Interview with Laura Ruby and Bad Apple Giveaway!

Laura Ruby lives in Chicago with her family. She spent much of her misguided youth writing angry, angsty poems and dyeing her hair lots of colors not found in nature. She is the author of GOOD GIRLS and PLAY ME as well as several other books for children and adults.

I'm thrilled to welcome author Laura Ruby to my blog. Laura is the author of numerous books for children, teens and adults. She stopped by to talk about her latest novel, BAD APPLE, which is in stores now.

In BAD APPLE, sixteen year old Tola Riley is an outcast with her ever changing hair color and unorthodox clothing style. After being accused of having an affair with her favorite art teacher, Tola’s whole world is turned even more upside down from the scandal. Can you discuss how the idea for BAD APPLE evolved from a tiny spark into a full length novel?

I came to this story in a very long, roundabout sort of way. The earliest draft was written more than fifteen years ago, when I was very young. At the time, my family was a little like Tola’s in that there were divorces, remarriages, reconfigurations that were difficult for me to deal with. I rewrote the story many times over the years with the family issues in mind. I knew that children of divorce often seemed jaded and sarcastic, but so many – myself included – were secretly romantic. Secretly yearned for a fairy tale ending. So, I stumbled onto Tola’s fairy tale obsessions.

Again, however, that wasn’t enough to focus the novel. So, I worked on a number of other projects, including GOOD GIRLS, but then read an adult novel called THE USES OF ENCHANTMENT, which is about a woman who, when she was a teen, claimed she’d been kidnapped by a man and abused. Later, her therapist writes a book about the incident, claiming that she made the story up. BUT…did she? Or…? More than a decade later, she doesn’t even know for sure.

The book is the mutability of memory, and the way other people try to tell our stories for us, especially when we’re young. And sometimes the stories that people tell about us are so powerful, we forget our own version of our stories. We give up our identities to others. (Also, the title comes from another book, a work of non-fiction called THE USES OF ENCHANTMENT, which is a psychology book about the importance of fairy tales).

The author of this novel, Heidi Julavits, said that she had been inspired by another novel, IN THE LAKE IN THE WOODS, by Tim O’Brien, which is the story of a man who could have murdered his wife, but no one can prove it. This story is told in numerous, often contradictory viewpoints.

After reading these novels, I kept thinking about fairy tales and fairy tale tropes (such as poison apples), about crime and punishment, and about rumor. A number of YA novels had been written about student-teacher affairs, but I wondered what would happen if a girl with an already tarnished reputation was accused of an affair, but there was no real proof? How much chaos would ensue? How would her fractured family cope? How would such a girl explain herself when she’s long been thought a storyteller? And where would such a girl find her happy ending?

Tola is a sixteen year old girl with a razor sharp wit and an obsession with Brother’s Grimm fairy tales. With all the modern day remakes popping up in books and movies, why do you think people keep returning to the old fairy tales, even in today’s modern times?

One reason is the shared knowledge of them, I think. We all know the tales, we can all reference Little Red Riding Hood, or Snow White, or Cinderella. None of them require explanation.

I also think fairy tales are powerful because — as fantastical as they can be — they seem to be hyped-up and/or boiled down versions of modern situations. A girl who feels out of place in a new stepfamily can relate to Cinderella or Snow White. Any child who feels lost or abandoned gets Hansel & Gretel.

In BAD APPLE, Tola’s nemesis starts a slanderous website called “TruthAboutTolaRiley.com to hurt Tola’s credibility. In GOOD GIRLS, Audrey Porter is humiliated when a compromising photo spreads around like wildfire. What types of reflection and discussion are you hoping to initiate among young readers? If there was one message you'd want them to reflect upon and possibly apply to their lives, what would that be?

I do have an obsession with technology, no? Even in my second teen novel, PLAY ME, my main character is plagued by an internet troll who derails his hopes to win an MTV movie-making contest.

Okay, so what’s with all this internet/cell phone/troll stuff? What fascinates me isn’t so much that people use the technology for ill. Of course they do. In the age of paper and pens people wrote nasty notes, scrawled obscene things on bathroom walls, passed horrible gossip in the hallways or the lunchroom, etc. The thing that’s so different about today’s technology is twofold. 1) That people can remain anonymous, and that anonymity can lead people to say and do waaaaaay more vicious things than they might say/do in person, or if everyone knew where the rumors were coming from. And 2) the speed at which rumors/photos can make the rounds.

I have to admit that when I’m writing a book, I’m thinking less about lessons and messages readers could take away from the book and much more about telling a good story. But now that BAD APPLE is out, I guess I’m hoping that readers consider that a lot of what’s blaring around them — the texting, the twittering, the facebooking, the blogging, the trolling — is a great wall of noise. That the most important voice is your own, and you have to work hard to make sure it doesn’t get drown out by everyone else’s.

