From Personal Tragedy to Powerful Storytelling: Cameron Kelly Rosenblum

Link:

https://youtu.be/DDHLWc0htPU

Title Options:

She Published Her First Book at 49—Here’s Why It Matters

Grief, Resilience, and Reinvention: A Writer’s Journey

What Loss Taught Me About Writing and Life

Why It’s Never Too Late to Become a Writer

Turning Pain Into Story: Cameron Kelly Rosenblum

From Teacher to Author: The Long Road to Publishing

How Writing Became a Lifeline Through Grief

The Story Behind The Stepping Off Place

What Happens After Loss? A Powerful Conversation

Finding Your Voice After Everything Changes

From Personal Tragedy to Powerful Storytelling: Cameron Kelly Rosenblum

Summary:

Cameron Kelly Rosenblum, young adult author with HarperCollins/Quill Tree Books, joins Dr. Lisa Belisle on Radio Maine to share her journey of resilience, creativity, and finding her voice later in life. After years of teaching and navigating personal challenges—including raising a son with significant special needs and processing the loss of a close friend to suicide—Rosenblum reflects on how writing became both a refuge and a form of healing.

Drawing from her own experiences, she explores the emotional depth behind her novels, including The Stepping Off Place, which examines grief through the perspective of those left behind. Rosenblum also speaks candidly about perseverance, rejection, and ultimately publishing her first book at 49—proving that creative success doesn’t follow a fixed timeline.

This conversation is a powerful reminder of the role storytelling plays in understanding ourselves and others.

Join our conversation with Cameron Kelly Rosenblum today on Radio Maine—and be sure to subscribe to the channel.

### Social Media Caption (Episode Promotion)

What if your life’s biggest challenges became the foundation for your creative voice?

Author Cameron Kelly Rosenblum joins Radio Maine to share how grief, motherhood, and resilience shaped her journey to becoming a published writer—at 49.

From navigating profound personal loss to raising a son with special needs, this conversation is a powerful reminder that creativity can be both a refuge and a path forward.

🎧 Watch / listen now and discover how storytelling can transform even the hardest experiences.

\#RadioMaine \#CameronKellyRosenblum \#WritingLife \#CreativeJourney \#Resilience \#Storytelling \#MaineWriters \#PodcastRelease \#AuthorLife \#NeverTooLate

Dr. Lisa Belisle (00:10):

Hello, I'm Dr. Lisa Belisle, and you are listening to or watching Radio Maine, our video podcast where we explore and celebrate creativity and the human spirit. Today, we're going to explore creativity and the human spirit with Cameron Kelly Rosenblum, who is a young adult author for Harper Collins and Quilt Tree Books. And as a reminder, we are sponsored by the Portland Art Gallery in Portland, Maine. Nice to have you on here today.

Cameron Kelly Rosenblum (00:38):

Thank you. It's so lovely to be here. I'm very happy. I love this endeavor of the creativity and the human spirit. That's pretty much where I live a lot of my writing time.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (00:50):

Clearly, I see in your background you grew up in Darien, Connecticut.

Cameron Kelly Rosenblum (00:54):

I did.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (00:55):

You found your way to Maine. Y ou had education out in Colorado, University of Colorado, Boulder, Kenyon College in Ohio. You have a teaching degree. You've had a profound turn in your life with an experience with your son, but through it all, there is that kind of creative thread that's woven itself. Yes. So lots of things for us to talk about.

Cameron Kelly Rosenblum (01:23):

I think so.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (01:23):

Yeah, absolutely. First, tell me about your connection to Maine.

Cameron Kelly Rosenblum (01:28):

I married a Mainer. So when I first started teaching, my husband also had a very circuitous route from Boothbay. He grew up in East Boothbay and he ended up doing nature outdoor teaching in the Berkshires. And then a school group came up and they fell in love with him and they recruited him on the spot to come to Greenwich Public Schools. And then meanwhile, I was like, "Well, I really want to be a writer, but I don't know how you just come out of college and start being a novelist." So I got my education degree and ended up in the same school. And so once we started dating, we just would come up here so often visiting his family and then I just fell in love with it. And finally I was kind of like, why don't we just live up here as much nicer than where I grew up.

