When I first read the description for your book REMEMBER ME GONE, I was immediately fascinated. It seemed very Stephen King or David Lynch-ish. What inspired you to write REMEMBER ME GONE?
It’s funny that you mention Stephen King. Growing up, he was my mom’s favorite author and she often left his books lying around the house. When she wasn’t looking, I would sneak-read as many pages as I could cram in, or until I scared myself so badly I’d have to stop. So I guess you could say he’s had a big influence on my writing and even my desire to be a writer from a young age. He’s also the reason I still look behind me whenever I walk down a hotel hallway.
But the inspiration for REMEMBER ME GONE came from an episode of True Blood, the HBO series based on The Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris. In the episode, someone hires a vampire to erase her husband’s memories in the hopes of curing his PTSD. I started wondering what it might be like to run a memory-taking business and, boom, the idea was born. Sans vampires.
Did you always plan on having Lucy, your female protagonist, in REMEMBER ME GONE a teenager? I ask because the circumstances in this story seem enough to throw anybody off kilter, but there always seems like an added level of danger when the main characters are teenagers. There is often the feeling of them being at the mercy of other people older or more in control than they are.
From the moment I thought of the story I knew it would be told from a teenager’s perspective. There is something special about writing characters that age. Everything feels more important and urgent. At sixteen you may not yet have felt the sting of rejection or the disappointment of not realizing one of your goals, so when it happens it feels bigger, scarier, and more gut-wrenching. There’s also a bigger sense of loss that first time you realize your family isn’t infallible.
Lucy starts off believing everything that happens at The Memory House is good, because why wouldn’t it be good? Up until that point in her life, she hasn’t been given a reason to question it (that she remembers at least.) But as she starts to uncover the truth of what’s happening in her small town, it challenges her entire worldview and belief system. To me, that narrative is so much more fun to write from the eyes of a sixteen-year-old experiencing those challenges for the first time.
Some other authors I’ve interviewed have told me that the kind of books they enjoy reading are not the same kinds of books they enjoy writing. What kinds of things do you enjoy reading? Favorite books? Authors?
I read across many genres and my taste is pretty broad, but my true love is stories grounded in our world with something a little off kilter or magical, which is the same thing I love writing. Some of my favorite authors include Maggie Steifvater, Laini Taylor, Neal Shusterman, Peng Shepherd, Tiffany D. Jackson and Nicola Yoon. I have way too many favorites to list, but a few books I recently read and loved are The Book of M by Peng Shepherd, Dark and Shallow Lies by Ginny Myers Sain, All the Birds in the Sky by Charlie Jane Anders, White Smoke by Tiffany D. Jackson and Instructions for Dancing by Nicola Yoon.
Can you say whether or not the mysteries in REMEMBER ME GONE are resolved at the end? Or are Lucy and the reader forever left wondering what really happened and what the truth is? Do you like books or films that are open-ended at the conclusion? Or do you prefer resolution?
The mysteries are resolved, and I hope that readers will feel satisfied with the ending. I personally prefer stories that have a sense of finality. It’s okay if there are still things about the character’s future that I’m left wondering about, but I like when any applicable mysteries are resolved and the story arch lands at a clear enough end point that I feel satisfied.
Because of the trippy quality this thriller has, I have to ask if you are a fan of horror films – either psychological like The Haunting, or ones that are a mix of psychological and slasher film like the 1970s classic film Black Christmas.
I watch the occasional horror film but can be a bit of a chicken when it comes to super scary movies. I’m one of those watch-through-the-cracks-of-my-fingers viewers (I blame it on a childhood spent sneak-reading Stephen King.) Much like my reading taste, I tend to like stories with a bit of magic or fantasy in them. One of my all-time favorites is Pan’s Labyrinth—I Iove the way the fantasy and real-world elements intersect. I also think The Pale Man from that movie is one of the most creative and terrifying-looking monsters I’ve seen.
That said I do love a good classic slasher film. In fact, my next book has some I Know What you Did Last Summer vibes in it. It’s been really fun to write. I love the challenge of finding ways to surprise readers while also leaning into the tropes that make the genre so much fun.
How long have you been a writer?
I have been writing stories pretty much as long as I’ve known how to write, but it wasn’t until about ten years ago that I really buckled down and started working on what would become my first finished manuscript. That book never really went anywhere, and I had several other trunked manuscripts before I wrote REMEMBER ME GONE and it sold to Penguin/Viking in 2020.
What are you currently working on?
I’m currently revising my next project which is slated to come out in 2023. It’s about a girl who sees dark clouds hovering over strangers’ heads whenever their lives are in danger. But when she saves a boy and causes a tragedy, someone discovers what she can do and wants revenge for her role in what happened. I like to describe it as Karen McManus’s Two Can Keep a Secret meets I Know What You Did Last Summer with a speculative bend.
Thanks so much for having me on Fresh Fiction!
Lucy Miller’s family has the unique ability to remove people’s painful memories—but Lucy isn’t prepared for truths she will uncover in this speculative YA debut thriller, perfect for fans of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
People come from everywhere to forget. At the Memory House, in Tumble Tree, Texas, Lucy’s father can literally erase folks’ heartache and tragic memories. Lucy can’t wait to learn the family trade and help alleviate others’ pain, and now, at sixteen, she finally can. But everything is not as it seems.
When Lucy practices memory-taking on her dad, his memory won’t come loose, and in the bit that Lucy sees, there’s a flash of Mama on the day she died, tinged red with guilt. Then Lucy wakes up the next morning with a bruised knee, a pocketful of desert sand, and no memory of what happened. She has no choice but to listen to Marco Warman—a local boy she’s always wondered about, who seems to know more than he should.
As Lucy and Marco realize there are gaps in their own memories, they team up to fill in the missing pieces—to figure out what’s really going on in their town, and to uncover their own stolen history along the way. But as the mysteries pile up one thing becomes certain: There are some secrets people will do anything to keep.
Young Adult Paranormal | Young Adult Suspense [Viking Books for Young Readers, On Sale: March 22, 2022, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9780593327661 / eISBN: 9780593327678]
Stacy grew up in Dallas, TX, but has lived all over. After spending time in Austin, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia, she is happy to call San Francisco her home, where she lives with her husband. When she’s not bringing the voices in her head to life, she’s working as a brand and marketing professional in the consumer products industry.
She has a slight obsession with puns (they are, in her opinion, the highest form of humor), which might be linked to the three years she spent studying improv comedy at Chicago’s Second City and IO theaters. She holds a BBA from the University of Texas at Austin and an MBA from The Wharton School of Business. WHERE THE STAIRCASE ENDS is her debut novel.
No comments posted.
© 2003-2024 off-the-edge.net
all rights reserved Privacy Policy