Adult women don’t fare very well in Teardrop! Is this intentional? Should we read anything into this?
I hope not! I like writing about teens because they take the kinds of risks that allow me to write exciting narratives. What’s interesting about the women in Teardrop is that they perish taking what I think are big, admirable risks: Rhoda dies defending her children. Blavatsky dies standing by her promise to Eureka. Diana lived her life as a risk taker. The difference, I suppose, is that the adults in the story are not invincible in the same way the teen characters are allowed to be. Eureka, Cat, Brooks, and Ander take as many risks as the adults, and somehow they manage to scrape by. This invincibility is born out of fearlessness, something I think adults lose more and more of every day. I imagine there’s something subconscious going on regarding the ill-fated ladies in Teardrop. I might be grappling with my own mortality.
Eureka is faced with some incredible choices as her story develops. Is there a decision you’ve made in your life that you’d change? How hard is it for you to make choices?
I make a lot of decisions based on instinct. About five years ago, I traded in my career in publishing and a life that I loved in New York for a spot at a graduate writers’ workshop in Yolo County, California. My friends and family thought I was crazy for leaving everything behind to move somewhere I’d never been before on a whim—but I had been writing for ten years and was tired of having nothing to show for myself but two mediocre attempts at novels and enough rejection letters to furnish a minor ticker-tape parade. I needed to explode everything and devote myself to writing. So I left New York and drove across the country—terrified, elated, terrified.
A few weeks later, I met the guy I would eventually marry. A few months later, I took the literature course about the Bible that inspired me to write Fallen. By the end of my graduate program, I had a book contract with my publisher. I’m writing this paragraph holding my daughter, looking at my bookshelf full of Fallen editions from around the world, remembering the moment I drove through the Lincoln Tunnel on my way out of New York thinking I am making the biggest mistake of my life.
What’s on your must-read list at the moment?
Son by Lois Lowry
Passenger by Andrew Smith
The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There
by Cathrynne M. Valente
Paper Valentine by Brenna Yovanoff
The film rights for Fallen have been acquired—how does it feel knowing that your books will one day hit the big screen? Does the thought of Teardrop becoming a major motion picture influence the decisions you make as a content creator?
When I was writing Fallen I was too close to the story to really let in anyone else’s conception of the world. I remember seeing the book cover for the first time—which is perfectly mysterious—and thinking, That’s what they think Luce’s arm looks like? That’s not what her arm looks like! I certainly wasn’t prepared to conceive of a movie that would pin down the characters to a single look and feel for all time. But then a few things happened: I finished the books and got some perspective. I also met so many readers who shared their views and opinions on the characters and the story—and I found beauty in how different their conceptions could be from my own. My readers opened the door to allow me to welcome the Fallen film. At this point, I’m excited and can’t wait to see what the director does with the series.
As for how I approached writing Teardrop, books and film are such different genres that I wouldn’t know how to think about a potential film while I was writing a first draft of a novel. That comes later. Writing goes inside characters’ minds; film can only show us what they do.