Ask the Author: Lois Metzger
Answered Questions (6)
Lois Metzger
Please write me on my website loismetzger.com (contact page) with your mailing address and I will send you a copy. Thanks!
Lois Metzger
Grace, thank you so much for writing and I'm so glad you liked the book! A Trick of the Light went through many, many drafts. Originally Mike told his own story. Then Amber told her side of things. Then his mom. The "voice" was always there--in everything I read about eating disorders, people spoke about a voice in their heads pushing them to more and more destructive behavior. With each draft, no matter the narrator, the voice got stronger and more present. At one point I was struggling with something and the voice told me, "Just let me tell it!" So I did. Thank you, again!
Lois Metzger
Stevie, thank you so much! Your question isn't trivial at all. I chose the name Cora because it's the "core" of someone, the essential self. But I also like when things echo other things, and "apple core" and "Snow White" fit perfectly in this regard. Unlike Snow White, Cora can eat the whole apple, down to the core! -- Thanks so much, again!
Lois Metzger
I'm not sure why, but water seems to help. I go swimming at a local Y and ideas can literally bubble up in the pool. I've tried to figure out why this happens--is it that your gravity shifts because you're moving in water, not air, and this changes the way your mind works? Other people have told me they have breakthroughs in the shower. I guess there's something in the water.
Lois Metzger
This is something I discovered by accident. When I first started out, I wrote the diaries of three characters. Every day, I wrote about what had happened to them that day, sometimes telling the same event three different ways. When I was in college, I wanted to enter a short-story contest, so I wrote a story about these three characters. The story felt ready-made because I already knew the characters so well. This is what I would recommend, to write the diaries, or the journals, or the blogs, anything that gets at the inner lives of your characters. In my case, the diary entries came to hundreds of pages, and the story was only 11 pages. I won $50.
Lois Metzger
I've written five YA novels and this is the only one based on a dream. In the dream, I'm standing in front of my bedroom window, looking out at a building across the way. That building is on fire. Inside is a girl standing there, looking at me. I can't understand why she's not running away from that burning building. Then I realize--I'm seeing a reflection. I'm the one in the burning building, and the flames are behind me and getting closer. The girl in "Change Places with Me" has this same dream and it scares her as much as it scared me.
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