(02:28):

I wanted to spread my wings a little bit. So we've been here ever since, since 1999.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (02:33):

Well, we're happy to have you. Thank you. I'm glad you decided to come up to Maine.

Cameron Kelly Rosenblum (02:36):

Thank you.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (02:36):

Boothbay in particular is a very lovely part of the state.

Cameron Kelly Rosenblum (02:39):

It Is. It is. Yeah. It's gorgeous. And his grandparents were in Damiscotta, so that was sort of my introduction was that Midcoast area. But we didn't want to get too far away from my family in Connecticut, so we chose the Portland area.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (02:56):

When you were trying to figure out your path toward being a novelist, your sense was that it wasn't a straightforward one and you decided, "Okay, well, I'm going to go in a teaching direction."

Cameron Kelly Rosenblum (03:07):

Yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (03:07):

Did you feel like the structures weren't in place, the mentorship, the writing groups, what wasn't in place that made you feel like you couldn't at that point go in that direction?

Cameron Kelly Rosenblum (03:16):

A piece of it was confidence from me, but in terms of structures, Kenyon College is ... So I started out at Boulder and I was in the journalism school and I thought I wanted to be a journalist. And then I took my first journalism 101 and the woman who was a Denver anchor woman, she was presenting, I mean, this is 1985, 84, and she played this audio. I think she was trying to frighten off people who wouldn't cut it in journalism, Maya Culpa, because she played ... She was also very aware that women at the time were only being given certain jobs. So you could tell she was kind of frustrated with that. And so she had the entire auditorium of 500, 18 and 19 year olds listened to ... She had been sent because she was a woman sent to cover a rape story and she came on the scene and she was by the railroad tracks and this woman was wailing and crying.

(04:29):

And I was like, "Okay, could I really do that? Do I really have the grit to get the story out there to be willing to do that sort of work?" And I just don't think that's what I was cut out for.

(04:46):

First of all, I like to control the narrative. I don't think that's a good match with journalism. And secondly, she kind of scared me out of it, honestly. And then structure, they closed the journalism school the next year. So then I was kind of at odds. So then I switched to Kenyon College, which had a great reputation for writers like E.L. Doctorow was someone I had done a big project on in high school and he was a graduate and they were just renowned for this amazing English department of people really dedicated to the art of writing, but they didn't have a creative writing track. So I was an English major. I wrote a million papers. I analyzed a lot of literature and at that time it was really the traditional English lit canon and I loved it. And I loved the side of it that was looking at human nature.

(05:45):

I really love that about analyzing novels is because the novelist is kind of giving you this portrait of human and deciphering how their motivations guide a story that just has always been fascinating to me. And I think that's the crossover with teaching is when you're working with a lot of little people and little people and big people are not that different, let's be real. They have some differences, but they also, human nature starts very early on, you really can see the motivations and things. So that became a little bit of a sandbox for my watching and parents, getting to know parents and their commitment to their kids. And I just got exposed through teaching to so many different families and family situations. So when I went into teaching, it was like, "Well, I can have the summers off to work on those novels." And I didn't really realize, I think I was pretty naive to just what a huge job teaching is and how much energy it takes.

(06:58):

And I did fall in love with teaching. I still love teaching. And last but not least, I will just say, I did go to Leslie, now Leslie University in Boston and Cambridge, Creative Arts in Teaching. So even in teaching, I was always trying to bring in the arts. It just makes it come more alive to me. I've just always been drawn to them. I never felt like I could do my own art in terms of visual arts, but I always dabbled in it and that sort of thing. So yeah, I kind of had to fall back on something, I guess. So teaching it was, and it's been really rewarding thus far.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (07:39):

Having a mother who was a teacher for many years, it always struck me that you have the summers off from being in front of students, but she spent a lot of time keeping her credentials up and getting additional education and doing the stuff that one needs to do to prepare to teach during the school year. So-

