Cassie's Crush (17 page)

 

Cassie's Crush is about a typical teenage girl – with typical teenage problems! What were you like as a teenager?

I loved music, drawing, reading and writing stories and decided at around 14 that I either wanted to work on a teenage magazine or be an illustrator. I started drawing little comic strips and sending them off to comics, and occasionally a cheque for all of £5 would arrive in the post, which seemed like SO much money. As an only child, I lived in my own imaginary world a lot – it was good training for being a writer. I wasn't really a fashion or make-uppy kind of girl until I reached about 16, when I became obsessed with the 1960s and started backcoming my hair, wearing ski pants and white lipstick and tons of black eye liner. Until then, I'd just liked messing about on my bike, writing, or doing art.

 

Where is your favourite place to write?

In my tiny boxroom – it's warm, cosy and crammed with notebooks with Post-it notes stuck all over the place. I also like writing in cafés or on trains – I'd go mad, being stuck at home all the time.

 

Do you ever test out your stories and ideas on your friends and family?

My daughter Erin read parts of my books, and a writer friend read the whole book at a very early stage, and gave me the confidence to polish it up and keep working on it.

 

What tips would you give for young writers?

It's harder to write a story than to have an idea for a story – so it's vital to get the words down, even if you don't feel very confident or want to show your story to anyone at that stage. You can always work on it, improve it, go back to it weeks or months later. It usually gets better and better and eventually you know it's the best you can make it. That's when you should give it to people to read.

 

Which book (that has already been written) do you wish you could have written and why? Or are there any that you would like to re-write?

I loved
How I Live Now,
by Meg Rosoff, and
Ways to Live Forever
by Sally Nicholls – beautiful, touching books with unforgettable characters. One holiday in France, my three children and I all read Ways to Live Forever, with each person impatiently waiting for their turn. And I love Cathy Cassidy's books too –
Dizzy
is my favourite. My kids and I all read
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night time
– absolutely brilliant. I read as much teen fiction as adult books.

 

Tell us a strange fact about yourself.

I used to live on a narrowboat on the canal in North London.

 

 

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First published in the UK by Scholastic Ltd, 2012

This electronic edition published by Scholastic Ltd, 2014

 

Text copyright © Fiona Foden, 2012

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eISBN 978 1407 14671 3

 

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