What would it be like if your favorite character from a book came to life and left his fictional world behind to join you in reality? Jodi Picoult teams up with her 16-year-old daughter Samantha van Leer to answer that question in a clever and charming new novel for teens.

Between the Lines features high school outcast Delilah McPhee, who falls for the hero of a strange children’s book. This fairy tale prince is not only “cuter than any guy” in Delilah’s school, he’s also smart, sensitive and courageous. Can she find a way to get Oliver off the page and into the real world where they’ll live happily ever after?

We asked the mother-daughter writing pair to tell us more about how they created this delightful fractured fairy tale.

Sammy, this is your first book, and Jodi, this is your first teen book. What was it like venturing into uncharted territory?
Jodi: I’ve been asked to write versions of my books for younger readers who might not be emotionally ready for some of the content of my grownup novels, and I’ve always said no—I’d rather tell the story the way I need to tell it, and have the kid wait till he/she is ready to read it in that form, instead of a watered-down version. But this story, which was 100 percent Sammy’s idea, was so different, and so cool—who hasn’t had a wicked crush on a character in a book at some point in her life? It felt rich enough to be a chapter book, and was a concept I thought both adults and teens could relate to.

Sammy: It was a lot of hard work, but in the end I was able to create something I could be extremely proud of. I’ve written in the past but I’ve never actually completed anything quite like this in terms of size and scope. I had lots of fun imagining an entire other world where I got to essentially decide the fate of everyone living inside. It was a power I’ve never had before!

"Delilah does something many of us think about: She literally gets inside the world of a book."

Was it always a dream for the two of you to collaborate?
Jodi: Sammy has always been incredibly creative, and a great writer. There have been story ideas she’s had that are so wildly original I’d find myself thinking, “I wish I’d been the one to come up with that.” I wasn’t sure if she’d have the desire or the fortitude, however, to take on a long-term collaborative project. Although it was her idea, I knew that having my experience crafting something of this magnitude would help—and that I’d be the one reining her in on sunny days when it would have been far more fun to sit outside than to be at a computer writing. I can’t say whether it was a dream for Sammy . . . but it was an unforgettable and wonderful experience for me to have with my own daughter.

How was the creation and writing of the story divided between you?
Sammy: We sat down together during the summer of my freshman year and every day we’d write for about four hours. Sophomore summer we spent the same amount of time each day editing. This summer—after my junior year—I’ll spend on tour. As for the actual division of labor, we sat side by side and wrote together, having a conversation or role-playing and writing it down.

What’s the best and worst thing about writing with family?
Jodi: The worst thing, of course, is that even when we’re writing, I’m still the mom. That means I am not only the one saying, “We have to finish 20 pages today,” I’m also saying, “Clean your room.” But the best thing is that I found our minds worked similarly in remarkable ways. We would literally write every sentence together, taking turns typing. I’d start to speak a sentence and Sammy would finish, or vice-versa. It was as if we were dreaming the same dream, and falling all over each other to describe what we were seeing, only to realize the vision in each of our minds was identical.

What sparks the attraction between Delilah and Oliver? Why do you think she connects so strongly with him when she’s a loner around real people?
Sammy: I feel like Delilah is more comfortable in the world of books than she is in the real world. When she uses the fairy tale as an escape from her world, she is able to associate with the characters inside better than she would with ordinary teenagers. The reason Oliver is so compelling for her is because he’s nothing like other modern-day teenage boys. He has chivalry, manners, and he also knows what it’s like to feel like he doesn’t belong in the world he inhabits.

What is it about Delilah’s character that teens will most identify with or admire?
Sammy: Everyone’s felt left out sometime—whether it was in high school or even in preschool on the playground. Anyone can identify with feeling lonely. Also, Delilah does something many of us think about: She literally gets inside the world of a book.

What makes your novel a modern story—even though it’s based on a fairy tale?
Jodi: The voice of Delilah—which is very poignant and true, and taps into that teen angst of how to find one’s place in a world that doesn’t seem to fit. Which, very intentionally, is also the driving force behind Oliver’s desire to escape his literary existence. There are bits of Delilah’s life that are so real a teen can’t help but identify—Sammy came up with one phrase I loved, in fact, where she described popular girls “clustered together like grapes, because really, do you ever see just one?” Who hasn’t witnessed that in the halls of a modern high school?

What’s one book you’d love to be a character in?
Sammy: A Dr. Seuss book. It seems like a really happy place to be, full of nonsense and imagination . . . which is a place I’d fit right into.

What has the process of working together taught you?
Jodi: I’ve always been proud of Sammy’s writing ability, but I was so impressed by her tenacity and her ability to really put in the time and energy required not just to craft a book, but to edit it multiple times, and then tour for eight weeks to promote it across three continents. I learned that I’m not the only story­teller in the family. And I learned that when my daughter wants to put her mind to a task, she can be incredibly successful.

In Dust Girl, Sarah Zettel has masterfully combined magic and history into a mysterious novel set during the Dust Bowl-plagued 1930s. Callie LeRoux makes the ideal heroine for this clever mash-up: She's part fairy, biracial and sick from the dust that inundates her Kansas town. Not to mention, her love interest is a Jewish hobo and her mother vanished in a dust storm.

Zettel’s novel, woven with classic jazz and blues music, is a wholly original take on fairy mythology. She combines the spirit of the Depression-era Midwest with the magical conflicts between the Seelie and Unseelie courts of fairies. The result is a novel that can be experienced through all of the senses: Taste the dust; hear the music; feel the gritty wind; smell the sweat; and see the Dust Bowl through Callie’s eyes.

Dust Girl is a combination of historical fiction and fantasy literature. How did you come up with this particular combination?
Well, partly it was because I'd never seen it done. I've always been fascinated by U.S. history and folklore, and love stories that make use of it. I grew up reading all the Wizard of Oz books, so those were always a part of my personal mental landscape. At the same time, I discovered stories about Paul Bunyan and other work heroes and tall tales. Plus, when I was a kid, I came across a set of stories by Manly Wade Wellman about a man named John who had a guitar with silver strings [and] a set of magic powers, and who walked through Appalachia having adventures and confronting ghosts and monsters. Those stories knocked me back on my heels and remain some of my favorites. So all of this was very much in the back of my mind what I was thinking of when I started considering my own ideas for a new fantasy series.

Sometimes the reader can actually hear the blues music playing in the background of this novel. What was your motivation for making music such an integral part of your storytelling?
My introduction to the history of the Dust Bowl and Depression was actually through music. My parents were big fans of traditional musicians like Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly and Pete Seeger. I grew up listening to Woody Guthrie's recordings of Dust Bowl ballads. So, when I came to write a book set in that time and place, it seemed natural to me that the music be included.

"That kind of poverty can make a person strong in some ways and leave them very scarred in others."

Have you always held an interest in fairies, or did you simply choose to write about them and then embark upon the work of researching the appropriate lore?
I have always adored fairy tales and fantasy. I grew up reading traditional fairy tales and folklore, and my father was a science fiction fan from way back, so I went straight from the Brother's Grimm to authors like Tolkein, Andre Norton, Ray Bradbury and Lord Dunsany because that was what was on the shelves at home.

