Creating Captivating Nonfiction for Kids: A Conversation with author Rebecca Barone

Join us for a conversation with nonfiction author Rebecca Barone (Race to the Bottom of the Earth: Surviving Antarctica; Unbreakable: The Spies Who Cracked the Nazis' Secret Code; Mountain of Fire (coming Spring 2024).

Approximately 3.5 million non fiction books are published each year, a full 88percent of all books published.  So how do you write non fiction that is as thrilling as a page turning novel? What ingredients are essential to nonfiction success? Listen in to find out.

About Rebecca Barone

Rebecca is an engineer and author. She has worked on technical projects as diverse as injury analysis for the NFL and engine calibration for hybrid cars. Realizing her love of books in addition to numbers, she now describes the world with words rather than equations. Her first two books, Race to the Bottom of the Earth: Surviving Antarctica and Unbreakable: The Spies Who Cracked the Nazis’ Secret Code, received a combined nine starred reviews and were featured on numerous “Best of” lists. She lives in Ohio with her family. Visit her at  rebeccaefbarone.com

Transcript

Beth McMullen: 0:31

Approximately 3.5 million nonfiction books are published each year a full 88% of all books published Today. On episode 32 of Riders with Wrinkles, we ask the question how do you write nonfiction that is as thrilling as a page turning novel? What ingredients are essential to nonfiction success? If you want to know, stay right where you are and we will be right back. Hi, friends, we are very excited to welcome author Rebecca Barone to the podcast. Rebecca is an engineer and author. She has worked on technical projects as diverse as injury analysis for the NFL and engine calibration for hybrid cars. Realizing her love of books in addition to numbers, she now describes the world with words rather than equations. Her first two books Race to the Bottom of the Earth: Surviving Antarctica and Unbreakable: The Spies Who Cracked the Nazi Secret Code, received a combined nine star reviews and were featured on numerous best of lists. She lives in Ohio with her family. You can visit her at rebeccaefbarone. com, So thank you so much for joining us, Rebecca. We're really happy to have you here today.

Rebecca Barone: 1:56

Yeah, I'm really really happy to be here.

Beth McMullen: 1:58

Can I just say that when I was reading your bio for this introduction, I loved the way you said that you now describe the world with words rather than equations. I think that absolutely encapsulates the books that you write. Now I got the chance to read an advanced version of Unbreakable way back when and I just felt like that was the perfect description of the stuff that you're writing.

Rebecca Barone: 2:25

Well, thanks so much. So I was an engineer before I ever I was kind of obtuse and just never considered being an author until much, much later. So I was an engineer when, through all this engineering school and it always just drove me nuts that engineers was like the best not possible science study seem to like not have the story of what they're doing. you know, and they're doing such cool things. you know like you're creating all of these things and you're just being really dense about how you're describing it, because I don't think a lot of the world realizes how cool it is And so just kind of using using some words rather than some numbers to say a lot of the same things, i think opens it up for a lot more people.

Beth McMullen: 3:03

I think that is so interesting, because when you talk to people that are planning on studying engineering or who are by trade engineers the idea of what they kind of call humanities they feel like it's so separate from their universe. The writing and reading, and expressing yourself in some way that is different than equations and numbers. I mean, it's such an amazing bringing together of these two things, because you get way more out of both that way.

Rebecca Barone: 3:36

Yes, absolutely, and like so. When I do school visits with kids, they tend to be really interested in a lot of the engineering parts too. I have this awesome picture of me like on the sidelines of a giant scheme. There's the sideline and there are my toes like right next to the rock. It was awesome, like it was this really cool, like side perk of getting to do grad school and doing this engineering analysis project with the NFL.

Rebecca Barone: 3:56

But I started to go through all this and you know I have this whole spiel where I wrap the kids up and I'm realizing that they're telling stories about these engineering projects and saying that you know, as an engineer, even if you do all these research projects and like you find all this stuff out, it's worth nothing unless you're telling other people. So, like, even all these equations and stuff that you're going to use to you know, to define this world and to explain it and to analyze it, you still have to use words to get it out there, and so that's that's part of what hit me and part of how I made the transition is that I honestly started loving seeing my work and writing more than I was loving doing the work itself. I was like oh yes, let's publish another article please. I would love to see my name there, i would love to see my words and print And I was like hold on a second.

