Big Fat Disaster: Edgy YA Fiction with a Heart
Colby Denton's life takes a drastic turn when her father's secret life is exposed, leaving her family homeless and facing media scrutiny. Amidst struggles with body image, family dysfunction, and a tragic event, Colby must confront the truth and her eating disorder. "Big Fat Disaster" is a gripping tale of resilience and self-discovery, earning praise for its honest portrayal of difficult themes in a compelling YA narrative.
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BETH FEHLBAUM EDGY YA FICTION WITH A HEART
FEARLESS FICTION: Big Fat Disaster As always, I am amazed at the honesty in Beth s writing. The characters in Big Fat Disaster sing with truth and reality. Colby s struggle with binge eating, body image, bullying, family dysfunction, and suicide make her the kind of character you want to wrap in a big, messy hug the kind of character whose journey you want to see through to the end. What I love most about Beth Fehlbaum s writing is that she comes to the page unafraid every single time she writes. Her writing never has a feeling of hesitation or of looking over her shoulder or holding back. She creates heart-to-heart-style that is to say, from her heart straight to the heart of her readers. Her characters the good and the bad come alive in a way that is rare and beautiful in YA writing, and that speak loud and clear to teens who really, really need to hear what they have to say. B.F.D. (Big Fat Disaster) stays true in this regard, true to that all-important message: Hang in there. You are not alone - Jennifer Brown, author of Hate List, Bitter End, and Perfect Escape
Whats Big Fat Disaster about? Colby Denton s family is a package deal . That s what her dad, a candidate for the U.S. Senate running on a Family Values platform, calls his wife, a former Miss Texas, and three daughters: Rachel, Colby, and Drew. Rachel and Drew inherited their mother s traditional beauty, but Colby takes after her father, a linebacker on his college football team. Colby finds a photo of her father kissing another woman, and within hours, Colby s father admits that he is in love with his mistress. But that s not all he s been up to; he s also been stealing from his campaign, and his investment company has been defrauding investors so that he can support his secret lifestyle. His wife and daughters are not only the objects of media speculation; they re left homeless, too. The only person willing to provide them a place to live is Colby s eccentric Aunt Leah, resident of Piney Creek, a tiny East Texas town, the black sheep of her image-conscious family, and mother to Ryan, the only player on his football team with the courage to report a girl s sexual assault at a party. His teammates are out for revenge, and Ryan has a grudge against the world. Piney Creek, Texas is tiny: Kindergarten through 12th grades are in the same building! But the social media network is huge, as Colby discovers. Her mother blames her binge eating and resulting weight problem for attracting negative attention, and Colby is driven to desperate measures. Tragedy ensues, and Colby keeps a secret out of fear that her mother will reject her once more if she finds out the truth. At last, Colby must confront the truth about the tragedy, her role in the destruction of her family, and the eating disorder that will eventually kill her if she does not learn to cope in other ways.
Big Fat Disaster received a starred Kirkus review and is on the 2015-2016 Spirit of Texas Reading List- High School. This is the Texas Library Association s list of Texas-centric fiction (either Texas authors or the setting is in Texas). The Texas Library Association wrote an academic program for use with Big Fat Disaster, and you may access it on my website or by Googling Texas Library Association, Big Fat Disaster. It s very cool and comprehensive. Big Fat Disaster is available in hardcover, paperback, and ebook, through all major retailers, independent bookstores, & distributors.
FEARLESS FICTION: The Patience Trilogy The grittiest, most uncompromising story I ve ever read about a mother and daughter. You ve got to meet Ashley Asher, a teen heroine for our tough times. Robert Lipsyte, author of The Contender and recipient of the Margaret A. Edwards Award for Lifetime Achievement, American Library Association Ashley s story is both heartbreaking and inspiring, a true testament to the strength and resilience of the human spirit. Written with elegance and fearless honesty, this book is a shot of hope, and quite simply a must-read for anyone who s suffered abuse. Jennifer Brown, author of Hate List, a 2010 American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults
Whats Courage in Patience about? Ashley Nicole Asher s life changes forever on the night her mother, Cheryl, meets Charlie Baker. Within a year of her mother s marriage to Charlie, typical eight-year-old Ashley s life becomes a nightmare of sexual abuse and emotional neglect. Bundling her body in blankets and sleeping in her closet to try to avoid Charlie s nighttime assaults, she is driven by rage at age 14 to tell her mother, in spite of the threats Charlie has used to keep Ashley silent. Believing that telling will make Charlie go away, instead it reveals to Ashley where she lies on her mother s list of priorities. We re just going to move on now, Cheryl tells Ashley. Go to your room. Ashley s psyche splinters into shards of glass, and she desperately tries to figure a way out, while at the same time battling numbness and an inability to remember what happened when she blacked out after Charlie tackled her. She knew that when she awoke her clothes were disheveled and the lower half of her body was covered in bright red blood but she has only a blank spot in the video of her memory. When Ashley s friend, Lisa, sees a note from Cheryl telling Ashley that Charlie would never do those things to her, and insisting that she apologize for accusing him of molesting her, Lisa forces dazed Ashley to make an outcry to her teacher, Mrs. Chapman. By the end of the day, Ashley s father, David, who has not seen Ashley since she was three months old, is standing in the offices of Child and Family Services. He brings her home to the small East Texas town of Patience, where he lives with his wife, Beverly, their son, Ben, and works with his brother, Frank. Through the summer school English class/ Quest for Truth taught by Beverly, an outside-the-box high school English teacher whose passion for teaching comes second only to her insistence upon authenticity, Ashley comes to know people who are confronted with challenges they must face head-on. The choices they make will not be easy but they will be life altering. Will Ashley have the inner-fortitude to survive the journey to recovery and the effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder? Will Ashley find her voice, speak up for herself, and break the bondage of her abusive past?
