Introducing Teen Fiction Author Anna Caltabiano

Hi guys! Thank you so much for inviting me to guest post! I’m really excited to be here. As a girl I think it’s very important to keep empowering girls and young women so they can grow up with the mindset that they can do anything.

I think this mindset was what kept me going when writing my first novel All That is Red. I didn’t know the first thing about writing a novel, but I did know that I wanted to write it.

The teenage years are supposedly one of the times in your life where you have the highest highs and the lowest lows. Of course I can’t really attest to this yet as still being a teenager, I truthfully can’t begin to imagine what being an adult will be like, so I have nothing to compare it to. All I know is how I feel now and seeing firsthand the things my friends and I go through. With All That is Red I wanted to show teenagers around me that it’s okay to feel bad sometimes and that they are not alone in those feelings.

Around one out of every ten teenagers self-harm, but we as a society still haven’t stepped up to talk about what causes this. Though there are many triggers, the most common is the inability to accept that it’s okay not to feel perfect all the time. Many teenagers feel a swirl of different emotions, which they don’t understand. They feel confused and even terrified by these strong feelings. To blot them out, they inflict harm upon themselves so that they only feel one, pure feeling–physical pain.

I wanted to show teenagers around me that it’s okay to feel bad sometimes and that they are not alone in those feelings. I think it’s important to openly talk about self-harm in a way that promotes learning about and addressing the causes of it, rather than condemning it. I didn’t want to spew facts and statistics at people, so I tried to make people feel those same emotions by using a story where the main character is a cutter.

Part of empowerment is talking about hard subjects in a way that is open and honest. I hope you enjoy this book and more importantly I hope it gives you the confident to face whatever life throws at you, knowing that you will get out the other end.

Fifteen-year old author Anna Caltabiano – who’s debut novel All That Is Red is out now – talks about how she was inspired to write in order to support other teens struggling with the pains of adolescence. Please join Anna online at her web site, Facebook and Twitter.