worry about that man with the camera.”

Or, God forgive me, this?

There’s really no caption that can do this justice.

And as for exhaustion, I am the one who first suggested we do release parties that last all week.

“It sounds like a lot of work,” one of them mused.

“I don’t know if I have that much time,” remarked another.

“It’s only a week,” I encouraged warmly. “And it’s for dear, dear Michelle. You wouldn’t want to disappoint dear Michelle, would you?”

Yes, that’s how the release party plan began, in July of 2011.  Little did they foresee the outcome: Five release parties in seven weeks in the fall of 2012 (mine, of course, being the first, while they were all still fresh as daisies.)

Coincidence?  I think not.

So take your own lesson from this. Sociopaths are out there–one in every twenty-five people, as L.B. will tell you.  They seem nice. Normal. Charming, even. Don’t be drawn in.  It can happen to anyone, even Charlotte. Even L.B. Even a manly man like Mike Jung.

The best defense is a strong offense. So read LEAGUE OF STRAYS so you can see the risk, and learn to be your own guide in life. Before it’s too late and you find yourself eating a whole chocolate cake under duress.

Another unsuspecting victim is drawn in…

And the best way to get your hands on a copy of LEAGUE OF STRAYS? Post a reply any time this week, for our drawing. For a book, not a cake.

When Good Writers Were Bad

Regrets, we’ve had a few…

Being human means having a conscience (hopefully), even if we don’t always listen to it. In League of Strays, the main character Charlotte is tempted by the opportunity to become part of a group which seeks to pay back bullies by bullying them in return. She knows it isn’t right, but…Well, you’ll have to read the story to see whether revenge worked for her and the other characters.

This story will get readers talking. And at Emudebuts, the conversation’s been about times when we did something that went against our own consciences, and what we paid and/or learned as a result. Here’s a peek into our checkered pasts: 

Melanie Crowder

I was nine. I had transferred elementary schools and even after a year or so to adjust, I didn’t fit in with kids there. To be honest–they were mean. They took turns picking on one kid, ostracizing her, and then welcoming her back into the group only to turn on someone new. I had survived my week of misery, and they had moved on. I wasn’t sure how to act. I wanted to have friends, but I didn’t want to be mean to someone else. I remembered too well what it had felt like.

One day at recess, the group was taunting a girl while I stood there and watched. A teacher became involved and he reprimanded us all. “But,” I protested, “I didn’t say anything.” He turned to me and said in a voice straining with conviction that standing by and doing nothing was every bit as wrong. His words stung, and they stuck.

We talk about bullying as if it’s just a schoolyard thing, but it’s not. It’s something I encounter frequently in my adult life. Even now, 25 years later, I find myself checking my actions against that teacher’s words.

L.B. Schulman

There is one teeny little scene on my book based on reality. I guess now is the time to admit it. No, I didn’t make out with a hot sociopath. But I did, with a few friends, mess up a French teacher’s room. It wasn’t nearly as bad as what my characters do, but there was some knocking of papers to the floor and drawing on the walls with chalk. This was when I was 14, pretty much the worse, most juvenile-delinquent time, in my life. But then one of the kids felt so guilty, she went right to the principal. Next thing I knew, I was in his office. And what did I do? I admitted everything, apologized to the French teacher, and offered to clean the cafeteria for a week. Oops, scratch that. OK, I denied it. Every last bit. In the end our principal, who was a bit on the lazy side, figured that it wasn’t worth the effort to figure out who’d done it, so he just dismissed it. I remember feeling several things: one, immense guilt at what I’d done to the teacher, and for lying about my part in it, and two, utter relief that the principal was going to let me go, even though he knew I participated. In the end, that one experience was so powerful that it partly motivated the writing of this book. I remembered what it was like to be a bored, angry teen, and the stupid things I did as a result. Even though I did them, they were a symptom of teen angst, more than who I was or would become as a person. Oh, and I remembered the value of a Get Out of Jail Free card. I didn’t waste it. From then on, I strived to be a much better person.

Mike Jung

High school was a very, very difficult time for me. I was the target of a lot of bullying, enough so that it probably became the defining aspect of my high school years, at least in terms of self-definition. Sadly, there was more than one time when my response to being bullied was to turn around and try to bully someone else. There was one other guy in my graduating class – let’s call him Danny X. (not his real name) – who was similar to me in some ways. He was also a target of our school’s bully population, although I think he actually stood up to it better than I did. It was a mark of how damaged and insecure we both felt that we spent quite a lot of time bullying each other. You’d think we could have become friends, or at least perceived each other as fellow exiles in a land of sadistic immaturity, but no, instead we engaged in our own little war of derision.

One day I decided to put my writing skills to use and create a petition with a single question on it: “Is Danny X the biggest _______ in the world?” I circulated the petition, feeling a mean-spirited enjoyment in the attention it garnered. It came to blows, of course, and whatever else Danny may have been, he was certainly a much better fighter than me. I ended up with a goose egg on my forehead, which eventually healed, and a dark stain on my conscience, which is probably still there. I know why I did it, of course – it was because I was immersed in feelings of helplessness, rage, and self-loathing. Those feelings, particularly the self-loathing, made it sadly easy to lash out in a wholly unadmirable and hurtful way. I’ve regretted the entire incident ever since, and if I could go back in time and do it differently, I wouldn’t hesitate.

Jeanne Ryan

When I was seven, my family visited my grandparent’s home in a distant state. Next door lived a girl a couple of years older who I thought was the coolest. As grown-ups would put it, we “played well together.” We both loved spooky stories and TV shows, so when she suggested we write a bunch of scary notes and leave them anonymously around her neighborhood I was all in.

