This week, I'm touring E. Lockhart, author of FLY ON THE WALL -- check out all the fun things on her site ... and be sure to read an excerpt



But first, check out the answers to my "standard" questions!

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR TYPICAL “WRITING DAY”?
Oh, it is so embarrassing. It involves me in fuzzy slippers and PJs with cute cherries on them. A lot of black coffee.  Young people and husbands and fuzzy animals try to get my attention, and I get distracted and nothing happens for quite a while except email and organizing my calendar and stuff, and then I finally shoo everyone out and open my document and FORCE MYSELF to write. In the middle of a project I aim for a word count -- 1000- 2000 words a day, depending on how fast the story is moving. 

DO YOU RECALL THE KERNEL OF INSPIRATION FOR  THIS BOOK?
I was naked. Which if you read Fly on the Wall is not insignificant. It is a very nudie book. 
I was in the shower, mulling over some titles that I liked -- sometimes it's useful for me to start with a title and work from there. I liked "Fly on the Wall" because it implied a question -- where? where would you like to be a fly on the wall?
Since my audience is young women and teenage girls, the answer suddenly seemed clear. My character would like to be a fly on the wall of the boys' locker room. 

PICK A CHARACTER IN THE BOOK AND TELL US WHAT TRAIT YOU  SHARE (OR COME CLOSEST TO SHARING) WITH THAT CHARACTER.
The central character in Fly on the Wall is Gretchen Kaufman Yee, a New York City art school student, half-Jewish half-Chinese American, later half-human half-insect. She is an ardent comic book fan (Spider-Man in particular), a collector, a bit of a loner, though obsessed with the opposite sex.  
I'm half -Jewish half-WASP, so I share that spit sense of identity with her. I was also writing about finding your voice as an artist when what you want to do is not the same as what your teachers think is worthwhile. This was very true for me in my late teens and 20s. My writing teacher in college thought only lyrical, semi-modernist writing was any good. My grad-school professors thought only scholarship was valuable. It took a long time for me to say to myself, "writing funny novels about angst-ridden high school girls is what I want to do, and I believe I do it well" and then to search out other people like me.  Gretchen has the same problem, only in a different context.


IF YOU WERE  STUCK ON A DESERT ISLAND, WOULD YOU RATHER HAVE A MAGICAL TRUNK THAT GAVE YOU  LIMITLESS BOOKS TO READ, OR A LIMITLESS SUPPLY OF PAPER ON WHICH TO  WRITE?
Oh, the trunk, the trunk, the trunk. I want that trunk so bad I might even go to the island in order to get it. 
I always write for an audience. No audience, no desire to write. 

BEER OR WINE?
I used to date this guy my dad called "the Beer Baron of Michigan" because he owned a micro-brewery near Detroit. So ever since, then, beer. He took me to beer tastings and beer contests and all kinds of things you don't even know exist if you are not dating a beer baron.

CHOCOLATE OR VANILLA?
Dolce de leche. Which is like vanilla with oomph.

WHAT’S YOUR  ALL-TIME FAVORITE BOOK?
I thought we just established that I am a book slut!  I love them all!  Do I have to commit?
Perhaps David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens. It is really so amazingly funny and true. 
Though also a bit sexist. 

****

And now, back to the book ...

Fly on the Wall: How One Girl Saw Everything is about a girl called Gretchen Kaufman Yee who goes to a wacked-out art school in New York City. She's a collector of plastic Chinese food and odd figurines, a passionate comic-book artist, and a crazy Spider-man fanatic. She's also completely freaked out by the opposite sex -- in particular, the Art Rats, a group of guys in her drawing concentration. One day, she wishes she could be "a fly on the wall of the boys' locker room," just to find out what the heck guys really talk about.
And the next thing she knows... she is.
A fly.
On the wall of the locker room. 

Nice Quotes:
“A super-smart, super-sweet, and super-fantastic read.”
-- Sarah Mlynowski , author of Bras & Broomsticks and Milkrun

From The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books:
"The stylish text (rendered nearly multivocal by the periodic font changes) combined with Gretchen's frank fascination with the oddity and then the humanity of the male body and psyche are a rare treat."

From Publishers Weekly:
"Narrator Gretchen Yee will grab readers from the first page with her snappy commentary."

Sounds fab! Be sure to check it out!

// posted by Julie Kenner @ 7:53 PM