Everything Girl

Last month in All Things Girl, we brought you the first half of an interview with Lauren Henderson, whose work includes the Sam Jones mysteries, Jane Austen’s Guide to Dating (which was recently optioned for film), and the young adult mystery Kiss Me Kill Me. Here is the conclusion of the interview.

Where do you find the inspiration for your stories? How did you come up with Kiss Me Kill Me?

There was an article in the Canadian press about a girl who kissed her boyfriend and he dropped dead – they thought it was because he had a nut allergy and she had eaten peanuts. Though that turned out to be a wrong assumption, I and my editor [sic] thought it would make a fantastic premise for a mystery novel. I’m also allergic to nuts myself, though much less so than Dan in Kiss Me Kill Me, so it’s something I know quite a lot about! I decided I wanted this to be the heroine’s first kiss, because that would make it even more important to her to find out how Dan really died, and whether she was responsible. So that was my initial impetus for the book, and the series, because I wanted the mystery of Dan’s death to be complicated enough to have to run over more than one book.

I also knew I wanted Scarlett to be a gymnast, because it would both explain why her life had been quite sheltered up till the start of the book – gymnasts train so hard – and it would also give her fantastic physical skills that she could use in a variety of exciting action scenes! Like, for instance, the one where she jumps out of her window, pursuing Taylor, and swings off a tree…

Scarlett seems pretty resourceful for a teenager. Tell us a little more about her?

“Extreme necessity always brings out qualities in people they don’t know they have, and Scarlett is really on a journey of discovery…”

Like all of us, Scarlett has no idea how resourceful she is until she’s put in a series of dangerous and crucial situations and she has to fight with everything she’s got to find out the truth. As I said, she’s a gymnast, so she has all these great physical skills already, and she has to learn how to apply them to the dangerous situations in which she finds herself while she’s investigating. Extreme necessity always brings out qualities in people they don’t know they have, and Scarlett is really on a journey of discovery – not just to find out the truth about Dan’s death, but also to find out about herself and how much mental and physical strength she has.

She’s an orphan and though her grandmother loves her, she’s the least demonstrative woman in the world, so Scarlett’s always been on her own as long as she can remember. Which is lonely, but it’s meant that she’s had only herself to rely on, so she has many more strengths than she realizes.

What about Taylor, and Nadia?

Taylor’s a great character – I love writing her. She’s a total, 100% tomboy, very butch and super-strong with no doubts about her physical abilities at all – she can be almost like a cartoon character. I like that she starts seeming indomitable, and we’ll gradually, as the series progresses, get to see that she really is human and has the normal insecurities and self-doubts we all have – she’s just got a very tough shell and it takes a while for her to let people in.

Nadia’s the opposite to Taylor in every way! She’s obsessed with her image. Taylor works out to be strong and healthy – Nadia only cares about how thin she is. And she’s in extreme competition with Plum, while being intimidated by her. She’s way too sophisticated for a seventeen-year-old – her parents are very rich and have left her to her own devices for much too long. And, as we’re going to learn in the sequel to Kiss Me Kill Me, she’s got some unpleasant secrets of her own.

What was your favorite scene in the book?

Oh wow, that’s such a hard question! I love writing the action scenes – Scarlett on the trampoline and swinging on the tree as she jumps out of her bedroom window after Taylor. But I also love big confrontational scenes, like the fight with Plum, and romantic/sexy scenes, like the kiss with Dan and Scarlett’s attraction to Jase… and I love writing funny scenes too, like the ones with Lizzie… ugh, obviously I’m finding it impossible to pick! But I’d love readers to tell me theirs. Email me at Lauren@tartcity.com or message me at MySpace – my user name’s mslaurenhenderson.

The ending of Kiss Me Kill Me seems to beg for a sequel, and I see from your website that the next volume is due next spring. Can you tell us a little about it?

I just finished writing it a week ago! It’s called Kisses and Lies and it resolves all the questions about how and why Dan was killed, though it ends with a surprise twist of its own. Hmm, what can I say without giving anything away? Scarlett goes on a date with Jase… she gets drawn into a big conflict between Plum and Nadia… she goes on a quest to a castle, where someone else dies… and Plum does some crazy table-dancing! So it’s just as full of thrills and spills as Kiss Me Kill Me. I had tons of fun writing it.

Did you find the young adult (YA) market vastly different from the contemporary/adult market? What made you choose to write a YA mystery?

