I’ve had the opportunity to speak to a lot of high school creative writing and English classes over the past six months. I’ve had the opportunity to speak to a lot of different groups, actually, but there’s something so very special about speaking to high school students.

For starters, they’re the audience I was targeting when I wrote A Little Something Different. But what I didn’t realize as I wrote the story was that I would crave their feedback. I want to hear what teenagers think of A Little Something Different more than any other age group, good or bad.

But it was during one of those creative writing classes that a girl raised her hand, almost like a wave. It wasn’t shy, but it wasn’t bold, it was like, “Hey, if you have a second, I have something to say.”

When I looked over at her to acknowledge her casual hand-raise, I smiled and she grinned back widely. “I don’t really have a question,” she said. “But I wanted to thank you for writing about Inga and Pam. I’ve never read any other books about adult lesbians and, well, it gave me something to look forward to. So thanks.”

I was instantly teary-eyed. I had worked hard on Inga and Pam. They were easily my favorite (human) characters in the book.

During the planning process for A Little Something Different, I had come to a sort of terrible realization. After I decided to make the professor and the professor’s spouse women, I sat there trying to think of other young adult novels with adult lesbian characters and came up empty handed. Young adult books were my forte. I was a teen librarian for goodness sake! I should have been able to think of books that had adult lesbian characters.

I’m not saying there aren’t any books out there featuring adult lesbian characters, but where I could come up with books off the top of my featuring adult gay men, the same wasn’t true for women. There’s a hole there in YA lit and I wanted Inga and Pam to help fill it.

Long story short: diversity matters. It’s not too much to ask for, to lose yourself in a book and find someone you relate to within its pages. Everyone deserves that, but especially teenagers.  It’s time to help them find pieces of their identity anyway we can. And I hope that’s what I’m doing with every book I write.

- Sandy Hall