Meet Michele Young-Stone

Today we’d like to introduce you to Michele Young-Stone. 

Hi Michele, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today.
I had always wanted to be a writer since I was a little kid. I wanted to make people feel. In truth, I wanted to make people cry and feel things deeply. I would write stories and poetry and read them aloud to my parents, who, it turned out, thought I was copying them from books. Which is funny now… that they thought I was some master plagiarizer. 

In high school, I continued to write fiction and poetry. I wanted to get a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing. Eventually, after teaching high school English for seven years, I went back and got my MFA in fiction writing. For my final thesis, I wrote my first novel. I remember feeling so sad when it was over. If I’d known that I would spend the next six years rewriting and revising it, I would have been less sad. Novels are never actually over. 

The first novel, The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors, is set largely in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. I remember taking my little boy to visit Sutton’s Pharmacy, the Forest Theatre, and the Old Well, showing him the places in my novel. On the day the novel came out, we went to see it in multiple bookstores and in the library. It was such a dream come true. My son was five, and now he’s eighteen and starting college at N. C. State in Raleigh. Time flies. 

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It has been a hard road. There are too many struggles to name, but I’ll start with a few anecdotes. On the day my first novel sold, I was nearly struck by lightning. The name of my novel is The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors. 

As I neared completion of my second novel, my editor decided to choose a new path, and I had no representative at my publishing house. It’s important to have a point person, someone you know, who’s invested. I lost mine. The book that wasn’t yet published had to be assigned a new editor. 

I had no real say in who the editor would be. Editors do not like to be “given” writers they don’t know, whose work they’re not familiar with or don’t care about. When I was finally assigned to an editor, I went to New York to meet with her. My agent phoned the night before our meeting with some not-so-great news: “She read the manuscript, and she doesn’t like it. She didn’t have anything positive to say.” Just the same, I went to this meeting near Rockefeller Plaza in the pouring February rain on my birthday to hopefully get some kind of constructive criticism. Well, that didn’t happen. She said, “I don’t understand the book. I don’t see the point to it. I wish I could tell you what to do, a direction to take, but I just can’t.” In other words, she didn’t like my work. She thought it was pointless. There was no feedback. There was no road to publishing this book that was under contract with Simon and Schuster. We were at a wine bar, and I drank as much as I could since it was their dime (and not mine), and the meeting ended with no answer in sight. I couldn’t even revise the book to make this woman want to publish it because I had no feedback. So, yeah, that was hard. Everything about that book that later became Lost in the Beehive, a 2018 O Magazine pick, was difficult. I have a lot of stories, but that was a real doozy. 

Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
In addition to writing creatively, I paint, collage, crochet, make clothes, sell clothes online, and weave. I am a Zumba queen locally. In fact, when I first moved to the Outer Banks of North Carolina, I thought someone knew me from my first novel (they recognized me), but they actually knew me as a Zumba Queen–a title I relish. I love to sing and dance. 

In terms of my writing, I think what sets me apart from those who decide to self-publish is that I never gave up. I got nearly 1,000 rejections, and for every rejection I got, I worked harder. It wasn’t that the rejections weren’t crushing; it was just that my response was to never settle, to never give up. As Truman Capote said, “Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.” 

Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
I liked to skip school by hiding in the school-or-public library. I was fat, and I had buck teeth. I wrote stories to make the world I wanted to inhabit. Wonderfully enough, I’ve made that world on and off the page. I’ve published three novels: Lost in the Beehive, Above Us Only Sky, and The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors. The chubby little girl skipping school between the library stacks is in every book. 

Contact Info:

• Website: micheleyoungstone.com
• Instagram: @micheleyoungstone
• Facebook: facebook.com/michele.youngstonefanpage
• Twitter: @micheleyosto
• Youtube: @micheleyosto