1. What is the working title of your next book?
All This Could End is the final title. The working title This All Could End. As you can see, dramatically different.
2. Where did the idea come from for the book?
The idea for this novel started as almost all of my ideas do: by wondering ‘what if’. What if I went to the bank one day and someone I knew was robbing it? What if this was someone I’d been close to? What if I were robbing a bank myself? Why would I do that? And how would someone I know react to me holding them hostage in a bank robbery? (This was followed by how cool would this be to write about?) When robberies are reported on the news, I always wonder what these robbers would be like personally. Would they seem perfectly ordinary in person? What are their families like? And from there I progressed to writing about a family of bank robbers.
3. What genre does your book fall under?
Contemporary YA. And there's crime stuff, obviously. It's a bit dramatic. Really, it's the same genre as Girl Saves Boy, but instead of somebody dying it's about a bank robbery.
4. What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
I wouldn't choose. If a movie were being made I would leave everything up to the movie-makers. I don't really have actors in mind for what characters look like, because I don't really imagine my characters being especially conventionally beautiful like the majority of actors. I would like the actors to look like ordinary people, thank you.
5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
"Teenage girl takes former friend hostage in bank robbery, hijinks ensue"? Clearly I am not that good at one-sentence synopses. That is a very condensed version.
6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
It's being published by Text Publishing on February 27th of this year.
7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?
Maybe six months. And then almost two years editing after that, on and off.
8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
I should probably have a whole lot of titles in mind here, and I did for Girl Saves Boy, but I guess I haven't thought about it as much this time around. Comparing yourself to others is necessary in a marketing sense but crap for your own writerly self-esteem, I think. I will let other people read it and figure out what books to compare it to, because I can't be objective about my own writing.
9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?
I dedicated the novel to my sister, and lots of things I wrote in the novel were because of her. There are two younger siblings in the novel, because my sister was a preteen while I was writing it, and I wanted to explore the relationship between older and younger siblings. Younger siblings tend to be equal parts hilarious and frustrating, and the sense of obligation and love is often at odds with how short-sighted people can be as teenagers.
I very much wanted to write a book teenage readers could relate to, and I think having people read my first novel and write to me about how much they enjoyed it and identified with the characters was a big motivating factor. The things that Nina and Spencer individually go through in the novel – not knowing their place, their shared sense of uncertainty about the future, the complexity of familial relationships – are things I hope readers will be able to relate to.
10. What else about the book might pique the reader's interest?
Well, there's a bank robbery.
Okay, maybe I should think of something else. There's a sister that communicates only through lollies, a crazy but delightful mother (it's very much a book about realising that your parents are not always right, especially if they are dangerous criminals), an obnoxious best friend with an obsession with bassists, a little bit of grand theft auto, and lots of secrets. It's a novel that attempts to be both silly and heartfelt and I very much hope it succeeds.
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You're supposed to tag people with these meme things but I'm not very good at that. If you do this meme (or have done it), you should comment the link so I can read it! I am always very curious about what people have to say about their own books.
