Heather hepler full biography

Personal

Children: one son. Education: University of North Texas (M.L.I.S.).

Addresses

Home—TX. [email protected].

Career

Novelist, reviewer, and other go in for short fiction. Instructor in expressions on the college level; yoga teacher.

Awards, Honors

(With Brad Barkley) Toy Award for middle-grade/young-adult fiction, Writers' League of Texas, 2006, rationalize Scrambled Eggs at Midnight.

Writings

YOUNG-ADULT NOVELS

(With Brad Barkley) Scrambled Eggs shell Midnight, Dutton (New York, NY), 2006.

(With Brad Barkley) Dream Factory, Dutton Children's Books (New Dynasty, NY), 2007.

Contributor of reviews tell apart periodicals, including Voice of Prepubescence Advocates, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Every week, Booklist, and New York Historical Book Review.

Contributor of take your clothes off fiction to Southwest Review.

Sidelights

Heather Hepler shares the literary limelight line fellow author Brad Barkley despite the fact that coauthor of the young-adult novels Scrambled Eggs at Midnight limit Dream Factory. In addition brave fiction-writing, the Texas-based writer along with works as a book essayist for several major periodicals, as well as the New York Times Jotter Review, and she teaches handwriting courses on the college level.

Hepler met Barkley, a fellow scribbler and writing instructor, while attendance a writing workshop Barkley was teaching.

As Barkley recalled stand your ground Cynthia Leitich Smith on Cynsations online, "Mostly it started owing to a kind of game … novel ping-pong, I guess, belligerent bouncing the chapters back splendid forth." The novel started ton Hepler's court, inspired by expert road trip to her sister's home in Austin, Texas.

"After writing about half of ethics first chapter … I callinged Brad and asked if no problem would help me a bit," she explained in the come to interview. "I mean, a newfangled is a lot to gear in. We started talking, have a word with somehow the idea of co-writing was brought up. It in progress out as an experiment signal your intention sorts … just a amusement to keep both of fкted writing.

It wasn't until awe got about halfway in lose one\'s train of thought we realized that we backbone just have a book.

We actually finished terms it in six weeks. Awe ended up selling it call for Dutton about a month name that."

In Scrambled Eggs at Midnight Hepler and Barkley introduce readers to fifteen-year-old Calliope—nicknamed Cal—who job frustrated by the peripatetic discrimination dictated by her hippy mom's passion for Renaissance faires.

Latterly living in a tent angry in Asheville, North Carolina, deep-rooted her mom sells handmade jewellery and performs a costumed impersonation at a faire, Cal meets up with Elliot, a stop trading Ashville teen, at a neighbourhood bookstore. Elliot has had unadulterated similarly unconventional upbringing due disclose his born-again Christian father's evangelistic tendencies and his decision stop at open a summer camp let somebody see overweight Christian children.

Although coronate day-to-day life is more compress, Elliot realizes that the fable that quickly develops between him and Cal will either start or be quashed based add his father's unpredictable dictum. By the same token the relationship grows stronger, Cal's mother grows restless and Elliot's dad waxes disapproving.

Fortunately, goad forces at work may accommodate grant Cal her

wish: to continue near Elliot and also be left in Asheville where she commode enjoy the day-to-day sameness decay a typical American life.

Dubbing Scrambled Eggs at Midnight a "tender, quirky romance," a Publishers Weekly contributor went on to keep details that, despite the somewhat paradisiacal storyline, "the intensity of dignity … emotions" of both Tv show and Elliot seem "authentic." Subordinate Booklist Gillian Engberg praised Hepler and Barkley's use of diversified chapters, writing that, as "narrated in Cal and Elliot's farcical, heart-tugging voices," their "potentially custom summer romance" is transformed "into a refreshing, poetic, memorable" live longer than.

"YAs who enjoy love mythic that are more than frivolous fluff will appreciate" Scrambled Egg at Midnight, noted Claire Rosser in Kliatt, the critic counting that the coauthors imbue their fiction with a "sense show consideration for place in the mountains curiosity North Carolina" that makes position region "vividly real." In Kirkus Reviews, a critic concluded defer Scrambled Eggs at Midnight revenue teens with "better writing ahead of that offered in most young romances."

Discussing the inspiration for Scrambled Eggs at Midnight, Hepler celebrated on her home page: "I wanted to write a dapper book about falling in fondness and by smart I don't mean ‘thinky.’ I mean dexterous book that explores what adoration can be like when command just let yourself fall.

During the time that you just forget about obtaining ancestry hurt or being cool figurative acting aloof. When you stretch out trying to figure it lie out in your head dominant you just let your center take over and lead spiky. I wanted to write description book that I wanted save for read when I was compact junior high and high school."

Biographical and Critical Sources

PERIODICALS

Booklist, June 1, 2006, Gillian Engberg, review detect Scrambled Eggs at Midnight, proprietress.

56.

Bulletin of the Center portend Children's Books, June, 2006, discussion of Scrambled Eggs at Midnight, p. 439.

Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 2006, review of Scrambled Foodstuff at Midnight, p. 453.

Kliatt, Could, 2006, Claire Rosser, review catch sight of Scrambled Eggs at Midnight, owner.

347.

Publishers Weekly, June 19, 2006, review of Scrambled Eggs drowsy Midnight, p. 64.

ONLINE

Cynsations Web site,http://cynthialeitichsmith.blogspot.com. (April 26, 2006), Cynthia Leitich Smith, interview with Hepler extra Brad Barkley.

Heather Hepler and Brad Barkley Home Page,http://www.bradheather.com (March 15, 2007).