Last week I was invited to interview the very talented Lara Morgan while she was in town on her book tour. Lara is the author of The Rosie Black Chronicles, the first book in the series, Genesis was released last year (see our review here), with the second book, Equinox, due out in November this year.

Check out our chat below, followed by some shots from her signing at Dymocks on George st in the city (Sydney). That outting coincided with the Water For Elephants premiere, with crews setting up barricades and fans setting up camp just around the corner to reserve the best vantage point for Robert Pattinson’s red carpet arrival (oh and Reese Witherspoon was there too…but that fans were basically there for Rob, sorry Reese).  The city was insane…

You’re in Sydney for 3 days for the book tour, with today being your last day. Have you done a book tour before?

No, actually, this is my first time at getting driven around by people who I called minions yesterday. One of the kids at one of the talks asked, “who are those people?” and I said, “oh they’re my minions” and they were like, “what’s minions mean?” [laughs]

Have you done a book signing before?

I have done signings before, for when my first book came out, Awakening, which is a fantasy book, and I did a few signings for that and I’ve done a few for Rosie Black as well.

So Genesis is your 3^rd book, which came out last October and Equinox will be coming out in November. What’s it like seeing quite a few books now on your bookshelf with your name on it?

It’s kind of surreal, because you know, I feel like those books belong to someone else, even though I am one now [an author]. I’ve got a special bookshelf for them at home, where I have the twins fantasy books [Twins of Saranthium series], plus the international versions, it’s come out in German now which is awesome even though I can’t read it [laughs], plus Rosie Black is up there as well. If I’m ever having a bad day it’s nice to look at them and see that I actually am an author, I call myself that now, so it’s a pretty cool feeling.

I had looked around other review sites such as Goodreads, and Rosie Black has been really well received, lots of 4 or 5 star reviews. Were you ever surprised by that reaction?

Um, I think I’m always hopeful. I hold myself back from reading reviews because I always actually fear that no one’s going to like what you do and will say, I can’t believe you wrote this, it’s absolutely crap or you should just go away and die. [laughs] There’s always this thing in the back of your head that says, you don’t know what you’re doing. So it’s always such a nice surprise, to see people say something nice about something you’ve spent so much time working on. I like to comment on reviews sometimes.

What stage is Equinox at now? Is it finished?

I’ve submitted it to the publishers and I’ve been talking with the editors about it, it’s at the major editorial stage right now, just tidying it up and streamlining the plot before we do the copy edits, so there’s still quite a bit of work to do. The story’s there, we just have to make sure it all makes sense before we go ahead.

So how does your writing process work? Do you start from the story? The characters?

Well, I always find that the story is driven by the characters. I do the background as well, which is something I have to think about a lot as well when writing something like the Rosie Black series, I had to come up with the world that the characters exist in. I do a little plot map, I draw a line on a big piece of paper, one of those artist blocks, and I think, ok, this is where Rosie’s gonna start, this is where I see the story ending and in the middle there’s this big climactic thing happening. Then I might put some points in between, and then I start writing, and as I go along, I figure out if the little things are worth doing and it changes a lot. Generally the beginning and the end doesn’t change, but the middle can change.

The world Rosie Black lives in is essentially a dystopia, which has been very popular this year for young adult books. Why do you think that is?

I think kids today can see the problems of the world, they’ve grown up hearing about these things, and it’s gotten worse as they get older. So of course, they’ve got these concerns and it’s something that interests them, it’s something that they think about.

Do you have a favourite moment from the book?

I like writing the moments between Rosie and Pip, and they’re often the hardest to write. I love a love story, I’ve got lots of deleted bits between Rosie and Pip. Just the moments between them, as their relationship grows .

You’ve done a few interviews now, quite a few talks, is there a question that you wish someone would ask?

I get so many good questions, probably not, kids tend to ask things that are just off the wall. One question I wish they wouldn’t ask all the time is, where do you get your ideas from and it’s almost impossible to answer because I get ideas from anywhere. I understand why people don’t know and they want to ask it, but it’s just from everywhere.

If you could spend the day with any author dead or alive who would you pick?

Ohhh….

You can pick more than one

Ursula Le Guin, I love her, I just want to be around her, maybe absorb some of her genius. Eoin Colfer, I think he’d be really funny, and Jane Austen, it would be so cool to talk to her, to find out what she was really thinking.

Last one, we’ll end on a fun one – crunchy or smooth peanut butter?

