Tiana asked Lizzy Mason:

What inspired you to write The Art of Losing?

Lizzy Mason When I was sixteen, I went to rehab. I had to cut ties with my "using" friends, my parents locked up their liquor, and I was drug tested every week. For my last two years of high school, I went to an AA meeting every day.

I thought I'd hate it. At first, I was angry that I even had to be there. But soon, I'd met dozens of other teens who were trying to get sober too. And they were like me: broken, anxious, depressed, angry. They understood me and together we had fun--while sober--which I'd never thought was possible.

The main character in TAOL, Harley, isn’t dealing with addiction herself. Instead, she is struggling to understand how her boyfriend could not just cheat on her with her sister, but also drive drunk, destroying both his and her sister's lives. And Rafael, her neighbor and childhood friend, is recently out of rehab.

One of the hardest things about getting sober, though, was rebuilding the relationships that I’d damaged. So in THE ART OF LOSING, I wanted to show the effect addiction can have on the people who love an addict while also telling the stories of the incredible sober teens I met in AA who worked so hard to build a new life--and who saved mine in the process.

TL;DR: There are some really great YA novels that focus on addiction, but none that show the experiences I had as a sober teen. So I decided to write one.

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