The Queen of Cool (18 page)

Why do you think readers identify with Libby?

All of my main characters — Egg from
Boy Proof,
Libby from
The Queen of Cool,
and Katy from
Beige
— are girls who have been one way for a long time and find out that they are actually totally different from what they thought. They all let their guard down and allow themselves to become who they really are.

Libby specifically has the cloak of cool pulled around her. She’s the fearless leader of her group but is afraid to admit what’s really wrong — that she’s totally bored. I think that every girl has felt like Libby, totally cool in one situation and uncool in another. She’s the ultimate insider and the biggest mean girl, but she also has a secret — she’s a freak! The truth is, a person is only boring or uncool if they aren’t being one hundred percent true to themselves.

Finding your own identity seems to be a major theme in each of your novels. Why is that?

I think identity is something that everyone struggles with at one point or another, whether they are young or old. I am always interested in that moment when a person decides who they are and what kind of person they are going to be. One of the first major times that happens, I think, is in adolescence.

What’s your writing regimen?

I am a plunger, not a plotter. The story bursts out of my head like Athena did from Zeus’s. I pretty much know how a story starts and where it ends. Then I follow the characters. I am also a binge writer. I’ll spend days being cranky and taking hikes in Griffith Park and moping and eating chocolate and staring at the ceiling and taking baths and doing the dishes. All that time, I am gestating, pulling the threads of the story together, keeping my mind’s eye on the characters, getting to know the nuances of the story — basically working it out. Then I will suddenly be compelled to write in a flurry and fit of hours and hours and sometimes a day or two. Then lather, rinse, repeat.

What is your favorite sentence from
The Queen of Cool
?

“Then I put my head down on the desk. It smells like pencil and hand.” I love this line.

What attracts you most to writing for teens?

Adolescence is a time when you throw down about what kind of a person you are going to become. Emotions and feelings and everything run really high, right under the skin, and everything is pretty much the first time. I find that endlessly fascinating.

Shout-outs to Mom and Dad; the menagerie I call or have called my friends; the Los Angeles Zoo — Luz Morales and Mike Dee; The Little People of America (LPA) Los Angeles Chapter; Kerry Slattery, Steve Salardino, and Skylight Books; my landlords, Bernard and Diana Arias; my gentle readers, Jo Knowles, Patty Cornell, Rob Takata, Sarah Sprague; Andrea Kleine, Katrina Kemp, and Keith Martin; my LA Lit Ladies, Jen Sincero and Carolyn Kellogg; the Cult of B and my other fellow author friends; my agent, Barry “Mr. Fantastic” Goldblatt; my Candlewick peeps; and most of all, my editor, friend, and the true Queen of Cool, the divine Ms. Kara LaReau.

C
ECIL
C
ASTELLUCCI
is the author of the young adult novels
Boy Proof
and
Beige.
She is a writer, a filmmaker, an actress, and a singer-songwriter, and engages in many, many other creative pursuits. She says, “Sometimes I feel cool and other times I feel like the biggest loser ever. So I started wondering, what would happen if everything you always thought was cool was suddenly lame? What would happen to you if
you
were all of a sudden uncool? And what exactly is ‘cool,’ anyway? This story came out of a desire to figure it all out.” Cecil Castellucci lives in Los Angeles.