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About Sarah McCoy

SARAH McCOY is the New York Times, USA Today, and international bestselling author of The Mapmaker’s Children; The Baker’s Daughter, a 2012 Goodreads Choice Award Best Historical Fiction nominee; the novella “The Branch of Hazel” in Grand Central; and The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico. Her work has been featured in Real Simple, The Millions, Your Health Monthly, Huffington Post and other publications. She has taught English writing at Old Dominion University and at the University of Texas at El Paso. She calls Virginia home but presently lives with her husband, an orthopedic sports doctor, and their dog, Gilly, in Chicago, Illinois. Connect with Sarah on Twitter at @SarahMMcCoy, on her Facebook Fan Page, Goodreads, or via her website, www.sarahmccoy.com.

Recent Posts by this author:

  • Sarah’s Simple Pleasures: Traditions
  • Sarah’s Simple Pleasures: Dog Days of Summer
  • Sarah’s Simple Pleasures: Mind the Gap
  • Sarah’s Simple Pleasures: Birthdays
  • Sarah’s Simple Pleasures: Coronavirus Edition
  • Sarah’s Simple Pleasures: Sunset
  • Confession of a Lapsed Reader
  • My Garden Summer: Books to Blooms
  • Hurray for Independent Bookstore Day!
  • Yes, I’m Still Sick: Writing with Chronic Illness
  • Auspicious Days: Musing on Childhood Readings
  • Book Business: A Bookseller Interview

    • Sarah’s Simple Pleasures: Traditions

    By 10 Comments

    We are entering the season of traditions in a time when nothing is traditional.

    It feels especially strange when the rest of creation appears to be operating routinely. The sun and moon continue to orbit like clockwork: the days growing shorter, the nights longer. The trees are all turning shades of amber and scarlet. The woodland critters collect their winter provisions as temperatures dip, dip, dip on the same scientific bell curve followed since the dawn of time.

    The natural world is paying no mind to the fact that kids aren’t back in their conventional school desks, families aren’t sitting round their tables, football stadiums aren’t roaring with fanfare, and the traditional social calendar has been completely thrown out.

    A devotee of musicals, I can’t help but hear Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof raising fists to the sky, “Tradition, tradition!”

    But, really, what are traditions? The dictionary says that they are customs or beliefs passed on from one person to the next, from one time to the next. A tradition can last for a season: We get Big Dipper cones from the ice cream truck in the summers. Or for generations: My family goes to church every Christmas Eve. But the fuzzy edges of traditions remind us that they had a starting point, which means they will, eventually, have an ending. Maybe not permanently—that’s another nebulous area. A tradition can stop and then pick up again at another juncture in history. Breaks don’t mean termination. They simply illustrate that we are human and so, nothing about us is certain. Everything living— from our bodies to our communities— is in a constant state of reinvention. It’s what defines us from the rest of the universe. It’s what makes us unique.

    So then, why are we surprised when our self-imposed conventional algorithms disappoint?

    It’s made me 1) think about how I define a tradition, and 2) evaluate if the traditions I maintain are helping or hindering my access to peace, joy, and love.

    Because sometimes a tradition becomes a burden. It mutates from being a thing we long to do to a thing we feel we must do out of obligation. Cherished tradition and ritualistic superstition can mesh so that we can’t tell one from the other. Recognizing the difference is the linchpin. [Read more…]

    Sarah’s Simple Pleasures: Dog Days of Summer

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    We are officially in the Dog Days of Summer, and I would venture to say that this might go down in history as the doggone doggiest summer of humankind. For once, that’s no exaggeration. And while you may be reading this nodding, crying, shaking your head, or catatonic with disbelief that we are still in a coronavirus pandemic, I must warn you that I do not use the term ‘dog’ in a negative context. Quite the opposite. I am here to honor the sometimes vexing (excessive barking at mailperson), … [Read more...]

    Sarah’s Simple Pleasures: Mind the Gap

    By 10 Comments

    June 2019 One year ago today, I was in London with my husband riding the Underground transit from Piccadilly Circus to High Street, Paddington to Westminster, packed nose to nose in a metal tube launching us at warp speed across the city. Up and down the lifts, rushing through the turnstiles, bumping our way through the opening train doors in an ocean of commuters. We saw nothing extraordinary about it at the time. Public subways in big cities are so common that we even grumbled at the chore … [Read more...]

