Enthralled Magazine Vol 1 Issue 8 - Fantasize

more like children’s fiction. I have yet to branch out into other genres, though I
would like to at some stage.
Q4 At Somerset you said you started with your blog, then you wrote your
book. Did you get an agent because you had a blog?
I think that the contacts I made through my blog and the fact that I could
demonstrate my passion for YA and my ability to promote my work both
worked in my favour – but I don’t think I would have been able to find representation
had the book not been good enough. The work itself is what really
matters.
Q5 What do you gain most out of attending writing festivals?
Writing is an isolating profession and you rarely get to speak to your audience
directly, so actually getting to present to kids and talk about books and literature
is a lot of fun, and I think helps to remind me why I write the kind of books
I do. (Plus it is awesome to meet kids who have actually read my books, and
getting to sign books remains a really terrific – and surreal – highlight.)
Q6 Do you draw from your own life experiences/family/places to write?
Absolutely! Sometimes in quite direct ways – in Night Swimming, the character
of Kirby’s grandfather is heavily based on someone in my family who has dementia
– and sometimes more indirectly – in All This Could End, Nina’s parents
are bank robbers, which is not from my own life, but I drew on my own feelings
of being loyal to family, as well as that process of growing up and realising that
your parents aren’t perfect and that adults don’t know everything. (It’s a little
more extreme for Nina but it’s still essentially the same emotional experience.)
Q7 When you wrote Girl Saves Boy did you approach an agent?
When I finished writing Girl Saves Boy, I queried a few agents based on recommendations
from another writer and ended up signing with an agent who had