Author Interviews

Author Spotlight: Interview with Meg Eden Kuyatt

Today, we’re thrilled to welcome Meg Eden Kuykatt, author of the MG novel in verse, Good Different. Praised by Laura Shovan as “a powerful addition to literature about the autism experience,” as well as “funny, insightful, and poetic,” the novel–Meg’s MG debut!–is out now from Scholastic.

Summary of Good Different

Selah knows her rules for being normal.

She always, always sticks to them. This means keeping her feelings locked tightly inside, despite the way they build up inside her as each school day goes on, so that she has to run to the bathroom and hide in the stall until she can calm down. So that she has to tear off her normal-person mask the second she gets home from school, and listen to her favorite pop song on repeat, trying to recharge. Selah feels like a dragon stuck in a world of humans, but she knows how to hide it.

Until the day she explodes and hits a fellow student.

Selah’s friends pull away from her, her school threatens expulsion, and her comfortable, familiar world starts to crumble.

But as Selah starts to figure out more about who she is, she comes to understand that different doesn’t mean damaged. Can she get her school to understand that, too, before it’s too late?

Interview with Meg Eden Kykatt

MR: Welcome to the Mixed-Up Files, Meg! It’s great to have you here.

MEK: Thanks so much for having me!

Inspiration Station

MR: Could you please share your inspiration behind Good Different? Also, what made you choose the novel-in-verse form for this particular novel?

MEK: Selah’s poems came out in the worst of COVID lockdowns, when my autism and anxiety had no more places to hide. I felt so overwhelmed, attacked and scared, and as I wrote, I dug up an old memory of a classmate braiding my hair without my consent. But then the speaker was no longer me but this other girl, Selah. And Selah took action. She hit her classmate! I was in shock, but then also I knew I needed to write a novel to figure out why she hit her classmate and what would happen from there.

We come to poetry when prose is inadequate, when the content can only be in verse. I heard this quote for musical theater—I think it’s from Bob Fosse—how the characters sing when the emotion’s too strong for spoken word. They dance when the emotion’s too strong for music. Poetry’s like that. The emotion has to be so strong that it comes out in poetry. And writing about discovering my neurodivergence in a neurotypical world, all the exhaustion and overstimulation and confusion of not being able to keep up, the feelings were too big for prose. They just made sense in poetry.

Rules for Being “Normal”

MR: Selah, the main character of your novel, knows she’s different and follows certain rules for being “normal.” Was this something you had to do as a child? If so, how did it affect you?

MEK: Yes, absolutely! But I don’t think I consciously realized it until adulthood. I think home was so restorative and safe as a child that I put up with the challenges of the public sphere without even realizing the toll it was taking on me. Only in college did I hit a melting point of trying to just “put up” with everything around me. Shortly after, I began to wonder if I might be autistic. So, to be honest, I’m not sure how to answer how it affected me as a child—at least not yet. There’s probably things I still need to explore and unpack.

Poetry in the Spotlight

MR: Selah takes great comfort in poetry. What is it about poetry that appeals to Selah—and, by extension, to you?

MEK: Poetry is about big feelings. It’s also about the little moments and details that often go overlooked. Like Pablo Neruda’s “Odes to Common Things”—in poetry, even the small things can be in the spotlight. As an autistic person, I really resonate with the possibilities of poetry, and the space for those big feelings over things the neurotypical world will often call “small.” I also think in little episodes—less in plot, more in the details and surprises of the everyday—which makes me keep coming back to poetry. It’s also less daunting than setting out to write a whole novel!

Dealing with a Diagnosis

MR: Unlike Selah, who was diagnosed with autism as a middle schooler, you were diagnosed as an adult. Can you tell us about this experience? Also, did your diagnosis in any way change how you viewed yourself—or how others viewed you?

MEK: I always knew I was different, but in college, I realized I wasn’t just a fun quirky different, but that my differences made it difficult for me to keep up with others. I burned out on summer mission trips and had a meltdown at my roommate who kept her light on all night. I didn’t understand why the summer schedules were so relentlessly long with no breaks, or why my roommate would leave a light on at night. It seemed rude and obvious to me that you just don’t do things like that.

