Interview with Cass

Hi Cass! Nice to have you on the blog today!

First off, could you describe yourself with three words?
Geeky. Sincere. Brave.

Julia and you planned to go on a road trip to California. Have you ever thought about which places you'd visit when you reached Cali? If yes, which three places would you visit?
We wanted to travel the old Route 66, which would have taken us into Los Angeles. I wanted to go up to Berkeley and San Francisco and over to Yosemite to see the redwoods, but we might not have ever had time for that. But we would have gone to see the Hollywood Walk of Fame and hung out on the beach, for sure.

I want to go to the Hollywood Walk of Fame too!

What are some songs on your iPod?
Okay, I know that I'm the very last person on earth to not have an iPod, but I don't have an iPod. I don't really have the cash to spare right now, and besides, I get everywhere on my bike. And I refuse to bike with headphones on. You can't hear what's going on around you and it's absolutely suicidal. Having said all that, I'm listening to a lot of Led Zeppelin and Queen right now.

Julia was your best friend for a long time, what was your first impression of her?
She was so friendly and outgoing. She treated it as a foregone conclusion that we were going to be friends now and she didn't want to hear any arguments about it! She always wanted to be the center of attention and she'd drag me right into the center of attention with her.

Emily Horner interviewed

Hi Emily! Congratulations on the release of A LOVE STORY. Happy to have you here at Read This Book this week! Could you please share with us a little bit about yourself? We would love to learn more about you!
I was born in Canada and grew up moving around to Montreal, France, Texas, and North Carolina. I studied linguistics and Japanese in college and spent some time studying classical Japanese literature in Nagasaki. I'd always loved to write, but in Japan I got inspired by the do-it-yourself culture of fan-made comics and decided to get serious about it.

The idea of going on a road trip on a bicycle is really cool! Was it based on/inspired by a real event?
I've never gone bicycle touring personally. I really wanted to, and I still want to, but I'm not naturally athletic. To be honest I'm the opposite of naturally athletic. I was trying to build up my fitness and my endurance so that I could make a serious go of bike touring, but I moved to New York before I managed to do it. My stepfather did some bike touring in Canada in his youth, and I was also really inspired by a guy named Ken Kifer who has done some crazy bicycle trips -- once he did one with kittens in his basket! -- and who documented them on his web page at kenkifer.com.

In a A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend, the main character Cass goes on a road trip on a bike. When was the last time you rode a bike?
In 2007, before I moved to New York. When I was in grad school I went everywhere on my bike, but drivers here are really aggressive, and a colleague of mine was killed commuting to work on his bike. I wish I were braver about cycling, but I don't quite have the skills to hold my own against traffic.

A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend week!

Hi guys, there won't be reviews this week either because I am hosting the slightly belated release week for Emily Horner's YA debut novel A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend which was released last week!

Here is the schedule:
Monday: Author interview
Tuesday: Character interview with Cass
Wednesday: Emily Horner guest blogs
Thursday: Character interview with Heather
Friday: Giveaway, win your own signed copy of A Love Story!

Synopsis: For months, Cass Meyer has heard her best friend Julia, a wannabe Broadway composer, whispering about a top-secret project. Then Julia is killed in a sudden car accident, and while Cass is still reeling from her death, Julia’s boyfriend and her other drama friends make it their mission to bring to fruition the nearly-completed secret project: a musical about an orphaned ninja princess entitled Totally Sweet Ninja Death Squad.

Cass isn’t one of the drama people. She doesn’t feel at home with Julia’s drama friends, and she doesn’t see a place for her in the play. Things only get worse when she finds out that Heather Galloway, the girl who made her miserable all through middle school, has been cast as the ninja princess.

Cass can’t take a summer of swallowing her pride and painting sets, so she decides to follow her original plan for a cross-country road trip with Julia. Even if she has a touring bicycle instead of a driver’s license, and even if Julia’s ashes are coming along in Tupperware.

A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend is a story about friendship. About love. About traveling a thousand miles just to find yourself. About making peace with the past, and making sense of it. And it’s a story about the bloodiest high school musical one quiet suburb has ever seen.

Excited for the book? Here's a teaser for you!

And then we were chasing each other around the workshop, not bothering with setting and aiming our weapons, but just throwing the little beanbags at each other, giggling when we could breathe enough to do it. As innocent as two six-year-olds in a water-gun fight. We scrambled over boxes and leaped over bits of props strewn on the floor.
(page 106)

A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend releasesd on June 10th! You can buy A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend at Book Depository or Barnes & Noble or Amazon or at the bookstore nearest to you. By the way, did you know that A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend is being published in Australia by Penguin Australia? Kangaroos, meet Cass and friends!

This was cross-posted on Read This Book!