Beth McMullen: 4:40

That is so interesting. Were you a football fan before you ended up in the injury analysis for the NFL? Or was that just how your grad school program tracked you?

Rebecca Barone: 4:49

No, it was a really cool project And I think the human body is amazing. The human body is absolutely fascinating. We can do so much with it And there's it's hard to replicate, like our, you know, like the idea of band aids. Your band aids pull in your skin because they're not elastic like your skin right. Your skin's moving in a different way And we have a really hard time replicating that. And they come close to it with, like burn victims and they do. You know, they do some stuff with that, but it's really really hard to do because our body is absolutely incredible And we just take it for granted 90 percent of the time. So I thought that it was really interesting. And studying the way that people break And I suppose that sounds kind of morbid But we, and especially athletes, push themselves so close to how they break that studying how close they get and not going a second, a millimeter farther than that It was just fascinating. So I, deep, dark secret, don't like football.

Rebecca Barone: 5:50

I know I know because like there's a million people that would kill like to work with the NFL, right, and so I feel a little bit bad saying this. but the project was so cool that like how could you not? And so of course they jumped at that and kind of Cliff note versioned but ball a little bit and learned what I could And was like, yeah, totally know what a two point conversion is.

Beth McMullen: 6:11

You're ahead of me, haha.

Rebecca Barone: 6:14

That ball now run hard Now run that direction.

Beth McMullen: 6:17

Nope, run the other direction.

Rebecca Barone: 6:19

I'm definitely the person at the at the Super Bowl who's like, yeah, chip dip This is a good transition into our first question.

Lisa Schmid: 6:27

So what drew you to middle grade nonfiction and what unique opportunities or challenges does it present compared to other forms of writing?

Rebecca Barone: 6:37

A lot of academics and a lot of like research you have to publish through academic and scholarly journals. But I think I mentioned like I'm just pretty obtuse when it comes to thinking about careers and career paths and stuff like that. So I really didn't consider being an author for long, long time And even once I did that I was writing fiction pretty much, and you know that's, i like to read fiction, i like to write fiction, of course. And there got to be a point in my life and I don't totally understand this where I couldn't read or write fiction, like I don't know why, but it was too intense or it was too emotional or I don't know why, and so I couldn't read it, which was a huge part of my life always. And by the you know I couldn't write it And by that point it was writing was also a huge part of my life.

Rebecca Barone: 7:21

I wasn't published or anything with fiction, but you know. So I was kind of freaking out about that a little bit when that part of you just disappears. But I have a very good friend from undergrad who is a ghost writer, and so she and I were talking and I was love ring to her and one flying of like what am I going to do? And this is awful in my life and everything. And she's like well, especially as an engineer, have you ever considered nonfiction?

Rebecca Barone: 7:43

She's like if you can write children's nonfiction. There's a big market for this right now This was even pre pandemic And so she was in the industry and she could see that there was kind of, you know, a takeoff or a lot of interest in children's nonfiction. So for me, nonfiction was kind of a lifeline, like I didn't go into writing you know, i'm not a nonfiction evangelist I didn't get into this right nonfiction, so it was kind of a lifeline and and I was able to do that And I still wrote it as like a story. So I write narrative nonfiction where it's very much trying to tell a story with nonfiction. And so you're, as for like the middle grade aspect of that, yeah, so my editor is the wonderful Brian Geffen and he's fantastic, but he and I end up joking a ton that we have the shortest attention spans in the world. And so I think, right, middle grade nonfiction, because I have the attention of span of a 12 year old, i mean, like you know. So we're always talking about piecing and how to not lose focus of the story.

Rebecca Barone: 8:39

But I think trying to write neared in that fiction is a challenge too, because you're always so focused on source material And you want to. You know, i call them characters because they end up the real people, of course, and everything in the story is true, but you end up talking about them as if they were characters, you know, almost in a fiction book, and so I want to be able to describe them totally. But if I describe someone as wearing a red shirt, i have to have a source that says they were wearing a red shirt that day, you know, in that scene. Which is frustrating, you know, because you want to be able to grab the characters, not only physically describe them them, but emotionally describe them as well too, you know, and what are they thinking, what are they feeling?