As you can imagine, the neighbors got quite upset at discovering threatening notes scrawled in child’s handwriting. It wasn’t long before we were busted. Our parents demanded that we go from house to house to apologize. But, sad to admit, I absolutely refused to, crying and stomping and throwing an Oscar-worthy tantrum. Now, as an adult, the tantrum bothers me as much as the crime itself. I wish I’d had the courage to take responsibility for my actions.

Jeannie Mobley

When I was in junior high (as we called it back then), I was a quiet,
overweight, glasses-wearing, book-reading goody two shoes. We lived in
the country, so I had about an hour-long bus ride to and from school
every day. The cool kids all sat in the back of the bus, and pulled off
all kinds of shenanigans, so one year the bus driver assigned us seats.
I was in the second-from-front seat, and whenever one of the cool kids
misbehaved, she made them come sit in the seat with me, where she could
keep an eye on them, and where, presumably, I would be a good influence.
Instead, it gave them an opportunity to pick on me, and they all came to
think of me as the bus driver’s accomplice. I felt like I was being
punished for being a good kid.

Somehow, I finally got to sit where I wanted, so I moved to the very
back of the bus and looked for my chance to prove myself as a cool kid
and not a bus-driver’s pet. That chance came in the form of a fire
cracker and book of matches, that were given to me with the instructions
to light it and throw it under the seats, so it would go off 1/2 way up
the bus. I lit it, but the “cool kids” had, as a double prank, cut the
wick extra short, so before I could throw it, it exploded in my lap. It
blew the cover off of my library book, which appropriately enough, was
GONE WITH THE WIND.

In the end, I was suspended from riding the bus for a week, after my
sister confessed all (except that she had been the one to smuggle the
matches onto the bus.) And I had to pay for the library book. And the
worst consequence is that I have never lived it down with my family.

I can’t say I’m racked with guilt about what I did, although I’m a
little ashamed at having been so easily drawn in by peer pressure. But I
do think as a teacher, I am always mindful about thrusting the trouble
students onto the good students to try to reform them. I understand that
that is torture for the good students, and an unfair “reward” for their
efforts. I also learned that you can’t fake who you are. I am the nerdy
good kid. I have to accept that and embrace it; trying to be someone I
am not tends to lead to disaster.

_______________

Thank goodness for second chances.

How about you? Got any youthful indiscretions you want to get off your chest? Better yet, a lesson learned? It could be such a relief to finally come clean…

L.B. Schulman’s book is sure to spur a lot of conversation around bullying and how to deal with it. Hopefully it will raise probing questions and productive conversation around a topic that’s far too often in the headlines.

Remember, if you want a chance to win a copy of LEAGUE OF STRAYS, comment on any Emudebuts post this week to be entered into a drawing.

Pull Up a Couch and Stay Awhile

There’s been a lot of talk about Kade’s hair prowess, but Charlotte’s hair definitely earns points on this cover!

Welcome to Day Two of the Release Week Fiesta for League of Strays by L.B. Schulman! In this page-turner of a young adult novel, L.B. Schulman has created Charlotte, a likable teen who doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere in the World of High School. Charlotte finally finds kinship in the League of Strays, a group of misfits led by Kade, a charming psychopath with, um, really great hair.

For some insight on how today’s teens navigate adolescent land mines like bullying, take a seat on the couch in the office of Ms. Kelly Winningham, guidance counselor at a high school in the Washington DC metropolitan area.

Emu’s Debuts: Welcome, Ms. Winningham!

In League of Strays, the bullied become the bullies. We would have thought that kids who’ve been bullied would be the least likely ones to turn around and bully someone else. How often does this happen, and why?

Ms. Winningham: I don’t think that this type of situation happens as often. When it does happen, I think it’s because a child has been hurt by someone else and they want someone else to experience the same feeling. There is a saying that we learn in our counseling program that has stuck with me, and that is, “Hurt people hurt people.” When children do not find positive ways to resolve a bullying situation, then it usually leads to other destructive behaviors. Bullying other kids is one of those destructive behaviors.

Emu’s Debuts: In the book, main character Charlotte struggles between wanting to fit in and going along with actions that she doesn’t feel comfortable with. What advice do you give students who are going through similar struggles?

Ms. Winningham: This is always a challenge. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t want to be liked or to fit in with a group of people. What I usually tell students is to find one or two friends that you have something in common with and who deserve your trust and friendship. There is more meaning in those types of relationships than in anything that can be offered from fitting into a crowd. Also, students have to listen and trust their inner voice. It always lets them know when something doesn’t feel right, and if it doesn’t feel right, then they shouldn’t do it. It may also help for students to talk to an adult whom they trust to help them make the best choice when it comes to going along with actions that they may later regret.

Emu’s Debuts: For kids who bully or who are being bullied, how important is literature in the lives of these kids? Do you think reading about bullying leads to more bullying, or does it make readers more empathetic?

Ms. Winningham: I think that literature about bullying is important. Sometimes, kids who are bullied think that they are the only ones going through this difficult situation. It gives students a chance to read about possible positive solutions to resolve the problem if they are being bullied. I also think that students who bully get something out of reading these types of books. It causes them to think about their actions and how it affects others. Of course, one would hope that bullies who read these books would be more empathetic. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but at least these books provide another avenue to try to reduce the bullying that happens in thousands of schools across the country.

Thank you so much for your insight, Ms. Winningham!

I’m now taking off my author/Emu hat and putting on my teacher’s hat to say this: League of Strays would make a great book club pick for kids who need to talk about bullying—from all sides of the issue.

Now it’s time for our readers to weigh in for a chance to win a signed copy of L.B. Schulman’s League of Strays! Ms. Winningham could have given Charlotte and the League of Strays some sound advice. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever given or received on the topic of bullying?