Sarah Dessen Interview + Giveaway

So, my life is amazing and I not only got to attend a dinner for Sarah Dessen’s pre-tour of Saint Anything, but I also got to sit down and chat with her beforehand!

I KNOW! Feeling really blessed over here! Before the event I got my fangirl on by painting my nails and making a tote bag that ties into both Saint Anything and one of my other favorite Sarah Dessen books, Just Listen!

The dinner was held at Antica Pizzeria in Chicago. They reserved half of the restaurant for us and the lovely Sheila, a book rep for Penguin, added some Saint Anything charm! There were suckers (read the book to find out why!) and a beautiful table of Sarah Dessen books!

Even though I’d met Sarah before and knew she was kind and delightful and just… genuine, I was still totally nervous. Chatting with her was such a delight! The restaurant was still setting up while we talked so there was some background noise to the interview recording I made. Also, we kind of jumped around when interruptions would happen. Because Sarah’s answers are much more interesting than my comments, I left my comments (aside from the questions!) out in the transcribing. Any errors (especially with spelling and punctuation!) are all on me!! Some of these questions make more sense after you’ve read the book but I promise there aren’t spoilers! My questions are in bold.

Reading this book made me hungry! Let’s start with some questions based on the foods in the book.

What’s your go-to pizza flavor?

I like the deluxe. I have become sort of, like Layla, a pizza connoisseur in the last few years. I love pizza and I got to the point where I was eating it wherever they had pizza, which is not a good idea if you go to a place that doesn’t specialize in pizza. At home there’s a place down the street from me. It’s very much what I based Seaside Pizza on. Behind the counter they have all these slices. You can buy it by the slice; you can buy it by the pie. It’s just amazing.

What’s your favorite sucker flavor?

I like the butterscotch. I’m not a big lollipop person. My daughter likes the bubble gum and cotton candy so that’s sort of where the idea came from. Any time we get any lollipops, she’s going to take all of those for herself. And the root beer was always my least favorite so I was thinking, “What would be the flavor people wouldn’t pick?” My bank always has these lollipops and there always seem to be a lot of root beers but very few bubble gum or cotton candy.

How do you eat your fries?

I am a purist. It’s just with ketchup. But I’m also very picky about my french fries. I like them to be crisp, beer battered, thin… I’m not a big fan of the big fat fries. Honestly, I love fried food and I would eat anything fried. That’s the Southerner in me.

I don’t know if I was hungry or I was nervous but there’s a lot of food in this book and I didn’t really realize it until later!

Sydney and Peyton are very different siblings. Were you a daredevil like Peyton or more of a shadow like Sydney?

It’s interesting. I had an older brother who was not at all like Peyton but I understood what it was like to be in the shadow of a very achieving brother. I was actually kind of a hot mess in high school. I did a lot of things in high school I’m not proud of. I wasn’t a good student and I wasn’t particularly a good daughter. I wasn’t very engaged. It took me until college to get my act together. But every time I tried to write about it, I wrote about it a little bit in Dreamland, but it was just too close. I couldn’t do it. I tried but it would just crash and burn.

The book I tried to work on before this was about a girl who sort of turned to some alternate not-so-good means to deal with her feelings and it just didn’t work. So I started thinking about it like maybe I’m approaching this the wrong way. Maybe writing it from the view of the girl in crisis is not the way to work it but to approach from the family dealing with the person in crisis. I hung out with a lot of guys like Peyton when I was in high school, guys who had everything. They were from really wealthy families, they had every opportunity, and they were just drawn to getting into trouble. Some of them were able to change their lives and go on and some weren’t. It was a way of writing about my past and this world I knew from the outside without writing about myself.

In Saint Anything Mariposa is a children’s franchise. It’s actually also one of my favorite words. Do you have any favorite words?

I love that word! I have to tell you the background of that. I went to Disney on Ice with my daughter two years ago for the first time and I was so fascinated by these people. I love the idea… like, you work for Disney on Ice, you travel around the country, you skate for three shows a day… what is your life like? How did you end up there? Obviously you were competing at some point. I was just fascinated by that. So I loved that idea. Of course I had to make my person disgruntled and bitter!

But words that I love… I have words that I love but also words that I avoid. Discombobulated is a word that I’m always afraid to use because I’m afraid that I’m going to say discom-boob-ulated!When I was teaching I would always avoid that! And then there are words that I avoid when I’m writing like lay and lie. I still get in trouble with that.

In the book there is the “Big” reality TV series. Do you have reality TV you love?

The Real Housewives is my show. I put Good Morning America into the previous book because I love Good Morning America. I also love the Real Housewives. It’s funny because my editor and I had this conversation about how you, as a teenager in particular, can kind of get absorbed.  I didn’t have reality TV when I was a teenager but I can see that if you were lonely you would really put yourself in. And I find myself talking back to the TV!

I watch the Real Housewives while I work out. That is the deal I’ve made with myself. So, I have to be exercising while I’m watching. I watch all the cities, all the episodes but I have to be on the treadmill or the elliptical while I’m watching because my husband hates them! That way I feel like I’m doing something productive. I love it. I’m obsessed with Andy Cohen, he is my dream person to meet. He’s the guy who created the shows and I love him. I could just see a teenager feeling the same way and it was just really fun to write about.

