Writer Spotlight: Tracy Bilen

Romance, Paris, pantsing, plotless, DIY trailers and misbegotten book titles: YA author Tracy Bilen

Charlie Barshaw coordinates our regular Writer Spotlight feature and interviews writers of SCBWI-MI. In this piece, meet YA author Tracy Bilen.

Your three young adult novels all have romantic overtones in addition to the suspense. When did you join Greater Detroit Romance Writers (GDRW)? How have you used the GDRW in your three published novels?

I joined GDRW somewhere around 2010 and it’s actually how I found my agent – she was a guest speaker at a meeting and I queried her afterwards.

Back when the group was affiliated with RWA (Romance Writers of America), I entered a lot of their local chapter contests, winning a full manuscript read by a published author, and some awards for my books in progress. (Reputable) contests can be a great way to improve your writing and find the incentive to keep going!

You’re a high school French teacher, and you studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. There’s likely a book there, but give us the Paris pitch. How did the opportunity arise? How did you enjoy Paris and its famous school?

My college had an exchange with the Sorbonne which just happened match perfectly with my long-term dream. I guess my shyness was evident from the forms we had to fill out, because I was assigned to a dorm run by nuns. 

Being the only American in the dorm, I made a lot of French friends and became a little less shy! I loved everything about the experience, except having my purse stolen in a lecture hall at the Sorbonne!

 

 

Whisper, you said, was inspired by the noise your TV made when the volume was turned down. What else in your childhood inspired the thrilling angst that runs through your stories?

Oh, wow. There are little bits of us sprinkled in all of our books, aren’t there? When I was thirteen, I lived in a three-story Victorian house designed by a woman architect, like Olivia does in Whisper. 

In high school I lived in a house on ten acres in the middle of nowhere near a town with just one blinking light like Sara in What She Left Behind. 

And my first teaching job was at a boarding school for skiers with Olympic dreams which was the inspiration for Thirty Seconds at a Time.

 

With three published titles, are you still a “pantser all the way”?

For the most part. I mean, I always know the beginning and the end when I get started, and plot points soon start to crop up after that. But I don’t write them in anywhere near chronological order – I love the Headings feature in Word because it lets me write the scene I’m passionate about in the moment and then easily drag scenes around later.

 

You won a mentorship with Shutta Crum through an SCBWI-MI contest. How much effect did Shutta have on What She left Behind?

Shutta’s insight and guidance had an indelible effect on my development as a writer and in transforming my first novel into all it was meant to be. In fact, it was the mentorship contest itself that inspired me, in part, to begin that novel. Whether you win or not, entering the mentorship contest can be transformative. I cannot recommend it enough!

 

While Left Behind is your first published YA, it was your third manuscript. Tell us about the first two.

My first two books were how I learned to write novels. A critique that I received on the first one was brutal but in the kindest way. It turns out the book had no real plot, just some scenes strung together! 

The second book did have a plot and I queried it for a bit. Then I followed the advice that said to begin your next book as soon as you start to query. 

By that book I had learned to use my own emotional journeys to better embody my characters and What She Left Behind was on its way to becoming my debut novel.

 

You have professional-looking book trailers for all of your books; they’re all compelling and make me want to go out and get that book. How did you make the first trailer? Over the course of the three books, how has your trailer-making process changed?

Thank you! I hired someone to make the trailer for my first book, What She Left Behind. But for Whisper, I decided to do it myself using Biteable, a video software website. 

And I loved it so much that I made trailers for a couple of friends and for my most recent book, Thirty Seconds at a Time. It’s really quite easy to do and very intuitive. 

Probably the only process change I’ve made is to be sure to keep the length under a minute, both to accommodate shortened attention spans and to make sure they can be easily posted to social media.

 

“I give myself a daily word count goal and keep track of my progress in a notebook. I usually write late at night.”  How does writing late at night work with teaching high school?

Yeah, the late-night writing doesn’t happen as much anymore. I think the quiet and stillness of writing late at night was what helped me let go of everything that was holding me back from writing (fear, laziness, imposter syndrome, writer’s block). 

Tracy at her college radio station

In world language acquisition we actually have a word that that sums up the feeling quite well: affective filter. The affective filter is what holds you back from trying to speak another language because you’re afraid of making mistakes. Now I can find that late-night peace in the morning (but not too early!!) 

In fact, it doesn’t even need to be quiet. For me this summer (I’m a teacher), one thing has worked really well: meeting friends at a café to write! My husband wonders how I can get anything done with friends around, but the reason it works is that I know that writing is the only thing I’m supposed to be doing there (besides a bit of talking!) 