Rebecca Barone: 9:18

And so I think, always fighting to get as much background, as much source material as you can is probably one of the challenges. I do find writing nonfiction a little bit easier from a structure perspective where, like fiction, you can take it and go like infinite amount of directions. You know you can do anything with the story that you want. Nonfiction is like, well, you're constrained on degree. You know you've got this amount constrained, at least.

Beth McMullen: 9:46

So do you think that helped you when you were trying to get over that fiction writer's block? Because you had to follow, you had to be in a bit of a box with nonfiction. There are certain liberties that you just can't take, So that structure you're talking about did that help you kind of focus in and be able to produce writing that you liked again?

Rebecca Barone: 10:08

You know, I've actually never thought about it that way, but that's a really good point. I do think that constraint probably did help. I think also probably knowing the ending helped too, you know, which is a very structured perspective, like you were saying. you know, like I know, where this is going, And even before I get like attached to a story, I know how it's going to end up, And so I'm I know if I'm okay getting into it or not, kind of too. I think that's a really good point. I'd actually never thought of that.

Beth McMullen: 10:33

I mean that's super interesting because it's a, it's a unique hivet. I mean it wasn't the writing that you were struggling with, it was just the type, because obviously you went on to be have been quite successful in the nonfiction area. So that leads to our next question. So you ended up writing middle grade. I totally understand the short attention span thing because I suffer from the same thing. I can't, if I can go chapter in five pages, that's about all I can focus on. So I don't know, i think that's just a societal problem. Now We all have very short attention spans. But you are writing for kids and you're trying to educate them and engage them at the same time. So how do you strike a balance between providing historical factual information and making sure that your audience doesn't get bored and float away?

Rebecca Barone: 11:30

Yeah, and so I think that's why I love writing the narrative part of it, the story part of it. And that's not to knock any other types of nonfiction that are telling facts or telling a story their own way. But this idea of trying to bring drama to a climax and resolve it and you can't really follow the beats like you would in fiction, because real life doesn't happen like that. But you get to use some more storytelling techniques that you're all familiar with, i think in part of not losing the audience or not talking down to the audience. You don't have to worry about being didactic in nonfiction as much. Everyone knows they're here to learn a story about that.

Rebecca Barone: 12:07

Like I said, i didn't get into this to write nonfiction. So I really can't stand when people talk about nonfiction and they're like you'll never realize you were learning something, like they were sneaking like prunes into your food or something like that. I'm not trying to sneak vegetables into your story Like. This is just, i just want to tell a good story and you're going to end up learning something along the way because you just have to. Beth, you were saying you were reading Unbreakable because you write good spy stories and I just wanted to write a spy story. That happened to be true, and so that one is so good.

Beth McMullen: 12:39

Can I just tell everybody to go and get it, because I really, i literally I picked it up and I didn't put it down until it was done. And again, it's because the storytelling is so, so strong and it's a good story. It was. It's a good story just in its own existence, but the way that you tell it is so well done. It's definitely should be in every kid library.

Rebecca Barone: 13:00

Well, thank you so much And it was, you know, like I hoped you were liking it because Mrs Smith's, you know, spy school for girls is so great And I loved that. You know, like way long before enigma or Unbreakable ever came out And you know, and so Unbreakable is hopefully this really good spy story. But you have to learn something about enigma you know, just to understand the story. So it's not that I wanted to teach people about, like, the mathematics of code breaking. It's just that to understand the story you're going to need something about that, just like you would need background on, you know, mrs Smith's spy school. You need to know what the school is and you need to know, you know, who the different characters are.

Rebecca Barone: 13:35

So that's that's kind of how I approach the nonfiction. Is that like it's that I never want to lose the reader for presenting information. I only want to present the information that is needed in order to tell whatever story I'm trying to tell. Because when it comes push comes to shove, i'm trying to tell a story and the story just happens to be true.

