I’m frequently asked where I get my wacky ideas
from for my stories. Well, I collect them from everywhere:
from news articles, from TV shows, from books, and
even from real life, too. Here’s a little bit
from behind the scenes with Almost
Fabulous.
Q. Fiona Blount, the teenage
heroine in Almost Fabulous, has moved around a lot in her young life because
of her mother’s career. She knows from experience how difficult it is to
integrate into a new school where everybody else has had the same experiences,
and have known each other practically since birth. Because of this Fiona tries
hard to maintain Total Anonymity at all times. That is, she tries hard to stay
below the radar and not be noticed by either the teachers or her fellow students.
Is this based on your personal experience?
A. Yes, partly. My
parents took me to Africa when I was very young because of my father’s job.
We moved back to Sheffield, England, several years later. I found school really
hard at first because I didn’t have the same accent as everybody else, had
some different experiences than they did, and some of my fellow students picked
on me because of this. They gave me a pretty hard time. But, I have to say, I didn’t
do what Fiona does – I did learn Partial Anonymity – that is, I realized
that there are times when it is good to remain below the radar, but I didn’t
let them stop me from making friends or from doing what I really wanted.
Q. Where did you get the idea of having Fiona develop
ESP powers?
A. Well, I’ve always wondered
if the human race might somehow evolve these powers,
but it also partly goes back to my school years and those
mean kids. Occasionally I wished that I had ESP powers.
Not to hurt the mean kids, or anything, but just to stop
them from being mean. Or to make them do something ridiculous
and have everybody laugh at them.
Q. If you really had ESP powers, what would you do with
them?
A. Oh, I’d be so tempted to use them to stop global
conflicts, or to prevent crime, or to stop despots, or
to sort out famine. But there’s always the flip side
of the coin. What if I tried to do something good and it
backfired on me in a way I couldn’t imagine? I think
on the whole it’s not a good idea to force other
people to do my will, because wouldn’t that make
me a bully, too? I might just play the stock market like
Fiona and make a little money, though, LOL.
Q. As well as being a hottie Joe
Summers, Fiona’s
secret crush, is also a science nerd. He’s interested
in everything from dinosaurs to cosmology to string theory.
Where did you get that idea?
A. This also goes back to my school
years, but has nothing to do with those mean kids this
time J. I remember biology, chemistry, and physics classes
just being so dry and dusty and boring, and I couldn’t
wait to drop them from my schedule. Then Carl Sagan happened
to me. He co-wrote and presented a wonderful TV series
called Cosmos.
This is Cosmos.
I became fascinated (and still am) by science as a whole,
and what a wonderful, diverse, awesome planet we live on,
and what a wonderful, diverse, awesome universe we live
right on the edge of. I don’t know what science classes
in schools are like these days, but I hope they are more
interesting than they used to be.
Q. Fiona’s mum
Jane is a music producer and knows Madonna.
Jane knows pretty well everybody else in the music industry,
too, like Sting and
the Arctic
Monkeys. Have you
ever met Madonna, Sting or
the Arctic Monkeys?
A. No.
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