Sarah Mlynowski & the All-True Gimme a Call Backstory

I’ve been friends with Sarah Mlynowski from the start of her writing career, when she was making the transition from Harlequin staffer to full-time novelist, so I was delighted earlier this year to see that her status in the YA market had been given a boost by a flurry of buzz over the #gimmeacall hashtag, as hundreds of readers (and authors) tweeted about what they would say to their younger selves if they could reach back in time and leave that message. Which is, as it happens, the premise of Gimme A Call, her new novel. Sarah is in the midst of a blog tour to promote the book (which you can follow through its Facebook fan page), and here she shares the honest-to-goodness truth about the story’s origins.

I have a secret.

When people ask me where the idea for Gimme a Call came from I make stuff up.

Some background: The story is about Devi Banks, a seventeen-year-old high school senior who accidentally drops her cell phone in a fountain at the mall while wishing she could change her past. After fishing it out, she discovers that the only person she can call is herself—as a high school freshman, at age 14.

“So, Sarah, how did you come up with the idea for Gimme a Call?”

“Well,” I say, smiling at the pretend-memory. “I was writing a new book. And when I say ‘writing,’ I mean staring at my ceiling, desperately trying to figure out how to fix a scene that was not working.” The writers in the audience chuckle and nod knowingly. “And I thought…if only Future Me would e-mail over the finished draft.” Ta da!

What do you think? Would you buy it? Too rehearsed?

(more…)

14 July 2010 | guest authors |

Read This: Marcus of Umbria

I met up with Justine van der Leun at a café just a few hours before she jumped a train to D.C. to do some interviews for her memoir, Marcus of Umbria—the story of how she threw caution to the wind and moved to Italy for a man she’d just met, and ended up falling in love with a dog. She’d been doing a lot of press recently, including some local news spots, although Marcus wasn’t always involved. “She would prefer not to,” van der Leun explained. (Oh, yes, Marcus is a female dog, said discovery not taking place until shortly after the first-impression name had been given.) “She’s very camera-shy, she would much rather stay at home.”

Since van der Leun didn’t just move to Italy for the guy—she also had a ghostwriting gig lined up—she didn’t go with a story in mind, certainly not a memoir. “I wish I had thought of it earlier,” she confessed. “I would have kept better notes and taken better photos.” She had a background as a magazine writer, but “when you write for magazines, you have to write for the voice of the magazine;” finding her own voice was much harder at first—and even before that, there was the proposal to write. “Proposals are an impossible thing to do… You have to be much better at selling… making a clear picture for the editor.”

I don’t know about the proposal, which I haven’t seen, but I’d say she’s done just fine at finding her voice; it’s a wonderful story about impulsively immersing yourself into a totally strange world, finding out that you’re in over your head, and latching on to a source of joy (and frustration) that comes out of nowhere. And whatever she says, the photos are pretty good, too.

13 July 2010 | interviews, read this |