Cameron Kelly Rosenblum (08:01):

A hundred percent.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (08:02):

I wonder, I mean, I know having been a doctor who writes, who has always thought, "Well, I'll doctor during these hours. I'll parent during these hours and I'll write during these hours." That doesn't always-

Cameron Kelly Rosenblum (08:14):

It doesn't always pan

(08:15):

Out. No. No. I finally came to realize that actually writing was sort of my happy place. And even though it can be torture when it's not going the way you want it to go, that sort of creative, just getting out of the here and now and moving into that space in your brain that just kind of has its own life, that has been a really important part of keeping me sort of balanced in my life. So I came to a certain point where I almost gave up when I hadn't gotten into ... I hadn't made it yet. I hadn't sold a book and I almost gave it up. And then I was kind of like, "Yeah, but then what will I do? " I need it.

(09:06):

So that's part of that human spirit part, I think, creativity in all its different ways. However, it manifests for different people. I really think it feeds your soul and I have needed that at various points like anybody else. And so I think that's what makes a difference between someone who has sort of a pipe dream of getting published and being an author versus someone who kind of needs to be writing. I do think there's ... I'm sure there's many successful writers who don't ... It doesn't have to feed their soul, but for me, it's always been that.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (09:45):

Some of the twists and turns in your life haven't just been around these educational experiences. You had an experience when you were younger with somebody that you knew who completed suicide, and that obviously is a pretty traumatic thing to go through.

Cameron Kelly Rosenblum (10:05):

Yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (10:06):

You also have a child with special needs.

Cameron Kelly Rosenblum (10:10):

Pretty severe special needs,

(10:13):

Because autism is a spectrum, and so I really like to be respectful because there's lots of people who have autism, who live full, lovely, wonderful lives. My son's version of autism is like way down on the spectrum where he's got some verbal, he's got a lot of ... Not a lot of verbal. He's got a lot of cognitive impairment. He's happy, he's delightful, and we all love him and he's great. And he's certainly taught me a lot of life lessons, I think. But yeah, that was a really devastating blow early in motherhood because we just didn't see it coming. We had no family history. You just have a baby and he's healthy and happy and you just think he's going to grow up and you're picturing all the things he's going to do. And I think every parent has those sort of visions of that. And so it was a very big blow when he just kind of stopped developing.

(11:09):

And when we got the diagnosis, that was in maybe 19 ... No, no, 2002, 2001, right after we got to Maine, hats off to the doctors in Maine because the people down in Fairfield County, which is so fancy, they just did not catch it at all. But anyway, so he got early intervention and all that, but that was a very, very big blow to me. Personally, I really, really struggled and he was our first and only at the time. So we were struggling with whether we ... Do we dare have another child? Do we adopt? We were really having a hard time with it. And both of us, I mean, it's devastating for anybody, but for people who have given their career to being with other people's children and then your own child is so, so impaired. And when he was little, the tantrums, the nonverbal stuff, they have no way to communicate.

(12:17):

And it's really hard. And it was really hard socially because you couldn't really take him anywhere. And so I think I turned inward more to my writing then. And then I actually took some time off from work thinking I wouldn't be having to do a lot of the interventions, working, consulting with therapists and whatnot. But then he got into this program that was like, he was gone from like nine to five every day. And all of a sudden I was like, wait a minute, I finally have time to work on a novel. And so that's when I really started getting serious about it.

(12:56):

And I think it was healing for me to have that total ... And at the time I was writing like a ... I was sort of the lion, the witch and the wardrobe type fantasy and it just took me into another place. And I really needed that at that time. I really needed somewhere that was like safe to go because I was so sad. I'm getting teary thinking about it and I don't think about it that way much anymore, but it has been a huge driver. Having a child like that kind of makes you take a step back and be like, wait a minute, what am I doing with my life? What is really important with my life? What do I want my life to be? So I sort of, instead of just kind of having everything come at you, kind of flipping it around and being in charge of your destiny, which maybe I wouldn't have been had he been just a typically developing kid.

(13:58):

I might have just not had that evolutionary step. I might not have been pushed to that.

