Debut Author Interviews

Where did you get the idea for your book?

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Where did you get the idea for your book?

TIPS ON HAVING A GAY (ex) BOYFRIEND started because I had heard of a hate crime incident at a nearby high school.

The incident involved a girl whose boyfriend had just come out. She’d been taunted and called derogatory names because of her ex boyfriend’s sexuality.

The real life incident didn’t get reported to the police or to the school administration.

It bothered me. A lot. So, I started writing TIPS…

And yes… I’ve had a gay ex boyfriend. He’s really cool.

Where did you get the idea for your book?

SHARK GIRL began in the summer of 2001, just before the September 11th attacks. At the time, the biggest story in the news was the rash of shark attacks that had happened that summer. There were many attacks but the one that stuck with me was a little boy who had his arm bitten off by a shark, and later reattached.

I remember thinking that for the rest of his life, that child would always be known for that. Then I started wondering what it would be like to lose part of one’s self in such a violent way, which would then be broadcast to the nation as evening news. So I started writing, with the intent to write from a young child’s persepctive. But my main character, Jane, stepped in. Jane was fifteen, an artist, and she had a lot to say. And she wouldn’t leave me alone until I just surrendered my original plan, and let her speak. So, the book became YA.

I think it goes without saying that this very event DID happen years after I’d started writing, in 2003 just as I finished my draft. It happened to a fifteen-year old girl in Hawaii. All I can say is that that was a horrible, tragic coincidence. I put the book away for a year, even though it was ready to submit, because it just looked too much like I had capitlalized on her loss, and been inspired to write my book based on that.

SHARK GIRL is fiction, and not based on any one person or event.

Where did you get the idea for your book?

The idea, characters, and plot of BLOOD BROTHERS grew over many years. When I finally decided to write the story, it took only a few days.

When I was fourteen I volunteered at the local hospital where my mom worked as a nurse. I was put to work passing out juice and fresh water. Sometimes I’d make charts for the nurses or change the linen on beds or run for supplies during an emergency. I was eager to do anything I was asked to do. I loved every minute.

After a year I started getting paid. Along with a paycheck came other duties. I would be assigned to check vital signs, give baths, change beds, and transport patients. I once delivered a baby by accident. I also helped out in codes.

BLOOD BROTHERS is a work of fiction.

Where did you get the idea for your book?

I was writing a booklet on child abuse prevention for the publishing company I now freelance for. I came across an article about kids abusing kids and it kind of sent me spiraling back to some incidents in my own childhood. Nothing like what happens to Laine happened to me, but the article was enough to spark that all-important question: “What if?”

Of the many many many [insert about 45 more many’s in here] times I have revised LESSONS FROM A DEAD GIRL, the one chapter that has remained almost fully intact is the first chapter I wrote after reading that article (now LESSON #2: Forever is a long time.).

Where did you get the idea for your book?

I grew up near Circleville, Ohio, which is famous for a festival called Pumpkin Show. The entire downtown is blocked off and over 400,000 people fill the streets. There is every imaginable kind pumpkin food, tons of rides, artist and craft booths, the world’s largest pumpkin pie, and a giant pumpkin contest. My novel, ME AND THE PUMPKIN QUEEN, was inspired by my hometown and the festival it hosts.

Where did you get the idea for your book?

I got the idea for my book from an event in high school. When I was a freshman, all the boys in our class got together and decided it would be really funny to vote one of the ….ahem…less popular (more PC than geek) students as the freshman boy attendant for Homecoming. Of course, the most popular girl in school got chosen as the girl attendant. So you had this really attractive girl and this tiny guy with huge glasses riding around together in the HC parade. I don’t think the boys did it to be mean because I know they really liked this kid. He ended up having a great time and I think his new status helped him out a little with the ladies! And the girl was so gracious about it. It set a precendent for future years, because the contest wasn’t all based on looks after that, which was nice.

So I thought what if the girl wouldn’t have been so gracious about it. What if she went totally nuts that her tiara had been so disrespected? I added a little mystery and VOILA! REVENGE OF THE HOMECOMING QUEEN was born!

Where did you get the idea for your book?

Like my primary character Logan, someone close to me got “kicked in the balls at scouts” and was constantly bullied. I think all of us were bullied at some time growing up (or maybe we were the bullies?). The bulk of the book comes from my own insecurities and awkwardness that I still deal with every day. I even feel awkward writing this.

They always say, you write what you know.

Where did you get the idea for your book?

