Luisa interviews Susie Day, author of Big Woo! (reviewed here) and Girl Meets Cake (reviewed here).
Hello Susie. What gave you the idea for Girl Meets Cake?
Tissues! My friend gave me some with 'she liked imaginary men best of all' printed on them, due to my tendency to have TV boyfriends (“I can't come out, I have an important date with Captain Jack Harkness!”). So I decided to write about a fangirly character who's used to conducting wild imaginary romances with boys off the telly, and who suddenly starts doing the same thing in her real life. Once I'd had the idea, I was amazed by how many people confessed to having invented a fictional boyfriend to impress their teenage friends.
Would you say you're quite an 'online' person?
I wear my Geek shirt with pride! I'm always pottering around on a couple of different blogs/social networks, and I do everything on my website myself - design as well as content. Sometimes the internet is a maddening distraction: I'm an awful procrastinator, and since I write on my laptop, it's always tempting to wander off and read half an hour's worth of TV Tropes between paragraphs. But there are some awesome sites for recommending and discussing YA fiction out there (including Chicklish, of course!), and it's a great way to stay in touch with readers.
I read in your author bio that you've worked in international schools. Are they anything like the "Hogwarty castles" that Heidi first imagined, and what do the students there think of your authordom?
There are some boarding schools that are in grand ancient buildings perched on a hill, but I've never worked in one. They're usually like other schools to look at, to be honest: no mahogany-panelled dining rooms replete with candle-lit wild boar, or teachers striding around in academic gowns. But on the personal level, the fact that most of the students don't go home to their families at the end of the day makes a huge difference. For one thing, it matters an awful lot more whether or not you have nice pyjamas. The students at my current school are very busy being aloof and grown-up, so I try not to annoy them too much with my writing – but there are always a few who are tickled to know I have this secret other life.
Big Woo! was called Serafina67 in the US. Will Girl Meets Cake change its name for US release? And did you need a linguistic glossary for American audiences, like Louise Rennison?
Girl Meets Cake will be known as My Invisible Boyfriend for the US release next year, and actually I've rewritten a few things, so it does feel a bit like a different book. We did a glossary for serafina67, but I don't think this book needs it: Heidi has her own set of weirdnesses, but she's not quite as linguistically mental as Sera was, so I hope US readers won't have too much trouble understanding her. I'm always intrigued to see which things my editor picks up on: they're never the obvious ones like trousers vs pants, or whether Gok Wan is on TV over there too; it's always something tiny about the way I've written a sentence that I never imagined would be confusing. I grew up reading masses of US teen fiction (Judy Blume, Paula Danziger, Paul Zindel), and the fact that it was about a culture that was a little bit like my own, but also completely different, was a huge part of the appeal, so I'm glad my books are still 'British' over there. And every now and then someone in the US mentions the fact that I'm Welsh, which fills me with absurd glee. (I may be a traitorous Welsh person who doesn't live there anymore and has lost all her accent entirely, but I reckon I'm still entitled to enjoy any reaction which isn't 'Is that in England?')
What's your favourite biscuit and/or cake?
What a question! I could be here for days, but it comes down to a straight-up fight between shortbread and carrot cake. My Auntie Liz makes this shortbread that's just so perfectly crumbly, but crunchy, and there's this soft shelf of sugar on the top to bite into. (Luisa's note: the shortbread in the picture is not Susie's Auntie Liz's shortbread.) But then a fresh home-made carrot cake, with cinnamon and walnuts and strandy bits of carrot, plus icing that's creamy but not too cheesy - oh! So shortbread for the biscuit and carrot for the cake. I can have both, right? (Definitely. Yum.)
Are you writing (or will you be writing) more books for teenagers?
Of course: it's addictive stuff, teen fiction. My next book is about a girl called Becky who sends an email to herself ten years in the future, only to get a reply from her future self – who isn't at all the person Becky expected to become, and who seems very keen to offer her advice. It's still in the early stages, but hopefully it'll be out next year. I'm excited, because it's the first time I've written a teen novel with a 'fantasy' element, so the rules are a little different. Keep your fingers crossed for Becky, though, because I still haven't quite figured out how it ends yet...
It sounds brilliant and I can't wait! Thank you very much, Susie Day.
Susie Day's Internet Top Five (guest post for Chicklish)
Really nice interview.
And I agree with the biscuits, Shortbread is one of my two favourites. Is it strange that I've never tried carrot cake/know what it looks like? Oh well, Google Images will have the answer...
Kate
Posted by: Katie Pinn | 10 April 2009 at 10:52 AM
Woohoo for Susie! Great interview, she rocks. Her next book sounds brilliant!
Posted by: Jenny | 10 April 2009 at 11:01 AM
Excellent post! I stumbled upon this blog and I'm glad I did. I'm a writer and totally agree with Susie about teen fiction being addictive stuff. Great interview. I'll definitely be coming back regularly. Thank you!
Posted by: Robin Rice | 12 April 2009 at 09:22 PM
Hi Robin, thanks for stopping by and thanks for your comment! I've been looking at your site too - it's great!
Posted by: Luisa | 12 April 2009 at 09:31 PM