Beth McMullen: 13:52

That probably helps too to make, because I feel like sometimes you read nonfiction, adult nonfiction, and the author is heaping so much information on you because they have it, because they did the work to get it, and it doesn't necessarily support the narrative that they're trying to tell, but they figure. Oh, you know, i found this, it's kind of cool and I hate to leave it out, so I'm going to shove it in, and that's the part where I like fall asleep.

Rebecca Barone: 14:22

And it's like I'm so glad you have a PhD in this And I just I didn't want to PhD myself. From reading the book, you know like it's a relief as, like writing for kids too, is that like I don't have to know that level of information, which is fantastic. I'm an engineer. My husband has a PhD in aerospace engineering. He has a math minor. When I was going through the research for Unbreakable, we're sitting there with the math, he and I can barely follow what they're doing and these guys were creating it. I mean, we're literally barely able to say, okay, i understand what that means. Then I could breathe this huge sigh of relief because it doesn't matter.

Beth McMullen: 15:01

Right.

Rebecca Barone: 15:02

I'm not destined to go to the book. There's not going to be a test on this. I don't have to defend this to anybody. It's fine, that doesn't matter. I can get into the weeds as an author if I want, but then I'm just going to let that go.

Lisa Schmid: 15:14

Well, and you didn't have to save the world. So there's that. Well, this leads perfectly into our next question. So could you share your approach to gathering and verifying information for middle grade nonfiction books? How do you ensure accuracy and authenticity while making the content engaging? And I think we just touched on that, but can you dive into that just a little bit more?

Rebecca Barone: 15:40

Yeah, I think a lot of panic is involved honestly. Especially before my first book came out. I mean, i'd wake up in the middle of the night going I hope I didn't get anything wrong. You work so hard to make sure that this is all true and then you really really want it to be true.

Lisa Schmid: 15:58

Do you have visions of scholars going through your book page by page and looking for?

Rebecca Barone: 16:04

mistakes. It's the worst of just like, oh my gosh, and someone's going to be really, really into, I don't know, Antarctica in 1912 and find this detail that I didn't get and I'm going to get it wrong, Oh my goodness.

Beth McMullen: 16:16

It happens. It was my biggest surprise with my very first novel was how many people called me out on these teeny, tiny things that I did not even realize I had done, and first of all I was shocked that it happened. And then I thought, wow, they really are paying attention And that made me feel good, if you're going to pick out these tiny things.

Rebecca Barone: 16:35

And, the one hand, you're like really grateful people are reading it And you're like, ok, thank you Also. Oops, sorry about that, but actually each of my three books, because I have Race to the Bottom of the Earth about Antarctica, and that was two races, so early 1900s and then 2018. And then Unbreakable is about World War II. And then my third book coming out next spring is about Mount St Helen's eruption in 1980. My first book was half people that are long passed away, dead and gone. Half that was happening. The race in 2018 was happening as I was pitching the book, so as nonfiction's written on proposals, so I did this whole table of contents, what's going to happen. And then at the very end, i just have chapter XX whoever wins, i will write about whoever wins, because I didn't know, because I was pitching it while they were doing this race, which was kind of cool.

Rebecca Barone: 17:27

But the research process was very different for each book, because for the historical ones, you're really relying on really all secondary sources, like some journals, but even the journals have been edited, maybe edited even after people have died, and so that's another place where you're like, wow, i really hope I got this right, because I can't go and ask them if I did or not. And then the same thing with Unbreakable, where it's a little bit different because enigma machines the code breaking machine that they used in there are some of those that actually exist. They've recreated the bomb like the computer-ish type machine that they used to help solve this code. They did recreate that a little bit So there were elements on it that I could go on YouTube and watch or go to a museum and see.

Rebecca Barone: 18:09

But most of that was still reading as much as I could get my hands on, reading interviews, especially journals. So getting as close to first person first sources, primary sources as I could, but still relying on lot on secondary and historical sources. The cool thing for Unbreakable was that I couldn't access it directly because the book was in Polish only. But one of the sons of some of the main characters, antoni and Javica, were a husband and wife kind of spy pair. Their son wrote a book And so I talked to the Polish editor of the book. So I don't think that even counts as a secondary source. But it's this crazy twisted, convoluted path that you always try to get as close as you can.