That’s when I realized people are different, and that just because something’s obvious to me doesn’t mean it is to someone else; that just because it bothers me doesn’t mean it bothers everyone. As a kid, I just ignored or put up with the things I didn’t like, but in college I hit a roadblock; I couldn’t just put up with things that I used to. When I tried, I exploded and burned out. This wasn’t an effective system for dealing with conflict, but I didn’t have the tools to deal with conflict. So I hit a real crisis.

And then, a breakthrough…

In college, I read a book with an autistic-coded protagonist, and though that book is controversial—and I’d probably go back and find all sorts of things that I find problematic about it—it was a gateway for me. I cried, realizing that I hadn’t felt so represented before on the page that way; that I understood this protagonist. I began to learn more about autism, and really connected—but it took me years to go from “I relate to autistic kids—maybe I can help them” to “I relate to autistic kids because I am autistic too.”

Finally during the pandemic, I sought a formal diagnosis. I think for a while I didn’t feel like I needed it, but a combo of starting to write about my autism and the exhaustion of the pandemic made me realize that a formal confirmation of what I’m dealing with would be incredibly helpful.

The diagnosis is a huge relief to me! It changed how I view myself in that it gave me permission to be kinder to myself. In college and my twenties, I wondered if I couldn’t keep up with “normal” because I was lazy or weak, that I wasn’t trying hard enough to be an “adult.” I pushed myself to burn out over and over again. But now I realize I am just wired differently and have a spiky skill set. While I don’t always do well with a traditional full-time job, I excel at self-employment: teaching online and at conferences, and writing. I’m very intrinsically motivated and do well working from home, where if needed, I can work from bed with a hot pack. Instead of shaming myself for what I can’t do, I can now see where I excel, and look for ways to capitalize on what I do well. I now have language to explain what’s going on to not just others but myself. I used to get overstimulated and have a complete panicked meltdown—why was I panicking? Where was it coming from? Now I understand what’s going on, and that helps calm me down.

Most people have been really kind when I explain that I’m autistic. Many people are surprised. I don’t know if it’s necessarily changed how people view me (I’d be curious to know if that’s the case!). But it’s been freeing for me to have that language when I’m struggling. It’s a shorthand that helps people get that I might need more help than it seems on the surface.

Restorative Power of Gaming

MR: Rumor has it that you’re a huge fan of video games. You also write extensively on gaming. What is it about video games that captures your imagination?

MEK: Video games are about play, possibilities and control. When you feel like you have no control, or things are happening at a pace that’s overwhelming, games give you a space to slow down, or try things until you get the outcome you want. As someone with an anxiety disorder, I often overthink what I’ve said and ruminate and wonder what it would’ve been like if I did something else. Games allow me to play through those possibilities and provide relief and satisfaction. I often go to games when I’m really stressed or burned out, and they’re restorative. They also give space for other parts of my brain to work and get ideas on new stories.

Anne of Green Gables: Pokémon Fan

MR: While we’re on the subject of video games, you’ve famously said that Anne of Green Gables would have been a Pokémon [fan] had she been a kid in the early 2000s. Please elaborate.

MEK: Ha! This is maybe more of a wish than a founded theory! Anne was my best friend in fifth grade, when everything was changing and I felt so alone. That’s also when I really fell into my special interest of Pokemon. I always felt a kinship with Anne, who found joy in her imagination, strong emotions and differences. I think fifth-grade me wanted Anne to love the things I love, so that I could connect with her more deeply. But the companionship and magic of Pokemon… I think Anne might resonate with those ideas 🙂

Path to Publication

MR: You wrote your first novel, a YA, in tenth grade and signed with an agent the following year. Your first book was published when you were 26. Can you tell us about your path to publication, especially at such a young age? It’s deeply impressive.

MEK: Oof, we could be here all day if I talk too much about my path! I think it’s kind that you call it impressive, Melissa. It’s felt so embarrassing to me, that it’s taken me so long when there are people for whom it all happens so fast.