I think as a writer one of the benefits is that you can put things that you’re interested in into your books. When my husband was really in to riding bikes I wrote Along for the Ride. I always have put a lot of food and restaurants because I was a waitress and I love to eat.

I like creating this alternate universe. Alan (Penguin book rep in Nashville) asked my last night, “Why didn’t you just use Dum-Dums? Why did you call them Yum-Yums?” It’s because I like having this alternate world. If I wanted to have a flavor that didn’t exist, I wanted to be able to do that. It’s nice to have your own version. That’s why I didn’t do the Real Housewives. I just made up my own version.

I’ve always wanted to have this alternate universe that only I know about. When I was in college I wrote a book that was set in Chapel Hill and all these people in my writing seminar were telling me I was wrong about things. Like, “It takes longer to get there than that,” or, “You can’t park there,” or, “That’s closed on Sundays.” I was like, I want to create a universe that is all mine; nobody is right except for me. So, as far as the “Big New York” show, only I know. So, it’s a control thing.

Mac and Layla’s family are very music oriented. Do you have any get going songs you go to when you need a little pick me up?

I have to say the song that my daughter and I have been listening to and that I started listening to before I started writing this book is  Sara Bareilles’ Brave. That is one of my daughters favorite songs and one of my favorite songs. It’s what I have been listening to.

I made myself a little playlist for this tour. I’ve been so excited about traveling, so excited about getting to talk about this book and make the most of it and be present. I’ve been meditating and doing yoga… but then I got going yesterday and I got really homesick and I missed my kid. She was feeling warm and my husband thought she might be sick and I was like, “I need to put on some music!” The Brave song, I just love. My daughter is very into Taylor Swift right now. She doesn’t really know that much about Taylor Swift but she likes those songs.

One of the things we kind of talked about earlier was the connections between your books. I love that… being set in the same place, seeing a character from another book… the first time that happened did you have it planned or was it something you decided to do as you wrote?

What happened was I was getting a lot of questions about sequels. The place setting came very naturally. That Summer was set in Lakeview and then Someone Like You was set in Lakeview and the Lakeview Mall… the setting that came from Chapel Hill and me wanting to create my own universe. But as far as the characters and mentions… it came from people wanting sequels.

As you know there’s so many amazing series in YA. Everyone is very used to seeing where the story goes next. I just don’t see myself as a sequel girl. I just don’t think it’s in me.

It was a way of kind of thanking readers who were so devoted to the earlier books, giving them a little wink when they read. I felt that way with Stephen King. I was a big Stephen King reader, still am. He would sort of do that. Pennywise the clown was in something before It and then he was in It. I just loved that idea. It’s kind of a way of being like, “Hey, I see you. Thank you for reading. You know. You’re in on something.” Hopefully it doesn’t distract people that are reading the book for the first time. If you have read my books before, it’s a nice little thing.

With this book, it came like such a comet. I was writing it so quickly that I was like, gosh, I really gotta think about this. Like, where am I going to put these mentions. The settings are very easy. The band mentions came very naturally because we had the band thing. Now people look for it. They count on it and they look for it. I have to make sure that it’s in there or else people are going to be disappointed.

[Insert lots of me (Heidi) fangirling about how much I love seeing characters again]

I just like to know that everyone is okay. Maybe I’m just a Pollyanna but I like knowing that people are ok. Scarlet from Someone like You is the first person I brought back in This Lullaby. I just wanted people to know that Scarlet is okay and Grace Halley is okay and life is good and everything’s fine.

Do you have any favorite mentions you like to include?

I loved when I brought Remy and Dexter back in Just Listen. Just Listen was such a hard book to write that I brought them back and I just wanted to follow them out the door! I was like, “Please stay!” As soon as they came in I could write them so easily.

Gah! Thank you oh so much to Sarah Dessen for taking the time to sit and chat with me. It was such a highlight for me!

Once people started arriving for the dinner, Sarah chatted with everyone. I loved that there were a number of teens at the event! Before we ate, Sheila introduced Sarah. Sarah shared her excitement for Saint Anything and the fact that it’s about to be out in the world.

After an amazing meal and great conversation each attendee was given a finished copy of Saint Anything, as well as one of Sarah’s earlier books and a “Keep YA Weird” tote bag! Mine had “Keep YA Weird” and “John Green and I Go Way Back” buttons in it. There was also a fact sheet about Saint Anything and Sarah’s other books. Sarah signed books and took photos with readers and then it was time to go!

I’m so grateful that I was able to attend this event and that I now have a cherished signed copy of Saint Anything! I am so very in love with this book (some of my thoughts on it here) and I want to share that love! Use the rafflecopter below to enter to win a pre-order of Saint Anything as well as a “Keep YA Weird” tote, a”Keep YA Weird” button, and a “John Green and I go Way Back” button. (I’ll pre-order Saint Anything and have it shipped to the winner’s address.) US only. Must be 13 or older to win.

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