I Write About Heroic Kids Overcoming Challenges. Then I Faced One Myself (Exclusive)

It’s hard to say goodbye to something you love. For 16 years, I have loved writing Whatever After, my book series for 7-12 year olds, about two kids who fall into fairy tales and have magical adventures. I have been working on these novels for almost a third of my life; when I decided to wrap up the series, it felt bittersweet and a bit scary. 

Eight months ago, on the morning of Tuesday, Jan. 7, I was at home in the Pacific Palisades, knee-deep in writing the final book in the series. Suddenly my phone shrieked with a text from the LA fire department. 

Wildfire- Palisades Drive. Prepare for possible evacuation.  

Ugh. Really? I did not have time to evacuate. I had to figure out the perfect, most satisfying ending for the last book!  But it was time to pack. And I knew the drill. This was not our first evacuation rodeo. Two bags for our girls: school clothes, jeans, pajamas, and, of course, my sixth grader’s bestie, her stuffed lion, Roar. My husband, Todd, filled half a suitcase, and I filled the rest. Important papers, medications, contact lenses. Chargers, laptops. The printed-out pages of my book. I still had a deadline, after all. 

The next emergency alert flashed across my phone: Evacuate now. Gather people and pets and leave immediately. 

We took my car, which miraculously had a full tank of gas. I fought the traffic to pick up our daughters from school, while Todd searched on his phone for a place to stay. Somewhere away from the huge mass of smoke that was expanding across the sky.   

In a hotel room that night, we scrolled for news. The flames had reached our coffee shop. Our grocery store. Our friend’s house. We tried not to panic. ​​We tried to reassure the girls. Our house would be okay. Our stuff would be okay. We would be okay. 

Then our Ring camera went offline.

But it could still be okay. All that meant was the power was out. We went to sleep. It wasn’t until the next day that my husband thought to check if the dashcam on his car was still responsive. 

It was. 

The car was still in front of our house. 

But the house was gone. 

What are you supposed to do when your house — and everything inside it — is gone?

My head was spinning. I had to focus. Food, shelter, insurance, does anyone have Tylenol? Yes, I do, in my cosmetic bag. I also have bug spray. Why did I bring bug spray when my house is gone? And why did I only pack one pair of socks?

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Suddenly the hotel staff banged on the door. We had to leave. Our hotel — our new safe space — was being evacuated because of the Sunset Fires. Was the whole city burning? 

We hurried to the car and drove into the night, our phones blaring with warnings, the air thick with ash. We sat in gridlock. The navigation was telling Todd to drive directly into the Eaton fire. I had to find us a different way out. I pulled up the map on my phone. East? North? My vision blurred. The screen swam with shapes and lines. 

I write stories about heroic kids overcoming challenges. And yet, in an actual crisis, I froze. My tenth grader bravely said she could figure it out, no problem. She took charge of the directions and found us a better way. We drove out of the city safely. Finally, we rolled down the windows. I took my first deep breath of fresh air.

Maybe I couldn’t navigate, but could I lift my family’s spirits? For the rest of the drive, I tried to distract them. I DJed. I joked. I said, maybe we could move to Beverly Hills, and I played the theme song to 90210. I said, maybe we could move to Bel Air, and played the theme song to The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. My little one came up with new lyrics that made us laugh. 

We got to my dad’s house in Palm Desert a few hours later. We were giddy. We were exhausted. We were devastated.   

As the days passed, I could not stop the waves of sadness. Flashes of everything we lost. Clothes. Dishes. The other stuffies — Roar’s friends. All of our books. So many books. There were the books I’d written, the books we’d read, the books we were going to read, the picture books I’d read again and again to the girls before tucking them into their beds when they were little. Signed yearbooks, stacks of photo albums. My childhood diaries. 

I knew I had to model strength for my daughters but I kept bursting into tears. I didn’t know how to look brave. How would I get them through this?  I sent 3 a.m. texts asking for help and tips, and guidance from friends, teachers, therapists. I googled “children fire trauma.”

I validated their feelings. Yes, the situation really did suck. When they saw me crying, I told them that even though I was sad, I was also strong. We were all strong. My husband and I gave the girls agency wherever we could, including helping us to decide where our family would live next. We told them that this, like everything else, would pass. I sang to them. I snuggled with them. We made jokes. We made playlists. We played Jenga. We ate banana splits. We did not roast marshmallows because fire made us nervous. We bought more socks. 

I postponed the publication of the last Whatever After book. I couldn’t give the finale the attention it needed — though I couldn’t help but notice the eerie parallels between my stories and my life. 

In each Whatever After novel, a magic portal yanks the main character, Abby, out of her comfortable life and thrusts her into another reality. Abby never knows if she will find her way home. We too were yanked out of our comfortable lives and thrust into another reality. Except my family knew we could never go home. 

But I’m a person who loves a happy ending, or at least a silver lining. So how do you stay optimistic in the face of loss and sadness? You find hope. You look for meaning. You grow.  

In portal fantasies, the heroine always returns home, but she returns changed. Dorothy returns from Oz grateful. Wendy returns from Neverland more mature. And, spoiler alert, my heroine, Abby, returns as well. Stronger. Braver. 

So what about us? How have we grown after being yanked into this new reality of losing our home and our neighborhood? What have we learned? That our photo albums are gone, but the memories they captured are not. That we will buy more books. And we will write more books. We have more to write about. 

Hearing from people, even people we hadn’t heard from in years, made us feel cared for and loved and helped us see through the sadness. Reaching out is never wrong. We are grateful and lucky to be safe. We are grateful and lucky to have each other. We should always err on the side of kindness and generosity because so many are walking through their own fires, large and small. We know we can get through hard things. And that this is just one chapter in our lives. We are a little stronger and a little braver. 

Today we live in a temporary rental, about 30 minutes from our old house. We have a new coffee shop, a new grocery store, a new bookstore. We have lovely new neighbors. We still text our old ones. 

We have started roasting marshmallows again. 

We were tossed into an adventure we didn’t want to go on, but characters don’t get to choose their own plot twists. All we can do is make the best of them, and move forward. I finally finished writing the last Whatever After book. I’m excited, ready, to start something new.     

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Mirror Mirror, the last Whatever After book, comes out Oct. 7 and is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.