In high school I was so full of myself, thinking, “Oh, now I’m going to be a career writer, and it’s all going to be easy from this point forward.” I hate to break it to folks, but it doesn’t usually work out like that! I know writers who say things like: “It took TWO WHOLE YEARS from the first idea of this book until it was published,” and if I’m honest, I really struggle with this. I’m so jealous of those folks, but also I’m reminded that that is very much not the norm.

My path has been lots of encouragement but also lots of bumps. I got an agent, as you said, in high school. We almost sold that book when I was in college. Then silence. My agent wasn’t really engaging with my other projects, so we parted ways and I went the small-press route. I think this was the right fit for the specific project; Post-High School Reality Quest is a weird book and I knew it wouldn’t have been picked up by a big press. That said, I think I should’ve tried to get an agent again to have an advocate, even for the small-press experience (my editor agrees).

Enter Pitch Wars…

I went through an MFA program in poetry, published individual pieces and small chapbooks of poems, tried to get another agent, and had quite a bit of silence–until 2020 when I got into Pitch Wars! From Pitch Wars I got a lot of agent interest, and we quickly sold my book to Scholastic. That gave me a lot of time for my craft to get stronger; for me to collect ideas, and learn how to focus a plot.

I’ve gotten a lot of humble pie on my journey—and I’d suspect there’s much more on the menu for the future. I thought I was an amazing writer, that I had “earned” a career with my hard work. Nope! There is ALWAYS more to learn, and you never “earn” anything, even if you give it your all. Writing is an incredibly unfair profession in that way. I still have so much to learn, and humility is still NOT my strong point. But I’m learning to always have my eyes open, and to be grateful for whatever I have because I do not deserve it. All I have is because of God’s grace, not because of me.

The Waiting Game

I’m also still learning to wait. There is still waiting! Even when you get a publishing deal! Even when your press expresses interest in more proposals! I have several manuscripts I’d love to have out in the world, including a rewrite of that first book you mentioned, but they are in the waiting room. For now. I refuse to believe in manuscripts being locked in a drawer for good. I love these stories and I believe so fiercely in them. They will find homes in the right time, I’m sure.

MR: Speaking of Pitch Wars, I noticed that your bio leads with the fact that you were a 2020 Pitch Wars mentee. What influence did Pitch Wars have on your journey to be a published writer?

MEK: HUGE. I might still be in the query trenches, slowly dying if it wasn’t for Pitch Wars. I’m so beyond grateful to Eric Bell for seeing Selah and choosing me. I had the story, but Pitch Wars gave it lots of eyes that weren’t seeing it yet. And of course, working with Eric made the manuscript so much tighter, and shine so much more.

Switching it Up

MR: In addition to MG, you also write poetry and YA. Is it tricky to switch from one genre to another?

MEK: It’s getting easier. I think I’m learning what each form and medium brings to the table. Each of them has tools that are best for certain content or material, and I go to whichever one will help me convey what I’m trying to convey. It’s not too hard to switch between them, I don’t think, but sometimes it takes a few tries to find the right medium. Many of my old YA drafts are now becoming middle grade, because I’m realizing that age range and the tools of that form are going to help me create the experience I want more than YA.

Write What You Know

MR: As a college-level creative writing instructor, what’s your go-to advice for writers? Also, are you a proponent of the common wisdom of “Write what you know”?

MEK: Yes! I actually just wrote a five-minute memoir for Writer’s Digest on writing what you know (Jan/Feb 2023 issue). I ran away from that advice for so long. First, I didn’t know what I knew, but second, I think I thought my life was boring, but also I love to learn, so writing outside of my experience let me explore so much. I think writing outside your experience can be a helpful personal exercise for empathy building but is rarely a good idea to publish. Writing what we know isn’t constricting; it’s an opening up of the gates! I’m learning how freeing it is to write what I know.

My go-to advice is to persist, read, and always be willing to learn. Try new things. Take courses in writing that you’ve never tried. Maybe that means taking some poetry courses or a workshop on Op-Eds—or maybe even a completely different art, like assemblage! Whatever we learn will give us tools in our toolbox. Also, a spirit of humility–and doing this because you love it. All these things will aid you in the long run. A writing career is not a sprint; it’s a marathon. (For more thoughts from Meg on the writing process/journey, click here.)

