Meet Rachel McMinn, Author

Rachel McMinn is high school English teacher who was born in the UK and who lives in Connecticut. She is also the mother of a two-year-old girl. Her debut novel, The Other Side of Loneliness, was published in June of 2016. Learn more about the book on Amazon and Goodreads.

1. How did you come up with the idea for the story told in your debut novel?

As a teacher, I have met many students who have faced a lot of hardship in their short lives. What always amazes me is the utter resilience they display. They manage to navigate their way through problems that, as an adult, I am not sure what I would do about. My novel was inspired in part by that resilience and the idea that so many of us are going through our day with problems that we hide from the rest of the world. I am a firm believer in being kind to everyone since sometimes the person with the biggest smile is the person facing the greatest hardship behind closed doors. At some point we have to let others in because a hardship shared, is less of a hardship.

2. How would you describe your protagonist, Riley?

Riley is a teenage girl that has experienced a tragedy that has turned life as she knows it, upside down. She has a lot of emotions and feelings that she isn't sure what to do with, feels like she knows it all, and at the same time feels like she knows nothing at all. The teenage years are tough anyway; school, friends, relationships, trying to figure out who you are and what you believe and what you want to do with your life. There is a lot of pressure. Add a traumatic experience to that and you have a recipe for disaster. Riley is very typical in that way. She is balancing her emotions and trying to understand how you can love and hate at the same time. There is a very confusing duplicity to life and emotions, and Riley is learning that lesson early in life. She is scared to let friends and loved ones help because she has experienced loss and doesn't want to risk losing anyone else. I think that is a feeling that teens and adults alike can relate to.

3. As an English teacher, when do you find the time to work on your own writing?

I'm a full-time English teacher with a two-year-old daughter so life is certainly hectic. I keep a notebook in my purse and write when I have a spare moment: waiting rooms, when my daughter naps, lunch breaks. I still nurse my daughter, so I have to pump at work and I have gotten pretty good at balancing the pump and my notebook! At home I will get on my laptop for twenty minutes before I start getting ready in the morning or for a half hour before I go to bed. I might not have a huge block of time to write but all of those little sessions add up. I wrote The Other Side of Loneliness in about 7 months.

4. What audience did you have in mind as you wrote your novel--were you thinking of your students in this context as you wrote?

I was absolutely thinking of my students as I wrote this novel. As a teacher you don't just teach your subject area; you also give a lot of pep talks about handling life. I don't pretend to know it all, but I try to give my students good advice so they can make better decisions or try to get them to stand back and analyze a situation before acting. I think about what I wish I had known when I was their age. This book takes some of those life lessons and puts them into novel form. I think that young adults and adults will enjoy this book because the real core message is that we all have issues that we hide from the public; we all struggle and that is okay. It is okay to not know what to do. We can choose to stay stuck and suffer or we can accept our issues and figure out what to do from there. This book is about the importance of friends and support systems, forgiveness, and that understanding that no one is perfect. That is what makes us human.

5. As the school year comes to an end, what are your plans for the summer?

Well, contrary to popular belief, teachers do not really get the summer off! I will be teaching summer school a few days a week and spending some time planning for next school year. When I am not working, I will be spending a lot of time at the beach; I love being outdoors! I run and summer is really my training season, so I will be doing that in preparation for a half marathon in the fall. I have a two-year-old daughter, Lillian, and I love every single moment with her. I will be spending a fair amount of time finger painting, collecting bugs, and visiting the farmer's market with her. Of course, I hope to have some time to read and write and I'll be waiting to be inspired for my next novel!

Thanks, Rachel!

Meet K.O. Giuseppe, Author

K.O. Giuseppe, author of Bonnie and Klyde + 2 Cats, is currently based in Los Angeles, California. He was born in Nigeria and raised in the United States in Queens, NY and Bridgeport, CT. According to KOG, writing is the only art form that transfers the power of imagination to anyone bold enough to read. Visit him online at his website, as well as on Twitter.

1. How did you first become interested in writing?



For a long time, I never felt interested in writing because coming from a different country, Nigeria, proper English was my biggest barrier. Plus. growing up in the inner city, reading was never the cool thing to do, so in order to fit in, I had to despise books. Silly now that I think about it, but that's how it was coming up in the inner city, in Bridgeport, Connecticut. My hatred of the literary craft led me to a stronger math comprehension and visual expression. After I graduated college, quit my good job, and took a journey to California, God guided me towards writing. Natasha and I, plus our two cats, were living in a car, with no electricity, no internet, and no home, but I had a pen and pad. I believe that that was God's way of telling me to write, and that's what I did.

2. What do you see as the pleasures--and the difficulties--of being an artist in today's world?



The pleasures of being an artist are also the difficulties of being an artist in today's world. It is pleasant to think differently from the status quo, but it is extremely difficult to be understood when you think differently. People categorize artists as crazy, simply because they see things differently. So the smart artist learns to fit in, sometimes.

3. If you had to describe your writing to someone who had never read any of your work before, what would you say?



I would say keep an open mind before reading. My books capture moments, so if I was angry at that moment a few years ago, you will feel the anger when you read it; same thing goes for happiness and sheer dumbness--yes, there is a hell of a lot of dumbness.

4. Would you tell us a bit more about your memoir, Bonnie and Klyde + 2 Cats?



Yes. Bonnie and Klyde + 2 Cats: Journey of a Starving Artist is a nonfiction book about my journey from Connecticut to California. I quit my good engineering job in Connecticut, got into my Jeep with my girlfriend plus her two cats, and spontaneously moved to California. We hit hard times, living out of the Jeep and sneaking cats in and out of motels. I would call it a fun survival guide with a DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME warning label.

5. As someone who writes both fiction and nonfiction, what do you find to be the unique challenges of each genre?

The challenge of writing nonfiction is not writer's block, but the underground demon I call procrastination. I love to experience life, then sit and write about my experiences, but that procrastination devil always has a chore for me to do: wash a car, go shopping, clean up, whatever it takes to avoid writing. The challenges of writing fiction are writer's block and realism. Writing fiction is like making Mars believable on Earth. The more outlandish the idea, the harder you have to work to make it believable to the reader.

Thanks, KOG!

Introducing the 540 Design Studio Blog

540 Design Studio is a website design firm based in Greenwich, Connecticut with clients all over the United States. They do design for websites and mobile platforms, and they also offer help with branding, social media, and graphic design--including print work. I think it's always refreshing to find a firm that brings knowledge of and experience with print media to their work in design for web and multimedia formats.

On their website, 540 Design Studio hosts an informative and very nice-looking blog. The blog covers a range of topics of interest to entrepreneurs, and the content is presented in a clean, clear format. A nice thing about the blog is that it's not self-promotional at all: the emphasis is truly on providing useful and relevant content.

Recent topics on the blog include a list of useful WordPress plugins, an overview of SEO, a comparison of two different eCommerce solutions for different sizes of businesses, and some thoughts on why Pinterest is an important social media avenue for reaching a large number of customers.

I find this blog to be a nice example of a blog done right: the content and design demonstrate the quality of 540 Design Studio's work, so the business owners don't need to spend time in their blog posts convincing readers that the company has something helpful to offer. As a blogger myself, I know that when I look at their site, I think to myself that it might just be time to hire a designer so that my own blog would have such seamless integration of form and content!