I don’t usually read my own reviews.

I know a lot of writers say this and then actually do read them, but I really mean it. I think I only read one review of my first novel, and afterward I felt totally weird and freaked out. So I decided that, in order to remain a functioning member of society, I would employ what my editor once jokingly referred to as The Novic Method of dealing with reviews—that is, not dealing with them at all.

Until today, anyway.

This morning I drove up to Mt. Airy, to the old campus of the PA School for the Deaf. PSD, the third oldest (permanent) deaf school in the country, recently celebrated its 200th anniversary—but it’s no longer a residential school, and has a smaller campus a few miles away. This campus, with the old dorms, is sprawling, majestic, maybe even a little formidable. It’s what I had in my head when I was creating the fictional River Valley School for the Deaf in True Biz.