Whats Hope in Patience about? Ashley Nicole Asher, 15, is a mess. She s starting a new school in the tiny East Texas town of Patience, Texas, but that s not her biggest problem. It s her mother, Cheryl, who can t see that the sexual abuse perpetrated on Ashley for six years wasn t Ashley s choice. A woman who, even after her husband, Charlie, breaks Ashley s arm in an attempt to take her back to their home in the suburbs of Dallas, still testifies on his behalf at his trial for injury to a child. Ashley s stuck in a cycle of self-injury and self-hatred as a result, and the people who love her are struggling to pull her out of it. David, Ashley s long-absent father, hadn t seen his daughter since infancy, until he showed up in the offices of Child Protective Services to bring her back to his home in the woods of East Texas, and the life he s built with his wife of ten years, Beverly, and their son, Ben. No longer a heavy drinking rage-a-holic, he s sworn he ll spend the rest of his life making up lost time with Ashley, and hopefully earning her trust and love. Beverly is balancing her life as stepmom to Ashley with her job as a high school English teacher, and her reputation in the community as a magnet for controversy. Scott Dr. Matt Matthews, a slightly unconventional, drop-kick-the-teddy-bear and kick-the-desk therapist, is determined to pull Ashley out of the darkness she crawls into when her self-destructive tendencies overtake her better judgement, and the squirrel on speed that gets going in her mind is making laps and chugging Red Bull. More than anything else, Ashley craves normalcy. She envies girls who can experience relationships with guys without fear of being touched, and she wishes that being a consistent back-of-the-pack finisher in cross-country was her biggest problem. But.. do other people have it that easy? (Cont d next slide)
Hope in Patience, continued Krystle K.C. Williamson has an electric guitar named Kurt and a mother who believes that the best cure for K.C. s homosexuality would be a trip to J.C. Penney s to pick up some cute skirts instead of the t-shirts and jeans that K.C. wears every day. Pam Littlejohn is driven by jealousy and insecurity to push herself hard for a cross-country medal in State, and to spread the rumor that Ashley moved to Patience because she had an affair with her stepfather Charlie. Marcus Merriweather is so afraid of not having all the answers, he hides behind THE Holy Bible (the only version that s right), and a stiflingly narrow world-view. T.W. Griffin quit his position as running back for his father s Patience Panthers football team, and now his dad s hell-bent on making Bev Asher pay for taking his son from him. Zaquoiah Z.Z. Freeman, self-described as bountiful, bodacious, and beautiful , is fighting the urge to knock Pam s smirk right off her face and beat Marcus to death with his holier-than-thou attitude. She s still reeling from her cousin, Jasper, being nearly beaten to death earlier in the year, and depends on dancing to help her deal with the fear that comes with being a racial minority in small Southern town. In a shocking turn of events, Ashley is forced to choose between living her life or longing for a relationship that was never what she had convinced herself it had to be. Will her new family be enough to keep her from treating her skin like a scratching post, sliding back into suicidal fantasies and hiding in small dark spaces?
