Friday, April 3, 2009

Elizabeth Scott

From a Q & A with YA novelist Elizabeth Scott about her forthcoming novel, Love You Hate You Miss You:

What was your inspiration for writing Love You Hate You Miss You?

I sat down to write with only the vaguest of ideas of what it was going to be about, actually. But what I wrote first is still the start of the book—Amy's first letter to Julia—and it was then, after that letter, that Amy's story started unfolding in my head and I took a lot of notes and then dove right back into her world. And I'm glad I did, even if Love You Hate You Miss You ended up being one of only two stories I've ever written that made me cry while I was writing a scene!

As Amy struggles to deal with Julia's death, she learns so much about life. Why was that important in the book?

Amy's so caught up in her life before—her life with Julia—and there's reasons for that. And so, in the beginning, she doesn't want to deal with her life now. She doesn't care about it. But she can't avoid it, and so she has to deal with her life, and that, in turn, starts to make her think about before. And how things were versus how she saw them/wanted them to be.
Read the complete Q & A.

Scott's other books include Bloom, Perfect You, Stealing Heaven, Living Dead Girl, and the newly released Something, Maybe.

Visit Elizabeth Scott's website and blog.

Writers Read: Elizabeth Scott.

--Marshal Zeringue