In the same vein, how much time did you spend researching the Dust Bowl era? You manage to evoke that time in American history so well.
I knew something about the Depression and the Dust Bowl from family history, the folk music I grew up with and of course authors like John Steinbeck and the haunting photos of Dorothea Lange. For extra research I read The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan, which is an excellent book about those who weathered the "dirty years." Kansas State University has done a fantastic job collecting oral histories from survivors of those times and they've posted them online. That's where I found details like the windmills glowing green from the static electricity in the dust storms. Then, too, I got lucky. I found a memoir of a Kansas farmer from right near where I put Callie in the University of Michigan library, and while I was listening to Pandora radio on my computer, an Alan Lomax recording came up of Woody Guthrie describing how he lived through "Black Sunday," the day of the worst, largest dust storm in U.S. history.

You’re already an award-winning science fiction and fantasy author. What made you decide to try your hand at writing for young adults?
Some of the best and most exciting science fiction and fantasy happening today is happening in the young adult section. There's an incredible breadth of subject, an energy and an excitement in the new books. I really wanted to be a part of that.

The world you create in Dust Girl is so captivating and unique, yet it seems so incredibly real! How did you go about creating the tableau of this novel?
This is where being a science fiction author gave me a head start. I had practice at building worlds I'd never seen and imagining what it would be like to walk there. Of course, this time I had all these magnificent first-hand accounts to draw on, and long, broad history of American folklore as well. 

You deal not only with the issue of racism but also with that of anti-Semitism in Dust Girl. Did you view these as peripheral themes of the novel or did you know from the beginning that you would be tackling these difficult issues within your story?
I very much wanted the book to address questions of identity. Frankly, it is not possible to discuss questions of identity in American history without discussing race and religion. You also can't talk about U.S. popular culture, especially in the ‘30s [at] the height of Jim Crow and segregation, without talking about race and culture. So it had to be there. 

Callie reveals, “If I had to be crazy, I wanted my mama's kind of crazy, because she was never afraid.” What is your own mother like, and did you draw any inspiration from her—or perhaps from your own experience as a mother—in creating the mother/daughter relationship?
There's a lot of my mother in this book. She was born at the end of the Depression and remembered very well the toll it took on her family. My grandfather worked as a "line walker" for the Rock Island Line, and they never had enough. That kind of poverty can make a person strong in some ways and leave them very scarred in others. This was part of the dichotomy I tried to present in Callie's mother Margaret.

I understand you practice Tai Chi. Does the practice help you in your writing?
Tai Chi affects my writing primarily by enabling me to calm down and take a break from the process. One of the problems with being a writer is it can get hard to shut your brain off. It's always working, always struggling with this idea or that one. You need to be able to step away, take a mental break. Tai Chi helps with that. Also, of course, it helps to maintain physical health. Sitting and typing all day is really bad for you, so it's important as a writer to have a good exercise program of some sort for balance. It also has had the side effect of teaching me some martial arts, which do tend to show up in fight scenes.

So, you married a rocket scientist. Is he your worst critic or your biggest fan?
VBG. It's funny. I knew he was the guy for me as soon as we met. It was at a party at a friend's, and there I was, busy explaining to him what I'd discovered about wave motion in Lake Erie for a science fiction story I was working on, and he was not only paying attention, he was grinning. I knew at that moment this was somebody I could talk to about anything and everything. He's helped with every one of my books, whether it's designing ships and space stations for the science fiction, or helping bounce ideas around for the fantasy and mysteries. This includes Dust Girl. There I was, struggling with how to show fairies and fairy magic in a really American context. The idea of Hollywood and the movies being how the Seelie court—the bright, golden, shiny side of the American fairies—manifest themselves and their glamour in our world came easily. But what about the Unseelie court? The night side, the less obviously beautiful, but still tempting, still magnificent, still powerful? I was saying all this to Tim, and he looked right at me and said, "You want a court? ‘Count’ Basie. ‘Duke’ Ellington. ‘Lady’ Day.” And I had it as soon as he said it. The Seelie Court was Hollywood, but the Unseelie Court was jazz.

Are you willing to reveal any teasers for the next two novels in the trilogy?
Let's see. Callie and Jack's relationship continues to change and grow. Their travels continue as well, first to California and then to Chicago where they both have to come to terms with their families. Callie finds out she and Shimmy are a long way from being the only part-fairy people out in the human world, and that a prophecy can have more than one way of coming true.

RELATED CONTENT
Read a review of Dust Girl.

Beth Kephart is one of those enviable people whose talent seems limitless. She is a prolific writer—of YA novels, memoirs and nonfiction. Her first book, the memoir A Slant of Sun, was a finalist for the National Book Award.

She teaches at the University of Pennsylvania, reviews books frequently for publications like the Chicago Tribune and has a passion for photography. And she holds a day job running a boutique marketing and communications firm.

When we meet on a sunny summer day at a quaint coffee shop near Kephart’s home in Devon, Pennsylvania, I ask her how on earth she has time to do so many things at once. With a smile, she explains, “I don’t sleep much, obviously. I wish I slept more and I want to sleep more. But I am so passionate about words and about story that it’s just hard to stop myself. When there is a story percolating, when there is an opportunity to do something with language, I’m unstoppable.”

Indeed she is. Over limeade (hers) and a latte (mine), we spend an afternoon discussing Kephart’s 14th book, the mesmerizing teen novel Small Damages. It’s the story of Kenzie, a 17-year-old American who is sent to Spain to wait out a surprise pregnancy before giving her baby up for adoption—a plan her mother has concocted to save face in their suburban Philadelphia town. Kenzie is not happy about the move; it will take her away from her home, her friends and the father of her baby, Kevin. But she agrees to go abroad, relieved to escape her mother’s judgment and have some space to contemplate the difficult journey ahead of her.

While the plot of Small Damages may sound sensational, Kenzie’s pregnancy and plans for adoption are only part of the story. As Kephart tells me, “This is not a political novel. But it is a novel about making choices and about not judging either way. It never occurred to me that I was writing a book about a pregnant teen. It was just a story that had to be written.”

An American teen sent to Spain to wait out a surprise pregnancy finds a new sense of family and belonging.

When Kenzie arrives in Spain, she is immediately struck by the beauty of the landscape and the richness of the culture all around her. She travels from Seville to a bull ranch outside of town, where she will serve as a cook’s assistant. Filling out Kephart’s story is a cast of unforgettable characters. There is Miguel, who trains bulls on Los Nietos, the ranch where Kenzie stays; Estela, the “queen” of the ranch who encourages Kenzie to master the art of Spanish cooking; Luis, Estela’s long-lost love; Esteban, a mysterious young ranch hand with whom Kenzie strikes up an unlikely flirtation; and a roaming band of gypsies.

Kephart’s descriptions of Spain—the scenery, the food, the people and the history—bring the story to life. It’s remarkable how much Kephart can say in so few words, and while the novel moves quickly, certain passages beg to be reread and savored.

The inspiration for Small Damages came from Kephart’s own travels through Spain, though the novel took her more than 10 years to write. “It wasn’t the direct line that many of my stories have been,” she says. The novel originally began as a book for adults, but after conversations with her son, Jeremy, Kephart decided to focus on Kenzie—and her relationship with Estela.

“I’m always interested in inserting the wise older person into my books for young adults. I think there’s so much to learn. I wanted someone who had the Spanish Civil War experience. I wanted it not to be a history lesson, but a reminder of what people have gone through and what they have to give up—and the lessons that they try to pass on to those they truly love. Once I discovered Kenzie as a character, Estela developed, because it is the tension between them that truly defines them.”