Writing Rituals

MR: What does your writing routine look like, Meg? Do you have any particular rituals?

MEK: I have playlists for each project. Usually video game soundtracks. The first track has conditioned me to fall into that world, to tell me: It’s go time! The last track usually tells me to take a break.

Sneak Peek

MR: What are you working on now, Meg? Can you give Mixed-Up Files readers a sneak peek?

MEK: I am in the middle of a few projects. I’m waiting for feedback on a possible middle grade project, and am taking a little bit of a breather to play with new ideas until I hear more. I’m also editing a YA manuscript that has taken me at least 20 drafts at this point, but I think (hope) we’re starting to go in the right direction…

Lightning Round!

MR: And finally, no MUF interview is complete without a lightning round, so…

Preferred writing snack?

Fruit gummies!

Coffee or tea?

Tea!

Favorite video game?

Fire Emblem

Zombie apocalypse: Yea or nay?

Nay?

Superpower?

Time travel

Favorite place on earth?

Okinawa

If you were stranded on a desert island with only three things, what would they be?

A Bible would be in there. Probably something to write with, and something to make music with.

MR: Thank you for chatting with us, Meg. It a pleasure, and I’m sure MUF readers will agree!

Bio

A 2020 Pitch Wars mentee, Meg received her MFA in creative writing from the University of Maryland College Park. She teaches college-level creative writing courses and is the author of the YA novel Post-High School Reality Quest (2017) as well as five poetry chapbooks and a poetry collection, Drowning in the Floating World (2020). She is also a participating author with the PEN/Faulkner Writers in Schools program. Her debut MG novel, Good Different, a JLG Gold Standard Selection, is out from Scholastic now.

In addition to being a writer, Meg has worked as an advertising manager, eBay seller, research assistant in linguistics and neuroscience, and publishing and marketing contact for a small press. She is the webinar coordinator for the SCBWI MD/DE/WV region, and runs the Magfest MAGES Library blog, which posts accessible academic articles about video games.

Meg is neurodivergent (autistic and anxiety disorder), an extroverted-introvert, and a complete nerd for all things Pokémon and Fire Emblem. She lives with her husband and two cats, Chaos Theory (CT) and Hazel, also known as “Floaf” (the fluffy loaf). Learn more about Meg on her website and follow her on Twitter and Instagram. (And if you missed Meg’s cover reveal for Good Different, click here for an encore!)

STEM Tuesday– Math– Interview with Author Rajani LaRocca

STEM Tuesday–Math– Interview with Author Rajani LaRocc

Welcome to STEM Tuesday: Author Interview, a repeating feature for the last Tuesday of every month. Go Science-Tech-Engineering-Math!

Today we’re interviewing Rajani LaRocca, author of Much Ado About Baseball. The book is told in alternating voices. Trish pitches for her team and worries about her future until she is sent a mysterious book filled with math puzzles. Ben is a former pitcher who now plays first base but is a math nerd at heart. They are math rivals at school competitions but now must form an alliance to solve the mysterious puzzles. They’re rewarded with magical results but soon they reach a puzzle that is the hardest of them all.

Kirkus Review said, “A moving tale of baseball, magic, and former rivals who come together to solve a problem.” (Fantasy. 8-12) Starred review.

Author Brad Thor’s review on The Today Show called it one of the best middle grade books he’d read as an adult.

 * * *

Christine Taylor-Butler: Rajani, you are a prolific writer for both children’s fiction and nonfiction. Many people in are unaware of how many women in our industry have STEM backgrounds. For example, you have both an undergraduate and a medical degree from Harvard University. Was it always a dream to go into medicine?

Rajani LaRocca: I knew I wanted to study medicine as far back as elementary school. But I was also a huge reader. In high school I told my creative writing teacher I was going to be a doctor and he said, “Who said you have to choose?” He gave me books written by doctors. It blew my mind. Even so, I wrote a lot of personal essays in college but no fiction. I didn’t start writing for children until much later. I love what I do and I still have an active practice in Internal Medicine/Primary Care.

CTB: How did you get the idea for this book?

