Author’s Note

 

I began writing Passing Notes as a challenge. A publisher was looking for romantic YA short stories featuring ghosts. I like writing prompts and decided this was a fun one to try.

My daughter was going into 5th grade at the time, and a hot issue was that cursive was not being taught in most elementary schools anymore. While I understand that cursive isn’t super important in daily life, it is a sad art to lose. One day, far in the future, will no one be able to read the important documents and even private diaries or letters of the notable people of our history who lived before the 1990s? Will no one ever pen a beautiful love letter? Is that something that will forever vanish from the world?

Also, that same year, one of my step-daughters was in a relationship, and she spent all her time texting with her boyfriend rather than actually talking to him. That saddened me too. What was happening to the language of love? It didn’t surprise me when that relationship didn’t last. How could it?

So I wrote Passing Notes in response to that. It didn’t get accepted in the anthology, and I never quite know what to do with Young Adult short stories. I played with it some more, hoping to stretch it into a full-length novel, but a novella is where it found its stopping point. Thank you to Caroline Andrus and Nancy Schumacher for agreeing to publish it through Fire and Ice. An extra thanks to Caroline for another beautiful cover design. Thank you also to Rebecka Neyman for the editing.

I send a special acknowledgement to my dear friend Jeni Richard who took the time to help me cut the original short story down in size to fit the word count required by the anthology. She really helped me chop out what wasn’t necessary. Although, I think she and I both knew the story needed to be longer, not shorter.

And please, my dear readers, if you enjoyed this story remember to take a moment to share a comment about it or give it some stars on Amazon or Goodreads or any online bookstore. It really helps let others know this is a book worth reading, and it certainly helps me know that you want me to keep writing. I appreciate all of you more than you can imagine.