(14:07):

So yeah, that was a big one. And then my friend who died by suicide, she did not take her life until we were about 40, so it was much later. So it was not that I experienced it when we were in high school, but at the time she had moved across the country when we were kids. So I actually didn't even go to high school with her, but we stayed close. We were Boulder at the same time for a little bit. And they had a family house near the Cape in Massachusetts, so we kept up, but I just had no idea. It was one of ... I mean, I think it's frequently like this where just nobody sees it coming and then all of a sudden, bang. And so when this kind of cross-sected with my ... I could not sell that middle grade fantasy book.

(15:06):

I just couldn't. And I had spent probably a decade trying to connect, networking, like really getting to know agents in the children's market, really getting to know editors, volunteering at things so that I could get insider edge. I was really focused on getting published and I had some really close calls, but when you develop a relationship with an editor and you can tell you're hitting it off and it's great and she's excited about what she knows about your project, but then when she reads the whole thing, she ultimately rejects it. I was like, "There's something wrong with this book. It's just not enough in some way, so I'm going to set it aside." And that's when I had my little, "Do I ever want to write again moment?" And then I decided to take this ... I was very devastated, two devastating things in my life, my son's thing and the suicide of my friend, and I didn't really get to process it.

(16:15):

So I am a huge believer in, we need to go through the grieving steps to really feel it. I did go through the grieving steps of losing that idea of my son that I thought I was having. And I think that's why I'm over it, so to speak, mostly. But with her, she had moved across the country. I found out six months after the fact, because I had sent a Christmas card and it didn't ... We always had these funny Christmas cards going back and forth, and she never replied. And so then in about February, I got this letter scrawled in Sharpie from her husband that she died by suicide, and I fell on my kitchen floor. I was just blown over. And so I had taken a class at Leslie University called Art and Society, and it was a fascinating class, and it was about how public art and monuments help heal people.

(17:26):

Building a monument, and everybody knows it's there, and we all know what it's for. And then you have the dedication, that process is very healing for people. So like the Vietnam Wall, things like that are so important because for years, those people who are grieving had no monument to feel heard, I guess. And so I was sort of like, "What if I made a piece of art in writing

(18:00):

About our friendship? That's like a monument to our friendship. Maybe that will help me move on from this and kind of make peace with it and her because the suicide is really complicated." And I was at first very worried about writing about suicide because of ... It's a dreadfully hard thing and would have anyone want to read it, but at that time, and this is kind of a funny story, my husband gave me a gift to go to a psychic. It was like a joke. He thought it was funny. He was like, "Go the psychic." It was an anniversary prison or something. So I went to this woman and I was ... She of course picked up on the whole thing of my friend before I even said anything. She was really good. And she said to me, "Your friend is telling me stop trying to tell her story.

(19:04):

That's not your story to tell. You tell your story, the survivor story." And that's when I was able to take better control of the story because when I put it in that light, it wasn't as hard to write about because I wasn't trying to get inside her head, which is too dark for me, too dark for me. So instead, it really became a story about what happens to the people who get left behind and does the person who commits suicide ever think that through? And I've gotten some really moving letters from readers about that book, The Stepping Off Place from young readers about how that particular slant, that lens on the story just was so validating for them. And so I'm really grateful to that psychic, first of all, but it also was really good for me, the healer, because one of the things that I loved about my friend was that she was larger than life.

(20:19):

She could do any sport. She was beautiful. Her family had oodles of money and not that I was destitute by any stretch, but to me, she was like on a pedestal and we were, I mean, every weekend night for like four years, we did sleepovers at each other's house. We grew up together really. And then she moved away, which was very hard, but we kept up. But she always seemed more confident to me, a little more athletic, a little more, just everything a little bit more. And so I think that the parallel in my story in writing about it is I made that dynamic where Reid, the narrator, she calls Hattie, my friend fictionalized, her social oxygen. And so she sees herself as like second to her and she's happy in that spot, but she sees herself as second. And then all of a sudden, what happens when the first gets pulled away and then you're like, wait a minute, but she was so much stronger than me, but was she?

