March 7, 2009

Interview with Lynn Weingarten


Lynn Weingarten is the author of WHEREVER NINA LIES, which came out from Scholastic last month. You can also find her at her MySpace - and an author this exciting ought to have more friends. Before writing WHEREVER NINA LIES, she worked for Alloy Entertainment.

Isn't the single eye visible on her book's cover arresting?

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1. Your book flap lists jobs you've previously held, including book editor and counter girl at a bakery in Ireland. What was your favorite job and why?

I've liked something about all of my previous jobs, however being a book editor was probably my favorite. It was very exciting to get to work on books and then get to see them in actual book stores and I really loved the people I worked with. That said, I will never forget my first job which was working at a coffee bar when I was 15. I enjoyed pretty much everything about it, up to and including that whenever a cookie broke, we got to eat it. Also, working in Ireland was ridiculously fun. I got to use an electric bread slicing machine and got to take stale bread and feed it to the ducks by the river.

2. Do you plan to be a full time author or to continue holding another job?

I'm actually writing full-time right now. I love it , however I wouldn't rule out my getting a full-time job at some point in the future.

3. My sister ran away (briefly) when I was home. I'll never forget trying to call my parents and tell them she was gone. Since then I've been drawn to books involving runaways. Do you have any personal experience with runaways?

Well I'm very glad your sister came back and is okay! I had a couple friends who ran away during high school. They were identical twin brothers. They ended up being fine, although they were gone for a while and it was definitely scary. The summer I was turning 17 I flew from New York (where me and my runaway friends grew up) to San Francisco to visit my sister. While I was there I actually bumped into one of my runaway friends at Buena Vista Park. My friend gone for a couple months at that point and so seeing him standing there right in front of me, sunburned and barefoot wearing a Snoopy T-shirt, was one of the strangest moments of my life. In the end, he and his brother both came back home and were fine. They were very lucky.

Book Cover

4. How did you decide on the title? Did you have any input on the cover?

Actually someone at Scholastic came up with the title Wherever Nina Lies. We all really liked it and ended up using it for the book. We went back and forth on a lot of different titles before deciding on that one. Two other ones I liked were: Good Girl Gone and Little Red Secrets. (Although some people thought the second title made it sound like a story about girls getting their periods. Ha ha).

As for the cover: I did get to have some input. One day I was looking through a stock photo website online looking for some cover ideas (just for fun, not because anyone had asked me to or anything). I came across a few photos that I thought were cool looking so I sent some of them to my editor. My editor really liked one of a girl holding her finger up to her lips, and so did the people at their Art Department. In the end, Scholastic decided to have a photo shoot and take a picture of a model doing the same pose as the girl in the stock photo.


5. If you could spend time with one fictional character, who would it be? Any fictional characters you would run away from if they suddenly became real?

Hmm, this is a very tough question. Off the top of my head I'm going to say Harry Potter. I think I would really like to fly around on a broom and perhaps he would help me with that. That said, there are a ton of characters it'd be fun to hang out with and I'd like to reserve the right to revise my answer later should this ever somehow become possible.

As for characters I'd run from: anyone in any Stephen King novel. I read a lot of those books when I was a kid and know one would be wise to avoid all those people!

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I would love to feed bread to ducks in Ireland. That sounds like an awesome job. But here's what ya'll really care about: I have an ARC of WHEREVER NINA LIES for one commenter. Check out this post for the rules.

29 comments:

  1. This book is really great! And surprising in a fabulous way.

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  2. Great questions, Liviania! Lynn, those jobs sound realllllly fun!

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  3. What a great looking cover. Very intriguing. :)

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  4. I'm loving the one eye peeking out on the cover, I hadn't noticed that before.

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  5. I love the cover and the title. Titles are always the hardest part for me to think of. It tends to cause problems in Creative Writing class.

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  6. Harry Potter would be a cool person to hang out with. =))

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  7. Oooh I'd love to enter to win, I've really been wanting to read this book. I would love to eat cookies at work, even if they're broken ;) I absolutely love that cover too! It makes you really think.

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  9. Being a book editor sounds like such a cool job!

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  10. I love how the book sounds and looks too ^^
    Thanks for the review.

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  11. Enjoyed this interview very much. We used to try to feed the ducks here at the Main river in Frankfurt but they were already too stuffed to accept our stale bread!

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  12. I would like to spend time with Harry Potter too!!

    bridget3420(at)yahoo(dot)com

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  13. I'm a follower

    bridget3420(at)yahoo(dot)com

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  14. isn't eating the "mess ups" like broken cookies the best part of that kind of job. I work in a restaurant and love getting to eat things that are made twice or mistakes

    i am a follower

    and i blogged about it here
    http://kissmybook.blogspot.com/2009/02/contests-galore.html

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  15. I'm loving the title and the cover art. It looks like a good book. Thanks for a great interview as well. I used to work in a fudge shop that sold cookies and stuff as well. We had the same rule: If it breaks, comes out slightly wrong, or the customer changes their mind after their order is put together, we got to eat it. Definitely the best part. ;-)

    tiffanyak1986(at)hotmail(dot)com

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  16. The book sounds wonderful! I grew up with ducks -- 3 of them actually -- Rocky, Tilly and Milly :-) I'd love to be a book editor -- sounds like a great job!

    vmlay@artsci.wustl.edu

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  17. Lynn seems like such a fascinating person. I've been dying to connect with her and find out the whole history of my own series through her eyes, actually (!)...and I plan on reading WNL asap. It sounds incredibly awesome. xo

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  18. I'd love to just go to Ireland! Ha!
    What an interesting person. Thanks for the interview. Your blog has such good ones!

    I'm a follower!

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  19. Running away also hits close to home for me (not myself, but other family members). They've come back, but it's such a touchy subject and I can't help but think about it once in a while.

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  20. Running away is such a scary thought. I don't know how people get it in themselves to actually go ahead and do it.

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  21. Thanks for the interview! I think it's interesting that authors have a bunch of different jobs when they are younger because it's great material for their books later!!

    Lesley
    lesly7ch(@)yahoo(dot)com

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  22. Thanks for the interview! I really like the cover with the girl holding a finger up to her lips and almost hiding behind the text. Also, I'm glad it wasn't titled, "Little Red Secrets". I'd be one of those people who thinks that it would sound like a story about girls getting their periods. Heh heh heh!

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  23. The interview was great. My bf ran away when we were in the 9th grade. It turned how well but I NEVER told I knew she was going to before she did!

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  24. I love the title of this book. The interview was great. Thank you.

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  25. I think that Wherever Nina Lies has such a beautiful title, and the cover is mysterious and radiant!

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  26. Looks like a good book, I love that cover!

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  27. Another amazing book cover! And I totally agree about the Harry Potter thing.

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  28. "Wherever Nina Lies" looks like a wonderful book!! The cover is great to! I think that Harry Potter would be really cool to meet up with if he could come out of the books and into real life, but I would really want to meet Amy from the "Heartland" book series by Lauren Brooke!!

    I follow, and my email is: countrystars95@yahoo.com (for the contest :)

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  29. Happy birthday?

    Elie

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