Interview Marathon Day 1 - Melissa de la Cruz

Alright, Readers …

It’s day one of the Carly Reads Interview Marathon.  In case you haven’t noticed, TBF is 30 DAYS AWAY!!!! This means that I am in TOTAL PANIC mode.  I have sooooo many interviews left to post, soooooo many book reviews to write, and ummmm, yeah, a few books left to read.  Remember how last year, I said that I was going to be more on top of it and I wasn’t going to post three things a day for the month leading up to the festival? Yeah. That didn’t happen. 

So, enough talking – let’s get to interviewing! The lovely Melissa de la Cruz was kind enough to agree to an interview with moi, so here is what we discussed …

Carly Reads: I picked up your novel “Angels on Sunset Boulevard” because I was intrigued by the social networking theme.  What inspired you to take such an extreme approach to social networking?

Melissa de la Cruz: A couple of friends of mine were talking about MySpace (I wrote the book around 2005 or so) and I was intrigued by how they met people through the Internet, not in a chat room, and how they had these very personalized web pages, it was like having your bedroom walls (posters, quotes, etc) on the Internet. I was also fascinated by pyramid schemes, and also something I read about how 60% of American teens think they will be famous. It just seemed so odd to have your popularity online through the number of "friends" you had, and it just sparked my imagination to think of something evil behind it. Social networking was still pretty new about six years ago, so it was fun to think of how it might be used for nefarious schemes. :)  

CR: “Angels on the Sunset Boulevard” is very plot-driven.  I didn’t want to put it down until I had finished it.  When you begin a novel, do you know how it will progress and/or end? Or does it come to you as you write?
MC: I always outline all my novels, so I know all the plot points beforehand. I aim to write page-turners, so thanks for the compliment! But it's all a process, sometimes the story takes off in a different direction, so you need to keep pushing it until you get to the core of the story. Some things are planned, some things are surprises from the writing process. The easiest books to write are the ones where the plot is perfect from the outline, then I'm just fleshing it out. “Angels” was actually a difficult book, I had to keep rewriting it to figure out what the real story, the real plot was. I always know the ends of all my books though. That I know from the beginning. I know all my endings and I try to figure out the best way to get to them, so it builds up to the ending.

CR: Have you always wanted to be a writer? When did you know that you wanted to write for teens?
MC: Oh yes, ever since I could read. Being a writer was a dearly treasured childhood dream that I never gave up on, it was my life's goal. I knew I wanted to write for teens when I read "Gossip Girl.” I thought, "I could do this, I want to do this." I wrote “The Au Pairs” and never looked back.

CR: What are your top five favorite books?

MC: So hard to choose. But here goes. “War and Peace.” “Dune.” “Lord of the Rings.” “Wizard and Glass” (from the “Dark Tower” series). “Harry Potter.”

CR: What author are you most looking forward to meeting and/or seeing at the Sixth Annual Greater Rochester Teen Book Festival?

MC: My dear friends Ally Carter and Elizabeth Scott. I cannot wait to hang out with them, I don't get to see them enough! 

Thanks so much, Melissa. I can’t wait to meet you in person in 30 days! (Yikes!!!)