Can you tell us what you're currently working on?
I just finished revisions on My Beating Teenage Heart (which will be out next September) and am waiting for copy-edits on it but in the meantime am researching a brand new YA book. I’m not far enough down the road yet to know if the idea will really amount to anything but if it does work out it will be quite different to any of my books so far.
Do you see yourself ever writing something other than Young Adult?
Yes! Thanks for asking. Actually this past summer I finished an adult book about a twenty-year-old girl named Leah who goes into a state of collapse when her boyfriend (the love of her life) dies in a car accident. She drops out of college, loses her job and cuts herself off from all her friends and family. The first third of the book is filled with grief and then Leah shocks herself by sleeping with someone else. Hopefully that book will be submitted to publishers in not too long so please keep your fingers crossed for me that it finds a good home!
Other authors have mentioned "must haves" while writing. Everything from Dr. Pepper to purple sharpies. Is there anything you can’t write without?
I need to be alone and it has to be as quiet as possible. I’ve also discovered that I can’t get any serious writing done before eleven in the morning, for some reason. I don’t drink coffee so I usually have a Coca-Cola on the go while writing.
You’ve wrote from the male perspective in your books. Do you find it difficult to capture the voice of a teen guy?
I don’t really find it a bigger a challenge to write from a teenage guy’s perspective than a teenage girl’s. It’s tricky trying to find anyone’s voice and discover who they are and once you have a handle on that the words start to flow more easily. For this reason I always find the first quarter of a book or so more difficult – I’m still learning how the character thinks and how they’d react in situations.
Is there a specific book that sparked your desire to be a writer?
Probably all the books I read or had read to me when I was kid (stuff like Babar, Madeline, The Hardy Boys, Anne of Green Gables, Tintin) but there’s not one book that stands out more than the others. Writing is something I always knew I’d do but it was actually watching the show Party of Five that inspired me to write a YA book.
What book/books are you currently reading?
Right now I’m 150 pages in Mockingjay and am enjoying it just as much as the first two Hunger Games books. They’ve all been impossible to put down. Before that I finished The Hate List by Jennifer Brown and was so impressed by her nuanced treatment of the impact the shooting had on the various characters and also the multiple, complex causes for the violence.
Favorites:
Color?
Sky blue. I like black an awful lot too.
Movie?
Children of Men from 2006 (directed by Alfonso Cuarón Alfonso Cuarón). It blew me away when I first saw it in the theatre. I was so tense that I had a splitting (tension) headache from thirty minutes in to the very end and when I watched Children of Men on DVD again this past September it hadn’t lost an ounce of its power. This film introduces us to a dark, hopeless future which is very much like our current world, the important difference being that there are no more children because women can’t get pregnant anymore. Children of Men shows us a completely convincing portrait of that world and then it offers us the possibility of hope but puts it at dire jeopardy. I can’t recommend this movie highly enough. If you haven’t seen it here’s a description from IMDB: “In 2027, in a chaotic world in which humans can no longer procreate, a former activist agrees to help transport a miraculously pregnant woman to a sanctuary at sea, where her child's birth may help scientists save the future of humankind.”
Food?
Either Shepherd’s pie or mint cupcakes, I can’t make up my mind!
Thanks so much for stopping by!
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Children of Men was SO good.
ReplyDeleteI love black and sky blue too! And pink of course (I'm a pink-a-holic).
Great interview :)