YA Shot Blog Tour : CJ Skuse Interview

I am involved in yet another YA Shot Blog Tour stop which is pretty awesome! I am super excited for both the event -which is only around the corner now, and to also have the chance to work with CJ Skuse the author of 'Pretty Bad Things', 'Rock-oholic', 'Dead Romantic' and the new novel coming out this week entitled 'Monster'!!

You can find her novels at my two favourite places Waterstones | Amazon

So we decided to do a quick interview on publishing, favourites and more! At the end I will be discussing a giveaway - which is pretty cool if you ask me.

So Let's get started shall we?!

How long did it take you to get published, and do you have any advice to unpublished authors on how to get published?

Eleven years, from the age of 17 til I signed on the dotted line at 28 for Pretty Bad Things. But I’m glad it took that long because I learned A LOT in that time. I never stopped writing or believing that I’d get there one day and I didn’t take any shortcuts. Self-publishing was really frowned upon when I was sending my first book out; now it’s the norm, but I’m glad I didn’t go in that direction. It’s fine if people want to do that but for me, it would feel like a cheat. I knew the reason I wasn’t getting picked up by agents and publishers was because I wasn’t very good at writing – in short, I needed to get a lot better. So I signed on to do a double of creative writing degrees and voila – a month later, I had a contract with Chicken House. My advice is to have faith in your own talent, do everything in your power to become better at what you do and get a good,respected literary agent with a proven track record as soon as you can.

Do you read the same genre of books that you write about?

Yes, for the most part though I find it almost impossible to engage with YA when I’m working on a YA novel myself. I don’t trust YA authors who say they don’t read YA – it sounds so arrogant, like they have better things to do or something.

Is there a special place where you find the most creativity when writing?

No, but I do need a lot of thinking time before I sit down to do it. My university lecturer (and damn fine writer in her own right) Julia Green once said that writers can be writing even when they’rejust staring out of the window. I didn’t get what she meant for ages. Now when I walk my dog, I can write a whole chapter in my head or unpick a ‘plot knot’ entirely before I’ve even opened the laptop.

What themes do you hope to incorporate into future books? and what themes or topics do you think are missing from a lot of YA Novels being published?

I want to go quite dark with my next-but-one-book (currently titled Sweetpea) which is hopefully going to be an adult novel featuring a character from Monster grown up. And as for what themes or topics I think are missing, I’m not sure any are. I just hope that YA doesn’t get too diluted. There’s this horrible vogue to drag it into a children’s bracket, clean it up, remove all the elements that made it what it is to suit a younger audience (and make more money, of course). I hope that gets shut down soon.

Where did the inspiration for your latest book 'Monster' come from?

I wanted to write an underdog story along the lines of the movie ‘Assault on Precinct 13’ but set in a boarding school and I’ve wanted to write a story in this setting since my first book, but the opportunity never arose. Paisley in Pretty Bad Things goes to one briefly before she’s expelled, and originally Zoe and Camille went to one in Dead Romantic but that was taken out in the disastrous first edit. So here it is again, fully-formed. Also, I spotted a story in a newspaper about a sighting of the ‘Beast of Bodmin Moor’ and one idea sort of leant itself to another and suddenly, there it was.

Would you say that you have a similar personality to any of the characters in your books?

I’ve always said there are five versions of myself and they are represented in my five novels. Paisley in Pretty Bad Thingsis my anger; Jody in Rockoholicis my stupidity; Camille in Dead Romantic is my romantic side; Nash in Monster is my ambition and Estella in my next bookThe Deviants is my frustration. None of them in their entirety is me but they all contain fragments of myself.

What are your top 5 YA novels?

1.The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

2.The Madolescents by Chrissie Glazebrook

3.The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

4.Martyn Pig by Kevin Brooks

5.Doing It by Melvin Burgess

Is there a particular book that 'got' you into reading?

Not really. When I was 17 I was reading a lot of Gillian White and Irvine Welsh, utterly different novelists in their intentions but I loved that every one of their books was so different and yet so ‘them.’ Then I became obsessed with The Wind in the Willows author Kenneth Grahame and read Alison Prince’s biography of him ‘An Innocent in the Wild Wood’ about fifty times. That became a sort of bible for me. He was the first author I’d come across who seemed so similar to myself, despite existing nearly a century before me – I really hooked into the whole idea of him being unable to let his childhood go and revisiting it through his writing. He’s been a massive inspiration.

And lastly, what was your reaction to being published? Did you cry, did you remain cool, calm and collected or were you just overwhelmingly happy!? :-)

No, I was shockingly underwhelmed actually. It had taken me eleven years and by that point, I’d just kind of thought’ ‘Well yeah, about time!’ It was a bit of an anti-climax if I’m honest. It was like when Del Boy finally became a millionaire, the thing he’d most dreamed of being throughout the entire run of Only Fools and Horses, but when he reached his goal, he had absolutely no idea what to do next. I didn’t know how to be anything else but trying to become published. Now it’s all about staying published and that’s the hardest part of all. The day I got my contract I came home, had sausage and mash and watched Deal or No Deal. Sad but true. It only ever feels real to me when I see a new cover design or a foreign edition. I really enjoy that.

So thats the end of the awesome Q&A with the equally awesome CJ Skuse! 

Now for the GIVEAWAY! The giveaway includes a signed copy of her new novel Monster which you can win by Re-tweeting this post! The closing date is the 2nd of October 2015. Remember to follow CJ on twitter for more novel updates! 

(Disclaimer: The images used in this post are not mine)

Yours Faithfully, 

~ She Who Writes