Rebecca Barone: 18:59

Exactly exactly. So you're just trying to get as close as you can, like you said, beth, and really hunt down as many sources as you can. And then for Mountain of Fire, which is about the 1980 eruption of Mount St Helens, that people were actually are still alive, and that's interesting, because you always feel this pressure. I always feel this pressure to get things right, but you really want to get things right when other people are still here, And so it was really cool to be able to talk to them and get their own recollections of it, even though there were several instances in where some of the people I was talking to went and talked to each other and then came back and said OK, actually, no, this is how we agree that it happened.

Beth McMullen: 19:39

Oh, so interesting, because we know memory is so faulty. It's funny that they went to sort of corroborate with other people who had been there. That's really interesting.

Rebecca Barone: 19:49

Because even still, i'm doing this 40 years later. And was that the way it happened, and especially things that happened so quickly?

Beth McMullen: 19:57

Traumatically danger. anxiety clouds your memory, so interesting.

Lisa Schmid: 20:03

How long does it take you, on average to research a book before you actually start the process of writing it?

Rebecca Barone: 20:12

Yeah, so there's about I've had about nine months from the time the proposal's sold until the time I need to have it first drafted. I think I mentioned this earlier. My first book was written mostly in panic, like I, really like I just I never actually written a book before And so, like you, sold this and then I was like, oh my gosh, i have to write this. And there were these awesome moments of just like research dead ends where one of the guys is in the military And so they probably are strongly cautioned about releasing like personally identifiable information.

Rebecca Barone: 20:47

One of which is your birth date right, because that can be like to, you know, like people can identify you personally through your name and your birthday. And so I couldn't find his birth date. And I remember just crying to my mom I'm like, mom, how am I supposed to write this book? And I don't even know how old the guy is? And she goes well, just make it up. I was like no, it's not fiction, i can't do that.

Rebecca Barone: 21:09

And so, like there are these moments of like how am I going to do this? And how am I not going to get around information that I don't have? but how am I going to work with it? And so that was very much for a book like that. I was very much researching and writing at the same time and kind of pooling together details and trying to work them into, you know, work them into the story, work them into the outline, and then build up this outline, which eventually became a draft, and then I could really, you know, make it into a story, kind of from that point. Since then, since then I've calmed down a lot and kind of gotten a little bit more used to this process, but I think I give myself somewhere between three and four weeks. One after a project is sold to do nothing but read and do nothing but research, and that's certainly not the end to the research by any means you know like, but that you know just a month where I don't trust myself to do any writing to know anything about the story.

Rebecca Barone: 22:09

Well enough at all, you know, to try and outline or structure or think that I know the story in order to write it.

Beth McMullen: 22:16

So so you're just absorbing, getting in the space, getting your head in the space so that you feel like you're immersed in it and then launching into the writing. I have never met an author writing in any space that didn't panic the first time they realized that now they had to write this on a timeframe. Yes, absolutely.

Beth McMullen: 22:37

So for many of us who write fiction, it's the second book, because you usually write the first one and sell that, and then you ticker around with it and they publish it and then they say, hey, let's have another book. You have to give me a draft in nine months And then you panic. Yeah, exactly, you know, you just want to go fetal, lie on the floor, cry, scream, whatever.

Rebecca Barone: 22:57

It's intense. That's when those like word count days of like. I am not moving from the seat until I get however many words down on a page. They don't even have to be good words, they just have to be words on this page, because I can't revise a blank page.

Beth McMullen: 23:10

Exactly, and there's nothing quite as terrifying as the blank page when you see it in the morning and you realize the day before went by without you adding anything to the blank page and it's still blank.

Rebecca Barone: 23:21

Oh my gosh, It's so true It's like it's a white page. How scary can that be? No, no, that is Very scary, very scary.