MidsummersMayhemRajani: It started when I wrote my first book: Midsummer’s Mayhem. It takes the magical people from Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream and puts an Indian family at the center of the action. I thought, “What would fairies like Tatania and Oberon be doing if they were living in today’s world and interacting with modern kids?” The answer is they would be fighting and it would embroil a number of people. I tried to figure out what fairies might fight over and what the consequences would be. I decided they would be fighting over something ridiculous and petty like sweet things vs. salty things. So Tatania, queen of the fairies, opens a bakery and Oberon, king of the fairies, opens a snack shack. Whoever made the most money would win. Then I realized, not only could Tatania be the patron of sweet things, but also other things like cooking and music and literature. I imagined that this might be why there are so many famous writers in Concord, Massachusetts. Oberon, on the other hand, would be the patron of math, science and sports. So the first book is from the perspective of “team sweet.”

Much Ado about Baseball is from the perspective of “team salty.” But it’s still about fairies being petty in their rivalry.

Much Ado BaseballCTB: We always suggest aspiring writers spend time observing kids to lend authenticity to their work. Did you have any real life inspirations for the story?

Rajani: My daughter is inspiration for one of the characters. But for Much Ado About Baseball, my son is the inspiration. He’s been a math kid from the day he was born. He understood multiplication and the power of two at a very young age. When he was 3 years old he was trying to figure out analog clocks so my husband taught him the power of five. After a while my son would quiz me too. He was on the math team in school and was always working on all these puzzles. He has just graduated from Williams College with a degree in statistics.

CTB: There’s so much detailed information about baseball and the math involved. How much research did you have to do to understand the game?

Rajani: My son played baseball from the age of five so that’s how I know so much about the game. I’m a mom that lived with baseball and knew there was a lot of math involved. It’s very much a summer activity. So I thought it would be fun to write a book from the perspective of kids who were math rivals playing on the same baseball team. And when they team up, magical things happen. I was inspired by Shakespeare’s play, Much Ado About Nothing.

TrishCTB: You wrote the book in alternating voices, Trish and Ben who don’t start out as friends. Was that hard?

Rajani: This book almost broke my brain :-). It was my sophomore novel and I was wondering how to write in dual point of views in such a way that each advances the plot. I had to balance competing motivations since the character’s didn’t know what was going on in the other person’s head.

Ben

CTB: So in a way that puts the readers at an advantage over the characters.

Rajani: Exactly. The reader is in on the secret. They can know and see things the characters can’t see.

CTB: This month’s theme is math. And while we usually cover nonfiction, books, we realized that sometimes people have a hard time getting their head around the idea that STEM can be embedded in speculative fiction for kids. You created a book about baseball that included a book of magical puzzles but also embedded so many facts about the game and math in general. It’s seamless.

baseball diamond

Photo by Haniel Espinal on Unsplash

Example: “Twelve-year-olds like me play Little League on a sixty-foot diamond, with forty six feet between the pitchers mound and the plate. But in the spring, we move up to the big diamond, which is the size of a Major League infield – ninety feet between bases, and sixty feet six inches from the pitcher’s mound to home plate.”~ Trish

Rajani: Trish is a math kid but it also fuels her secret sadness. When you move up to the bigger field it’s a long way to throw a ball. Those kids are still kids but in a year they’ll be stronger and bigger. But Trish is a girl and she’s thinking that the boys are going to get stronger faster. She’s worried she can’t do baseball anymore but is trying to make the math work of moving up to a bigger baseball diamond. So the book looks at both STEM and character growth.

CTB: When I was writing the Lost Tribes Series I had to balance puzzles needed for the characters to advance in the plot with the real science of the places and problems they encountered. How hard was it for you to embed the science and create the puzzles at the center of your plot?

Rajani: The Math Puzzler team (the imaginary math team in the book) was about these kind of puzzles. They’re the same type of activities my son was doing in the school math contests. The problems are not just straight math. The goal was to get as many right as you could. So the lead up to the competition was practicing different types of puzzles. It takes too much time to “brute force” the answers so the students were constantly thinking of multiple ways to arrive at an answer in the least amount of time.

I observed my son and thought “How would I solve this myself?” These were upper elementary kids learning the process. I wanted to put that in the book as well. The idea that math could be fun and joyful. It’s just a puzzle to solve.

