Sophie Pecora’s song “Seventh Grade” fresh from the studio really hit home for me, as she deftly tackles issues – like bullying and feeling like you don’t belong – with ease and sensitivity. I first heard this song while she was competing on America’s Got Talent a couple years ago, and it’s really stuck with me ever since.
But that’s not to say that she sugarcoats things either. Absolutely not. This girl took all the things I remember feeling in middle school. You know the stuff – like somehow no one understands you, and most other kids were too snotty and rude to even give you the time of day.
In my experiences, more often than not, I always felt like the odd one out, and that I had to just suck up whatever the bullies threw at me, because if I didn’t, the teachers would punish me worst of all. Looking back, I realize now that the entire situation was incredibly messed up, and it was beyond unfair of my superiors to take away my human need to defend myself (verbally or otherwise).
Listen to “Seventh Grade” HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kA10k_O3bw
So how is this relevant to my author blog?
My latest book, Forgetting What I Couldn’t Remember (Book 1 of the Rewind Duology), tackles these very issues through the narrative structure of (what I hope) is a really fun and intriguing time-travel coming-0f-age romance:
Vera Bartlet is a soon-to-be college graduate with absolutely no idea how messy her life is about to become. It’s not just the job search looming on the horizon or her lack of a boyfriend that’s got her stomach in knots – rather, her dad has been missing for almost a decade, and no one knows what happened to him.
When Uncle Edgar mysteriously arrives back onto the scene, he comes armed with some interesting new ideas about what may have happened to Vera’s dad – and an even more revolutionary idea of how to find him. With nothing short of bending time and space, Edgar sends Vera back in time in the hopes that she might find the clues they need to get her dad home.
As she sifts through the mangled pieces of reality and her altered memories of middle school drama become jumbled in between truth and fantasy, Vera has to choose which elements of her past should stay in the past, and which she might like to incorporate into her future. Time travel is never simple, and there are always side effects – but in this case, it might just hold the key to finding her dad. Will Vera stay sane long enough to find her dad and make peace with the bullies who made her miserable?
View this book on Amazon HERE: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B084QK6DFW?pf_rd_r=JM9ZE02090JSY3VEVQZT&pf_rd_p=edaba0ee-c2fe-4124-9f5d-b31d6b1bfbee
Thank you so much for your interest in my writing blog – I’m so excited to get to know my followers a bit better, so please don’t hesitate to leave a comment below and tell me if any of this resonated with you too. For your sake, I hope you don’t relate, because it was a really tough subject for me to deal with and I’m still dealing with the repercussions even today, over ten years later.
But I’m convinced this is why art is so important – it’s an incredibly effective medium for sharing relatable struggles and connecting with others who have been through the same (or similar) things.
By creating and sharing our work, we can show others that they’re not alone, and maybe even connect on a deeper level.
So I guess I’ll get off my soapbox now, but I’ll leave you with this: Don’t be afraid to share the things that matter to you, because I’d wager there’s a really good chance that it’s going to matter quite a lot to someone else too (just the way Sophie’s song mattered quite a lot to me) ❤
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Angelina Singer Author Updates 