    Sarah’s Simple Pleasures: Birthdays

    By 11 Comments

    It goes without saying that the time between my last post and now has been rollercoastic. That’s not a word. I made it up. But making things up feels appropriate given the global coronavirus shutdown. We are living a reality that seemed only to exist in science fiction. Stranger still was celebrating two milestone birthdays during this apocalyptic time. Doc B and I were born exactly four weeks apart. I’m the perpetually younger. His birthday is in March and mine is in April. With … [Read more...]

    Sarah’s Simple Pleasures: Coronavirus Edition

    By 11 Comments

    While I am not scheduled to post a column this month, how could I not in light of a global pandemic? It is now when we are grasping for simple pleasures most of all. At this very hour, my husband (Doc B) is at the hospital attending to patients. He’s been doing so 24/7 since the coronavirus hit our nation. As an immunocompromised individual, I am under strict lock-down. Self-isolation by way of a matrimonial physician. But I couldn’t just sit here at my desk while he’s out helping people. So, … [Read more...]

    Sarah’s Simple Pleasures: Sunset

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    Dear friends, Our wise editor Therese Walsh and I got to talking about recent joys, struggles, and all the things that go into the writing life. All the things that Writer Unboxed was founded upon. We decided that 2020 should be a new decade of simple pleasure jubilee. Somewhere in the last few years, life got more complicated than ever before. Now, in addition to emails, we have Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, SnapChat, TikTok, and texts pinging at us day and night. I, for one, have a … [Read more...]

    Confession of a Lapsed Reader

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    I must confess: I stopped reading. As a person whose vocation is writing books for people to read, I’m ashamed of this fact. I hid the truth from everyone, myself included, for nearly six months. I was busy, I said. Every time I picked up a book, I thought of something I needed to do: a writing deadline to meet, an Instagram post to craft, a friend’s book release to tweet, a presentation to prepare, an author event to attend, emails to reply, novels to blurb, a dog to walk, a husband to feed, … [Read more...]

    My Garden Summer: Books to Blooms

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    This is my garden summer. If you follow me on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, you will quickly see that my posts have become progressively more vegetable and flower filled. In fact, that’s where I was just before sitting down to write this column: out in my garden, procrastinating with a hose and trowel under the auspice of these weeds can’t wait; then further distracted in my Google search on “How to get rid of June bugs on my roses?” (Answer: Neems oil!) To most, it’s far from novel, in … [Read more...]

    Hurray for Independent Bookstore Day!

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    In case you weren’t aware, April 27 is a national holiday: it’s Independent Bookstore Day. Only five years old, you might not have heard of it and that’s okay… because you have now! What could be more exciting than discovering we have a new holiday to bedazzle on our calendars? In my humble opinion, we don’t have enough true holidays. I.e. Unadorned celebrations without the stress of gift giving, event planning, cooking complicated meals, decorating, and contending with the in-laws. Too … [Read more...]

    Yes, I’m Still Sick: Writing with Chronic Illness

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    Flickr Creative Commons: Sal A friend texted me the other day while I was lying on my back under the glaring light of my dental surgeon’s chair. How are you? I’m still sick. [Attachment: photo of me on laughing gas.] You have had the (poop-emoji-est) January ever! [Interpret 'poop-emoji-est' as you wish: wasteful, crap-natious, grossest, unbelievably garbage, and so forth.] It made me lopsided smile through the dental dam, needles, drills, suction, and mind-altering … [Read more...]

    Auspicious Days: Musing on Childhood Readings

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    It’s clearly an auspicious date. This Writer Unboxed post falls on the launch of my new novel, Marilla of Green Gables. It’s true, Jupiter and Mars are in alignment, the harvest moon has risen full, and the air is sparkling with autumn’s magic. Not that I believe in any of that and, of course, I believe in all of it. Whatever your conviction, no one can deny the charm of October. It’s ingrained from our childhoods to feel the magnet pull of change—new yet old, strange but familiar, comforting in … [Read more...]

    Book Business: A Bookseller Interview

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    The book business is divided between two divergent yet synergistic entities: art and commerce. As authors, our stories are imaginatively composed, subjectively appreciated, and diversely interpreted. These qualities don’t particularly abide by Wall Street rules, but to make writing a vocation, the work cannot exist in a void. Whether we like it or not, there is a parallel corporate track to literature that has existed long before any of us. It’s not to be feared but to be embraced as part of the … [Read more...]