CTB: You’ve written other books that are more directly about STEM. For example: The Secret Code in You – All about your DNA. and A Vaccine is Like A Memory.

Secret Code Inside You

Rajani: The Secret Code Inside You: All about your DNA was the first picture book I ever wrote. It’ a non-fiction science book in rhyme. I tried hard to change it to prose but it didn’t work. The nucleotide base pairs line up every time so it fits the same pattern as a rhyme.

vaccine is like a memory

I wrote A Vaccine is Like a Memory after I got my first Covid-19 vaccine. I wanted to show how vaccines occurred and the science behind it. But also what the world was like before vaccines were invented. It’s like a memory of a disease you’ve never had. I loved the metaphor: at the end, we have to remember. We can’t forget that people once died of diseases we don’t have anymore. An example would be measles. We have to remind people what it was like back then. Polio in the US is another great example. Until recently, young people have never experienced those desperate times. We need to ask the question – do we want to go back to those times? No. Many diseases were particularly deadly to young children.

One of the things I discovered in my research was that a slave named Onesimus taught a minister, Cotton Mather about smallpox and how to people in Africa inoculated other people from getting sick. Doctors in the Boston area turned up their noses at the the suggestion except one: Zabdiel Boylston. The people he inoculated died at 1/6th the rate of the general population. Later, Edward Jenner realized that cowpox was a milder disease but gave people an immunity against smallpox. This concept of giving people a mild infection to prevent them from getting sick had been known for thousands of years in China, Africa and India.

spread from vaccines

That’s how I came to the title. Vaccines are our body’s way of “remembering” a disease it might not have actually had so it can fight the illness the person is infected later. Aside from water and food sanitation, vaccines are one of the greatest advancements in public health.

One and only heartCTB: So the book about vaccines will be out in June 2023. Is there any other book we should look forward to seeing?

Rajani: I wrote “Your One and Only Heart.” It’s a picture book written in poetry. I love this book so much. It will be out August 2023. The book is about anatomy and physiology.

 

CTB: One last thing. Many people might not know that you produce the STEM Women in Kidlit podcast with the amazing Artemis Roehrig. It rates a 5 out of 5 on Apple.com. What was the inspiration for this.

STEM Women podcastRajani: I was at the Kindling Words children’s literature retreat eating a meal and Artemis said “You know, we both have STEM backgrounds and I’ve been asking around. You wouldn’t believe how many women in this room also have STEM backgrounds. She said “We should do a podcast.” There’s a lot of giggling because working together is so much fun. We started in 2020. There are so many links between STEM and writing for kids. So many authors draw inspiration from their experiences and training.

I wanted to highlight women’s voices. The world rejoices about men’s contributions in children’s literature and in science. As a result, people believe that what they’ve been taught about history is all there is to know. Our podcast celebrate the contributions of women. Also, I’m heartened about the number of biographies coming out about the significant contributions made to the field by women. I happy to see the industry changing.

CTB: Thanks for joining our blog this month, Rajani. I would like to urge readers to look at Rajani’s substantial body of award winning work. She covers topics in a way that is both joyful and accessible. It’s a great way to help encourage young readers to learn about the world and how they can create their contributions or solve problems. And most importantly? STEM is just puzzles scientists like to solve.

LaRocca book banner

 

*****

Rajani LaRocca

 

Rajani LaRocca is the award-winning author of books for young people. Her work includes novels and picture books, fiction and nonfiction, written in both prose and poetry. Her middle grade novel in verse, Red, White, and Whole, won a 2022 Newbery Honor, the 2022 Walter Dean Myers Award, the 2022 Golden Kite Award, and the 2021 New England Book Award, as well as other honors. She is the author of numerous other acclaimed novels and picture books, including Midsummer’s Mayhem, Seven Golden Rings, and more. She also co-hosts the STEM Women in KidLit Podcast. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Medical School, she’s been working as a primary care internal medicine physician since 2001. She lives in eastern Massachusetts with her family and impossibly cute dog. Follow @rajanilarocca on Twitter and @rajanilarocca on Instagram.

