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The Teaching Librarian 26.1 15 Angela Thompson foremost. i'm not trying to be issue driven, per se. But with The Reluctant Journal of Henry K. Larsen, for example, i was reading a book by Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed. he'd put a character in the real life tragedy of Columbine high School. And there was a line in the book that mentioned that one of the shooters had a brother. i'd never ever thought about what it would be like to be the surviving sibling of one of the perpetrators of an act of violence like that ... and that's where henry was born. So, i tracked henry through the aftermath of a tragedy -- it is always character first. i also have a lot of fractured families in my stories, and i think that comes from my own family background -- divorced parents, raised by my single parent mom, half siblings, step siblings, step-parents, etc How do you decide what stories need to be told and/or what your next project will be? i honestly just hope and pray that another idea comes to me! my most recent one was just a line that popped into my head between wake and sleep. What details are you able to share about the current projects you are working on? i can't talk about what i'm currently working on, but my new book comes out in September and it's called No Fixed Address. it's about a boy, 12-year-old Felix, who is living in a van with his mom - and has to keep this fact a secret from everyone. z