For a while I thought I’d have to go to a café every morning to make any progress, but once I eased into the process with friends, I found that the same thing happens at home if I come out and sit on the patio at the same time every day. 

Obviously, that’s not going to work in the winter, but if I can just keep up the routine of a daily time and place, I will be able to power through the sometimes crippling fear of not being able to create.

You told Cynthia Leitich Smith, “The bottom line is that if you really want to publish your book and you’re willing to work hard and listen to criticism, it’s not as unattainable as it seems.”  Was that your attitude even before your first book was published, before you had an agent? You went to school in Paris. Did you always have a can-do attitude?

As writers we’re dreamers, aren’t we? We make up stories about how we imagine things could be. I dreamed of studying in Paris since I was in third grade and my aunt put the idea in my head. Shortly after that I started buying French records at garage sales and clandestinely used the record player at home. 

Tracy and Austria in the 90's

That’s how I learned how to say my shoe size so well in French – that was the part where the record would always skip. When French wasn’t offered at my high school, I took Spanish and studied French on my own so I could test into a higher level in college. 

I kept dreaming and did everything I could to tilt the odds in my favor. 

For me, writing goals are the same. Every time I’d send a query out, I’d do a bit of dreaming about what it would be like if it worked out. But I also took that same garage sale approach to make success more likely: I did the Writer’s Digest novel writing classes, sent my work out to be critiqued, entered contests, joined professional organizations and critique groups, pitched a movie, and most importantly, put myself out there and made dear writing friends. 

At first, criticism was hard to take because it messed with all my dreaming. It reminded me that I hadn’t done all I could. And when you get an editorial letter for a book under contract, that imposter syndrome can hit you pretty hard. 

But just know that you can do it. Let your subconscious mull it over and dig back into the same routines you used to write your book in the first place.

 

Watch Your Back and Come With Me were early titles. How much did your opinion matter when it came to naming your books?

Ha! Those of you publishing veterans out there know that as writers we typically have little to no control over our titles or our covers. My first published book started out as Leaving Dad. But a friend thought that meant it was about leaving Dad at a nursing home, so I changed the title to Leaving, because one-word titles were all the rage at the time. 

Tracy's latest YA romantic thriller

With the help of another friend, that turned into Riding Backwards, which is what the title was when it was picked up by my agent. But one editor thought it was a horse book, so that didn’t work either. 

When it finally sold to Simon & Schuster, they decided the title would be Come With Me. I was able to talk them out of it (but obviously not before it sneaked onto the Internet somewhere for you to find!) And then the publishing house finally picked the title What She Left Behind. 

The German version of the same book, by the way, translates to Like Father Like Death – the Germans definitely like their stories dark!

 

Duolingo? Are you a student? You are already fluent in how many languages? How does your knowledge of other languages help you as your write your YAs in English?

Yes, I do a bit of duolingo as a student – some Catalan for a sister school exchange we do at my school. I speak fluent French and also some Spanish and German. I’m currently working on the translation of Thirty Seconds at a Time into French. Unfortunately, the English version of that book is currently out of print – but I will hopefully find a new home for it in the not-so-distant future!

 

There’s a passage attributed to you on a website called Quote Fancy: “He made my mom call and tell Maureen I wouldn’t be in to see her anymore. He said therapy is a waste of money. He also told her to upgrade the cable service and to order him a subscription to Military History magazine. Then he went and bought a new fishing pole for Matt, who is dead.”

— Tracy Bilen

What’s this all about?

This quote is taken from What She Left Behind. My main character, Sara, is talking about her dad, who is both physically and emotionally abusive. Sara’s been seeing a therapist to help her deal with her brother Matt’s suicide. It’s obvious from her dad’s statement that this is not about money, It’s about power and control, but it’s also about denial. 

Sara’s dad’s way of dealing with Matt’s suicide is to pretend it didn’t happen and that he’s still alive. Sara and her mom are forced to play along with the fantasy to avoid provoking her dad’s anger. But Sara’s dad is a complex character – while his abuse is unforgiveable, Sara and her mom struggle with the memories of the loving person he once was.

 

So, school’s just about out for summer, and that’s when you can write full-time. What’s cooking? (In keeping with the bad kitchen puns) What’s on the back burner?

I’m actually working on a book set in Paris, which I hope to finish this summer!

 

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Website:

https://tracybilen.com/

Book trailers I made:

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJwBMTArHK432d57q8rN3wonaJL7-Hr2s&si=kY3GhXUtMhJnBuKu

Insta:

https://www.instagram.com/tracybilen/

Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/tracybilenbooks

X:

https://x.com/tracybilen