With the technology available to us today, it’s easy for people to hide behind screen names and become more vicious than ever with the types of lies and cyber bullying they can involve themselves with. Many teens (particularly young girls) have had to endure the stigma of having their reputation soiled by unfair rumor spreading. What advice would you offer a young girl in Tola's shoes?

I would say firstly, that the people who have a picture of you, or are spreading gossip about you do not own you. They have an image, or an idea of you, or a story about someone who looks like you, but it is NOT you. They don’t know what’s in your heart. They don’t know what’s in your head. Basically, they know squat.

Secondly, you have the option of turning it off and tuning it out. I know how hard this is. I used to read every comment, every review I could find about all my books. There are always people who won’t connect with your work and that’s fine, I don’t mind a critique. Every once in a while, however, someone would say something thoroughly horrible or nasty or incredibly weird and/or personal about me or something I’d written, and I would have nightmares over it. No matter how many nice things I’d read before, these little scraps of viciousness and disease would take over my thoughts, torturing me. A friend of mine said, “Uh, how about you stop reading all that crap?”

Oh.

At first, this seemed impossible. I thought I HAD to know what everyone was thinking. But I don’t. And neither do you. You can pick and choose who to read, who to listen to, who to value.

So, I’d set up boundaries as best you can. I’d erase vicious blog posts or disallow comments altogether if that’s what you have to do. Don’t friend people you don’t like, and unfriend people who are nasty. Don’t read vicious comments about yourself, don’t listen to crank calls, etc. If you stumble onto something, step away from the computer/phone. Refuse to “listen.” Change your cell phone number if you have to. Whatever it takes.

You are a successful author who has written in adult, children’s and teen genres. Out of all the novels you’ve written, from the collection of short stories in I'M NOT JULIA ROBERTS to the childrens novel THE CHAOS KING, is there one book that was your favorite to write? Which one, if any, was the most difficult to complete as well?

The weird thing about writing is that though you’d think you get better at it, each book is its own unique thing, has its own unique process. In other words, I don’t write in the same way twice. I’m Not Julia Roberts was eight years in the making. I spent that time writing and rewriting short stories, and then trying to fit them in the right order. I wrote the first draft of The Wall and the Wing, a fantasy for children, in just a few months. And, as I said earlier, the first pages of BAD APPLE were written in the mid-nineties.

But if I have to say which book was the hardest for me to write, I’d have to say THE CHAOS KING. It was a sequel to THE WALL AND THE WING, which I had a great time writing. But I’d never written a sequel before, and had the most difficult time trying to figure out how to get back into the story, how to view the characters, what the plot should be. After that experience, I have new respect for people who write series books. I can’t imagine doing that all the time.

As for the book that was my favorite to write, I’d have to say GOOD GIRLS. That book just flowed out of my fingers. Didn’t feel like work at all. And of course I have a soft spot for my first novel, LILY’S GHOSTS (a middle grade ghost story) just because I love ghost stories, and always will.

What type of feedback do you receive about your books from readers? Has there been one sentiment that especially touched you?

There was one girl who wrote me an email soon after the publication of GOOD GIRLS, something that has stuck with me for a few years now. She was only 13 years old, but she had experienced the same kind of humiliation that Audrey in my book had. She’d been taken advantage of, bullied, ostracized by friends and family. She said that when she read GOOD GIRLS, she got back a piece of herself, a little piece of herself that she didn’t even know was lost. I sometimes read her letter at conferences, and every time I do I have a hard time keeping my voice steady, I’m so moved by it.

Do you have any advice for all aspiring writers out there?

Just the boring stuff. Read everything you can. Even the stuff you don’t think you’ll like, cause you never know. And write, write, write. Practice! Make sure you finish what you start if you possibly can.

One more hint: read what you write aloud. You’ll hear repetitive words and phrases, clunky sentences, bad dialogue, boring spots, etc. so much more clearly when you read your work aloud. That’s something I try to do as much as I can.

Can you talk about any upcoming projects you are working on right now? What can we look forward to from you next?

Hmm. Well, I just finished a draft of a mystery for middle-schoolers, though I’m not sure how long it will take to polish it up. And I’m working on a sort of fantasy, sci-fi-ish adventure for teens. Another YA, a love story. And then a horror novel, also for teens. I’m not sure which of these I’ll settle into yet, which will pique my interest enough to follow through to the end. I guess it will just have to be a surprise. : )

BAD APPLE BY LAURA RUBY

Junior Tola Riley doesn’t care what people say about her. She knows her ever-changing hair color and goth clothes make her an easy target. Whatever. But the latest rumor is different.... The entire school believes she had an affair with her art teacher. The rumors may be a lie, but the fallout is all too real. Will Tola finally stand up for the truth?

With a heroine you'll root for and a truly relevant story, Laura Ruby has once again brought the authentic teen experience to life for readers who relish dark humor and razor-sharp wit.
You can read my review of Bad Apple HERE.
You can purchase Bad Apple HERE.

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