‘What My Last Book Taught Me’ Wednesdays are back, with this new entry from NYT Best-selling Author Lisa Papademetriou. Writers all have different reasons for writing, and when we finally realize what that reason is, we can unlock new stories to tell and new ways to tell them. Tale of Highly Unusual Magic, is Lisa’s latest release and is available at your nearest book store.
What My Latest Book Taught Me:
A Tale of Highly Unusual Magic
by Lisa Papademetriou
One day, several years ago, I convinced my sisters-in-law to have lunch at the Bellagio Hotel. We were in Las Vegas on a road trip with the family—twenty of us in two vans, driving from Colorado to Disneyland.
My husband is from Lahore, Pakistan, and my sisters-in-law are both Pakistani-American. One is a biology teacher who wears the hijab and dresses very modestly. The other one looks like the Lost Kardashian—long, black hair, glamorous makeup, diamond rings. At the time, she owned a fancy pet store that sold dog beds made of chinchilla fur and dog T-shirts that read “Bitch” in fake diamond letters. And then there was me, the Greek-American children’s book writer. For this particular lunch date, I was wearing my Summer Uniform: casual sundress, straw hat, and Birkenstocks. We walked up to the maître-d to ask for a table. He looked us over, clearly bemused. “How do you know each other?” he asked. Right. How on earth did these three people connect, much less become sisters?
Our lives are filled with unlikely connections, odd coincidences, near misses, and lucky breaks. When I was in high school, a friend said to me, “Lisa, isn’t it comforting to think that, right now, God is preparing someone special, just for you?” We had been talking about finding the perfect husband. I replied, “But what if that one special person for me is in Japan? What if I never meet him?” My friend rolled her eyes, but the joke was on her: at that very moment, my future husband was in Pakistan. On the other hand, the joke was also on me, because, of course, I met him. I don’t know if it was meant to be or not. But it feels like it was, because that meeting changed the course of my life.
There’s a Chinese legend that the gods use a red thread to connect lovers who are destined for each other. I imagine all of us as points that exist in space and time, with red threads that unite us to people, places, events, and even things that are important to us. These threads cross and intersect. They tangle. They are a huge web that circles the world, sometimes linking the unlikeliest of people in unbreakable ways.
A Tale of Highly Unusual is about two girls on opposite sides of the world. One is in Texas, the other is in Pakistan. Each of them finds a mostly blank book, and when they write in it, the other person can see what was written. As the story unfolds, the past and present intertwine, linking the girls through a tangled web of people and events. When important things happen in a book, we call that the plot. When important things happen in life, we call that fate.
What my latest book taught me is that stories are the way we expose the magic of these mysterious threads. This happened, and because of that, this. This is the way human beings understand ourselves, and how we have come to be who we are. Narratives reveal what is important in someone’s life—whether that someone is a character or ourselves. Stories make the magic of fate visible.
For me, this novel answered the very big picture question: Why do I write? I write to try to make sense of a world that does not always 
make sense. I write to give events meaning.
I write to understand the ways in which we are all connected by invisible, unbreakable threads.
Lisa Papademetriou is the New York Times bestselling author of Middle School: Big, Fat Liar and Homeroom Diaries (both with James Patterson), the Confectionately Yours series, and many other novels for middle grade and young adult readers. Her books have appeared on the Bank Street Best Books of the Year list, the NYPL Books for the Teen Age, and the Texas Lone Star Reading List, among others. A former editor, Lisa has worked for Scholastic, HarperCollins, and Disney Press and is the founder of the humorous grammar magazine, IvanaCorrectya.com. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her website is www.lisapapa.com.