Crunchy, absolutely, what’s the point of smooth? [laughs]

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Signed copies are now available at the Dymocks’ city store, so if you couldn’t make it to the signing, you can always head into the store on George st, Sydney and pick up a copy Saskia (center) from TeaMouseBooks.com also came along, and as you can see from out shot with Lara, we’re happy customers, haha.

A big thank you goes out to the very lovely Jo at Walker Books

Lorraine Zago Rosenthal is the author of the incredible new novel, Other Words For Love. If you haven’t already got a copy, you must, must check it out. Lorraine was nice enough to let us steal some of her time for an interview (as well a great guest post which you can read here).

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You have a B.A. in Psychology, (which is very impressive!) what made you opt to take up writing as opposed to a career in that field?

Thank you! I began writing at a young age and had initially planned to major in English in college, but instead chose to study psychology because it was also a subject that interested me. I really enjoyed studying psychology, and this knowledge assists in fiction writing. To create believable characters, you have to consider their background, experiences, and everything else that affects them emotionally. I never planned to work in the field of psychology, and I later went on to earn graduate degrees in education and English. Throughout my education I was always writing and hoped to become an author.

Other Words For Love is incredibly heartbreaking but also moving and a story a lot of people can learn from and relate to – what inspired you to write it?

I’m a character-driven writer, and the characters were what came to me first. Ari and her family were in my mind for quite a while before I fully understood Ari’s story and began to write it. When that story crystallized, I just wanted to tell it and to share it with readers. Ari was my inspiration all along.

Most reviews I’ve read for OWFL have been incredibly positive, many with a 5 star rating, were you surprised by the response?

I was hoping for a good response but because fiction is so subjective, I knew that not all readers would give my novel five stars. I have therefore been pleasantly surprised and very grateful for the immensely positive response.

It was so interesting reading a book set in the 80s which has barely been touched on in YA Fiction, why that decade?

There are a few reasons why I chose to set the story during the 1980s. As you mentioned, the 1980s are a neglected era in YA fiction. The only other YA novel I know of that is set during this decade is The Carrie Diaries. There is YA fiction set in the 1800s, 1920s, etc., so why not the 1980s? This decade is as valid historically as any other, and I believe that no time period should be restricted from the YA genre. There are stories to tell from the viewpoint of young people in every era.

I thought that if teens could identify with historical fiction—time periods with cultures and values so different from now—then they could easily relate to a time period that they didn’t live through but wasn’t all that long ago. The ideals of the 1980s weren’t exactly the same as today, but they weren’t completely different, either. I also thought that adults who read YA fiction and lived through the 1980s might connect with the story.

But the main reason I set Other Words for Love in the 1980s is that the story wouldn’t work in the present day. As I mentioned, culture and values weren’t radically different then, but they weren’t exactly the same as today. For example—in the novel, Ari’s sister has a baby when she is seventeen years old, and although teen pregnancy isn’t encouraged now, I think it has less of a social stigma than it had during the 80s. There was no “Teen Mom” on MTV back then! Ari is more embarrassed about her sister having been a teen mother than she might be today, and Evelyn’s choices are extremely disappointing to her parents.

Also, the issue of AIDS is prevalent throughout the novel. Although AIDS unfortunately still exists, it is better understood than it was during the 80s, when it was new and many people didn’t fully comprehend how it could be contracted. There was an undercurrent of hysteria when AIDS first appeared, and this is present in Other Words for Love.

Finally, although Ari is intelligent and mature, she’s also more innocent than most girls her age would be today—for various reasons. For example, the internet didn’t exist during the 1980s, so teens didn’t have as much access to information as they do now. The 1980s were more conservative than the present time—just take a look at how teens were represented in the media back then as opposed to now.

What’s your favorite thing about the 80s?

I would say my favorite thing about the 1980s is the music. There was a lot of great music back then, especially from English artists who had a very distinctive sound.

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Thanks Lorraine!  You can follow Lorraine on twitter – @lorrainezr

Check out our review of Other Words For Love here.

Other Words For Love is available in store in the U.S. and online via Amazon or Book Depository for international readers.

Myra McEntire is the debut author of Hourglass, which will be available in May. Without spoiling anything, Myra took the time to answer a few questions and open up about what went into writing Hourglass.

How does it feel to publish your first novel? Is the publishing process everything you expected?

Emerson is a very sarcastic and witty person. Are you or is someone you know that sarcastic?

Read Kiona’s review of Hourglass.