As Kenzie spends more time on the ranch, she grows to love—and feel truly loved by—the people around her. Estela transforms from a brash taskmaster into a wise, supportive presence, encouraging Kenzie to listen to her heart and live a life without regrets. She shares her story with Kenzie—a story of love and loss in the time of the Spanish Civil War—and gives Kenzie a perspective on family and belonging that she had been missing. When she thinks about the baby growing inside of her, Kenzie thinks about her father, who has recently passed away, and she begins to question her mother’s plan to give the child up for adoption.

While Small Damages is a book for teens, it is a novel that adults will enjoy, too. Of this crossover, Kephart says, “When I took the leap [to write YA] I said I will never write down, I will never do anything other than honor the intelligence of young readers. I’ve had the privilege of spending time with them and I know how smart they are. I write with great respect for their intelligence. I think that’s also why my books get carried forward to the adult reading world.”

No matter the audience, there is one thing Kephart hopes readers take away from her novel: not to judge others. Of her protagonist, she says, “Kenzie is very loving, intelligent, moral. She is in a situation. I think no less of her and I don’t want my readers to think any less of her.” Kephart speaks with such compassion for her characters and such passion for her work that it’s hard not to be inspired by such an unassuming, accomplished woman. Of her career, she reflects, “I never want to look back and say, ‘Well, my best book was my first one or my fifth or my seventh,’ so I’m highly motivated to not just slide. I try to break form or go to a new place in the world or tell a story that hasn’t been told before. I’m invested in challenging myself and going to the verge or taking the risk.”

Small Damages is a book well worth the risk. Kephart has created a lyrical, beautiful story about a young woman at a turning point, struggling to reconcile her choices, find her place in the world and discover the true meaning of family.

In their debut YA novel Mothership, authors Martin Leicht and Isla Neal create an uproarious, action-packed tale narrated by an expectant teen mother at a boarding school in outer space. While those attributes alone should make readers curious about the book—the first in a planned trilogy—the best part of this futuristic adventure story is its pitch-perfect blend of the serious and the hilarious.

A chat with the authors revealed them to be just as funny as we hoped they’d be.

Teen pregnancy is traditionally treated as a serious topic in YA literature. What inspired you to take a lighter perspective?
Isla: Well, I think it was something we wanted to be silly about, while still treating seriously, if that makes any sense. What makes the humor in this book work, in my opinion, is that underneath it all there is a confused teenage girl, worrying about huge life decisions she never thought she’d have to face before. Plus lots of gastrointestinal jokes—always good for a laugh riot.

Martin: I’ve always felt that humor is an effective way to explore any serious emotional subject. Humor is how we deal with loss, hardship, death, etc. It’s not just how we cope with these things, but how we gain some perspective on them. With Mothership, we wanted to take the issue of teen pregnancy seriously, but have really strong, funny characters that deal with the situation in a realistic way so that it never came off as preachy.

Mothership blends the genres of science fiction, action and adventure, humor and romance. What sparked this genre mash-up?
Isla: It was all kind of born out of a joke that wouldn’t die—the idea to write a book that was “Juno meets Alien.” The project seemed like a natural collaboration for Marty and me, because Marty loves sci-fi and I love girly YA novels. And we both like to think we’re pretty funny.

"Humor is how we deal with loss, hardship, death, etc. It’s not just how we cope with these things, but how we gain some perspective on them."

Martin: I’ve always enjoyed cross-genre stories—in books, in film and on television. Humor can punctuate an action beat, romance can raise the stakes in an otherwise esoteric science fiction universe, and so on. I think it adds variety to the experience and keeps things fresh.

Elvie’s use of slang (new words like “blink” for “text message” and abbreviations like “obvi” for “obviously”) is part of what makes Mothership so much fun to read. How did you come up with her unique voice?
Isla: Elvie’s voice was one of those things that just sort of came out organically—it was completely unlike anything either of us had written before, and it just worked. I hate to be one of those infuriating authors who pretends like she’s merely channeling the voice of her character, but it really did feel like that for this book. We spent a lot of time tweaking the story and discussing plot ideas and story elements that needed to be enhanced or changed in revisions, but Elvie’s voice—that was there from the first sentence of the first draft.

Martin: There was a lot of discussion early on about Elvie’s use of “future-slang.” We didn’t want it to sound alien or silly. The book only takes place 60-some years in the future, so we wanted the way she and the other characters spoke to sound very natural and contemporary, so that it felt familiar to readers today but still showed an evolution of the language. It’s important that even if you don’t know a word Elvie is using, the context of what she’s saying will make it abundantly clear.

Mothership blends serious themes like individual vs. group priorities with genuinely funny moments, like the odd food combinations Elvie and Ducky (Elvie's best friend) eat. How did you work on achieving a balance between the serious and the hilarious?
Martin: I think that if you have a firm grasp on your characters, especially your protagonist or narrator, they will give you that balance. You need to appreciate how your characters would feel in a given situation and make sure their reactions in each moment are believable.

Isla: Finding that balance was one of the really great things about collaborating with another author—which for me at least was a completely new experience. Marty and I took turns writing drafts of each chapter, and then we’d give our draft to the other person to look at, and that person would make changes, and then we’d swap again. Each chapter probably went through at least eight revisions, back-and-forth and back-and-forth. It was a little tiring, but the wonderful part about it was that you could just throw something at the page—a joke or a completely out-there idea or a sappy, touching moment—and you knew there was a talented, funny author on the other side who would either love it and keep it, or one-up it and make it even better (or, often, axe it completely). It felt a little bit like an improv show, where two comedians are really just trying to make the other person on the stage laugh. If we both liked something, then we figured it was probably worth sticking with.

What was it like working together?
Isla: It was quite the experience! We are both fiercely loyal to our ideas and our words, which can be good but can be difficult, too. We seriously spent a good 40 minutes arguing over a single word one day. (Not to brag, but I won.) So it got a little exhausting at times. But I think our book is a trillion times better for having both of our voices in it. It’s definitely greater than the sum of either of our talents.

Martin: I still maintain that I was on the right side of that single word debate. Sometimes we would have very different ideas about what the thematic underpinning of a scene was, and our different drafts would reflect that. It’s very easy to be sensitive and protective of your work, and to have someone change it in a draft can sometimes be frustrating. What is important to remind yourself of is that if your partner is changing something you liked into something else (or vice versa), it isn’t because they hate your writing but because they have a different view of what’s important in the scene, or you’re simply not conveying what you think is important as effectively as you think you are. Then you get into more serious conversations, sometimes going on for days, but ultimately you end up with a much stronger passage.

Who was your favorite character to come up with and write?
Martin: Elvie is the easy answer because she’s just a really fun character and would be a lot of fun to know in real life. But Cole Archer (the father of Elvie’s unborn baby) was great to write, too, because I enjoyed tweaking the cliché handsome boy character to make him something a little more relatable—and a whole lot funnier (one hopes). There are also a few characters that don’t get much page time in Mothership that I’m very excited to delve into deeper in the next two books.

Isla: Elvie for me, too, but a close second was Elvie’s dad. He’s more than a little bit based on my own father, who’s an utterly hilarious worrywart with a game plan for every ridiculous situation you can dream up. Several of the sillier moments with Elvie’s dad are actually based on real-life incidents with my dad. (Luckily, my father has a very good sense of humor and was tickled pink to have a character based on him.)