I don’t find the market that different – you need to write good books with strong characters and plots, no matter what. And, like adult mysteries, readers love a good, long-running series, so hopefully everything I learned in writing the Sam Jones mystery series will make the Scarlett Wakefield series just as exciting!

I started writing the books because I was asked to by my editor Claudia – who used to be the assistant to the US editor of the Sam Jones series. She’d remembered me when she got her editing job, and thought I’d do YA really well. I was instantly attracted by the idea of writing YA – the first thing I said was, “I want to set it in a girls’ boarding school in the English countryside.” I don’t know where that came from, but as soon as I said it, I was inspired by the idea, and everything flowed from there…

What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

“See what the authors do well, and what they do badly – learn from their successes and their mistakes. Work out what you can bring to your writing that no-one else can.”

Study the market – read a lot of books like the one you want to write. See what the authors do well, and what they do badly – learn from their successes and their mistakes. Work out what you can bring to your writing that no-one else can. Write from the heart, but plot your book reasonably well before you start. Write about what you know to begin with – don’t try to run before you can walk. And keep going. My friend Val McDermid, a very successful thriller writer, says that the key to writing is finishing – so many people start books they don’t finish!

Ipods and mobile phones have become universal accessories, and indeed, are mentioned in connection with the teens in your novel. Have you succumbed? What’s playing on your Ipod while you write? What’s your ring-tone of choice?

Ugh, I have very uncool tastes in music! My husband likes very cool rock bands and obscure Japanese pop and thinks I have the worst taste in the world, which honestly, I probably do. I love pure pop – Abba and Britney and Shakira and early Madonna. I used to have Dancing Queen as my ringtone but then some bastard nicked my phone and I’ve been too lazy to work out how to download ringtones to the new one.

I love a lot of country music, which I listened to when I lived in NYC – I’d have CMT on the TV all the time. There’s something so pure and straightforward about country music and it’s a bit less sexist than rap. I really hate having to buy a ‘clean’ version of a song to avoid hearing women called rude words every other second. I like Eminem, but blimey, he’s a really angry little boy, isn’t he? Someone should have washed his mouth out with soap a bit more often. I used to be a major indie chick when I was in my early twenties in London, and I went to all the cool indie clubs, saw Nirvana at tiny venues, etc etc, and Nirvana, Jane’s Addiction, Nine Inch Nails are still my favorite music to dance to when I feel like pogo-ing. My husband and I do agree on one thing – we love The Cure. We wanted to have Love Cats for our first dance at our wedding, but knew his family wouldn’t get it, so we didn’t do it, and I still regret that!

What’s next for Lauren Henderson? Tell us about your next project?

Hopefully I’ll do more Scarlett Wakefield books – but actually my next novel is going to be called Divas. It’s an adult fiction, sex & shopping/blockbuster novel, with battling heroines – a spoilt heiress and a pole dancer, who have to join forces to wrest their rightful inheritances from the evil villainess, who’s murdered her husband – who was also the heiress’s father and the pole-dancer’s lover. It’s set in London, New York, Italy and lots of exotic locations. I’ve written three chapters already and it’s so much fun – really over the top, like a glamorous soap opera, with everyone tossing their hair around and hissing threats while dressing fantastically. It’ll be published in the UK next September, and it’ll be written under the name of Rebecca Chance.

I’ve written so many different kinds of book already in my real name – mysteries, romantic comedies, a non-fiction dating book called Jane Austen’s Guide to Dating – that the publisher of Divas thought this book should be under a pseudonym. It’s a two-book contract, so I’ll be doing another Rebecca Chance one after that – probably about trophy wives going into rehab a lot. I don’t know any more than that about what the plot’s going to be – that’s all I have right now, but an idea always starts with just one line and then you go ahead with fleshing it out!

Lauren Henderson’s MySpace address is www.myspace.com/mslaurenhenderson and she can also be found on the web at www.tartcity.com. She welcomes comments from her readers at either place. Her next novel, Kisses and Lies, the sequel to Kiss Me Kill Me will be released by Knopf in Spring, 2009.

Melissa A. Bartell earns her living by writing articles for an SEO marketing firm, and dabbles in essays and fiction on the side. She lives near Dallas, TX with her husband, two dogs, and more computers than anyone really needs. She is the Senior Editor here at All Things Girl. Find out more about her on our About Page. You can find her at her blog as well as other places here and there.

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