Bleak
Bleak is a young adult novel inspired from my experiences with bullying in elementary school. Writing the book was a 15 year journey for me and I was continually motivated by my middle school students who said that their voices weren’t being heard. The thought I couldn’t run away from at 11 was if “life is this bad now, it will never get any better.” If you’re struggling with similar thoughts - it is my hope that this book is a light in your world.
In this one minute video, I talk about my storytelling decisions for Bleak and my hope that it can be a light for students today.
Looking to add a free, standards based unit curriculum to your classroom? Click the image to add Bleak’s classroom unit to your class (includes a schoolwide classroom curriculum that can be implemented at the K-12 level).
Bleak was inspired by my experiences with bullying and my struggles with depression. The novel explores some dark places and rightly has this content warning at the beginning of the book. If you find yourself in a dark place, click the image above for help. Recovery is possible.
Interest in hiring Shelby to be the graphic designer or illustrator for your project? Click the image to access her website and make an inquiry!
When I was 12 years old. I wrote these notes as a form of reflection and meditation (though I couldn’t describe why I did it at the time). Living in a small town, I didn’t have access to a therapist, and these notes helped me channel the feelings I had onto paper. This practice came to shape Tommy’s journal entries in Bleak. If you feel you’re facing a similar struggle, help is out there at https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org/
Setting the Setting: How the city of Baldridge came to shape Bleak (click the image for more).
When I was at KU, I struggled to find the time to write Bleak. I wasn’t allowed to bring a notebook to work as a cashier, but my bosses looked the other way if I wrote on receipts (and got my work done, of course) I ended up writing 20 chapters of this novel on the backs of receipts while working as a cashier at KU. Click the image to read more!
Click on the cover image (designed by illustrator Shelby Miller) to get a sneak peek of the first five pages of Bleak.
Beyond Bleak - The influences and references found in the novel. Learning about Langston Hughes transformed the novel I hoped to write with Bleak and shaped the novel as it is today.
Let’s talk about Bullying: In the above blog post, I reflected on one of the worst days of my life, and how this day inspired the novel I hoped to write. Click the above image to read the full story.
Music and brilliant musicians listed here came to shape Bleak’s identity. It helped inspire the story, its characters, and its message. The title itself is a reference to Opeth’s track on their album, Blackwater Park. Clicking on the image will take you to an article about how the band Opeth inspired the title of this work.
Bleak and “Method Writing”, in this blog post, I talked about how actor Daniel Day Lewis inspired me while I was in high school as I conducted research to write this novel. Click the image to see the article!
In 2012 (8 years before Bleak published) I wrote a blog post about what inspired me to write this book - including how I found its core topic (bullying), to be more important than ever - click the image above for the full story.
