editor at Teen People and an advice columnist for Teen, and she has helped with casting for MTV’s award-winning documentary series, True Life.
Her new novel is Libby Lost and Found.
My Q&A with the author:
How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?Visit Stephanie Booth's website.
My original title was The Falling Children Find Their Way Home, which is a nod to the mega-best-selling fantasy book series, The Falling Children, that the main character, Libby Weeks, writes. It took a lot of soul-searching to admit that while I was fond of the title, it wasn't the best entrance into the story.
Libby Lost and Found kinda says it all: Libby has been recently diagnosed with early-onset dementia and feels absolutely adrift in her life. But as she enlists her biggest superfan, an 11-year-old girl named Peanut Bixton, to help her finish her last book in the Falling Children series, they both find parts of themselves they didn't know existed.
So...some heartbreak, but not all heartbreak!
What's in a name?
When I first started writing, the main character's name was Elizabeth. But I started thinking that it felt too competent, if that makes sense. Libby is softer. It sounds like a character in a nursery rhyme or the name of a favorite stuffed rabbit -- something you want to care for. And there's an intentional meekness to her last name, "Weeks."
Libby's 11-year-old sidekick is Peanut Bixton. I wish I could trace back the roots of that name, but it just popped in my head one day. (Maybe there's an unconscious nod there to Turtle Wexler in The Westing Game?) Peanut's the opposite of Libby and her name conveys that. It's odd and doesn't easily roll off the tongue.You have to think about Peanut Bixton as you say it.
How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your new novel?
My teenage self would be too busy getting in trouble to notice this book. There were a few years of my adolescence where I didn't do a lot of reading. But my younger kid self would be thrilled! And probably have a bunch of notes and questions.
Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?
To me, the beginning of a story feels like a house that I have to circle hundreds or thousands of times — in the dead of night! Without a flashlight!— before I find a way in. For Libby Lost and Found, that entrance wasn't where Ithought I was. I hit so many dead-ends until a sentence formed in my head one day on a walk: "The Children are still in the forest." I kept hearing that, and each time I did, another sentence would be attached to it. That became the prologue and helped me understand, "Oh, this is a story within a story." It's not just Libby's life which is in crisis, but her fictional characters.
Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?
Every character in this book feels so alive and distinct from me. I felt like a fly on the wall, watching them go about their lives and hoping they wouldn't notice me.
What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?
There are so many ways I could answer this question, but I'll go with this: Research shows that the average person processes 74GB of information every day, or the equivalent of 16 movies. So what do our brains do with all that information? Where does it put the scrap of conversation you overheard, the SNL joke that made you laugh, the song lyric that won't leave your head, the person who sped by you on the highway who was clearly eating a bowl of hot oatmeal.... I love imagining that writing is your unconscious spinning all this data into something distinct and meaningful.
So in answer to your question...Keeping an open mind, because inspiration is everywhere.
--Marshal Zeringue