Whats Truth in Patience about? Ashley Nicole Asher is finally adjusting to life in the small town of Patience, Texas. She s been going out with Joshua Brandt for three months and he s wild about her but what will she do when memories of childhood sexual abuse intrude with the natural progression of their relationship? Ashley s mom, Cheryl, marks Ashley s sixteenth birthday by sending her a boxful of Ashley s baby clothes and photos with Ashley cut out of every one of them and Cheryl still won t admit that her late husband, Charlie, stole Ashley s innocence. Dr. Matt, Ashley s slightly unconventional therapist, is determined to help Ashley see that just because her body reacted to the things Charlie did to her, it does not mean that Ashley chose to participate in the abuse, and that the only way to freedom is to embrace truth. Ashley s father, David, and stepmom, Bev, are at the breaking point when it comes to dealing with Ashley s tendency to self-mutilate when she is angry or hurt. And Bev s dealing with challenges in her job, too, as an English teacher at Patience High School. When all of her students choose the controversial novel Chris Crutcher s Whale Talk for their independent study of a multicultural book, she wonders if she will again have her feet held to the fire at a school board meeting for guiding her students to ask hard questions. When Jeff Foster s dad opens the Dixie Pride store as a means of dispelling the myth that the Confederate flag represents slavery, Jeff comes face-to-face with students whose family members were directly involved in the Slocum Massacre. Soon, he comes face-to-face with his white-hooded father as well, and he must decide for himself what kind of pride his dad is really selling.
Truth in Patience, contd. As Dr. Matt says, Life is messy and Ashley s friends and family are finding out just how messy it can be. Ashley s Human Ecology teacher, Ms. Manos, is teaching the students about dating and love relationships in between running to the hallway with bouts of morning sickness and planning her wedding to Ashley s Uncle Frank. Ms. Manos will be relieved if she can keep her pregnancy a secret before the news gets out in the tiny town and also if she can get Travis Hager to stop referring to sex as Bow-chicka-wow-wow. K.C. Williamson s mother has taken up full-time substitute teaching and volunteering at Patience High School, because if she s watching her all the time, she thinks K.C. won t be gay. And, when Ashley s grandparents go on an extended vacation and Cheryl is all alone, Cheryl insists that Ashley come back to her: after all, she has papers proving that she has primary custody of Ashley. In a heart-pounding, long-awaited confrontation, Ashley must find a way to get her mom to see that the game playing won t work anymore. Ashley insists on TRUTH IN PATIENCE.
More about The Patience Trilogy: Hope in Patience, 1stedition, was named a 2011 YALSA Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers. Courage and Hope are revised 1steditions; Truth is 1stedition, and all 3 are available in paperback & ebook, from all major retailers, independent bookstores, & distributors.
My writing career began as a therapeutic assignment. I initially wrote the first draft of Courage in Patience as a therapeutic assignment. I was in recovery for trauma from childhood sexual abuse and learning to manage having Post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the experiences I had from the age of 8. I was writing poems and short stories as a way of processing my grief and rage, and the only person I showed them to was my psychologist. He suggested that I try writing a novel. It took about four months of stopping/starting and always sending up stuck in asking, Why?. . .Why did this happen to me?. . .Why did my mother ignore my outcry at age 14?. . . Finally, I gave myself permission to imagine the recovery process as someone else s. That s when the story began.
The main character, Ashley, experiences a horrific attack at the hands of her stepfather. Throughout the series, she has been unable to remember exactly what happened, because she blacked out. In the last book, Truth in Patience, she is triggered by something and remembers the incident in a visceral way. That was difficult for me to write, but I will say this: the growth and healing I experienced between writing Book 1, Courage in Patience, through Book 2, Hope in Patience, then in Book 3, Truth in Patience, enabled me to be able to address Ashley s remembering in a way that I could handle it with grace and in a gentle way with myself. I wrote The Patience Trilogy over the period of six years that it took me to go from a frozen-by-trauma eight year old in my mind to becoming an adult in the way I cope with the world. Common question I m asked: What s the hardest scene I ve ever written since The Patience Trilogy is about childhood sexual abuse and I drew on my own life experiences to write the books?
A question related to my eating disorder, which I drew on to write Big Fat Disaster: Most people think about Anorexia or Bulimia when they hear the phrase eating disorder, but Colby is an overeater. You have said that you yourself manage an eating disorder similar to Colby s. Can you give readers some insight on what managing your eating disorder entails? The first thing I learned to do when I was in therapy was to seek a way of soothing myself in other ways than food. Over time, I learned to recognize my eating disorder as me trying to take care of myself in a way that only created more problems, i.e. if I was having unpleasant feelings about a situation, if I binged because of it, the shame took my focus from the original situation and caused me to instead feel bad about having gorged myself. Plus, there s the physical discomfort, which also serves to distract from the original problem.
As you can see, my writing is very personal, and theres a reason I m so honest in my novels: The subject matter of all my 4 novels has something in common: shame. Victims of Childhood Sexual Abuse are coated in shame from head-to-toe, and Binge-Eating Disorder is a secretive disease with shame being the engine driving it. I believe that by writing these stories/characters in a way that allows the reader to have a deep understanding of what it s like to be in those places mentally, it s made clear that: (1) people who have been sexually abused or who are managing their feelings by using food as a drug are not alone. Feeling alone in those situations perpetuates a sense of shame, i.e. I m so broken/violated/horrible that I m sure no one else in the world feels like this. (2) the feelings experienced when dealing with complex issues such as mental illness one has as a result of trauma are very common. Rather than being ashamed of, for example, startling easily and feeling like a freak, I want people in those places to recognize that they are NOT freaks.
