Bracha Rosman: format, vibe, and the connecting power of the oomph of life
The world of teen reading is small. With girls who want juicy issues they can explore and mothers concerned about exposure and message, it’s tricky to find titles that check all the boxes. Brocha Rosman’s books were the first to fill this narrow niche, with super-popular titles like Where There’s a Will, Out of Sight, Never too Late featuring intriguing stories exploring real topics through the lens of teens. Bracha’s books have charted the path to frum YA (Young Adult) and become genre classics. Since then, Bracha has brought her signature depth and relatability to middle-grades, children, and adults. Most recently, Go for the Gold is a new comic book from Israel Bookshop.
It’s been over ten years since Where There’s a Will, and you’ve done an astonishing range of projects since then. How has your approach to writing evolved since you first wrote Where There’s a Will?
Styles change. When I first started, it was all emotional, thought-provoking novels. Then scary was in, so I wrote Not For Sale, Bird’s Eye View, and Hide and Seek. Now issues are popular again, so I wrote Double Dance.
Many authors who write across multiple genres or age groups have different seasons in their writing careers, with periods spent focusing on each. Your writing, though, defies any pattern. In succession, you’ve done an adult mystery, a teen historical fiction, and a middle-grade adventure. How does bouncing between genre and audience affect your process?
I write as the requests come in. At one time I was writing a kid's serial, an adult serial, and short stories all at once. So it is challenging, because when you're writing for kids, and then you sit down to write for adults, you have to change gears. You're not writing “Mommy” anymore or “Mrs. so and so”, you’re using first names and nicer words…
Whenever you’ve ventured into mystery, whether with Don’t Look Back or with the middle-grades Cops and Robbers and Not for Sale, you’ve injected a cross-genre feel, threading mystery elements with your signature depth of conflict and character. Why do you think this is important?
When I write something scary, I don't want it to just be a thrill ride. Every day is a learning experience, and every day has emotions. So I need to bring it all together. I love to build up my characters so readers really feel for them. My books are pretty fast-paced, but there are times when you’ll just stop and savor what you're reading, because you're learning about the character. I have a 10-year-old granddaughter who loves these thought-provoking books. She’ll tell me, “I want a friend like that, I love her.” That means they're connecting.
I want to get into the kids' heads a little bit. Show them life isn’t only about the exciting story. Life is complex. Because people are. When readers get to know the character in a deeper sense, they really live the story. They're getting a thrill ride, anyway, so why not give them a little bit more oomph of life in there?
How do you balance presenting issues to teens with nuance and sensitivity while targeting a young age?
There's a lot of humor and suspense in my books. So I even out the intensity. Even when I introduce something more sensitive, I'm careful how I introduce it. I have so many people I speak with first, Rabbanim, therapists, lawyers… I want to be sensitive, but also factual. When I wrote Cops and Robbers, I had to speak to a police officer, and when I wrote Out of Sight I spoke to a top eye surgeon. When I wrote Don't Look Back, I actually spoke to an FBI agent. It happens to be that there's a man in my shul who worked for the police department, and he got me in touch with someone who gave me a crash course in WITSEC.
It’s so interesting that you speak to Rabbanim. What are you asking about?
Halacha. You want to be correct and factual in everything you write. When I have a blended family and the father and stepdaughter are home alone, is that yichud? Singing in the Sukkah with a half-brother and a half-sister.... I’m always asking.
The idea of teen fiction is somewhat controversial, as parents have many different opinions on their teen’s reading materials. What is your approach to exposure and sensitive ideas?
I never got negative feedback about my teen novels about the topics I was writing about. But when I wrote Not for Sale, I made it a bit scary. At that time, nebach, there was a terrible tragedy in Boro Park where a little boy was killed. I had written the story so many months before that, but they made me take out all the scary things because parents were worried and that it was too scary.
You have to know the forum you're writing for. You have to be way more careful writing for a magazine than for a book. The magazines are very strict, you can't use a lot of terms that you'll use in a book. A parent has a choice whether or not to buy my book, they could say, oh no, it's too scary. But when you're buying the Mishpacha and it comes with the Mishpacha Junior, you're trusting Mishpacha that this is a family magazine and everything is safe.
When I rewrite my stories for the novel, it takes me months. I don't just send it in, I add and take away things that they made me play down. Also, your word count is so limited in a magazine. When I rewrite, I add so much more description. When I rewrote Don't Look Back, someone told me they read it in the magazine, and it was a totally different book.
Do you have ideas of where you would want to change things as you’re writing the original story?
When I was writing Look Both Ways, the sequel to Don’t Look Back, I wrote a scene with a gun, and they told me they really don't want a gun in the scene. So I have two chapters: one is really embellished and scary and the other less so. So I pretty much know when I'm writing what has to be fixed and I have notes.
Hide and Seek and Over The Gate are both unique in how the setting and period add a somewhat gothic ambiance and tone to the whole book. Narrowing in on Hide and Seek, how did you come to choose this time period?
I read an article about baby farms in the 1900s, and I thought that's so creepy, I'll write a story about it. I knew that the Mishpacha Junior wouldn’t write about a baby farm, so I settled on a brother and a sister. I chose that setting because baby farms were a thing in that era, and I needed a time period where there was no internet, telephones were scarce, and a car was a big deal. I needed laws about kids to be very lax; it has to be realistic. So that was just the easiest time period to use.
It's easy for writers of historical fiction to fall into the trap of using history as the plot itself. Over the Gate and Hide and Seek’s plots have little to do with the time period. The fact that it's historical gives it an extra flavor, it's not the actual story itself. That's unique.
