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All responses Most smiled responses
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I wrote The Popularity Rules first, so when it came time to have Tasha's professor at Oxford, I realised that of course it would be Kat's mom! All my books take place in the same universe in my mind, so it made sense to have that follow through on the page. You'll also spot some people in PopRules talking about the reality show 5th Avenue, and Tasha's hot-tub scandal, and characters in all my books reference the same pop culture and celebrities: Chris Carmel, Lily Larton, the Alarm, Devon Darsel... It's easier to have fake pop culture, rather than risk celebs doing something to date the reference (see also, the cringeworthy reference to Chris Brown being dreamy in the 1st hardback editions of Sophomore Switch, shudder), plus, I think it's fun to have in-jokes like that for you readers to spot!
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I have family in Canada, and took a great trip out to British Columbia and the Rockies - the landscape there is so amazing, I knew I wanted to set a book in that wild, epic environment. I also had been thinking a lot about how we take up causes so passionately as teens, and environmentalism seems to be a hot topic these days. The idea of someone who is a real Green Teen but who hasn't actually spent much time in the great outdoors.... well, I could see the adventures already!
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We're still playing around with covers and tag lines, but here's some potential cover copy for you... If you promise to keep it off the blogs :)
Will the real Alice Love please stand up?
Alice Love keeps her life (and boss, and family) running in perfect order, so when her bank card is declined, she thinks it's just a simple mistake. Instead, she's fallen victim to identity theft. Someone has emptied every penny from her bank account, spending her hard-earned savings on glamorous holidays, sexy lingerie, and a to-die-for wardrobe-- leaving thousands of pounds of debt in her name.
With her perfectly-organised world crumbling around her, Alice enlists the help of a charming investigator, Nathan, and sets about clearing her name. But as she unravels the intriguing paper trail, she makes a shocking discovery: her thief is closer to home than she ever imagined.
Following the clues from London to Rome and LA, Alice edges deeper into an exciting new world. One where honesty might not be the best policy, rules are made to be broken, and the power of a gorgeous cocktail dress shouldn't be underestimated. Perhaps her alter-ego's reckless, extravagant lifestyle is the one Alice should have been leading all along...
But as her little white lies begin to stack up, how far will Alice go to find the truth? And whose life, exactly, is she fighting for?
Coming July 2010! -
No plans yet, but I've got my fingers crossed!
(There's also a wonderful thing called amazon...) -
CANNOT PICK.
For me, the best meals are always the ones I have off on adventures; I don't remember just the meal but the company, location, everything.
- The braised short-rib at Garden on the Cellar in MA (so good, I dated the chef)
- My first-ever sushi on a roof-deck on my crazy solo trip to Vancouver when I was 16
- Cuban food at this place in LA during my 'Sophomore Switch' research trip
- Bilboquet ice-cream all summer long when I lived in Montreal
- Coconut cream pie on a dock during my road-trip in British Columbia - again with the 'research trips' :)
- Corn dogs in Brooklyn with my best friend.
- Everything at Yuautcha in London
I could go on and on and on... -
All of them - I read them, that is. Oh, the mixed joy that is my google alert! But of course, it's a dangerous game: some people loved the 'unfinished' nature of the end of Sophomore Switch, since it was realistic that way; other were very frustrated. Some people adored how the heroine of The Popularity Rules was rather spiky and aggressive, and then other people found her too unlikeable and wanted a more traditional 'chick-lit-style' character.
The most interesting comment was a reviewer who noted lesbian subtext in The Popularity Rules. The book is about the relationship between Kat and Lauren, who were very best friends in school, until something happened to drive them apart; they don't even speak until 10 years later, when circumstances force them to reunite. So, it's untraditional, in that the focus is this intense female friendship, with a romantic subplot hardly even figuring (at least, not in my original drafts). Now, the Kat/Lauren dynamic is fraught and complex, but to me there aren't sexual undertones - but I can easily see how someone might read that into it if they wanted! -
Ack, my mind is blank for this one! Thing is, when I'm deep in writing, I stop reading almost everything except historical romances and the internet. And now I'm writing *all the time*, that doesn't do much for my reading. So... There's a series of books from the 1950's by Lorna Hill, starting with 'A Dream of Sadler's Wells' about girls who dream of becoming ballerinas, and Northumberland, and a dreamy sardonic future conductor called Sebastian... My mother read them to me as a child, long after I could read them for myself, and I only mention them now because I had dinner with another author, Sarra Manning, and we fell on our shared love of them with such passion and delight that it reminded me how much I adore them. So, for now, it's them :)
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I'd love for one book, one day, to hit 'Devil Wears Prada' levels of success - to just be *everywhere*. Book, film, best-seller lists... It may not be for another 25 years, but I can dream :)
The other thing I really, really want probably has no correlation to sales, but ever since I was a kid, I've looked at the posters on the Underground (London subway system) and wanted one of my books up there. That would be just the best thing.
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