YA New York

Melissa Walker, author of Violet on the Runway, Violet by Design, and coming soon, Violet in Private met up for coffee (actually, she had mint lemonade and I had sparkling water) recently, and we decided to mix things up a bit when it came to the interview. So we played my version of Twenty Questions, in which each person gets to ask the other a random question, taking it in turns, until we reached twenty. All answers had to be one sentence long so I could scribble them down quickly in my terrible handwriting.

Ahem. Presenting … Ms. Melissa Walker in Twenty Questions:

Question one:

Sabrina: What made you decide to write the Violet books?
Melissa: I spent twenty-four hours in a male model apartment and I decided that I had to set a book in that world.

Question two:

Melissa: Why sparkling water?
Sabrina: I have had three cups of coffee today, and if I have any more I will go insane.

Question three:

Sabrina: Under what circumstances did you spend twenty-four hours in a MALE model apartment?
Melissa: I was writing a story for Elle Girl, which I pitched myself.

Question four:

Melissa: What is the last thing that you wrote?
Sabrina: That would be a chapter from my (hopefully) upcoming book, Letters to Bert.

Question five:

Sabrina: Why would you pitch a story that required you to spend twenty-four hours with male models?
Melissa: I felt it was important for teen girls to know that really hot guys can be really boring.

Question six:

Melissa: Who is Bert?
Sabrina: Bert is a fictional rock star.

Question seven:

Sabrina: What was it actually like to spend twenty-four hours with male models?
Melissa: They spent three hours at the gym, ate their dinner on bread plates for portion control, and watched a lot of MTV reality shows.

Question eight:

Melissa: What is your favorite of the Hershey’s miniature candy bars, or are you a fan at all?
Sabrina: Mr. Goodbar is probably the only one I can stand.

Question nine:

Sabrina: Where did you get those awesome orange shoes?
Melissa: I got them from LaRedoute.com, which is like the French H&M.

Question ten:

Melissa: What books did you buy today?
Sabrina: I bought Zombie Blondes by Brian James and Artichoke’s Heart by Suzanne Supplee, both of which I plan to review.

Question eleven:

Sabrina: What books did you buy today?
Melissa: I bought When It Happens [by Susane Colasanti] and How to Be Bad [by E. Lockhart, Lauren Myracle and Sarah Mlynowski], both of which I plan to give away on my blog after I read them.

Question twelve:

Melissa: Is the red that you’re wearing right now your go-to pedicure color?
Sabrina: Yes, I always wear red nail polish on my feet, specifically Essie’s A-List.

Question thirteen:

Sabrina: Who are your all-time, top five celebrity crushes?
Melissa: Kirk Cameron before he got all Christian-crazy, Sean Astin in Goonies, before he became a hobbit, Ethan Hawke in Reality Bites before he either married or left Uma, Winona Ryder for being the smart brunette that every guy had a crush on, and Johnny Depp forever and always.

Question fourteen:

Melissa: Do you have a good story about summer love?
Sabrina: I once went to crazy Christian sleep-away camp, where I had a torrid romance with a boy named Felder.

Question fifteen:
Sabrina: Since you asked me … well, why did you ask me that question?
Melissa: I am currently writing a teen romance called Lovestruck Summer that will come out in 2009.

Question sixteen:

Melissa: Where did you get your bag, which looks like fireworks to me, which is awesome?
Sabrina: I got it at a random shop on Smith Street in Cobble Hill [Brooklyn] for $22 because I needed a really big bag that wasn’t hideous.

Question seventeen:

Sabrina: What do you think of book trailers [about which I have a post planned; watch out for it once the electricians stop plaguing me]?
Melissa: I like them if they’re done well, and my favorites are usually the more DIY, less produced ones.

Question eighteen:

Melissa: What is your must-read blog?
Sabrina: I am ashamed to admit that I am insanely addicted to Go Fug Yourself.

Question nineteen:

Sabrina: Since this is my last question for you, I’m going to go all free-form and ask you what you’d like to say to the readers?
Melissa: I’ll use this opportunity to communicate my “No Rules for Summer” policy: Paint your nails any color you want, read books that call to you, listen to music that inspires you, cut your hair the way you’ve been afraid to cut it, but one piece of clothing that you’re not sure you can pull off, and ignore other people’s rules.
Sabrina: That is an awful lot of rules for a “No Rules” policy.

Question Twenty:

Melissa: Are these bright pink walls making you as cheerful as they’re making me?
Sabrina: Actually, they make me think of Barbies, and that is a totally neutral not-good/not-bad thing.

Melissa and I chatted for awhile, and she told me she grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina (which is the town her protagonist Violet lives in). She turned thirty-one June 4, and is engaged to be married — yay!

But then we decided we hadn’t had enough fun with questions, and so we each asked the other one question that we should have asked earlier, but forgot to.

Question Twenty-One:

Sabrina: What is your favorite YA novel?
Melissa: I read a book a few years ago called Stone Garden [by Molly Moynahan], and it so aptly captured adolescent grief that I was mesmerized, and I can’t forget it.

Question twenty-two:

Melissa: Let me ask you the same question.
Sabrina: … [very long pause] … The Chosen by Chaim Potok because it was the first novel with a male protagonist that I ever really loved.

And that, my dear friends, is all I have to offer you now. Oh. Except for this:

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 3rd, 2008 at 2:10 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.