Beth McMullen: 23:30

Do you ever find yourself in a research rabbit hole where you have to pull yourself out? Say, for instance, it's something that's just interesting to you as a person and you go pretty deep into it and then you realize it really is not related in any significant way to what you're trying to produce and you have to pull yourself out of it? because I do that sometimes and I'm trying to convince myself oh, this is related, it's really work, but no, i'm just really interested in whatever it is. Do you ever have to reel yourself in from stuff that you're thinking this is so fun, i'm having such a good time. Okay, i can't do this anymore.

Rebecca Barone: 24:07

Absolutely. And Wikipedia is the worst because it feeds that so easy, like, yep, i'm gonna click this, yep, i'm gonna click that, and yep, yep, so those. And the worst thing is that, for as a non-fiction writer, i can somehow convince myself this is a future project, you know. Like no, this is all right, i'm not doing research for the thing I need to be doing research on, but I can totally use this later And I mean, i guess that actually kind of does happen. I'm fortunate enough to be able to work with some magazines too and kind of like parlay this information, like the side stories that I can't necessarily use in the book, into like maybe an article or two. But actually that's so.

Rebecca Barone: 24:40

Wikipedia is kind of how I came up with the idea for the very first book, race to the Bottom of the Earth, because I love Antarctica.

Rebecca Barone: 24:46

Antarctica is so cool, like just it's so extreme, like the idea that it's on this planet and it's just it's so extreme. But again, it was a Wikipedia just like rabbit hole, like you were saying that I went down several times, i guess. Honestly, you know, before the idea for Race to the Bottom of the Earth ever came to me, i was like I knew there had been this race to reach the South Pole way back when, and like I couldn't remember too much about it because I wasn't paying too much attention, i was just enjoying reading and everything. But when I read in the New York Times about the 2018 race, i was like, wait a second, this sounds familiar, you know. And so I can go back to that Wikipedia rabbit hole and be like, oh yeah, there is something here and these do run in parallel. And then you know, kind of form that into a book idea. So there you go, beth, you have nonfiction ahead of you. You, too, can write, and it's not just procrastination, rabbit holes.

Beth McMullen: 25:34

Can I tell you how many articles I bookmarked in the New York Times where I say that'd make a great book? That would make dozens. I mean, i could spend the rest of my life writing and not get through, you know 10% of them. Because there are so many. I think the real world supplies so many amazing jumping off points that it's hard not to get just swept up in it.

Rebecca Barone: 26:00

I mean, and like I began by saying this, like I'm not some sort of like nonfiction, you know, like oh, it's the best thing in the world. But it's hard also to see as a nonfiction author that it doesn't get, you know, nearly the attention that fiction does, and you know that's darn, but okay whatever. But it's also kind of a bummer to realize that just people who don't read nonfiction are kind of closing themselves off to all of these awesome stories that like are there and are awesome and are great stories And I think for a long time maybe they weren't told very well as stories, which is why there's like this collective trauma about nonfiction that like we all react to. But it's nice to see that changing, especially in children's literature. I mean, there's this huge YA middle grade. There's so much good narrative nonfiction out there. There's so much good nonfiction totally. But like especially as kind of like the gateway drug to nonfiction, you know, narrative nonfiction.

Beth McMullen: 26:52

Yeah, because it's. I mean, I am not a huge nonfiction reader for the reasons that you just said, that much of it is after two chapters. I'm just asleep. It's too much or it's too dry, or it's too detailed or I just. But some of my favorite books of all time are Empire of Pain, which was a nonfiction about the settlers, and Purdue Pharma, and into thin air, john Crackauer's Journey Up, not Everest. Those are probably two of my favorite books of all time of any kind. So when it's done well, it transcends, i think, so many hurdles and it just stays with you forever.

Rebecca Barone: 27:36

So I mean, i think in nonfiction, like the world building. Well, we all live in this world and it's not gonna be. I've never been to Everest And so there's a lot that you would have. You know that John Crackauer had to do about that, but we can all relate to it kind of immediately. So I do wish it did get a little bit more attention. I think people can be a little bit more open to it. But I absolutely agree about there's a lot of dry stuff out there.

