Goodreads asked Julia Day:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Julia Day I’m an autism mom; my younger daughter has Asperger’s. I’ve always wanted to write a book with an autistic main character—a story whose heroine is, like my daughter, interesting, complex, amazing, articulate, yet still struggles with the challenges of being on the spectrum. But I couldn’t come up with the right story, so I set the idea aside.

Then my editor and I started to brainstorm my next book. Since we wanted to set it in the summer, we chose a teen musical theater camp. I had built-in research through my daughter, who loves the theater and drama camps. It didn’t take long to discover the character of Natalie, a heroine in FADE TO US.

The rest of the story just flowed from there. My two daughters have such a wonderful relationship that I wanted to celebrate how great sisterhood can be. The heroine/narrator came next, and Brooke was definitely the harder character to create. Since Natalie is a good actor and singer, has an adoring relationship with her dad, but struggles with social skills—I wanted Brooke to be the opposite. Their weaknesses and strengths had to complement each other. So Brooke is good at computers, earning income, and making friends. But she knows nothing about the theater and has always longed to have a father and siblings. Once I understood these two new stepsisters, I gave them a summer to live together—and FADE TO US was born.

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