Elvie’s best friend Ducky is the epitome of a video game geek—while also being a loyal and dedicated friend. Is he modeled on anyone you know?
Isla: I think he’s Marty.

Martin: There’s more than a little of me in Ducky, although he’s probably a bit nerdier than me in some ways. Not personality-wise, but he’s definitely better at video games than I ever was.

The ship on which Mothership takes place is “an old recommissioned low-orbit luxury cruise liner.” If outer space cruises were available now, would you vacation on one? Where would you go?
Martin: I probably wouldn’t go because I’d get too motion sick, even in orbit. I have enough trouble getting on a cross-country flight.

If you could choose only a few “classic flat pic” movies for late 21st-century viewers like Elvie to see, which would they be?
Martin: Oh, God, I could list a page of movies or more! I’m that annoying friend that’s always going, “You haven’t seen Such-and-Such? We have to watch Such-and-Such this weekend!”

Isla: (rolls eyes) He’s not kidding.

Martin: I’d want them to watch John Ford films like Stagecoach and The Searchers, and Hitchcock films like Vertigo and Rear Window. I think Elvie would love Jean Arthur in The More the Merrier and I think Ducky would have a major crush on Rita Hayworth in Gilda. I would want to make sure they didn’t miss underrated (or at least under-watched) gems like The Iron Giant, The Rocketeer and Serenity. I also think they’d be real big fans of television shows with strong characters and witty dialogue, so I’d include copies of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel," "Firefly" and "Gilmore Girls." And yes, I totally love "Gilmore Girls."

Isla: I’d pick The Sting. One of my all-time favorites. So funny and smart and clever, and the performances are amazing. Plus, Robert Redford and Paul Newman are eternally charming. Elvie would have mega-crushes on both of them, definitely.

Martin: Wait! I thought of about 50 more . . .

Isla: Hush, now, Marty.

Can you give us any hints about what’s to come in the second two books in the Ever-Expanding Universe trilogy?
Isla: Elvie is going to go from preparing to be a mother to actually having to be one, and the alien-human love triangle we saw sparks of in book one will get even more complicated. She’s going to learn some surprising things about her family and herself. We will also come to discover that there’s a much bigger threat to the world than anyone had heretofore imagined.

Martin: And the authors will finally find a way to use “heretofore” in a sentence.

RELATED CONTENT
Read a review of Mothership.

Publishing phenom Jessica Khoury has had a busy couple of years: In 2010, she graduated from college and got married. In 2011, she wrote a book (in about a month) that was snapped up by Penguin’s Razorbill imprint. This year, she finished revising the book, appeared at book and library conventions and traveled to the jungle for the first time.

On September 4, Origin—a thought-provoking YA novel with a fascinating premise—debuts with an impressive 250,000-copy first printing. And that’s not all: The 22-year-old Khoury is already writing her second novel for Penguin, and she has embarked on the publisher’s Breathless Reads tour.

But while the past two years have been a veritable whirlwind, Khoury wants to emphasize—especially to aspiring authors—that, as easy or speedy as her timeline might appear, writing and publishing a book takes significant time and effort.

“It’s important to know it’s a long process. You can write a book in a month, but it takes months and months to get it ready to go out into the world,” Khoury says in an interview from her home in Georgia. “Some people may say this just happened overnight, but it didn’t . . . and I have a great team of supporters who worked with me."

Origin isn’t the first book Khoury created. After being homeschooled, she entered Toccoa Falls College, a Christian school in her small north Georgia hometown, and began working on a high-fantasy trilogy. (Khoury says she has loved fantasy since “my dad forced me to read Lord of the Rings in elementary school.”) She was in the midst of querying agents and publishers about that book when the idea for Origin struck during a walk in the woods near her home—and that, as they say, was that.

"You can't get a more universal theme than mortality. We all think about it, and we all have to make our own decisions about what it means."

At the heart of the novel is a 17-year-old girl named Pia. She’s been genetically engineered to be perfect—and to be Person No. 1 in the immortal race a group of scientists has been secretly and feverishly working to create in their hidden compound, Little Cam.

This coming-of-age story is rife with romance, suspense and danger, plus musings on nature vs. nurture, the notion (and possibility) of immortality and archetypal mad-scientists-vs.-noble-savages, all set against the lush backdrop of the Amazon jungle.

The scientists are the only people Pia knows. They praise her superiority even as they groom her to carry on their work and strive to keep her ignorant of the outside world.

But, like any good coming-of-age tale, the time comes when Pia is offered a glimpse into a different sort of future, and she rebels—though the consequences are far more dramatic, even deadly, than typical teenage turbulence.

Pia begins to question her own viewpoints, and her very existence, when she sneaks away from the compound and encounters Eio, a handsome young man who lives in a nearby village. As she gets to know Eio and his tribe, she is shocked to realize the world is much bigger than she’d realized—and perhaps the goings-on (and people) at Little Cam are not what they seem.

Khoury describes the jungle’s flora and fauna, its colors and scents, in colorful detail. That’s no small accomplishment, considering she had never been to the jungle when she wrote Origin. “The jungle has always fascinated me. When I had the original idea, I knew the jungle had to happen, I just didn’t know which; I had to do a lot of research to decide which one.”

And research she did, “probably two hours of research for every one hour of writing,” Khoury says. “The week I came up with the idea and started writing, I made my husband drive me to Barnes & Noble and we bought coffee-table books, folklore anthologies and video documentaries; Wikipedia was perpetually open. I learned a lot as I wrote, and I tried to research every little detail so it would be real to the readers.”

The novel’s exploration of the possible consequences of immortality wasn’t something the author needed to research. “It has always been of weight with me because of my faith and religion,” Khoury says. “You can’t get a more universal theme than mortality. We all think about it, and we all have to make our own decisions about what it means. Pia struggles with that.” (It’s fun to note, too, that, not unlike Eve biting that fateful apple, Pia eats fruit-flavored Skittles shortly before her first escape from Little Cam—something Khoury says, “I didn’t even think about!”)

The weight of others’ expectations is also something Khoury’s felt, and explores through her protagonist. “For me, I’m still kind of coming from Pia’s angle and dealing with the expectations of people,” she says. “When I have kids, I’ll be looking at it from the other angle. I do that a little bit now with my four younger sisters [she has a younger brother, too]. I think, I don’t agree, but I support you, and nothing’s gonna change how I love you.”

Speaking of love, Khoury says her husband and family are very excited about her becoming a full-fledged author (not least her Syrian grandfather, whose last name she is using in tribute to him).

“My family has been waiting for this as long as I have,” she says. “I’ve been telling them I was going to be an author since I was four years old. They’re my biggest cheerleaders.”

They’ll have lots to yell about in the coming months, for sure. And of course, there’s Khoury’s next book, which may be a companion to Origin, maybe not: “Anything could happen down the road,” she says. A fitting outlook for a newly minted author.

Almost 20 years have passed since the publication of Lois Lowry’s Newbery-winning novel The Giver. While dystopian stories are widespread today, Lowry’s 1993 book was a pioneer in the genre for young readers, and it remains a searing and unforgettable reading experience.

It’s therefore chilling to be transported back to this colorless, controlled community where sameness is the norm, and where a boy named Jonas is designated as the “Receiver” of the society’s past memories. But that’s exactly what readers have in store with Son, Lowry’s latest book and the final volume in The Giver Quartet. Son introduces a new character, Claire, a 14-year-old girl who is somewhat embarrassed to be assigned the role of birthmother.

