My lovely editor, friend and favourite West Australian writer, Amanda Curtin, has tagged me to participate in this book meme - “The Next Big Thing”. It is an embarrassingly inappropriate title in my case. I prefer to name this blog “The Next Hopefully As Moderately Successful WIP Crawling Toward Deadline”. To read about a genuine Next Big Thing please refer to Amanda Curtin’s blog here.
1.What is the working title of your current work in progress/next book?
Open Slather
2.Where did the idea come from?
When I was living in the United States there was a trial involving a teen couple who had become pregnant and decided to hide the pregnancy. They delivered the infant in a motel room and then killed her, disposing of her in a dump bin. The story has never left me. I began to think about what circumstances could possibly convince two affluent, well-educated young people that they had no other choice but this. What are the psychological mechanisms which enable two young people to convince themselves that a human life is just a thing? How do young people become so isolated from, and fearful of, the intervention of parents? What are grown-ups doing within their relationships with young adults to sabotage the one connection that should be the safe place to fall? I approach this with no judgment.
3.What genre does your book fall into?
Young adult/Cross Over.
4.What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?
I do write very visually! (Little movie in my head...) I can see Abigail Breslin as Rose. Logan Lerman would be a great Michael. I would cast Ryan Gosling in there somewhere. Just for funsies. Give me an excuse to lick the screen....
5.What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?
Does doing something monstrous make you a monster?
6.Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
Fremantle Press has given me a deadline based on the first 10,000 words they read. However said read words are no longer the first 10,000. They may not like it so it may be “The Next Big Rejected Thing”. Stay toooooned....
7.How long did it take you to write the first draft?
Bit of a premature question as unfinished. I started making notes in 1997. I started writing real words late 2011. In between I had a husband and child to raise. The husband has since moved on to more bruise-accepting pastures and so I write and write and write...
8.What other books would you compare this to within your genre?
Who knows? And who the fuck cares? Comparisons are so self-defeating. I’ve got one little book out there compared to years and years of dozens and dozens of beautiful, thought provoking YA.
9.Who or what inspired you to write this book?
Refer question 2.
10.What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?
This is a non-judgmental stare at perpetrators of infanticidal manslaughter. Interested?