(21:30):

Apparently not in some ways. So it kind of rejiggers your whole sense of self because that was really my experience for several months of just trying to process the loss was like, wait, but she's the strong one. And then I was like, okay, wait a minute. By this time I've now dealt with having this disabled son. I'm like, "Maybe I'm pretty strong. Maybe I am pretty strong." And so that's the arc I gave Reid, the narrator of the story, was to discover, sort of come into herself through the horrible experience, but to kind of come to realize that like maybe she had more going on. Maybe she was the crutch for Hattie, maybe she didn't even realize it, but maybe the friend is finding strength in you.

(22:28):

So art has always really woven into my creative process. Just in fact, in the story, one of the ways there is a traditional church funeral in the story, the hardest chapter to write because of course I miss the funeral. And so I was basically writing myself into ... But always with a fictional eye, of course, but sometimes it's really close to the bone. I put off writing that chapter for a really long time, but then I finally went for it, but the kids in the story are very ... It's too formal for them. It doesn't really help them feel like they've said goodbye to her, even though they can see it help the family and everybody else. So they decide to go ... She has a summer home in Maine in the story. So there's a big love letter to Maine, but they have ... I kind of pictured Macworth Island being a private island for a house.

(23:28):

And so they live there and the kids go up to her summer place and they each do their own monuments. So there's like a ... I think there's five characters there at that time. It's been a while since I wrote it, but each one has their own way to say goodbye and one of them has music and one of them, they build a can out of rocks and they ... Well, I shouldn't give away the inning. But anyways, that's how they process is like by doing ... It all came back from that class at Leslie University about how art heals.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (24:13):

You're making a pretty significant statement. If you put a monument up, obviously you're making a statement that includes lots of people who are going to look to that monument for their sort of external reality validation. And in your case, it's sort of a meta experience. You're writing about the people who are then creating their monuments to this person's life. And I think there's something really powerful about that.

Cameron Kelly Rosenblum (24:43):

It's like a proxy. It's like your imagination creates a proxy for you to work through. And did I cry when I wrote the last line? You bet that last line still gets me when I read it because I know the veil between the fiction and the reality is like virtually gone in that sentence, like the same way for some of the emotion that I wrote into the funeral and really throughout the story. But yeah, I find that so fascinating about the human mind that we are capable of doing that is just kind of blows my mind and I can feel it. There's sometimes when I'm writing where I kind of get lost, where I don't even know what I'm ... It's almost like someone else is writing it, but I know it's not somebody else, but it's some part of my brain is starting to like activate.

(25:45):

I don't know if you've ever met Jennifer Jacobson.

(25:51):

She's a great writer for young people in Maine, and I've gone to many workshops. She's also an amazing writing teacher, and she said, she gets up first thing in the morning and starts writing because she feels like she's still in touch with her dreams mind. And I really relate to that because I sometimes have written scenes in that space and like the next day I'm like, wait a minute, I wrote that? I don't even recognize it. So I find that fascinating. I would love to know the neuroscience behind what happens when people are in that flow state of creativity. I think it must be like meditating. I've never really been able to do just that straightforward meditating, but I get, I have like an out of body experience sometimes when I'm writing. So I wonder sometimes if that's a similar thing or if someone's really involved in painting, how you can kind of just get lost in that process.

(26:57):

I feel like that's so powerful.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (26:58):

Well, it reminds me of the Julia Cameron idea of morning pages. And I think you're right that there's something that when we start the day like, okay, now I need to empty the dishwasher, now I need to jump on a screen for an hour and get the morning news. It's kind of, there's a quote about how you spend your moments is how you spend your life or something like that written by a writer. Of course, I'm blanking on the exact quote, but I'm sure it'll come to me as soon as we're done our conversation, but it really is about ... I do love that this idea that you're barely awake and it's no less a part of who you are than your truly awake self, but you're tapping into creativity in a different way.