 

author christine Taylor-butler

Photo by Kecia Stovall

Your host is Christine Taylor-Butler, a graduate of MIT and author of The Oasis, Save the… Tigers, Save the . . . Blue Whales, and many other nonfiction books for kids. She is also the author of the STEM based middle grade sci-fi series The Lost Tribes. Follow @ChristineTB on Twitter and or @ChristineTaylorButler on Instagram. She lives in Missouri with a tank of fish and cats that think they are dogs.

Author Interview: Dianne Salerni and her latest release, The Carrefour Curse

 

ABOUT THE BOOK

The Addams Family meets The Westing Game in this exhilarating mystery about a modern magical dynasty trapped in the ruins of their once-grand, now-crumbling ancestral home.

Twelve-year-old Garnet regrets that she doesn’t know her family. Her mother has done her best to keep it that way, living far from the rest of the magical Carrefour clan and their dark, dangerous mansion known as Crossroad House.

But when Garnet finally gets summoned to the estate, it isn’t quite what she hoped for. Her relatives are strange and quarrelsome, each room in Crossroad House is more dilapidated than the last, and she can’t keep straight which dusty hallways and cobwebbed corners are forbidden. 

Then Garnet learns the family secret: their dying patriarch fights to retain his life by stealing power from others. Every accident that isn’t an accident, every unexpected illness and unexplained disappearance grants Jasper Carrefour a little more time. While the Carrefours squabbles over who will inherit his role when (if) he dies, Garnet encounters evidence of an even deeper curse. Was she brought to Crossroad House as part of the curse . . . or is she meant to break it?

Written with loads of creepy atmosphere and an edge-of-your-seat magical mystery, this thrilling story reads like The Haunting of Hill House for preteens. Perfect for late-night reading under the covers.

Introduction

Today, we have the pleasure of hosting a favorite author of mine, Dianne K. Salerni, to talk about her latest release from Holiday House Books called, The Carrefour Curse. Here’s her official introduction:

Dianne K. Salerni has written many books for children, including Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selections Eleanor, Alice, and the Roosevelt Ghosts and Jadie in Five Dimensions. After teaching elementary school for twenty-five years, Dianne now spends her time hanging around creepy cemeteries and climbing 2,000-year-old pyramids for book research. Visit her online at https://diannesalerni.com/

Dianne can also be found online at: 

The Interview

MH: One of my favorite things as a reader and a creator is the author’s story of their story. The journey and brain science behind how a story grew from bits and pieces of an idea to a book on the shelf is fascinating to me. What is the origin story of your latest middle-grade release, The Carrefour Curse?

Dianne: There were two main inspirations for The Carrefour Curse: Dark Shadows, the supernatural soap opera, and The Spook House, a vignette written by Ambrose Bierce. My mother was a fan of Dark Shadows, and I used to watch the show as a young child even though I wasn’t allowed to. I hid behind the sofa and became a lifelong fan of all things gothic. As for the Bierce story, the image of a locked room filled with dead people haunted me for a long time, and I tried for years to build a plot around it. When I got the idea to combine Dark Shadows and The Spook House, the result was The Carrefour Curse.

I wrote the first draft in 2017, and when it was finished, I proclaimed it “a terrible mess,” closed the document, and forgot about it. Fast forward to early 2020, when I devoured the Netflix series, Locke & Key. I loved that show so much, I made a list of all the elements that called to me and thought, I’d like to write a story with these elements. Then I remembered I already had!  For the first time in three years, I opened the document named Crossroad House, read it, and discovered that, although it was messy, it wasn’t terrible. Revising this manuscript soon became my pandemic project.

MH: I’ve always been drawn to your ability to create real and believable fictional worlds within a recognizable “normal” story world. From the magical extra day of The Eighth Day series to the extra dimension worlds of Jadie in Five Dimensions, you build logical worlds that allow the reader to seamlessly move in and out of. I realize my begging at your feet and screaming,  “How do you do this?” is too broad and too unfair of a question to ask, but can you share a few steps of how you create such effective world shifts in your books? 

