I could go on for days about the interesting ways in which I have met people (you already know the bizarre way I met April Lurie, for one). Why can’t I simply meet someone by walking up and saying ‘Hello, sir or madam, pleased to make your acquaintance’ like normal humans do?

My connection with Julie Halpern was also unusual, and takes us back seven years. I won’t tell the story because it is very long, but I’ll leave it by saying it involved an overly-precocious 12-year-old me, a telephone call to a top editor at the biggest publishing house for children’s books, somehow ending up talking to a security guard instead, and the realization just a few months ago that Julie’s editor and that editor are the same person. Funny how small this world is. Thus I just had to have an:

Interview with Julie Halpern

1. Quick! Describe yourself in ten words or less (and ‘Hey Ya’ll I Wrote Get Well Soon It’s Real Good’ doesn’t count):

I’m a Harry Potter-Sims-Degrassi-roadtrip-husband-cat-Buffy-lovin’ fool. I’m not quite sure how many words that is, actually.

2. On your website (www.juliehalpern.com), you say you wrote lots of stories when you were younger, especially through high school. Did you ever think of yourself as becoming a writer one day?

No. I never really thought of myself as a “writer,’ I guess because it was just me doing it for myself or my friends. I took some creative writing classes in both high school and college, and even then I just took the classes because I enjoyed writing, not because I thought I wanted to be a writer. Looking back, the fact that I was always writing tells me that it was probably more important to me than I thought.

3. Where did the idea for your book GET WELL SOON come from?

Get Well Soon is a story about a girl in high school who’s hospitalized for depression, and I was hospitalized for depression in high school. Much of it is based on the weird things and people who I met while I was there. So much of it was so bizarre, almost unbelievable, that I always thought it would make a great book. I originally serialized the story as a zine, which made me think that maybe I could write a novel (I had never written anything that long). I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed the novel writing process.

4. How did it come about that you decided to take the leap and start looking for a publisher?

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As usual, I met author April Lurie in a very odd way. It started at the dentist.

This dentist office must have some magical qualities about it, for I have met four people through it already (none of them medical malpractice lawyers, thankfully). I was about fourteen when this happened, and was sitting with my head back, facing the ceiling- as calm as someone who wanted to be a radio DJ can be whilst another digs about in his mouth near his vocal chords with sharp metal objects. Silence weighed upon the dreary room, so the dentist struck up a conversation with me.

“So what are you doing these days besides that DJ stuff?” asked the dentist.

“Wathinth ath boowkth,” I attempted. She nodded.

“I know someone who wrote a book,” said she, and I shan’t bore you with the rest. Needless to say, I left with my dentist’s business card: on the back of which was written seven digits commonly used to telephonicly communicate with other humans.

However, being new to writing, I never could get myself to call. Here I had the phone number of someone who had already made it, and yet I was too fearful to use it. When I was 13, I had no trouble calling the head editor at Scholastic (and being thrown to the lions) but I just couldn’t call April. And so that card sat for five whole years in my drawer.

Five years later, I stumbled upon a blog of a writer named April Lurie, and I immediately recognized the name. Of course I had to email her the whole story. And I still have my dentist’s business card with April’s phone number. But I think she prefers her cell.

Though we narrowly missed meeting at a book festival, we have been in touch, and she has a new book coming out called The Latent Powers of Dylan Fontaine. I have read excerpts of her writing and I was truly surprised. There is something behind it that has a genuine voice, like that soul that is always hard to transfer onto the page. Writers like that are very rare these days, so I am eagerly looking forward to Dylan Fontaine, since her last book had a solid, bright, unavoidably pink cover I just couldn’t pull off the shelf. But I did sneak a peek at Amazon.com.

Thankfully, April agreed to do an interview for my site. I wonder if the dentist knows?

———-

1. Thanks April so much for coming on. Can you give us a little background story on you and how you became a published author?

Well, let’s see … I grew up in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn - a neighborhood populated by the Italian Mafia. Strangely, it was one of the safest places in Brooklyn because, well, no one was going to mess with those guys! I went to college in Manhattan, and worked as a Neonatal ICU nurse for many years. During this time, I got married and had four kids. As my kids grew older and began reading middle-grade and YA novels, I followed suit and fell in love with children’s lit all over again. That’s when I decided to write a novel for teens.

2. Was is always a dream for you to be an author or did it just happen that way by accident?

It was never a dream of mine to become an author. Even when I was writing DANCING IN THE STREETS OF BROOKLYN, I decided early on that the story was a gift for my parents. If it became published, well, even better! But I wouldn’t say it happened by accident either. I’m extremely pig-headed and persistent, so I gave it my all and tried my best not to get discouraged by rejections. The publishing field is tough and highly competitive, and you must have thick skin to survive.

3. How did you feel on the morning of the publication date for your first book?

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- Kaza Kingsley will be on here January 20th, and will also show up at times the following week to answer questions in the comment box. I will moderate these as fast as humanly possible.

- April Lurie, another popular author, has agreed to answer some questions about writing on this site, which I will be posting soon after Kaza’s stop. I will have the full announcement following Kaza’s interview. Have a question for her? Put it in at the Ask page and say it’s for her.

- I bought a Flip video camera. This is very exciting since I’ve seen it used so many times online and it is great quality for the price. Shipping disasters aside, it should be here in a week and I’ll start putting some videos up.

- A whispering lizard told me that if you click on the image at the top of the site, you can find out what the pictures mean. But you didn’t hear it from me.

Now Playing:

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I realized this morning that I never posted anything about the Texas Book Festival weeks ago. I went there to meet with authors and mingle with other book-minded people. There were plenty about, an entire schedule of big names including Rick Riordan, the big kids author of the moment who is writing the Percy Jackson series.

There was secret service everywhere, because Jenna Bush and Lynn Cheney were coming. I almost ran into all these guys with suits, little diamond collar pins and curly headphone wires. They were serious. I went to the end where Jenna was going to come in, without knowing where I was, and they were all looking at me, a whole group of them and police. I realized she would be coming from that street because it was filled with black SUV’s. I spun about and started right off in the opposite direction.

I went there hoping to see Rick Riordan, Kimberly Willis Holt (I won an autographed book from her 2 weeks ago), Jenna Bush and meet with April Lurie, who I have met over email. I ended up seeing none of those, but I did get to see Rick Yancey, Sherman Alexie, Neal Shusterman and this oddball:

One of those things you only get to see in places where authors congregate.

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