Kellie M. Parker

Kellie M. Parker grew up traveling the United States and Europe as a US Navy brat. She attended high schools in three states and was too nerdy to ever sit at the cool kids’ table. With books as her most reliable companion, it was only a matter of time before she decided to write one herself. She has college degrees in biology and nautical archaeology but has always found her sense of adventure most satisfied by a great story.

Parker lives in west Michigan with her husband and four kids. She writes about brave, smart teens trying to figure out who they are and where they belong. When she’s not plotting her next fictional murder, she can be found baking, gardening, tackling DIY home projects, and reading to her kids.

Thin Air is her debut YA novel.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

I admit that coming up with book titles is normally a challenge for me, but the title for Thin Air came to me pretty early on in the drafting process. This title stuck out to me for a few reasons. It’s short, which usually works well for thrillers. It implies a sense of danger or mystery since it’s hard to breathe when there’s not enough oxygen. Last of all, it relates to the book’s setting--almost the entire story takes place on an airplane at 42,000 feet. And as readers will find out, the characters find themselves in a dangerous situation almost right after takeoff. The air up there is very thin indeed!

What's in a name?

Like book titles, I often struggle with naming characters also. My go-to solution is to use baby name finders on my internet search engine, based on the year the character would’ve been born. Then I scroll through the list of popular names for that year, looking for something that feels like a good fit for the character’s personality. For Thin Air, I used Pinterest to find images for each of my characters. Once I had a mental picture, narrowing down the right names was easier.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your new novel?

As a teenager, I loved reading all kinds of novels, but I definitely included a number of mysteries in my reading “diet.” Thin Air follows a group of boarding school students who are competing for a scholarship—one someone is willing to kill to win. As a teen reader who also happened to be an overachiever, I think I would’ve related well to these characters and how important success is to them. I would’ve loved the twists and turns as I tried to figure out who the killer was. Would I have guessed correctly? Hmm, not sure about that one!

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

I think I feel more pressure when I’m writing a beginning, because it sets the tone for the whole story. If I don’t “get it right,” then I worry the story will run off the rails right at the start. So in that sense, I think endings are easier. By the time I get to the end, I know the characters very well and my subconscious brain has pulled together all the loose threads of the story into a nice, tight ending. But because I’m often tired of drafting and ready to be done, I tend to rush my endings and need to go back later to flesh them out more. Beginnings are harder, but I change the ending more during revisions.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

To some extent, all my characters are infused with little bits of me, whether it’s a personality trait, an interest or skill, or something from their backstory. I think that’s a natural outflow of writing characters you care about. But I don’t want them to be clones of myself, so I make sure to round them out with plenty of things that are different, even if they’re small. Emily, the main character of Thin Air, is much more extroverted and “popular” than I was in high school. She also drinks a lot of Diet Coke, which I can’t stand. But she’s smart, loyal to those she loves, and has a quirky sense of humor like I do.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

My writing tends to be shaped by two major non-literary inspirations: my love of learning and my love of travel. I’ve got a pretty good storehouse of random information in my brain after years of learning about things that interest me, and these facts often work their way into whatever I’m writing. And because of all the places I’ve been able to visit, setting is very important to me in my work. I want the setting to feel real to readers and to play such an important role in the story that it couldn’t happen the same way if it were set somewhere else. For Thin Air, I loved being able to research private luxury planes and thinking about how to use elements of the setting to propel the story forward.

Visit Kellie M. Parker's website.

--Marshal Zeringue