YA New York

Today I am extremely pleased to present an interview with Suzanne Supplee, author of Artichoke’s Heart, recently reviewed here. She is also the author of When Irish Guys are Smiling, and she’s currently working on her next YA novel. Suzanne and I talked on the phone, since she lives in a suburb of Baltimore, Maryland, though of course I’m hoping to meet up with her in person one day when she comes to New York, YA Mecca of the world that it is. Without further ado, the interview is right after the jump.

In case you don’t know the rules, Twenty Questions works like this: I ask one question, the author asks the next. We try to keep our answers one sentence long, but sometimes that rule doesn’t work. Okay, here goes:

Question One

Me: How did you get the idea for Artichoke’s Heart?
Suzanne: Several years ago I was sitting in a salon chair in front of a mirror and I thought, what would it be like work in a place with mirrors everywhere if you didn’t like the way you looked?

Question Two

Suzanne: How did you get the idea for your website?
Me: I was a book reviewer for several years and now that I’m working on my own book and not really earning any income, I can’t afford to buy all the novels that I read every week, so I needed free books.

Question Three

Me: Have you ever struggled with your weight?
Suzanne: In the sense that Rosemary struggles, no, but in the sense that nearly every female struggles, yes.

Question Four

Suzanne: Where did you grow up?
Me: I was an army brat, so I was born in Korea, then moved to Maryland, then moved to Oklahoma, then moved to Mississippi, then finally ended up in New York.

Question Five

Me: How did you learn about Rosemary’s struggle, or invent it, or explore it?
Suzanne: I have to say first that I grew up around people who struggled with weight, so I was witness to those struggles, and I knew them up close and personal and in an intimate way, but also I think we all have our points of insecurity and weakness and sadness, and so I wrote from those places in myself as well.

Question Six

Suzanne: What’s the title of your novel, and how’s your novel coming along?
Me: Actually, I’m currently working on a non-fiction YA book called The Worms in My Brain, which is a new project for me, and it’s going much faster and better than I could possibly have anticipated.

Question Seven

Me: You say on your website that you wrote for years and kept getting rejection slips; how did it feel to finally hit The One?
Suzanne: Every time I think about it I get a little choked up. It’s an incredible feeling, and it doesn’t solve all your problems and it doesn’t bring you millions of dollars and instant fame, but it’s just a beautiful thing to think that something you’ve worked really hard on and pursued most of your adult life has come to fruition.

Question Eight

Suzanne: What’s your own personal habit for your writing life, not including your website?
Me: I’m really really bad at the whole “discipline thing” because I get distracted by e-mail, the internet, RSS feeds, contractors trying to destroy my home, but when I need to get serious, I put my headphones on and I listen to music that is work-conducive, and I just write until I can’t do it any more, which can vary from an hour to several hours.

Question Nine

Me: Let me ask you the same question back.
Suzanne: I write every day, Monday through Friday, and if need be, I will get up at some hideously early hour and write, but mostly I’m finished with my writing work around three in the afternoon. [Editor's note: Suzanne admitted she sometimes rises as early as 4:45 a.m. to write!]

Question Ten

Suzanne: What is your all-time favorite book?
Me: I’m going to have to say Anne of Green Gables, because not only do I understand what it’s like to be lonely and overly imaginative, but also because I grew up with the exact same strict religion L.M. Montgomery writes about, which was a kind of puritanical Presbyterianism.

Question Eleven

Me: What is your all-time favorite book and why?
Suzanne: Flannery O’Connor, the Complete Stories — The first time I read one of her short stories I realized that all the stories I had swirling around in my own head were worth writing down because they were so similar to the observations she made in her Southern upbringing.

Question Twelve

Suzanne: How long have you been in New York?
Me: My family moved to New York state when I was thirteen, and when my father died when I was sixteen I refused to move and told my mom I wanted to finish high school in one place, so here I stay.

Question Thirteen

Me: You said you teach. What do you teach, and where, and to whom, and for how long have you been doing it?
Suzanne: I have taught off and on since 1993, and most recently I was at a magnet high school in Baltimore County, and I taught English and in their literary arts department.

Question Fourteen

Suzanne: What is your ultimate goal for your website?
Me: I’d really like to have a consistent audience of people who are passionate about books and have lively discussions about the books they’ve read on the site, and I also want to keep bringing the best new teen fiction to people’s attention.

Question Fifteen

Me: You are a teacher, a writer, and on top of all that, a wife and a mother of three. How do you do it?
Suzanne: I just take it day by day, and I address needs as they arise, and when I’m writing I try to enjoy writing, and when I’m teaching I try to enjoy teaching and when I’m mothering I enjoy mothering.

Question Sixteen

Suzanne: Have you interviewed anybody, not just on your website, because I know you were a journalist, but have you ever interviewed anyone who made you feel a little star-struck, and if so, who?
Me: You know, I don’t really get star-struck because from a young age I’ve been exposed to people who are famous in some way or another, but the closest I’ve ever come was definitely when I interviewed Meg Cabot, because she is, as I think I’ve said quite often, the High Priestess of YA.

Question Seventeen

Me: Can you tell our readers a little bit about your current project?
Suzanne: I am working on a book, tentatively titled Somebody Everbody Listens To, and it’s the story of Retta Jones, and she lives in a tiny little town on the Tennessee River, but her big dream is going to Nashville to become a country music singer.

Question Eighteen

Suzanne: What can writers do to help you support your website?
Me: Well, they could give me money, which they won’t do, but truckloads of cash are welcome anyway; realistically, they can link to me from their blogs and do interviews with me like you’re doing, and just generally tell their fans that I’m out here.

Question Nineteen

Me: There are so many more questions I want to ask you, but for the last one, I’ll just ask this: What makes you tick?
Suzanne: There are three things that make me tick: It goes without saying that my family is the most important thing, but reading, writing and exercise are the things that make me tick, and if I’ve done these things in a day’s time, I feel like it’s a day well-spent. [She runs, uses an elliptical machine, and sometimes jumps on the giant trampoline in her backyard.]

Question Twenty

Suzanne: What’s your worst hair salon story?
Me: When I was eight years old, I really, really, really wanted a perm because my mom got them all the time, so one day I convinced her and her faux-stylist friend to give me a perm, but they ONLY permed my bangs, and I looked like a poodle until my dad could get me to a real salon to get the mess fixed.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 18th, 2008 at 12:55 pm and is filed under Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.