The idea for NO CASTLES HERE came from reading HOLES and THE VIEW FROM SATURDAY, and deciding that I, too, wanted to build a novel with intertwining stories, each with its own voice and point of view. Starting from this premise, I created a bunch of characters with very different backgrounds and explored how their lives connected. This led to two intertwined story lines: one set in contemporary Camden/Philadelphia metro area, and the other told in a series of fairy tales that span 500 years. The novel is a combination of realistic fiction with a hint of magic, fairy tales, and even a little historical fiction that work together to create one story.

Where did you get the idea for your book?

I have absolutely no clue where I got the idea. Years of reading folklore? Life? I can trace the influences of some aspects of the text(s), but that’s as close to an answer as I get here. One day I wrote a short story (not as dark though) with the general plot of the text. A year later, I picked up the short, and it evolved into the novel over a couple months. I credit my muse (Ms. Muse) for telling me the tales. She dictates them; I just write them down.

Where did you get the idea for your book?

As I’ve said before, I’m a plot-challenged writer. Retelling fairy tales, besides being fun, gives me a time-tested action framework to work within. Confident that at least the underlying structure won’t suck, I’ll brainstorm characters, motivations, and settings until I come up with a combination I want to explore.

Wondering in the summer of 2004 which fairy tale to play with next, I was reading Paul Delarue’s excellent book Le Conte Populaire Français, and found a story called “The Devil’s Daughter.” It had many, many versions in French—over 120, I think—so I knew there’d be lots of possible shapes the story could take. Plus disobedient daughters, lots of magic, and a central mystery. Writing gold!

Where did you get the idea for your book?

I know no one ever believes me when I tell this story. But it’s the truth, I swear.

One Saturday morning, I woke up and all of my main characters, along with how their friendship evolved was in my head. It was one of those moments of clarity where in your gut you realize that either you can write down the info flowing through your head to preserve it for later thought. Or, dismiss it as an early morning whim that will become foggier as the morning progresses.

I mean, I’ve had some great ideas emerging from sleep. If I acted on all of them I’d be hopping from venture to venture all the time. The key was knowing or at least having that feeling, this time the idea was meant to be captured.

So I came into my office and quickly began outlining the characters and plot lines. I started writing that same day.

Where did you get the idea for your book?

I used to be a physical therapist in a rehabilitation hospital. I worked with people with spinal cord and closed head injuries. I often wondered what it was like for my patients to return home. What were those first moments, days, weeks like? Did friends visit? Did they leave the home?

My protagonist, Frank, was not any one of my patients. But he was inspired by many brave people who worked with me in rehab.

Where did you get the idea for your book?

MY LAST BEST FRIEND began to take shape when my daughter was beginning fourth grade. She had her first “boy teacher” that year and, at first, it was really a very scary and intimidating thing for her. So I began thinking about other things that might make a fourth grader feel scared or intimidated or just completely not wanting to participate in the program.

Where did you get the idea for your book?

I got the idea for my book from Hans Christian Andersen. I read Andersen and the Grimm Brothers ad infinitum until I discovered Madeleine L’Engle. One Andersen tale, “The Marsh King’s Daughter”, has always haunted me with its brutal beauty. I had started a story about a priest finding a baby in a strange giant flower in a swamp, and that baby grew into a character named Mara who was a Gullah slave and hoodoo root doctor’s apprentice in the South Carolina Low Country during the Civil War. And then, the more I thought about it, there was a school where Mara had been brought by this priest and there were three girls there named Corrine, Ilona, and Christina…See where this is going? This led to the books that became the Hallowmere series. Interestingly, Corrine’s story became the founding trilogy; Mara’s will appear later on. Usually, I just form a string of associations, keep asking questions, keep letting the images boil up until I have a very different animal than what I saw in the beginning.

Where did you get the idea for your book?

I wrote a crazy story in 1995 about superhero kids, mad scientists, and a garbageman who becomes the absolute and uncontested ruler of the world. It wasn’t a very good story. You wouldn’t want to read it—not unless it were completely rewritten, and maybe even not then.

A couple years later, a friend said to me, “Hey, a bunch of us are taking the old stories we’ve written, projecting them twenty years into the future, and writing about what happens next. Want to join us?”

When I thought about it, the whole story fell into place. Twenty years after “In Sal We Trust”, Sal the Garbageman has seven children. The last three are triplets. The last of the triplets has purple hair. The middle triplet vanishes mysteriously, a mad scientist shows up, there are three mysterious penguins named Spots, Stripes, and Solids, and you’ll just have to read THE PENGUINS OF DOOM to find out the rest. :D

Where did you get the idea for your book?

The idea for INTO THE WILD grew from two separate ideas that I’d been playing with for a while:

1) What if a girl had a monster under her bed, and her mother knew about it?
2) If Rapunzel lived in the here and now, she would own a hair salon.

