Although I've been busy trying to promote Rogue, I also have a new YA novel that I finished and sent off to my agent last November. Titled ANTS GO MARCHING, it's about an academic superstar from a hardscrabble mobile home park, the only person from the park in an elite honors program at his suburban high school, whose dreams of escape are crushed when a fight with classmates leaves him with a severe concussion.

My agent loved the story and the writing but felt the story was too dark, so she asked me to find ways to lighten it up. I procrastinated in getting the specific comments from her because I was so wrapped up in marketing efforts for Rogue that it was hard to concentrate on anything else. I felt that to turn away from my full-time promotion would be kind of like walking away from a book in which I'd invested so much of myself.

Finally, though, my agent sent me the comments along with a gentle nudge to move on. I'll have to say, the comments were both inspiring and revealing. Inspiring because both she and three separate readers loved my writing and said they could not pull themselves away from the story. And revealing because of the crushing negativity of the book.