Things don’t go as planned for Claire. She becomes a “Vessel,” but has such difficulty with the birth of her first “Product” that she is sent instead to work at the fish hatchery.

Claire is filled with a sense of loss and an urgency to be with her baby. She finds a way to visit the Nurturing Center, all the while hiding her true intentions: to be with her son, no matter what it takes.

Claire’s story is riveting. And for readers of The Giver, reading Son is like visiting a place you lived long ago: Memories flood back; the landscape is eerily familiar; you start to recall people and events.

The events in Claire’s life connect so effortlessly with The Giver it seems as if Lowry must have planned it this way. Nothing could be further from the truth.

“I thought The Giver would be a single book,” laughs the author, speaking from her home in Maine. She was inspired to continue Jonas’ story in part because of young readers’ reactions to The Giver’s ambiguous ending.

“Kids like things tied up a little more,” she explains. “It was clear from letters and emails that kids didn’t like the ambiguity of the ending.” This led to the next books in the series, Gathering Blue and Messenger.

Similarly, readers’ curiosity about another character in The Giver prompted Lowry to write Son and return to the world that Jonas fled. (In preparation, Lowry herself sat down to reread the first book!)

Just as Lowry never planned to write a quartet, she also doesn’t do much planning for individual books. “I never have a plot carefully thought out,” Lowry explains. “As an author you want to create a journey.”

Critical to Claire’s journey is that somehow, after she is sent to the fish hatchery, no one remembers to give her the “pills,” which are used to stop stirrings—of love, dreams, longing and emotions. While she didn’t know what would happen to Claire, Lowry understood her character’s passionate need to connect with her son. For readers who know that Lowry herself lost a son (an Air Force pilot who was killed in the crash of his F-15), the story has added resonance.

Claire’s journey takes her to a place far from the world of The Giver, to an isolated village at the foot of a high, terrifying cliff. In Claire’s new home, the technology that permeates the community of The Giver is absent. Lowry’s juxtaposition of primitive conditions and advanced technology draws inspiration from her life and the connections she makes to others.

For some time, she has been part of Women for Women International, a program that helps women survivors of war rebuild their lives. Through a monthly sponsorship, Lowry is helping a mother of five in Afghanistan support and educate her children; her photo is posted by Lowry’s computer, a reminder that many people in our world still struggle with poverty and difficult living conditions.

Lowry is a mentor and role model, as well as a mother, grandmother and a writer with an immense dedication to her readers. So it’s probably no accident that Claire finds help in her own quest to be reunited with her son.

“I realize in looking back that Jonas, Kira, Matty, Gabe and Claire each find a mentor, or someone who gives them wisdom,” the renowned author notes, reflecting on the main characters in The Giver Quartet. “It seems to be a recurring theme.”

While Lowry only works on one project at a time, she feels fortunate that inspiration still strikes. “Within the past week, the beginning of a new book appeared in my imagination,” she reveals. She started to write down what had come to her.

“I suddenly realized I had written five pages,” Lowry says. She closed the file on her computer: She has another deadline to fulfill.

But the book will be waiting for her—and hopefully someday for us—when she is ready.

It’s no secret that Printz Award winner Libba Bray can tell a scary story. Her latest novel, The Diviners—the first of a planned quartet—is like a silent film meets a slasher flick. Set in 1926 Manhattan, The Diviners features a cast of dynamic characters with unique supernatural abilities who come together to stare down a great evil. But it’s Evie O’Neill, Bray’s modern and plucky heroine, who steals the show.

A Q&A with the chatty and outspoken author reveals, among other things, what inspired her to write such a mash-up of history and horror, her take on the darker side of American culture and how she encountered Evie’s namesake.

The Diviners is an ambitious project mixing history, mysticism and good old-fashioned Prohibition law-breaking. What inspired you to set the novel in the 1920s?

I had long been interested in delving into the 1920s. It’s a fascinating period in American life: women had just gotten the vote, Prohibition was creating a criminal underground, radio was exciting and new, there were flappers and Ziegfeld Follies, corruption and anarchism, labor struggles and wealth inequality—it was a wild party leading up to an eventual devastating financial collapse. At the same time, there was also this backlash reaction to all of these modern changes through the temperance movement and anti-immigration law and rising evangelicalism as certain segments of the American population who feared the change fought to hold on to their “Americanism” and “traditional American values.” That sort of conflict makes for an inherently interesting story.

New York City was one of the most happening cities in the world at that time—a symbol of American progress and modernity. I couldn’t resist the glamour and grit of it, my adopted hometown. Even NYC’s mayor, Jimmy Walker, was a real character, a corrupt charmer as likely to be found in a speakeasy with a beautiful girl on his arm as at City Hall. NYC in the 1920s promised to be a wild ride and I was not disappointed.

What kind of research did you do for this book? Did you visit any former speakeasies or haunted mansions?

I spend all of my time in haunted speakeasies, actually. Talk about “spirits.” Ba-dum-dum. (Thank you folks, I’ll be here all week. Tip your waitress. Try the fish.)

I did a lot of research and yet, I always feel that it’s never enough. When I knew that I wanted to write this series four years ago, I began reading up on the 1920s to get some sense of overview, books like Ann Douglas’ Terrible Honesty: Mongrel Manhattan in the 1920s; Playing The Numbers: Gambling in Harlem Between the Wars, by Shane White, Stephen Garton, Dr. Stephen Robertson, and Graham White; When Harlem Was In Vogue, by David L. Lewis; and Sacco And Vanzetti: The Men, the Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind, by Bruce Watson, among many others. I also read literature from the period: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Cane by Jean Toomer, Home Toward Harlem by Claude McKay, poems by Langston Hughes, essays by Alain Locke and columns by journalist H.L. Mencken and Lipstick (Lois Long), who wrote a gossip column for The New Yorker.

Fortunately for me, New York City has some absolutely amazing libraries and historical resources, and my terrific assistant, Tricia, and I made trips to the Brooklyn Public Library, the New York Public Library, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, as well as the New York Historical Society, the Paley Center for Media, a Follies/Musical Revues exhibit at Lincoln Center, and the MTA Museum and archives. Historian Tony Robins led us on a walking tour of Harlem and the Lower East Side, while Joyce Gold took us to Chinatown. I also pestered my librarian pal, Karyn Silverman, who used to teach a unit on the 1920s at Elizabeth Irwin High School. Reading newspapers and advertisements is always a revelation as it gives clues to everything from syntax and language to the values and aspirations of a society. And hey, when you need a starting point, Wikipedia can help you realize what you don’t yet know so that you can make a list. I could spend all day clicking on links and thinking, “Oh, I really should research that, too . . .” This is probably why I can’t remember anything anymore. And why my house looks the way it does.

But my untrained, ninety-eight-pound-weakling research skills could only carry me so far. There was so much I needed to know that it became clear I needed the services of a ninja librarian. Enter the amazing Lisa Gold. She’s a goddess. I could email her at any time of day or night and plead my case: “I need primary sources on chorus girls or pictures of the Bowery in 1926,” and she’d make it happen. Like I say, when the going gets tough, the tough get a librarian. Librarians: I am sorry—I’m going to be bugging you a lot over the next few years. I promise to provide you with chocolate.