Beth McMullen: 27:58

I like the idea of it being a gateway drug for kids because it's going to no. I think that's a really good way of thinking of it, because you prime them to have an expectation that this nonfiction is gonna be told in this really thrilling way, And so they're gonna search that out. So they're not gonna be satisfied with the nonfiction that puts them to sleep. They're gonna seek out the stories that are more exciting and are more a story rather than a data dump.

Lisa Schmid: 28:24

Have you thought about doing picture books, nonfiction picture books? We were just last week. I was talking about a nonfiction picture book that I absolutely love, called I Am Smoke, and it's so good. It's really so, very good. So I'm curious is that something you've ever considered doing?

Rebecca Barone: 28:42

I have. So picture books in there, just as an entire genre. wow, those are hard to write. I mean, you are, i'm all about the pacing and short attention spans, but oof, that is. I mean that is compressed, and so there are some spaces where I could see telling a story like that or that a story would need to be told in that format. That is hard, though I am super impressed with picture book writers.

Lisa Schmid: 29:10

They're the magicians of Ghiblet. You know, i really think picture book writing is such a skill set that it's magical the way they just can take 250, 25 words, whatever the case may be, and create this magic in a story that's so concise and so captivating that it keeps kids' attention. So hats off to them. We tried picture book writing and it was hard. It just said it makes my head hurt.

Rebecca Barone: 29:44

And there's this whole collaboration too, like, especially if you're not like an author, illustrator and one, how do you have that handoff? How do you handle that? You know, like I'm very impressed with, like teams that can do that.

Beth McMullen: 29:53

Yeah, it's definitely. People do not understand how difficult it is. It is much easier to write 2000 words than to write 25.

Rebecca Barone: 30:03

Oh my gosh, or 250,. I mean like, how do you even get a story in that much?

Beth McMullen: 30:08

You know like so possibly, before we wrap up, can you tell us again the title of your book coming in 2024 and it's Mount St Helens. but just give us a little bit of so people can be ready for it when it shows up.

Rebecca Barone: 30:23

Sure, so it's actually let's see. Here it's going to launch May 14th 2024. So we just found that out. But it's called Mountain of Fire the eruption and survivors of Mount St Helens, and it's about the May 18th 19,. Oh shoot, i hope I got that right.

Rebecca Barone: 30:39

I think it's May 18th 1980, eruption of Mount St Helens and the lead up to it. So the mountain volcano was shaking, blowing off steam for about a month and a half beforehand, but it was really the first time that a volcano like this had erupted or showed signs like this. They were scientists, were comfortable studying, like volcanoes in Hawaii, but this was the first time they'd really, since the advent of modern science at least, studied a volcano like this. So they were really working on the fly to kind of piece together what information they could and give people what warnings they could. And of course, the mountain was the home and many people worked there, and so trying to balance, like the danger versus people's livelihoods, and then the science leading up to it And then the survivors.

Rebecca Barone: 31:29

So how did people experience this eruption that ended up killing 57 people And how did people escape from it? And so there's some interesting stories leading up to it. There's some really adventurous, dangerous, harrowing stories and people escaping from it, and there's some really cool lessons that were taken away from it And kind of the intervening 40 years. It's really only the maybe the last chapter or two of kind of lessons learned, but I like that. I like seeing how the mountain came back from it too. So May 14th 2024.

Beth McMullen: 32:00

May 14th. Okay, we are gonna wait for that. I'm definitely gonna wait for that. I'm a sucker for natural disaster stories of any flavor, so I'm like, first in line for that, peppy. Absolutely Well, thank you so much for being here and sharing all your wisdom with us. This has been a really interesting conversation, and I think we haven't touched on any of this stuff in our show to date. So this has been, i think, really insightful and will be helpful to all those aspiring nonfiction writers out there. So thank you so much for joining us.

Rebecca Barone: 32:31

Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

Beth McMullen: 32:32

This is very fun and I love talking to you And thank you, listeners, for tuning in. Please follow and review our podcast and recommend it to a friend if you would like to do that. It helps us get new listeners, which helps us keep doing the show, and we thank you in advance for your support, and we will see you again next week, june 19th, for a brand new Hot Writing Tips episode. So be sure to join us for that And, until then, happy reading, writing and listening.