The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B (28 page)

There are some excellent resources for both teens and educators on the Web, and people can go to those out of interest or need. I’ve posted links to the most helpful sites on my website,
teresatoten.com
, and we’ve also provided a list of resources in this book.

Thank you. I am clearly drawn to dark things and heartache, but I also have a finely honed sense of the absurd. It’s helped me a lot with the dark bits in my own life. And like so many readers, I
always
respond when a book makes me laugh and cry at the same time.

It’s like writing on a knife-edge, trying to pull off the despair/funny card trick. Even so, dozens of those books line my shelves, and I am a certified fan of so many more. I’d have to say that memoirs seem to play with that balance the best. My favorite is Mary Karr’s
The Liar’s Club
, followed closely by Catherine Gildiner’s
Too Close to the Falls
. A couple of exceptionally funny and heartbreaking OCD memoirs are Jennifer Traig’s
Devil in the Details
and Fletcher Wortmann’s
Triggered
. In YA literature, the “Sues” (Susan Juby and Susin Nielsen) finesse humor and hurt each time out, as do the amazing John Green and Libba Bray. Stephen Chbosky’s
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
also holds a special place in my heart. And finally, although he writes for a slightly younger crowd, the wonderful Brian Doyle showed me what to aspire to in just about everything he ever wrote.

I leave the fate of Adam and Robyn with my readers. I genuinely look forward to hearing what they think will happen to them. My next book is a psychological thriller about two beautiful, emotionally injured young women who somehow become entangled in a murder.