Last but not least, in the spooky mansions department, my inspiration for Knowles’ End was the old Wheelock House, which was once a part of the rarefied Audubon Park neighborhood around 157th Street. The house was demolished in 1941, but here’s a picture of it (taken by famed photographer Berenice Abbott in 1936, via www.bulgergallery.com):

I dare you to spend the night in a house like that. In fact, I double dog dare you.

Evie is an adventurous and funny heroine who truly embodies the Jazz Age. How did you find her unique voice? Did it involve channeling the spirits of long-dead flapper girls?

I’ve known an awful lot of adventurous, funny, might-want-to-keep-some-bail-money-on-you-just-in-case ladies in my time, so channeling their spirits isn’t too hard. I was a huge Dorothy Parker fan in my teens. I mean, how can you not love a woman who gave us “Brevity is the soul of lingerie,” and “You can’t teach an old dogma new tricks”? That sort of wit is irresistible, and I really wanted to pay homage to those wisecracking women I adore.

True story: I got the name Evangeline from a picture I found in my grandmother’s box of old photos. It was a picture from 1926-27 of my grandmother and a blonde flapper who looked at the camera like she could take it on in a fight. “Who is that?” I asked. My grandmother, a staunch Presbyterian prude through and through, pursed her lips and raised an eyebrow: “That,” she said with a hint of admiration mixed with approbation, “is Evangeline. She was hot to trot, as they say. Real trouble.” I knew then that I’d use her for something someday. (My tiny grandmother’s maiden name was also Fitzgerald, hence Uncle Will’s surname, in case you thought I was tipping to Mr. F. Scott. We’re no relation, as far as I know.) Here’s that pic for you (Evangeline’s in the middle; my Nana is on the left):

There’s an unsettling scene where Evie and Jericho stumble into a eugenics exhibit at a county fair. What made you decide the theory of eugenics (a pseudo-science most closely associated with the Nazis' desire to create a pure race) would be a good fit for the story?

In The Diviners, there’s a large, diverse cast of characters, some of whom have unusual abilities, and they are living at a time when there’s a lot of racist dogma being passed off as science and influencing legislation that stays on the books for decades. I don’t think you can write an American story without delving into race and immigration, certainly not one set in the 1920s.

The eugenics movement, which upheld the idea of an American identity based on “racial purity,” was big in the 1920s as America reacted to the waves of immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe with a rather nasty nativist streak. This movement was not just limited to conservative WASPs but also encompassed many progressive, leftist thinkers, like writer H.G. Wells and birth control advocate Margaret Sanger. The KKK was big in the 1920s, though more so in the early ‘20s. In 1916, eugenicist Madison Grant published The Passing Of The Great Race, which was chock-full of racist “scientific” theories about the Nordic “great” race being responsible for most of civilization. He advocated phasing out the racially “inferior stock” and the “weak and unfit” through ghettos and forced sterilization. Sound familiar? What you have to know is that this was put forward as science at the time. As fact. It’s important to remember this. And these racist eugenics theories led to legislation like the Immigration Act of 1924 and the Racial Integrity Act of 1924 and to the Fitter Families for Future Firesides.

When I found the photos of exhibits for Fitter Families for Future Firesides—and no, they don’t get points for alliteration—I was fascinated and horrified. Essentially, they went to state fairs and judged “human stock” according to these racist ideas, judging the “fitness” of families and awarding them (if they passed all the “whiteness” tests) with bronze medals declaring, “Yea, I have a goodly heritage.” There were boards at these exhibits—which purported to “educate” people about the “science” of eugenics—that talked about the need to get rid of those who were a “burden on society.” Chilling. Sometimes you want to make up a villain and then you do a little research and realize you don’t have to go far to do it.

I’ve said that we Americans seem to have a convenient, collective amnesia about some of the more disturbing aspects of our history. We’re a can-do people raised on a spirit of Manifest Destiny and Horatio Alger rags-to-riches stories. It becomes almost a mantra. Even our Declaration of Independence guarantees us the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We do a lot of pursuing. And certainly, there is a wonderful optimistic and maverick quality to the American spirit. But when you say, “Yeah, but what about slavery? And the Chinese Exclusion Act? And the eugenics movement?” it’s as if everyone turns their heads, sips from their XL soda cups and says, “Why, I don’t know what you mean.”

These racist sentiments are still alive and well today.  We’re still having the same arguments about immigration. Whether you agree with President Obama’s policies or not, I’d argue that his presidency has been framed through the lens of our inherent racism, that these “Birther” arguments and the far right-wing hatred we’re hearing is, at its core, a reaction to his race first. We have such an uncomfortable relationship to our identity, a push-pull between our spoken belief in the melting pot, a country made up of all sorts of cultures, and this underlying xenophobia. Some people find change to be a threat to their perceptions of who they are and who they think they are. They fear losing their safety net of a crafted, curated identity, and they fear the thought that by incorporating the new, they will lose some part of themselves.

If we as a country want to evolve and become what we purport to believe in our creed, we are going to have to take an unflinching look at some of these disturbing aspects of our past, of ourselves, and we are going to have to have honest dialogue about race, trying to move beyond the reactionary, the defensive, and the fear-based.

But nobody asked me for my opinion so I wrote a book instead.

You’ve said you could always be counted on to tell a scary story. What scares you?

Besides religious fanatics and corporations running our country?

Well, I’m guessing you don’t mean things like small enclosed spaces, Madame Alexander dolls, hemorrhagic viruses, and circus clowns, so we’ll leave them off the list for now. I’m a huge horror fan; it’s my genre of choice. Give me Shirley Jackson, Stephen King, Peter Straub, Bram Stoker, Richard Matheson, Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hammer Horror films, gothic tales set in old castles, psychological suspense, and ghost stories of all kinds. I’m not a fan of torture porn or gore for gore’s sake.

But if you really want to scare me, give me a story that involves satanic or demonic forces, like Rosemary’s Baby or The Exorcist. That’s probably a throwback to my having grown up in the church and overthinking much of what I learned in Sunday school: “Wait! So God can see me ALL THE TIME? How will I ever be able to pee again???” I always figured that you could outrun, outwit, or just plain hide from a maniac in a mask, and you could blow the head off a zombie. But the Big D? You are screwed, man. Game over. You’re gonna end up rocking a black cradle or falling out of a window in Georgetown. Just saying.

For a story that involves communicating with the dead, I have to ask: What do you hope your epitaph will say?

No longer on deadline.

Your first series, the Gemma Doyle trilogy, was also a work of historical fiction, set in the late 19th century. Have you always been interested in history?

I suppose that I have. I’ll have to send a thank-you note to my high school history teacher, Diana White, who was terrific. I always loved literature and movies that took me to a different time and place, books like Jane Eyre and Les Miserables, A Tale of Two Cities (I was really interested in the French Revolution in my teens), The Red Badge of Courage and the play A Man For All Seasons; movies like The Seven Samurai, The Lion in Winter, Roots, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, and just about any costume drama you could find on PBS. Maybe we should blame PBS for my love of history while we’re at it. Whether I’m reading about the Civil War, Tudor England, feudal Japan, Francois Mackandal and the Maroons, etc., I’m exploring the human condition, searching for touchstones of universality, for evidence of human beings’ struggle to evolve.

History is story. It’s right there in the word. And I love story.

