Interview with Gayle Forman: If I Stay; Where She Went

Today I have an interview with Gayle Forman, author of If I Stay and Where She Went. Since she was at my indie on Thursday, here are some of the questions the audience and I asked her!

Did you plan to write a sequel to If I Stay from the beginning?

No! I remember leaving If I Stay with Mia and Adam in a hopeful, if not totally solved, position and I was happy with that for a while until I realized...whoa, I'm awful. I had left this with this road ahead of them that would be full of problems and complications so the idea for a sequel just started nagging at my brain. I had been working on a different book at the time, so I brushed it aside and hoped it go away. It didn't. So finally, I sat down and wrote a first draft, thinking that that would put me to piece. But Mia and Adam didn't' want to only be heard by me, they wanted to be let out.

Did you always know what Mia's decision was going to be in If I Stay?

Actually, no. I only knew that the end was going to be Mia’s decision and the book would be her tug-of-war with life and death. Until halfway, I had absolutely no idea. I also didn’t know Adam was going to be so important until I wrote their first date and I was like: “Wow, she really loves him.”

Will there be a third book to Where She Went?

No, I like where I left Mia and Adam in Where She Went. I know a lot of people like trilogies, but that's where they're story ends!

Any advice for aspiring authors?
The usual first: Write. Write. Write. With practice comes experience, and that's exactly what you want. Also GET OUT. Have some life experiences. Write what you want to write, not what you feel you should just because it's a super huge trend at the moment. You want to write a Dystopian? Go ahead. But if you love it and you really loved that book, the reader will be able to tell.

Also, something I found out, read out loud, especially poetry. It really helps.

Happy Reading!
-Harmony