Cameron Kelly Rosenblum (27:46):

A hundred percent. I feel like once those realities kind of start to trickle in in the morning, the door is shutting. That's what I feel like, the little windows going down because now I have to deal with like the more boring parts of life or the more tedious, or not always, but it's hard to stay in that state. It's hard to get ... For me, I am not one of these people who can dash off 500 words here, 250 here and eventually come together because there are people who can definitely do that and bravo, but that is not me. I need to sort of get in that space. And that's the hardest thing I think for someone who's ... It's really hard for people to ... First of all, it's hard to make a complete living as an author. So usually people are doing something else, right?

(28:52):

It doesn't come with an insurance package either, by the way. So, if you're juggling family life or even dating life or whatever, or trying to find dating life, or whatever stage in life you're in, if you're trying to juggle your social life with your work that you have to do to put food on the table with your writing life, you have to make some conscious choices. Now, some ... I've often had friends who teach, and when I got my publishing contracts and things were like, "How do you do it? I don't know how you do it. " And I think to myself, "Well, I don't have as many social opportunities because I have a kid that somebody has to be watching twenty four seven. So I can't leave him, somebody's got to be in charge of him." So in a lot of ways, he's anchored me to the work of writing and I'm forever grateful for it.

(30:03):

So I do have to turn down a lot of social things a lot of times. And my husband and I have to play if a big event comes up, one of us has to stay home. I mean, probably, I mean, not to get out the violence, but probably the hardest time this happened, the hardest one for me was my second book, The Sharp Edge of Silence was a finalist for an Edgar Award. And they do a big banquet evening and it's formal black tie in New York City. And he couldn't come. I couldn't bring my husband to that. That was just really tough.

(30:52):

So I guess I am trying to say that I maybe have it easier than some people who really have to make choices because they get invited to go do this, that, and the other thing, and they can go. A lot of times I just can't go. So maybe it's easier for me in that sense. I don't know. But I know that for anyone who's trying to do this, you have to carve out the time. It's like, what's that saying? You can't take time. You can't make time, so you have to take time. So if you're waiting for the time to just appear, it's not going to happen. So you have to find the time.That's how it has been for me anyways. I have to find the time. And luckily, I write my best in the morning because that also happens to be when my house is silent.

(31:48):

And so I can get a lot done in those early hours of the morning for me.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (31:55):

Does your son still live with you?

Cameron Kelly Rosenblum (31:57):

He does. Yes. That's such a huge topic that we could talk about, but we're guardians and we just do not. I know some people find home settings, but it's like releasing a toddler. I mean, he can't even advocate for himself. So I'm not letting somebody else ... It's too scary for me. So we are committed to having him as long as we can take care of him.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (32:33):

And I specifically ask this because you talked about him being diagnosed ...

Cameron Kelly Rosenblum (32:39):

Two-ish. Yeah.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (32:40):

Age two. And so that means he's ... He's

Cameron Kelly Rosenblum (32:45):

27\.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (32:46):

27\.

Cameron Kelly Rosenblum (32:46):

Yeah. Wait, is he 28? He's 28.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (32:49):

So you have a 28 year old.

Cameron Kelly Rosenblum (32:52):

Camping out.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (32:53):

Who's living with you?

Cameron Kelly Rosenblum (32:55):

We do.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (32:56):

I mean, and my husband and I, we have six adult children and a grandchild and significant others and spouses. And they have lived with us at various times, but they are fully capable of taking care of themselves. They eventually leave. Yes. Sometimes they come back, but they leave again.

Cameron Kelly Rosenblum (33:15):

Right.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (33:16):

And I think I'm not sure that everybody completely understands that when you have somebody in your family who has this diagnosis, then ...

Cameron Kelly Rosenblum (33:22):

Yeah. He's ...

Dr. Lisa Belisle (33:25):

You have to make choices.