From there, I had the idea that the girl was Rapunzel’s daughter (whom I named Julie), and the monster was the essence of fairy tales (the Wild) … and the rest simply evolved over the course of 6,523 drafts to become:

500 years ago, Rapunzel escaped the fairy tale with her fellow storybook characters to live incognito in our world. But now Julie’s world, our world, is about to change — the fairy tale wants its characters back.

Where did you get the idea for your book?

My book is a sketch journal by an 11 year old girl who goes camping with relatives she dislikes.

The idea to do a book in that style came from fellow writers: When I returned home from my first big national SCBWI conference in NYC in February, 2005, with a sketchbook full of what happened in NYC, I put it all on my website. (http://ruthexpress.com)
Fellow writers saw it and urged me to do a kids’ book in that style. I didn’t think it would sell, but they insisted I try. So I did. A week later an agent contacted me.

The idea for the book came from my childhood. I camped often with my huge family.
The characters are all me and most are also my relatives. I refuse to get more specific on the grounds it may incriminate me. :)

Where did you get the idea for your book?

I got the idea for To Catch a Mermaid while jogging in Stanley Park in Vancouver, BC. The tide was out, exposing beautiful tide pools. Lots of kids were playing in the pools, delighting at the things they discovered. I realized that one of the universal joys of childhood is discovering things. What would be a neater thing to discover in a tidepool than a baby mercreature? And so, the story was born.

Where did you get the idea for your book?

I adore factories and assembly lines and complicated Rube Goldberg machines. And I’ve always wanted to visit the Acme factory that supplied dynamite (and odder equipment) to Wile E. Coyote. Since I couldn’t find a real Acme factory to visit, I slid into the cartoon universe and brought it back here via REALITY LEAK.

Where did you get the idea for your book?

I took a self-guided tour where each person was handed a Walkman with a cassette tape inside. Standing in front of each display, you pressed PLAY and the narrator told you what you were looking at. Then you hit STOP and moved on to the next display…or stayed to admire the first display for as long as you wanted without a tour guide yelling at you to “Keep up!” I’ve always been drawn to books with unique formats and kept the self-guided tour idea in the back of my mind for a future book. Instead of chapters, there would be sides of cassette tapes (Chapter 1 = Cassette 1: Side A, Chapter 2 = Cassette 1: Side B, etc…). But it was many years later that the storyline to 13 REASONS WHY hit me: A teenager decides to take her own life, but instead of writing a suicide note, she records thirteen stories about thirteen people who pushed her toward that decision and mails the tapes to the first person on her list. The book reads as sort of a double first-person narrative, her tapes are listened to by one of the thirteen people as he walks a self-guided tour around town.

Where did you get the idea for your book?

My book YUMMY is inspired by a true story. In the summer of ‘94, I was teaching workshops in a school in south-central LA. A story broke about an 11 year old gangbanger who killed a neighborhood girl and went into hiding. As the days passed, more and more facts came out about this boy, how he’s been abused since age 2, how he’d been in and out of juvie centers his whole life, how he had committed 23 felonies by the time he was 11. How the gangs used these shorties for their dirty work because they couldn’t be convicted as an adult.

Then came the stories about why he was named Yummy: for his love of sweets. More stories about how he loved the Little Rascals, his bike, Minnie Mouse. I started following the story with the kids around me. Was Yummy a thug or a victim? Who was to blame for his actions? Himself? His abusive parents? The system that kept turning him out onto the streets? His gang?

Then 3 days later, he was found dead, assassinated by another teenager in the gang he was trying to impress. Yummy had caused so much attention to be focused on his gang that he had become a liability.

I could not forget this story. The story made the cover of TIME magazine. I was a filmmaker at the time and wrote a screenplay that became a Sundance finalist. But everytime I started to think about making it, something stopped me. Film was too immediate, too graphic. The film would be rated R, so only adults would see it. And as powerful as it was, it was just too depressing.

Years passed, ideas floated around about how to tell this story the best: theater? Radio? Art installation? Interactive CDROM? Then I realized, I needed a narrator, someone who would struggle with these events as many did. A child, in the neighborhood…

Yummy became a graphic novel, a perfect synergy between the film and children’s stories I was now writing. It would hit the audience that it needed to: boys, ages 10 and up, right at the age where they were struggling with these ideas. The medium would get reluctant readers to read about serious issues not just fantasy. It would catch them off guard, plant a seed.

That’s when I knew I had a book.

Where did you get the idea for your book?

Where did the idea for TOBY WHEELER: 8TH GRADE BENCHWARMER come from?

