Jacquelyn Mitchard is the bestselling author of 21 books for adult, young adults, and children. Her newest book, WHAT WE SAW AT NIGHT, is out from Soho Teen. She lives on Massachusetts with her family, which includes nine children who range in age from nine to twenty-eight.
Sarah: If you could have any author (dead or alive) as a mentor, who would you choose?
Jacquelyn: Ruth Rendall, the great British thriller writer, perhaps the most elegant writer in the English language. She’d have to promise to give it up though!
Sarah: How many books did you write (or start writing) before you wrote the first published one?
Jacquelyn: None. First one, boom!
Sarah: Which one of your characters has the most of you in him/her?
Jacquelyn: There’s a character in a moody thriller called ‘CAGE OF STARS’ called Ronnie Swan … she’s not only me, she is what I would wish to be.
Sarah: Name three books you think everyone should read.
Jacquelyn: 1. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith 2. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote 3. The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
Sarah: What is the one tip you would give to aspiring authors?
Jacquelyn: Imitate EVERYONE you admire. You voice will emerge, despite.
Sarah: What has been your biggest challenge in writing/publishing so far?
Jacquelyn: Disappointment and criticism still hurts as though I was five years old. I suppose if I were a normal person, whose ego could be satisfied in normal ways, I wouldn’t be a writer.
Allie Kim suffers from Xeroderma Pigmentosum: a fatal allergy to sunlight that confines her and her two best friends, Rob and Juliet, to the night. When freewheeling Juliet takes up Parkour—the stunt-sport of scaling and leaping off tall buildings—Allie and Rob have no choice but to join her, if only to protect her. Though potentially deadly, Parkour after dark makes Allie feel truly alive, and for the first time equal to the “daytimers.”
On a random summer night, the trio catches a glimpse of what appears to be murder. Allie alone takes it upon herself to investigate, and the truth comes at an unthinkable price. Navigating the shadowy world of specialized XP care, extreme sports, and forbidden love, Allie ultimately uncovers a secret that upends everything she believes about the people she trusts the most.
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Sharon is a writer from Mackay in Queensland, Australia who has short stories published in anthologies and was also runner-up in the Australian Literary Review’s Young Adult short story contest with KARMA. By day she is a public relations executive and by night she writes weird fiction and soulful contemporaries while her husband, two sons and cat are fast asleep.
