James recently had the opportunity to have a chat with Danielle Younge-Ullman, the Canadian author of the buzz-worthy novel, Falling Under. We hope you enjoy his conversation with this talented writer as much as we enjoyed her book (see James' review here!)....
Your bio states that you spent 10 years performing
in theatre before shifting your focus toward writing. How did that transition
come about? Had you always had an interest in writing?
I was always a passionate and voracious reader
and I think I’d always wanted to write, and specifically to write books. I just
didn’t believe I could do it—I didn’t know if I could weave a coherent story,
didn’t think I had good enough ideas, didn’t believe I’d have the self-discipline
to get the thing done. In the meantime I fell in love with the theatre, and
therefore buried even the knowledge
of my desire to write. But all that time studying and working in the theatre
was fabulous training for me as a writer. As an actor you work so hard to
understand the vision of the playwright and the deepest motivations of every
single breath of the character you’re playing, to get under and into their
skin, and obviously these are also things you need to do as a writer. And I
think being an actor gave me a good ear for dialogue and for how a story has to
be shaped, how to create conflict. Ultimately, I wasn’t happy as an actor; the
business is crappy and even when I was working, I wasn’t getting enough
creative satisfaction from it. I wanted, needed,
something that more directly expressed what I had to say. Around that time,
someone who I’d let read some random stuff I’d written asked me if I’d ever
thought of being a writer and all of a sudden I just knew that was what I was
supposed to be doing…and that’s what put me on the path.
Falling Under is
a tremendously evocative novel to have read; could you describe for us the
emotional experience of having written it?
With Falling Under, I decided to take
the gloves off and go for it, and be very instinctual. I knew the general
conflicts and issues I wanted to write about, but I didn’t really know where it
was going to go. I just gave myself permission to go as crazy and raw as I
wanted to and see what happened. It was terrifying and exhilarating, fun and
frustrating. The book goes to some very dark places and you’d think maybe this
might have messed me up...given me some hard days…but those parts were the most
fun because I was being the most true, the most creative, and the most
courageous.
It's said that all fiction is at least partially
autobiographical; in terms of emotional and family history, how much of
yourself might readers find in Mara?
As writers, we write what we’re passionate about and what we’re preoccupied with…so I think with any book, an immense amount of who the author
is, on an essential level, goes into character and story. But it’s fiction.
Mara’s life story is completely different from my own, but I do come
from a divorced family, and have strong feelings about what happens to kids
when families break up. There’s also a lot of research that shows kids of
divorced families (all different types of divorces) deal with anxiety and
depression and a host of other issues. This information helped when I created
Mara, and obviously there’s commonality here and there with my own experience,
emotionally speaking. She also has my sense of humor!
The name Mara means "bitter" according to
some sources. Were you aware of this when choosing a name for your character?
Honestly, I just liked the name and I had the
vague thought it had something to do with the sea! I wouldn’t have purposely
chosen a name that meant “bitter” because I don’t really see Mara as bitter.
Your
book was released first in print, back in 2008, and reached the Kindle in
September of last year. What was that process like? Do you have plans to make
the title available in any other digital formats?
It’s been really exciting and fun having Falling Under out as an
ebook. With the economic crisis in 2008, it was a tough year to be launching a
debut novel—especially a dark-ish book that is so hard to define and describe.
Re-launching Falling Under in ebook format has given it a second life a chance
to reach a new readership—the very passionate and growing ereading community.
The response has been amazing, and I’m really grateful. There was quite a bit
of work involved in getting the book formatted and orchestrating the design of
the new cover, but I’m thrilled with the result.
Falling Under is currently only available on Kindle through the Kindle
Select program, but it was available through the other ebook stores (B&N,
Kobo, Sony, Smashwords, Diesel, the iBookstore, etc) and will be again soon.
Your website says that you're hard at work on your
next project. Could you tell us a little bit about it, like whether it's a play
or another novel?
I’m working on a new book and I’ve got two others sitting on the
shelf that I’d like to pick back up and revise. The one I’m working on is about
a teenage girl who gets sent on a wilderness trip against her will. She’s a
fairly sheltered, “normal” middle class girl and expecting a camp-like
experience, but the trip turns out to be much more hard-core than she expected
and she finds herself surrounded by a really rough group of people with serious
emotional and psychological problems. The whole thing is so much worse and so
much more intense than she expected, and the book is about how she gets through
it.
Wow. You just forced me to summarize it, which I haven’t done in
awhile! This book may turn out to be best for the YA market, but I’m not
positive about that. Even though it’s about a teen, I’m not trying to
deliberately cater to a certain age of reader—I’m just writing the story the
way I need to write it.
How would you compare working on a second novel to
the experience of drafting the first? Can fans expect news on your next book
any time soon?
This will actually be the 5th
novel I’ve written. There was one before Falling Under, which I thought was
great when I wrote it, but now realize should remain in the drawer. And there
have been two written since Falling Under, both of which have been put aside at
the moment and are awaiting revisions. As to how it is working on successive
novels…I wish I could say it gets easier, but it doesn’t. I think you get
better at the brass tacks writing stuff, and you refine your voice and style,
but it doesn’t get any easier to do. I will say that with this book I have an
outline and I know much more specifically where it’s going, so that helps.As to when fans might see a new
novel…I hope to finish the one I’m working on this summer, but then it will
need revisions. I will keep you posted!
You can visit Danielle's website at www.danielleyoungeullman.com and her electrifying novel, Falling Under, can be purchased both in dead-tree and e-book formats!