As a senior in high school, I rode the bench on the varsity basketball team. I averaged less than a point a game and once forced a turnover without a single second ticking off the clock. Good times. For the book, I wanted to tell the story of a basketball season as seen through the eyes of a benchwarmer. Now, there are two species within the benchwarmer genus. Happy-to-be-here benchwarmers, which is what I was. And get-me-in-the-game now benchwarmers. Toby had to be the second kind if there was going to be any tension. What happens to him during the season, and the ideas for game situations, came less from personal experience than from imagination, reading, and surfing coaching websites. But if I hadn’t been the twelfth man (of twelve) on that basketball team, this book probably never would have happened.

Where did you get the idea for your book?

BRENDAN BUCKLEY’S UNIVERSE & EVERYTHING IN IT is a result of my pondering the question: “What if my white grandparents had never accepted my black father, and by extension, me?”

Where did you get the idea for your book?

About two miles from my house, there’s an old, but charming house that for years had a rusted sign posted in the front yard that read, “Beauty Shop for Rent … fully equipped, inquire within.” I passed it nearly every day, but never thought much of it.

At the time, I was struggling to write a mystery novel that I just couldn’t get a grip on. Then one day, I passed the sign and thought, wow, will the owner ever find a renter? I wondered what she was like. Probably old, probably frustrated because she can’t retire … but really, who has a home beauty salon these days? Most people go to the mall, so who would want to rent her old-fashioned shop?

Then I thought … hmm, what would happen if you threw a teenager in this woman’s old-fashioned world? I was so intrigued with the idea that I tossed the mystery novel aside, and started to write this young girl’s story. I had no doubt what the title should be. Exactly what was written on that sign!

Where did you get the idea for your book?

My book had a long gestation period. The seed for CARPE DIEM was planted nearly ten years ago while visiting Malaysia. I wanted to write about how travel transforms you – like it or not. And how it brings out the “Extreme You” – the real self with all its flaws, idiosyncrasies, and prejudices. In extreme conditions you have no energy or time or resources to keep up a polite façade. You are raw and reactionary. And living in America, we’re often so sheltered we never get a chance to experience it.

Initially, the plot revolved around “a recently married expat couple transformed while living in Malaysia.” I sketched an outline, but eventually set it aside to pursue other projects. I picked it up again a few years later when adventures in Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam provided more material for a potential novel and reinforced the Southeast Asia theme. By now the plot changed to “an overachieving single woman transformed after a backpacking trip through Southeast Asia.” Career changes gave me the time to focus my attention completely on the novel.

To nudge my muse, I returned to Bangkok to stay at the kitschy Atlanta Hotel (www.theatlantahotel.bizland.com/pic.html) where I wrote for a month as a “writer in residence.” (If you’re ever in Thailand, you’ve got to check this place out – especially if you’re a fan of vintage 1950s décor in an Asian setting.) Anyway, during my stint in Bangkok, I realized my “voice” wasn’t adult, but young adult and my heroine was sixteen, not thirty. (I love it when the book makes decisions for you!) So the plot changed yet again to “a teen overachiever transformed after backpacking through Southeast Asia with her bohemian grandma.” But — I didn’t know how to end it. Then I decided to take a break from writing and go trekking through Laos. And there in a remote jungle, I experienced a “can’t-believe-it’s-true” adventure. I’d found my ending!

Where did you get the idea for your book?

I was channel surfing one night and I happened upon a televised Texas Hold’em tournament. I had never seen the game played before, but after quickly picking up the rules, I was hooked. Each hand was its very own mini-drama with lying, deceit, and deception. Risk and reward. And lots of money. Right then, I realized something that writers of Westerns have known for decades…poker mirrors a perfect drama.

I sat down at my laptop and cranked out a little 10-page story about a kid who blows all his money at a poker game. I loved the story, but did not see the novel potential until it fermented on my hard drive for a few months. When it percolated long enough, I realized the whole story was right there in the deepest recesses of my brain waiting for me to let it out.

And out it came. The first draft took only a few months to complete (in the evenings). Revisions took much longer!

Where did you get the idea for your book?

Years ago, I knew a black woman named Judith whose best friend was white. When her friend died, her infant daughter was then adopted by Judith. I know black children are often adopted by white couples, but you rarely see it the other way around. As I watched her daughter grow, I often wondered what it would be like to be white, growing up in an all-black environment. This planted the original seeds for my story—my main character is white, yet lives in a black neighborhood and attends a primarily black school. I’ve worked in an inner-city hospital for many years, and what I’ve always loved about it is the melding of two cultures.