First off, thanks so much for joining us for an up-close and personal interview for TeensReadToo.com! My name is Jen, and I’ll be your server toda…oh, wait, wrong job! Anyway, thanks so much for taking time out of your writing schedule—which I’m sure is busy!—and answering a few questions for your readers and fans.
Let’s get some of the typical interview questions out of the way first. When did you first know that you wanted to be a writer?
When I was seven, I used to carry around a journal and write stories and poems in it all the time, so I think I knew then. In sixth grade, we had to do a project on what we wanted to be when we grew up and a writer visited our classroom and I thought, “people do this for a job!” and that’s when I really decided that I wanted to keep writing.
Can you tell us a little bit about your road to publishing?
In college I studied writing and theatre and ended up getting my teaching credential and becoming a high school theatre and English teacher. I spent my first years of teaching really learning to become a teacher so I wasn’t writing much. Then, I wrote my first novel on an off for about five years and started shopping it through query letters to agents and independents. I got a ton of input from my teenage students. Then, I got some encouragement from a really great agent at the Big Sur Writing conference and she really worked with me on what I needed to do with the manuscript. Before I started shopping it intensely to agents or publishers, a small independent publisher who had read it through another writing workshop I was attending, approached me about publishing it as their first YA fiction title.
Tell us a little bit about either your latest or upcoming release. If you could only tell your readers one thing about the story that had to convince us to buy the book, what would it be?
My title is called Songs for a Teenage Nomad. Everyone has a sound track – we walk around with the music that helps make us who we are. What is the sound track of your life?
What, or who, has been the greatest inspiration for your stories?
My students really provide the great inspiration for my stories. I have found in my ten years of teaching high school that teenagers are these complex, amazing, idealistic and interesting people. I feel like our culture really gives them a hard time, expects too little from them. They are the future and teaching them was and is a daily inspiration.
Let’s hear about your family, who I’m sure are thrilled to have a published author among them!
I have been married for almost eight years to Peter Sagebiel who is a teacher and academic dean of a local Charter school. He is my biggest fan and the most supportive husband a writer could ever hope for. I think the book made it to the publishing arena because he just kept encouraging me to write it. My daughter, Anabella, is three and a half going on fifteen and she now has her own “journal” and loves to tell stories in it. Mostly they are about bugs and fairies and My Little Ponies. My parents were both high school teachers and ALWAYS supported my writing, including the one summer during college where I lived at home and wrote a novel (one I decided to not try to publish because it was mostly where I just learned to write a novel). My sister is just multi-talented in all the areas I’m not so she’s a perfect balance for me. She designed my webpage and she’s an analytical chemist with an MBA. She’s a great resource for me because she gets things like marketing and business and I just don’t. =) I have the most supportive friends in the world and a rock of a writing community around me, something I think every writer can benefit from.
Now for some fun facts. What’s your greatest comfort food?
Homemade macaroni and cheese and also ice cream and chocolate (can I have three greatest comfort foods?) =)
What are the first three things you do when you wake up in the morning?
Drink the latte my husband makes me each morning (he’s a keeper!), kiss my daughter, put in my contacts…not always in the same order.
If I came to your house and looked in your closet/attic/basement, what’s the one thing that would surprise me the most?
All the sports stuff. Because I’m a drama teacher and I write novels, people assume that I’m only about arty stuff, but I’m a total sports nut. I played basketball in high school and college and I LOVE football – go Chargers!
Everyone asks the question about “if you could be a tree, which tree would you be?” so I want to know: If you could be a color, which color would it be, and why?
Hmmmm….I think indigo because it’s not really blue and not really purple and blue is deep and has shadows and purple is happy and bright.
Who is your favorite cartoon character?
Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes.
Which cartoon character is most like you?
I wish is was Wonder Woman but I think it’s more Susie from Calvin and Hobbes.
If you could beam yourself to anywhere in the world (“Beam me up, Scotty!”), during any time in history, where and when would it be—and why?
I would have really loved to see Italy during the Renaissance, all that art and creation and vision and humanism. But it would be probably better to be a man in the Renaissance so I feel pretty lucky to live where I live now.
So what’s your favorite type of music to listen to? Favorite musical artists? Do you listen to music while you’re writing?
Music is obviously a big deal to me since so much of my novel is about music. Favorites? Ben Harper, Jack Johnson, Counting Crows, Ani DiFranco, Bare Naked Ladies, Joshua Radin, Everclear, Aimee Mann, Schulyer Fisk, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Dave Matthews, and anyone who has good lyrics. I’m a lyrics girl. And I do listen to music while I write…mostly whatever mood I’m intending to set in a certain scene or whatever is playing in the café speakers if I’m writing in a café =)
Do you have any favorite T.V. shows? Movies you watch over and over again? What was the last movie you saw at the theater?
Favorite TV shows of all time: Freaks and Geeks, Seinfeld, The West Wing, Will and Grace, Friends, The Daily Show
Movies I’ll watch over and over: Chocolat, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, Dead Poets Society, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, almost anything of Cameron Crowe’s but Say Anything has a special place in my heart.
Favorite Teen movies (it gets its own category!) Better Off Dead, Clueless, Mean Girls, The Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink (okay, anything by John Hughes!), and, of course, Say Anything – I think every girl in my generation wantied a guy to hold a stereo outside our windows…
Last movie at the theatre: (I have a three year old so we don’t go to the movies much…I think it was The Chronicles of Narnia…that was a long time ago…I need to go to the movies more). The last movie I watched on DVD was Orange County (which appealed to my years as a college advisor and I thought Colin Hanks was darling!)
You have the chance to give one piece of advice to your teen readers. What would it be?
Keep writing and reading and watching good movies- stories make up the fabric of who we are as people. Tell them, read them, hear them, watch them…they make us human.
One last question. What stories can we look forward to from you in the future?
I am currently working on the screen adaptation of Songs for a Teenage Nomad for a producer who has optioned the script. And I just started my second novel which is just starting to form itself so I can’t say too much about it yet other than expect another strong female teenager!
Again, thanks so much for joining us at TeensReadToo.com!
Thank you for your wonderful site!!
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