Cameron Kelly Rosenblum (33:25):

You have a human living in your house. We do not have a huge house. My husband did retire early after the pandemic. He was working in the Falmouth schools. He retired early because a lot of the day programs shut down. The way we survived all those years was that after Jack graduated high school, he could go to the day programs. He went to Strive for a while. And then Strive really got stripped back with the pandemic and they could no longer accommodate him, even though he's very pleasant and has very few troubling behaviors actually. He does have a seizure disorder that he developed when he was about 16. That was another curve ball. So he really needs eyes on, and they just couldn't take him. And so my husband had to retire and become ... He's like Jack's full-time ed tech. But luckily it suits my husband well because he is a person who loves to be outdoors and Jack is ... He has weird skillsets.

(34:37):

He's an awesome ice skater, so they go skating. He can't tie his shoe, but he can ice skate better than me. They do adaptive skiing. They do in the summer, he does adaptive surfing. I mean, he's very busy. They do great things, but it's still ... It's hard for my husband because he has a very social mind and they're alone a lot and Jack doesn't have a lot to say. I mean, I often wonder what's going on up there. It's not like he's ... He's very animated personality and he's happy, which is very, very good. It would be much harder if he was mad or if he was even aware that he's disabled, but he's just like, "Here I am." So he doesn't really worry about much. But it's a lot on my husband. So we try to share the burden. I try to send him off with his friends for trips, extended trips so he can just get a break.

(35:42):

It's a lot. I'm not going to lie. It's a lot. And our daughter is ... She actually just graduated from college. She went into neuroscience. She is busy trying to get a job. So she's home too. So we're a little crowded right now, but it's all good. It's all good.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (36:04):

Our children all eventually leave, but we absolutely have been. At times we've had a lot of bodies in our space. Yeah. You're just kind of like, oh. Yeah, you're right. Getting up in the mornings before everybody is awake, that is a very good time to take advantage.

Cameron Kelly Rosenblum (36:17):

It's a wonderful time of day. It's my favorite time of day.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (36:20):

Yeah. I do love the fact that you reached this critical juncture and you dedicated yourself to something that you knew that you wanted to do. I mean, I think were you 40 ... Oh, 35, you kind of recommitted to your dream.

Cameron Kelly Rosenblum (36:38):

Yes.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (36:39):

Which I wonder if you're talking about these very serious things that you've had happen in your life. And it seems to me that that might sort of crack things open for someone like, "Well, I've already been handed these things that I have no control over, so maybe if I take back some control and I'm going to go in this direction because it's what I want to do. "

Cameron Kelly Rosenblum (37:00):

That's exactly it. Yeah. And sometimes it takes, I think, getting shaken up like that to shake you out of just, especially when you're a young parent. I mean, my goodness, six children. So I know that the wheels just go. They just go and you're just going. And then everyone wakes up and they're like, "Wait a minute, my kid's 14. How did this happen?" And I think because my process just was totally atypical, it gave me an opportunity to take charge of that piece. I think you're absolutely right.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (37:38):

And having talked to people who kind of believe that whatever decisions they make when they're in their, I don't know, late teens, early 20s, "I'm going to go to this college. This is the path I'm going to take. If I don't achieve this by 30, if I don't achieve this by 35, life's over, I'm a failure."

Cameron Kelly Rosenblum (37:57):

Right. I mean, my first book came out when I was 49.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (38:01):

I mean, and I think that's the thing that I kind of love hearing. And I think it's really important for other people to hear this as well.

Cameron Kelly Rosenblum (38:08):

And here's a point I will make about that. I know so much more. I can bring so much more to the page at this age, even as ... I mean, I found that my voice is my teenage voice. We could spend more time talking about that, but that is when I write in that teenage voice, it's so natural for me that I think that's why when I started writing in that voice, then all those agents and editors were suddenly like, "Hey, wait a minute, here's my card. Here's my card." And I was like, "What is happening?" But when you click with the voice, and I think I can now as an adult, a seasoned adult, I can look back on that and I can maybe take it apart and put it back together in a way that I couldn't have even done in my 20s.

