We are thrilled to feature Brittany Balin’s Nice Mommy as part of our weekly feature series. As part of our weekly features, we are interested in learning more about our authors, and hope that their experiences will help to empower other writers. Please enjoy this brief Q&A with Brittany!
What is your favorite childhood book?
My favorite childhood book is My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult. I found a copy of this book among my stepmother’s belongings as a child and was immediately enthralled. Having a child for the sole purpose of being an organ donor for an older child with cancer is a situation I am sure no person would wish on even their worst enemy. The book enriched my life perspective by including chapters written from the point of view of each of the main characters providing readers with several different experiences and life outlooks. This writing technique is what lead me to become a Jodi Picoult fan overall. I would also recommend her books The Pact and Nineteen Minutes. They are very entertaining and life enriching reads as well.
What is the first book that made you cry?
The first book that caused me to break down in tears was The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. I could feel the pain of the characters right off the page as I shared in both their triumphs and losses. The most painful scenes in the book for me were the revealing of Baba as Hassan’s biological father and Hassan’s assault at the hands of bullies in his quest to locate Amir’s kite.
What is your writing Kryptonite?
My writing kryptonite is being able to write pieces that focus on purely the beauty in life without all of the ugly. My viewpoint has always been that suffering is life and life is suffering. In order for us as people to truly love and embrace life, we must take both the beautiful and the “ugly.” A little bit of both or perhaps moreso the ugly is where my writing tends to lean.
What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel?
My favorite under-appreciated novel is Hate List by Jennifer Brown. This is another novel that takes a terrible tragedy and truly analyzes it for what it is and isn’t by diving deep beneath the surface to show the events that lead up to the disaster as well as what happened after.
Anything else you would like to share?
As an emerging writer who has a passion for both writing and reading, I would love to encourage anyone else who has any desire to write, to settle down and do so no matter how infrequently it ends up being. Writing is an art, an expression of the human form put into words. Each of us is only helping to make the world a richer place by sharing our own perspectives with others. We should all feel free to contribute to the human conversation of life.