Dianne: Well, it certainly doesn’t happen in the first draft, that’s for sure! The world-building usually starts with an idea. Like: There’s a secret day hidden between Wednesday and Thursday. Or: Our 3-dimensional universe exists inside a larger 4-dimensional universe. In my first draft, world-building is thin, disjointed, and often contradictory as I try to nail down the plot. After the story is complete, I work on a list of “rules” for my alternate world, with my priority being that the rules have to allow all my events to happen and still make sense. In successive drafts, I work on the inconsistencies and the logic and make sure that the world elements saturate the story, instead of feeling tacked on. In the final drafts, I make a list of the chapters and chart what elements appear in each one. Has it been several chapters since my main character felt like Crossroad House was watching her or influencing events? I’ll work a mention in.

MH: Can you describe your creative process of how an idea becomes a fully-formed story in your hands? 

Dianne: Every book starts with a premise, like the secret day or the nesting universes, or an inspirational source, like Dark Shadows and The Spook House. Next, come the characters. Who are they and what happens to them? What is the main conflict? In rare cases, before I start writing, I’ll outline the entire story on Scrivener. I did that with Eleanor, Alice, & the Roosevelt Ghosts and also with the second and third books in the Eighth Day series. But most of the time, I outline the first third or half and then jump into writing because I don’t know how it all works out until it happens on the page. Sometimes there are surprises. In The Carrefour Curse, a rather important character invented herself in Chapter 23 and inserted herself into the climax, forcing me—in later drafts—to weave her very existence into the first half of the book. Sometimes, the surprise is that the book is a dud. There are many, many unfinished manuscripts on my computer.

MH: Are you a multiple-irons in-the-fire creator or a one-story-at-a-time creator?

Dianne: Usually, I’ll work on only one story at a time. If I’m struggling with it, I might put it aside to revise and polish an old manuscript. (The Carrefour Curse is not the only one of my books to come out of a resurrected manuscript.) Once in a while, publication deadlines require that I work on more than one thing at a time. While I was under contract for the Eighth Day series, I once found myself proofreading the galley of Book 1, making editorial revisions on Book 2, and drafting Book 3. I got so confused about what Jax knew and when he knew it that I had to rearrange my schedule to work on one at a time: first the proofreading, then the revisions, and finally back to drafting.

MH: Can you describe your experience with Holiday House in bringing The Carrefour Curse to its publication date? 

Dianne: Holiday House has been wonderful to work with. My last three books have been published through Holiday House, and I think my editor, Sally Morgridge, is brilliant. I love the covers they’ve commissioned for all three books – they’re all very different but each one perfect in its own way. The publicity department is enthusiastic and very communicative. In the past, I have worked with bigger publishers where I never had any contact with my “official publicist,” so this is a refreshing change!

MH: What’s next?

Dianne: I have a book on submission. Because it’s not recommended that we talk about works on submission, I’ll say only that it’s a comedy-mystery and somewhat different from my other books. While I wait for word on that, I’m drafting a middle grade horror story. We’ll see how that goes because I’m approaching the end of the “index cards” on my Scrivener corkboard and wading into the un-outlined part of the story. For me, this is the scariest part of my horror story!

MH: What are some of your favorite activities, outside of the butt-in-chair life of an author, to recharge your creative battery?

Twice a week, I volunteer at our local animal shelter. I walk dogs and service the cat room – feeding and cleaning up after the cats and assorted critters. (Currently, we have more rabbits than cats in the so-called cat room.) I have three hydroponic gardens in my home. I typically grow lettuce, tomatoes, and baby bok choy, but I’ve also experimented with sweet peas (too much vine and not enough peas), dwarf eggplants (they do better outside), and Swiss chard (nobody at my house would eat it). I also enjoy skiing and scuba diving, and my husband and I LOVE to make homemade pasta.

Conclusion

Thank you, Dianne, for a fantastic insight into your writer’s life and The Carrefour Curse. How can one not want to read a book with a tagline like, The Addams Family meets The Westing Game? The entire MUF family wishes much success for the book and for you. Personally, I can’t wait to read the next one.

For more information on The Carrefour Curse and Holiday House Books, check out the following links.

The Carrefour Curse Book Page @ Holiday House Books

Holiday House Books Socials