Swinging by WORD today is Nova Ren Suma! Nova wrote Imaginary Girls and Dani Noir (aka Fade Out in paperback). Her newest novel, 17 & Gone, is coming from Dutton/Penguin on March 21 - and, if I may say so, it looks amazing!
Seventeen-year-old Lauren is having visions of girls who have gone missing. And all these girls have just one thing in common—they are 17 and gone without a trace. As Lauren struggles to shake these waking nightmares, impossible questions demand urgent answers: Why are the girls speaking to Lauren? How can she help them? And… is she next? As Lauren searches for clues, everything begins to unravel, and when a brush with death lands her in the hospital, a shocking truth emerges, changing everything.
Nicole: 17 & Gone looks amazing and slightly terrifying. What makes this different than your other books so far?
Nova Ren Suma: 17 & Gone is not what it seems. Maybe you could say the same about my last book, Imaginary Girls, but what feels different to me with this new one is how sneaky the disguise turned out to be. So sneaky, I myself didn’t realize until I was deep into writing and had one of those lightbulb epiphanies, changing everything. Talk about 17 & Gone being slightly terrifying!
N: I look forward to this twist! Spoiler free: who's your favorite character in 17 & Gone?
NRS: There’s an angry, volatile character in this story named Fiona Burke. She has dark hair dyed fire-red at the tips, and she despises pretty much everyone, which makes her kind of cathartic, even delightful, to write. When my narrator, Lauren, was a kid she witnessed her next-door neighbor Fiona run away from home under questionable circumstances. Fiona Burke was 17 years old, the same age Lauren is now. Since this is a novel about the missing, it’s no spoiler to say Fiona Burke’s whereabouts are a mystery that still haunt Lauren. And maybe still haunt me, too.
N: How hard is it for you to name characters?
NRS: I find boys harder to name than girls. Girls’ names I have bleeding out my ears; I collect them. It’s the boys who don’t want to be pinned down by a name. With 17 & Gone, I was having such trouble naming Lauren’s boyfriend—his name shifting every few days—that I finally gave up and chose the next thing that came to me. At the time I was writing this novel to an album playing on incessant repeat: xx by the xx. So that’s how Jamie found his name. He was named after one of the band members. Of course now I can’t imagine him being called anything else.
N: You're an author that also blogs! How do you balance that? What are some of the challenges?
NRS: Yes, I’m a blogger, too! And I know that fellow bloggers will understand how, while it can be time-consuming and take a lot of energy to keep a blog running regularly, especially when it involves coordinating themed series and guest posts with other contributors, there’s something exhilarating about doing all the work, too. It feeds me and my love of books. It makes me feel like a true part of this community. Which is why, even when I’m burned out and beginning to feel like no one’s really listening, even when I have those moments when I consider maybe closing up my blog and taking a breather, I remember. It’s all about connection. It’s about keeping the conversation about books and writing going, however I can help contribute. That’s why I feel committed to making time for blogging. I kind of love it, if you can’t tell.
N: Where did you come up with the name for Distraction 99?
NRS: I started my blog distraction99.com in 2005, before I was a published author and before I’d even started writing for teens. I am an easily distracted person (and keep in mind, this was before Twitter… just imagine how distracted I am now!), and the name of the blog was kind of a dig at myself: I had so many distractions that kept me from writing, and blogging was just one more: number 99 on a long list. (By now, my distractions are definitely well into the triple digits.)
N: Do you have advice for aspiring authors who are also bloggers?
NRS: This is personal to me, but the one thing I don’t do is review other authors’ books. I know there are some writers who are able to balance being critical of their peers with also being an author, but I can’t find that balance. It’s a simple conflict of interest for me, and being an author and writing my own fiction has always come first. So I find other ways to talk about books without reviewing. I host guest posts on themed topics. I do interviews. I ask for recommendations of books that deserve more buzz. I feature authors in other ways. If you’re a blogger who aspires to one day be writing and publishing books, not reviewing them, it’s something to consider even now.
N: Who are some of your favorite authors?
NRS: In YA I love Libba Bray, Gayle Forman, Jo Knowles, Nina LaCour, Laura Ruby, and Sara Zarr. I wouldn’t be the writer I am today without discovering Jean Rhys and Angela Carter and Aimee Bender when I was first attempting fiction and discovering my voice. And the author that changed my world and inspired me to write YA is Laura Kasischke, though I love pretty much everything she writes, no matter the shelf or marketing label.
N: If you had to travel to any other world, where would you go and how would you survive?
NRS: I’m intrigued by other planets. At the Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop I took with a group of other writers this past summer, we learned viable ways of one day terraforming the moon, Mars, Venus, and even one of the moons of Jupiter. Survival may just be possible, and it’s not so far off—just look at Mars One, which is planning a human settlement on Mars by 2023. I don’t think I’d be approved for that mission, since I barely have the life skills to survive outside New York City, but if you want to go, they’re apparently conducting a global search for Mars astronauts this year. Just keep in mind: You could never come home to Earth. Ever. If you go to the Red Planet with Mars One, you’re there for good. I couldn’t do that… could you?