Another common question: Is there anything you will NOT write about? I would never write erotica or explicitly detailed sex scenes as an author. I would not be comfortable doing that. I m not a prude, but writing those scenes would not be my thing. I would never write graphically violent scenes, nor would I write gratuitously violent scenes. I would never have characters swear for the sake of swearing, i.e. when my characters swear, they do so because to say those words in that way is the most authentic, realistic way I can think to communicate their feelings at the time. Finally, in terms of plot points, I will NEVER write about the death of a beloved animal, NOR will I ever have Ashley s dog, Emma, die. The real-life Emma died suddenly at a young age, and it nearly killed me when it happened. She will live forever in The Patience Trilogy.
Common question: have any of your books been banned? I have not heard of any of my books being banned or challenged. On the contrary, most of the feedback I get from librarians is that they know of a certain student (or two) whose hands they d like to put my books into. I ve had more than a few teachers contact me to ask me for signed copies that they purchase for students whose histories cry out for hopeful stories like mine.
Common question: what do I say when librarians/teachers ask me if I think my books are appropriate for their clientele? I state that my protagonists are 15, turning 16, in my books, and I suggest that they choose books whose protag is a little older than their patrons. I state, If you have Speak by Anderson in your library, you should able to shelve The Patience Trilogy with no problem.
Common question(s): How closely does Ashley s family in The Patience Trilogy resemble (or not) your own? My mother, like Ashley s, sided with my stepfather. I made an outcry at age 14 which went pretty much like it did in the book, with the exception that I never told a teacher or anyone and I remained in my mom & stepdad s home until I married when I was nearly 19. I have an older brother, unlike Ashley. Her bio father is not modeled after my own father with the exception of my bio dad showing little to no interest in me as I was growing up. My parents did not have to get married, and they did not divorce until I was older, around age 5. Was your dad a UT football star & was your mom a former Miss Texas, like Colby s parents in Big Fat Disaster? Not at all. Colby s family does not resemble mine in any significant way. (Cont d next slide)
More common questions Is Patience, Texas a real town? No. I always research to make sure the town I am using as a setting does not actually exist in name. However, I modeled Patience & Piney Creek (in Big Fat Disaster) after the area where I live. Those fictional towns are in deeper (further SE) East Texas than my town, however. Other questions you may have?
Cool resources for you: On my website under Media & Interviews, you will find links to official & reader- made book trailers, interviews, etc. A Common Core- aligned teaching guide for Big Fat Disaster is currently in production. I hope to have the same for The Patience Trilogy, soon.
My official bio: In which I speak of myself in third person... In addition to writing Young Adult Contemporary Fiction, Beth Fehlbaum is a high school English-Language Arts teacher who frequently draws on her experience as an educator to write her books. She has a B.A. in English, Minor in Secondary Education, and an M.Ed. in Reading. Beth is a featured author on the 2015-2016 Spirit of Texas Reading List- High School for the Kirkus Starred Reviewed Big Fat Disaster (Merit Press/F+W Media, March 2014) and The Patience Trilogy: Courage (1), Hope (2), and Truth (3) (Steady On Books, April 2016). (cont d next slide)
My official bio, contd.: Beth is a member of the RAINN (Rape , Abuse, Incest National Network) Speakers Bureau. She has a following in the young adult literature world and also among survivors of sexual abuse because of her work with victims advocacy groups. She has been the keynote speaker at the National Crime Victims Week Commemoration Ceremony at the Hall of State in Dallas, Texas and a presenter for Greater Texas Community Partners, where she addressed a group of social workers and foster children on the subject of Hope. Beth is in-demand as a panelist, having presented/appeared at the Texas Library Association Annual Conference, the American Library Association s annual conference, YALSA, and N.C.T.E./ALAN. She is a member of The Author s Guild. Beth is a survivor of a traumatic childhood, like Ashley in The Patience Trilogy, and the day-to-day manager of an eating disorder much like Colby s in Big Fat Disaster. These life experiences give her a unique perspective, and she writes her characters stories in a way meant to inspire hope. Beth lives with her family in the woods of East Texas.
Learn more and/or stay in touch: My new website URL is http://bethfehlbaumbooks.inf o (It used to be .com). My email is: bethfehlbaum@gmail.com There s also a Contact Me form on my website. I m on Facebook- look for Beth Fehlbaum & friend me! I m also on Twitter, @bethfehlbaum.