If you could meet any historical figure, who would it be?

Only one? Sheesh. Tough. There are so many historical figures I’d love to meet, but for today, I’ll say Oscar Wilde, because I’m going out to dinner tonight, and I’ll bet Mr. Wilde would make a most excellent dinner companion.

As evidenced by your Twitter feed, you are friends with so many amazing YA authors. What's it like to be part of a talented community of writing rock stars?

Well, every village needs an idiot. I guess that’s why I’m there.

I count myself very, very lucky to know so many talented, generous friends with whom I can share work, laughs, complaints, and snacks. It’s also good to have people who can hide you in their basements if you miss a deadline.

What are you reading now?

Besides research, I’m reading the books of folks I’m going to get to hang out with this fall: Adaptation by Malinda Lo, The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater, Beta by Rachel Cohn, Every Day by David Levithan, Clockwork Prince by Cassie Clare, Black Heart by Holly Black, and Princess Academy 2: Armed, Pissed, and Ready to Bring It by Shannon Hale. I’m kidding; it’s really Princess Academy: Palace of Stone, but the thought of sweet, lovely Shannon Hale writing the former makes me giggle.

And now I shudder to think what revenge she’s plotting for me in Salt Lake City come October.

Gayle Forman, acclaimed author of If I Stay, takes readers on a whirlwind tour of Paris in her latest novel, Just One Day. While on a summer trip to Europe, recent high school graduate Allyson Healey—who has never before considered herself adventurous—meets the attractive actor Willem and decides to take a risk and spend a single day in Paris with him. But one day of sparkling electricity with Willem soon turns into one year of revelations about herself that Allyson could never have predicted.

BookPage joined Forman to talk about Shakespeare, international travel and why the first few months after high school can be such a tumultuous time for a young adult.

Your own extensive travel experiences form part of the basis for Just One Day. Can you tell us a little about the traveling you did when you were Allyson's age?

When I was 16 years old, I decided to be an exchange student in England for a year, a completely uncharacteristic move because at that point, I was hardly what you’d call an adventurous soul. But I did it, and I came home from that year wanting more. So instead of applying to college, I sanctimoniously announced to my (very understanding) parents I would be foregoing college and matriculating at “The University of Life.” Senior year of high school, I got a job, saved money, and a week after graduation, took off with a one-way ticket and a Eurail pass, and some hazy plans involving Barcelona and wine-grape picking. I spent four months traveling through Europe, first with a friend, then on my own. I eventually landed in Amsterdam, where I got a job, made friends, had my heart broken—all mandatory requirements at The University of Life. I stayed for a year and a half, and I traveled off and on (had to refill the coffers) for three years before finally deciding to go a proper college (though even then, I took a semester off to travel some more). Later in life, my husband and I went around the world for a year.

I know I’m over-answering here, but there’s a point to it, because it all tracks back to that first year in England, which 20-20 hindsight has allowed me to see was a major crossroads. That was the year that changed me from the person I was on my way to becoming to the person I did become. Allyson has a very different experience from mine, though some of my travel stories became hers, but travel very much alters her trajectory, just as it did mine.

"When you move out of your comfort zone, you are actually expanding it, and this is how you learn to feel at home in the world."

Just One Day is full of details about international travel, from navigating public transportation to ordering in restaurants when you don't speak the local language. Did events in your own travels inspire these details?

Oh, yes, both directly—some of Allyson’s, and later Willem’s, tales come straight from my travel journals—and indirectly. People love to romanticize travel, because it can be so incredibly romantic. But it can also be enormously discombobulating, and little things—buying a train ticket—can feel enormously intimidating or equally triumphant. I have traveled so much and felt like an idiot so much that I wanted to include the whole spectrum of experience in the book. Not because I want to show the “downside” of travel but because I actually think the downside is often the upside. Delicious meals and famous paintings are wonderful to experience, but there is something about travel that takes you out of your comfort zone, and that’s when the shields come down and you start to see things and feel things you might not otherwise. And of course, when you move out of your comfort zone, you are actually expanding it, and this is how you learn to feel at home in the world.

The sights, sounds, smells and even tastes of Paris that you describe make your readers feel like they're really there. How were you able to translate these sensations into words?

Thank you. It was difficult. A love story in Paris is almost by definition a cliché so how to avoid that? Especially when I don’t know Paris as well as I do New York City (the backdrop for Where She Went) or Oregon (the setting for If I Stay). What made it both more challenging and rewarding was that I immediately knew, for a variety of reasons, my characters would be mostly staying out of central Paris, which was the Paris I knew. So, I took a research trip and spent a lot of time in the 10th, 18th, 19th and 20th arrondissements, getting to know areas like Villette and Belleville and Barbès-Rochechouart,and visiting art squats and hospitals and wandering along canals and graffiti-covered parks and endless staircases up to Montmartre. I already loved Paris, but this made me love it more. And this sense of discovery and being a little lost and a little in awe, it was a good reflection for how Allyson was feeling.

Shakespeare's plays—especially Twelfth Night and As You Like It—form an important backdrop for Allyson's story. What makes Shakespeare still so meaningful to today's readers?

What makes Shakespeare so meaningful is that Shakespeare is still so meaningful. I didn’t set out to write these books with lots of Shakespeare in them. I’d already named my Dutch boy Willem before I even knew there’d be a significant Shakespearean component. But then it just kind of happened by degrees. Allyson and Willem meet before a Twelfth Night performance. Allyson has a moment of awakening when she reads out loud during her Shakespeare course, and initially I assumed I would use Twelfth Night for that moment. But as I was “researching” for the book, I went to several plays, including an incredible Royal Shakespeare Company production of As You Like It, which had me with my heart in my throat for the entire play. I loved it so much I thought maybe I should use that play for Allyson’s moment. And then when I sat down and read it, I was shocked by how resonant it was—to the themes of shifting identity, of love and trust—and how perfectly it worked for my (and her) needs. It almost seemed tailor-written for both books. Which sounds incredibly self-centered but it’s really a testament to Shakespeare’s staying power.

If you could hang out with anyone in Allyson's life, who would you choose and why?

Dee is the smartest (as in most intelligent) character I’ve ever written, and hanging with him would be fascinating and fun. Also, his mama makes a really good peach cobbler and I would finagle myself an invitation for dinner.

If you had “just one day” to spend in the city of your choice, where would you go and what would you do there?

I would probably want it to be somewhere I’ve never been before so I could have that total joy of discovery and also a certain amount of surrender. With one day, I would know I couldn’t see it all so I wouldn’t even try. I’d just aimlessly wander, and eat. Ironically, if I returned to a place I already knew, one day would not be enough because I would be aware of what I was missing and I’d want to rush around and see my favorite spots. Ignorance is bliss, right?

Would you plan the details of your trip with color-coded schedules, like Allyson's mother might, or would you rely on spontaneity, like Willem?

I’m a bit of both when I travel. I’m all about having hotels booked when I arrive in places—even when I used to travel for long periods of time, I liked knowing I was arriving somewhere, because there’s nothing worse than showing up and having nowhere to go. But once I’m settled, I turn into Willem. I like to travel with as few plans as possible and make it up as I go along. I’m a big fan of getting lost, or “tooling,” as my husband and I call it. Just wandering and finding things, yes, by accident. That said, when it comes to being a mom, I see the logic of the color-coded calendar, even if I’m not there yet.