(39:05):

I might have done it in a different way in my 20s that is no less valuable, but I know that at this age, I have more confidence in building those characters than I could have at that age. As a matter of fact, I took a philosophy of art class in college and I was amongst mostly art majors. And I remember this one, I mean, it was like the late 80s and there was this one classmate of mine, he was from Philadelphia and he was very urbane and he always had a scarf and like a tweet coat and he was super articulate and very opinionated in this class. And I was kind of like, "Well, I'm not really an art major, so I'm going to kind of soak all this in. " And I remember he was talking with the professor at the end of class one day and he goes, "I mean, no art ever comes from suburbia." And he said it like that.

(40:04):

And I was like, "I don't know why I believed him. I believe that I had no story to tell." So I was like, "I can't write a novel. I have no story to tell." Well, two of my stories end up being about before that.

(40:23):

I don't know why I believed it, and of course I grew up in the quintessential suburbia of New York City. So I think I didn't have the confidence, I guess is my point. Whereas once you have nothing left to lose, you don't care anymore. You're just going to write it and you're going to believe in your voice. And that's the funny thing about writing. You have to ride this very narrow wall of, I can do this to, I have to be open to hearing some criticism because otherwise it's never going to hit a shelf ever. So I think that's something that you can ride more easily with more maturity. Certainly in my case, it was true because I would have, if I had to go ... I mean, I joke, I say I have rhinoceros skin at this point, but if I had to go up against how tough the market is and how brutal feedback can be and good reads, I know I'm not supposed to read what other people write about my writing, but I do sometimes sneak on there in a weak moment and like when someone says something that's just devastating, I don't think I could have moved on from that kind of thing when I was still a younger woman.

(41:48):

And I think that it takes those life experiences to build the rhino hide.

(41:55):

So I had a period there where I became very self-conscious because of course Instagram, you need to be on Instagram if you're an author, especially for YA. I don't even know if I ... I'm not a big fan of kids being on social media, so I already have like a little chip on my shoulder about it, but I kind of have to do it, right? So I've tried to embrace it, but I comparing myself to some of the bestselling authors and they're like 32 years old and I'm looking at myself and I'm like, "I don't belong here, but my agent is awesome." And because I was having one of those sort of like insecure moments and she said, "Own it, Cameron." She's like, "Own it. " And she's only like 35. And I was like, "Okay, okay, I can do this. " But it is weird.

(42:46):

It's a weird place to be, being a little bit older and writing for younger people in this world where we are very aware of the generations, I think, more than maybe in decades past. I don't know.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (43:05):

I really appreciate your willingness to come in here and have this conversation with me and to be very transparent about the things that you've been through and how it's really lent itself to, I think, ultimately becoming more creative and really dedicating yourself to the creative process.

Cameron Kelly Rosenblum (43:27):

Absolutely. Absolutely. It has. And thank you for giving me a moment to remind myself of that, because I think it's good for me to just remember that too.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (43:39):

The pleasure is all mine. Thank you. I appreciate your creative spirit and sharing it with me today.

Cameron Kelly Rosenblum (43:46):

Thank you. Yours too.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (43:48):

Thank you. I'm Dr. Lisa Belisle. You've been listening to or watching Radio Maine or video podcast where we explore and celebrate creativity and the human spirit. We are sponsored by the Portland Art Gallery in Portland, Maine. Today I've been speaking with Cameron Kelly Rosenblum. She is a young adult author with Harper Collins Quilt Tree Books. And I really do hope that whether you're a young adult or an adult, that you might find your way over to Cameron's books because I think there's something very profound that she's bringing forward that it doesn't matter whether you're a teenager or not, it's worth exploring more. And I hope, Cameron, that you'll join us. I know it's very difficult to get out, but maybe you can, at some point, maybe you could trade off with your husband and come to one of our Portland Art Gallery openings.

Cameron Kelly Rosenblum (44:38):

I love it. I love Portland Art Gallery and I have come to some of your openings in the past, but yes, and I have traded off with my husband. Sometimes he waits in the car and I run into flip flop.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (44:49):

Okay. All right. Well, when he's waiting in the car, maybe you could let me know and I'll go out and I'll say hello too.

Cameron Kelly Rosenblum (44:57):

Sounds good.

Dr. Lisa Belisle (44:58):

Thank you so much. Thank you.