Today I am extremely excited to have Keris Stainton on the blog with an interview. It is no secret that Keris is one of my favourite authors and I cannot wait for her newest books to be published later this year.
Tell us a bit about your up and
coming release Spotlight on Sunny.
It's the
second book in the Reel Friends series (the first, Starring Kitty, came out
last year) and this one focusses on Sunny, who is British Asian. The girls go
to London for a film-making course and Sunny also has to deal with an annoying
roommate, a cute boy, and the secret she's keeping from Kitty and Hannah.
I love that the characters in
your books are diverse and was especially excited to hear that Sunny was
getting her own book. Why is it so important to include diverse characters in
fiction?
Quite
simply because the world is diverse, the readers are diverse, why wouldn't you
show that in fiction?! There are so many people doing amazing things in this
area now - not least the fantastic We Need Diverse Books campaign - but the
thing that really made me stop and think was Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's TED
Talk, The Danger of a Single Story. She said, "Because all I had read were
books in which characters were foreign, I had become convinced that books by
their very nature had to have foreigners in them and had to be about things
with which I could not personally identify... I did not know that people like
me could exist in literature. " Everyone should watch it.
Starring
Kitty and Spotlight on Sunny have been classes as MG by some and YA by others.
Which do you think it is? Does it matter?
I think
because they are probably in the grey area between MG and YA! I think maybe
that's what 'clean teen' is, but I'm not sure. I think of them as 10-14-ish and
that's not really a category that we have (even though LOADS of books fit right
in there). I'm not sure if it does matter, to be honest. I go back and forth. I
think maybe it does because we have the UKYA campaigns and the wonderful new MG
Strikes Back site, so the in between books might get missed because they're not
so easily categorised, but do readers really take much notice of these
categories anyway? I don't know. Clear as mud, sorry.
I love series that are companion
novels rather than the traditional series. Will there be more from Kitty, Sunny
and their friends?
I hope
so! Would love for Hannah to get her own book too, but no news yet.
I also want to know more about
Counting Stars your next novel. Can you tell us anything yet?
I think
so... It's set in Liverpool and it's for older readers. Older than anything
I've written before (under my own name anyway). It's about a group of friends
sharing a house and working, having fun, getting drunk, making terrible
decisions... I hope it's real and funny and a little bit sexy. I'm loving
writing it.
Which authors do you draw
inspiration from when writing?
I'm
incredibly lucky to have a fabulous group of writer friends who are always
there (online) when I need encouragement or support or a kick up the backside,
so they're my main inspiration. Books-wise, I'm not sure I'd be writing YA if I
hadn't read Meg Cabot's The Princess Diaries series.
Which book has been your
favourite read in the past year?
Okay so
my favourite read of the past year was a One Direction fanfic. Shut up.
(Seriously though.) That aside - ahem - Pea's Book of Holidays by Susie Day is
full of joy. Only Ever Yours by Louise O'Neill blew me away (and depressed the
hell out of me, but still). I thought Alex as Well by Alyssa Brugman was
brilliant. Oh and not YA (or MG) but I think everyone should read What the ****
Is Normal? by Francesca Martinez. (Sorry, were you hoping for just one?)
Which five characters from
fiction would you invite to a dinner party and why?
Oh help.
This is too hard. Can I take five from the One Direction fanfic? You know
why.
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