I believe that time and setting are the base of a story. I did Over the Gate in that time period because I wanted it to be this grand old house, girls in puffy skirts, that vibe. Kids forget, they think everything is contemporary and modern day. I want to expand their imagination and their knowledge.
I had to know what things were called back in those days; they had different words. In Hide and Seek, they didn't say car, it was an automobile. I was googling, Who delivered telegrams? How did he deliver them? What did he wear? So you're always learning and it's nice for the kids to learn this too.
Would you consider doing another historical novel?
I actually pitched a story during the homestead period, when Abraham Lincoln was president. It happens to be a really nice story, I worked hard on the outline. It’s about a group of orphans who decide they want to homestead and try to make it on their own. The story follows them through adulthood. I wanted the characters to be young, but old enough to get it right. So I guess it would be for both adults and teens.
What's locked up in your vault of pitches that never came to fruition?
I never throw an idea away; I have a file full of pitches that were rejected. You have to have a thick skin when you're writing! Sometimes it’s just the timing that’s off for a pitch. So I save everything. This way, I pick them out and use them for something else. I’ve written short stories with pitches that were for a serial and instead became an excellent short story.
You recently published your first comic book, Bird’s Eye View, a sequel to Not for Sale. What was the experience of writing for a comic book like for you, and how did working in this new format change how you think about storytelling?
I had to learn how to work together with the illustrator. A comic book is only as good as its illustrations; the illustrations are what grabs the reader, and the story is secondary. For my first comic, I didn't really know that there was a specific format, so I googled a bit and saw how each chapter is its own little stanza, almost like a poem. No one said anything to me, so I thought, hey, I'm getting it right, and did the same for my second comic, Go for the Gold. I don't know why, but all of a sudden I was getting all these emails, “You need to use the correct format!”. You have to number everything, and then it’s formatted like a play. There are different fonts for description and whatever. It took me a few chapters until I got the message that the illustrator was frustrated, but bH it all worked out and the story was a big hit.
It was a lot of back and forth because you're also telling the illustrator, I need a table in this scene because something has to be hidden under it later on in the story. I need a window over here with curtains because I need kids to hide behind the curtains in three chapters. So you have to think ahead.
You’ve recently written sequels to two of your books, Not for Sale and Don’t Look Back (not published yet). What is it about these two stories that led you to believe they had a sequel in them?
For Bird’s Eye View, Mishpacha Junior asked me to write a comic and I said, how cool would it be to use characters from a book that was so well received - they even made a CD out of it - and bring these characters to life for kids to see what they look like!
After Don’t Look Back, I got so much feedback from people. “Where's Peri? We miss her. What's she up to? How's her baby?” Crazy emails. I wanted to tell people, “It's not real, there is no Peri! It's all in my head!” Then the Inyan asked me for another serial, and I asked them, would you want a sequel? They said that Don’t Look Back was so well received and they got such incredible feedback, they would love it. So I wrote Look Both Ways. The hardest part was coming up with a title with the word look in it!
Would you consider doing a third installment of Don’t Look Back?
I was thinking about it. But like they say, don't ruin a good thing. If a sequel isn't as good as the original, it's like it ruins the original. To have the third one fail when the first two were Boruch Hashem so good would be a nightmare. So I don't know, I would have to see the feedback after Look Both Ways comes out.
Writing a sequel forces the author to create a story in a world that already exists. How does writing a sequel constrain you? How does it free you?
All the history to refer back to is there, and you can't change anything. As they say, hindsight is 2020 vision. When I was writing Look Both Ways, I thought, oh, if I would have done this, I could have done that… But it's too late.
I also had to take into consideration that not everyone read Don’t Look Back, but I didn’t want to bore readers who did read it with information. There were many times that I gave in a chapter and the editor wrote, “What if someone doesn't know this?” Having that outsider helped keep me on track.
Many authors talk about how their characters have minds of their own and chart their own path, which of your characters have surprised you the most.
Probably Peri surprised me the most. She started as this put-together chic makeup artist who thought she was at the top of the world. But through the story, you see how vulnerable she really is. Then towards the end, she gets this strength from within and throws everything on Hashem.
I had to start off so that she's positive in the reader's eye; you always want everyone to fall in love with your protagonist. Nobody wants a weak character. But it's okay to have them struggle, because that's life. You're not always on top. But then you have to also end it with that boom because you want to leave the reader with a good taste in their mouth.
Readers of your serial stories are waiting for Look Both Ways and Double Dance to be published. Are those coming soon? What’s coming up next for you?
I hope to submit Look Both Ways as soon as I redo it. I hope to work on that this summer, iyH. And then I have Double Dance, which I have to totally redo because I want to take out a whole part that I put in that I felt wasn't needed at the end. After that, I have other ideas in mind. I would like to write a novel that's not serialized. but I need to have time for it.
I have two books coming out soon. The first is a comic book called Go for the Gold, it was serialized in the Mishpacha Junior. [Out now!] The other one is a book tentatively titled “Everyone Loves Moo”. Years ago, I used to write in the Mishpacha Junior about a 12-year-old girl and her stuffed cow, Mr. Moo. I collected all the stories and fixed them up - my style then was way different than it is now! It's coming out soon from Menucha Publishers, for tweens. I just got the manuscript yesterday, so I have to tweak it. I don’t know when it will be out, because it goes into a queue and then you just wait until they deem it the time.