Allyson's relationship with Willem catapults her into a journey toward self-discovery that continues throughout her first year of college. Why did you decide to focus on this transitional time in Allyson's life?

This book came to me in a dream. I saw Allyson and Willem in an abandoned art loft type of place (what became the artists’ squat). I knew that these two people were abroad, that they’d just had this really intense day together and in my half-awake state, I started unspooling the story for myself. I remember thinking: “Too bad it’s not YA.” And then I snapped up, wide awake, and realized it was completely YA, that it would take place the summer between high school and college and lead into that first year of college.

That’s a long way of saying, it was automatic. There was no other way to tell this particular story, to take a character who had been shackled, have her in a situation in which she had a modicum of freedom, then give her a taste of true freedom, then take it away and thrust her into a setting where she is nominally independent, but still somehow controlled by her parents and watch her forge true freedom for herself. It had to be college.

?Many readers—both teens and adults—will relate to Allyson's struggle to define an independent identity for herself. This struggle is at the heart of many books for people in their late teens and twenties, which have lately been grouped together under the name of “New Adult” literature. Do you think that label fits your books?

I’m not sure what to make of that label. Does it have to do with the amount of sex scenes? How racy they are? Or does it have to do with age of characters? I will let people debate the raciness factor of my sex scenes, but if it’s just an age issue, then many of my books are supposedly New Adult, aren’t they? Even If I Stay dealt with characters trying to figure out how to navigate lives, post-high school. And Where She Went, the same characters are post-college age. That said, I still believe that I write young adult novels. Don’t “young adult” and “new adult” actually mean the same thing? Fledging adults, trying to figure their shit out. It’s what makes these books so fascinating, even to all of us old adults.

Two of your previous books, If I Stay and Where She Went, also focus on the events of a single day in the lives of your main characters. What is it about this focus on a particular day that appeals to you?

It’s just so inherently dramatic, to show those hinge moments in life when everything can change. In If I Stay, this was literally the case. Mia’s life changed that day. But the thing is, life may change overnight, but people don’t, or people need time to catch up to the whiplash of life. That message was implicit in Where She Went. The action took place in a day but it really concerned three years of emotional fallout from what had happened that one day in If I Stay.

In Just One Day (and also Just One Year) I was interested in the day as well. In what can happen to a person in a day, in how life can seem to change overnight. But this time, I didn’t want to stop there. I wanted to examine, on the page, not just the catalyst, the moment it all begins to change, but what it takes to actually change your life. And it takes work. And that can’t be accomplished in a day. So I needed to expand my timeline, to look at a deliberate transformation that takes place over the course of a year.

Willem gets a chance to tell his own story in Just One Year, a companion novel planned for fall 2013. Can you give us any teasers about what to expect in this second book?

The unexpected. And a lot of Willem.

In The Madman’s Daughter, Megan Shepherd revisits the H.G. Wells classic The Island of Dr. Moreau from the point of view of Juliet, the doctor’s daughter. Forced to leave her London home, she travels to the island where the father she thought had died is still conducting cutting-edge experiments—sometimes on live animals. The story is full of big ideas, romantic intrigue and exotic locations, but it’s also intense, dark and scary.

There’s an amusing contrast when I reach Shepherd by phone at her home in Asheville, North Carolina: She’s still pinching herself over her good fortune. “It’s a debut novel, so I still can’t believe all this has happened,” she says.

“All this” encompasses a lot for Shepherd. She’s about to launch The Madman’s Daughter with a signing at Highland Books, the store her family owns in Brevard, North Carolina, where she used to work. But the book is the first in a trilogy, which she’s still writing, along with a second series, which took shape, she says, when she asked fellow attendants at a writer’s retreat, “‘Has anyone ever written a book about a human zoo?’ And it was just . . . silence.” People told her, “That’s the weirdest idea we’ve ever heard,” so she gamely dove in.

When asked where the inspiration for The Madman’s Daughter came from, she laughs. “It came out of my love of television, actually. I was a huge fan of the show ‘Lost,’ and thinking I’d like to set a book on a mysterious island, maybe with scientific experiments going on . . . and I realized, oh, H.G. Wells already did that!” But while rereading The Island of Dr. Moreau, she noticed, “There are no female characters in the book,” so the potential was there for a new story to unfold.

While the characters and story will remain consistent throughout the trilogy, the second book draws inspiration from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and the third from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. “It’s a challenge to do,” says Shepherd, “and I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think it would feel organic, but now that I’m deep into books two and three, it just works. It works perfectly to do it that way.” The three Gothic novels have much in common “in terms of the dangers of science, arrogance versus science, man versus self, man versus animal and that kind of thing.”

There are big questions raised by The Madman’s Daughter, which contains some harrowing scenes of experiments done on animals (Dr. Moreau’s work centers on surgically combining animals to create an “improved” almost-human being). For Shepherd, an avid horseback rider and co-parent with her husband to two terribly spoiled cats, the scenes were hard to get through. “I’m a huge animal lover, which made this book tough to write,” she says. “I get a little shaky even thinking about it because I scared myself writing those scenes. It was a challenge.”

Although the island is chock full of animals and manimals, Juliet still manages to round up two hot love interests: Montgomery, her childhood friend, now employed as the doctor’s right-hand man, and the mysterious Edward Prince. “My first draft didn’t have as much romance in it,” Shepherd allows, “but my editor and I both enjoy that, so I decided to put a little more in. A book can have romance in it and still have lots of other elements because people are just as complex as books can be.” There’s an advantage to the historical setting, too. “[In] the Victorian time period you could just mention a wrist or an ankle and it was so sexy. There doesn’t have to be gratuitous sex in the book. It can be subtle but still very sexy.”

The book is so assured for a first-time effort, I asked Shepherd if her time working in a bookstore gave her literary chops via osmosis, or influenced her decision to start writing. She says that’s nearly the opposite of what happened. “I had such reverence for books that until just a few years ago I never even dreamed that normal people could be authors! Books were these sacred things, and the idea of the people that wrote them? I thought they must be somehow special.” She says, “It never occurred to me to be a writer until about five years ago. I decided to give it a try, and my husband and my parents were just super-­supportive, and I pretty much instantly became obsessed with it and fell in love, and ever since then it’s been my absolute passion.”

That’s a good thing, since she’ll be at it for a while. When asked what she does when she’s not writing, she reminds me, “Right now because I have six books under contract, I’m pretty much only writing” for the foreseeable future. When things settle down she’ll likely travel and make time for some hiking, and she says, “I’d love to be able to read more for pleasure than for work.”

For now, bringing The Madman’s Daughter and its sequels into the world is priority number one. I asked if Juliet would be returning to the island in later books and was surprised to hear it’s unlikely. “I will say that she is probably going to find herself in similar situations in other really cool locations. The second book takes place in London in wintertime. It’s almost the opposite of the island, but there are quite a few scenes that take place in the Royal Botanical greenhouse, so that captures that steamy jungle atmos­phere in these little pockets within the city.”

While marketers have labeled The Madman’s Daughter Gothic horror, Victorian romance and a host of other labels, Shepherd has always thought of the book as historical science fiction. “I wanted to try to write a book that would be both entertaining and that . . . would let [readers] think about complicated questions.” At the end of the day, she says, “I hope that readers get swept away into the world [of the book] and escape from their own lives for a while. If they come away having learned something or having felt something new, that’s even better.”