Interview with Catherine Linka for What I Want You to See

What I Want You to See

by Catherine Linka
Publisher: Disney-Hyperion
Release Date: February 4th 2020

Genre: Young Adult

Synopsis:

Winning a scholarship to California’s most prestigious art school seems like a fairy tale ending to Sabine Reye’s awful senior year. After losing both her mother and her home, Sabine longs for a place where she belongs.

But the cutthroat world of visual arts is nothing like what Sabine had imagined. Colin Krell, the renowned faculty member whom she had hoped would mentor her, seems to take merciless delight in tearing down her best work—and warns her that she’ll lose the merit-based award if she doesn’t improve.

Desperate and humiliated, Sabine doesn’t know where to turn. Then she meets Adam, a grad student who understands better than anyone the pressures of art school. He even helps Sabine get insight on Krell by showing her the modern master’s work in progress, a portrait that’s sold for a million dollars sight unseen.

Sabine is enthralled by the portrait; within those swirling, colorful layers of paint is the key to winning her inscrutable teacher’s approval. Krell did advise her to improve her craft by copying a painting she connects with . . . but what would he think of Sabine secretly painting her own version of his masterpiece? And what should she do when she accidentally becomes party to a crime so well -plotted that no one knows about it but her?

Complex and utterly original, What I Want You to See is a gripping tale of deception, attraction, and moral ambiguity.

Can you briefly describe WHAT I WANT YOU TO SEE and its characters?

Sabine is a first year art student getting back on her feet after a horrible year. She lost her mom in the spring and after months of living in her car, she got new friends, and a scholarship that even covers a cozy rented room. But Sabine’s painting instructor, Collin Krell, critiques her work so viciously that she’s terrified she’ll lose her scholarship. Then she meets Adam, a grad student who wants to help and he seems to have the access and insights she needs to deal with Krell. But Sabine makes a not-so-great choice that pulls her into a situation that could demolish the new life she created. 

Who would you say is your favorite character from the story and why?

Sabine, of course. After I spend so much time in a character’s head, I can’t help loving her. She’s smart and determined, and knows she’s talented, but she’s barely holding it together after losing her mom and their home. She’s aching for friendship and love, but she holds herself back because she doesn’t want people to know she was living in her car. She knows they’ll label her that “homeless girl,” and the only label she wants is “talented painter.”

How did the story occur to you? Did you find inspiration anywhere?

I wanted to write a story set in the art world, and I’m obsessed with art crime so it had to be twisty. I remembered a book I’d read where a grad student did something borderline illegal to help a guy she loved, but it took her life apart. I thought what if my character was young and desperate so she crossed a line, but what she was doing wasn’t really hurting anyone….until it sends her world crashing.

If you could choose one song to describe your book, which one would it be?

I always freak a little when I hear the perfect song for the first time. As soon as I heard the opening bars of Smoke by Lucie Silvas, I had to stop and listen because this was Sabine’s song. When Sabine meets Adam, “she knew right from that moment he was too good to resist” and then, “Somebody stop me. I am a danger to myself.” Perfect, right?!!

If your book was going to be made into a movie, who would play your characters?

Sabine’s in her first year at the art institute, so I’d team up with Ariana Grande to produce and play Sabine. Then I’d beg her to cast Avan Jogia to play Adam, because he’s got Adam’s smoldering intensity—and she’d need to cast Matt Bennett as Kevin because he’s got the smile and the curls.

What drink and place do you think will go with your book to have a perfect book date?

For a perfect book date, you’d want to go to The Broad art museum—or any museum of contemporary art, and contemplate a few pieces that really speak to you. Then you’d want to find a grapefruity drink—maybe with vodka—maybe not and soak up some sunshine on the patio of a nearby restaurant while you dip into guac and WHAT I WANT YOU TO SEE. 

Can you recommend your readers any other books in case they are left hungry for more once they finish WHAT I WANT YOU TO SEE?

Art lovers who yearn to live in NYC should check out Piper Perish and Art Boss by Kayla Cagan. LGBTQ readers will fall in love with Kelly Loy Gilbert’s Picture Us in the Light. And if you like your stories twisty, dive into Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart.

What would you say is the most difficult part of writing a book?

Figuring out why a story isn’t working. It can be painful!!

What’s next for you?

Getting my newest protagonist out of the mess she’s gotten herself into.

Catherine Linka is the author of the young adult novel WHAT I WANT YOU TO SEE as well as the dystopian series A GIRL CALLED FEARLESS and A GIRL UNDONE. A GIRL CALLED FEARLESS was an ABA Indie Next Pick and won the Young Adult Novel Award 2014 from the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association. A frequent speaker at writing and teen conferences, Catherine received her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and worked as a young adult book buyer for an independent bookstore for seven years. Prior to pursuing a career in publishing, she studied international politics at Georgetown University followed by a master’s degree in business at the University of North Carolina. Catherine is married and lives with her husband in the San Gabriel foothills. Visit her at www.catherlinelinka.com.

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🖌 G I V E A W A Y 🖌 . . Happy Wednesday, Beautiful Bookish People! Do you have any hidden talents or what talent do you wish you would have? . . Today I am super excited to share with you about an original story about belonging and deceptive expectations. After some tragedies in her life Sabine Reye's has won a scholarship to California’s most prestigious art school. However, things don't turn out to be the way she hoped and she finds herself meeting someone and doing things that could be seen as questionable. Full of passion, attraction and complexity, this story would keep you up all night! . . I have partnered with @letstalkya and @mbc_books to give you the opportunity to win a copy for yourself . . Entries for the giveaway: ▪︎Follow @theffbc & @whatmakespatri ▪︎Follow @catherine_linka ▪︎Follow @letstalkya & @mbc_books ▪︎Comment - Answer my question above ⬆️ #qotd . . Extra entries: ▪︎Tag a friend (each friend will be an extra entry). ▪︎Share on your stories about the giveaway (remember to tag me @whatmakespatri and @theffbc) ▪︎Follow @michellesulk & @artsyreadergirl ▪︎Follow any other FFBC team member participating in the tour (let me know who did you follow): @booking_belle @savingsinseconds @bookishgeekig @ya.its.lit @l.m.durand @sometimesleelynnreads @sincerelykarenjo @bookablereads @shalini_g26 @moonlight_rendezvous @twilightreader1 @adreamindream @kaitplusbooks @kagunderman @laurensliterarylibrary @amysbooketlist #whatiwantyoutosee #letstalkya #catherinelinka #bookshimmy #bookgiveaway #bookgram #yabookstagram #ireadya #booksatgrammer #bibliophile #bookphotography #booknerd #booklover #amreading #yalit #booksofinstagram #bookcommunity #booksbooksbooks

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FFBC: Welcome to the club, What Happens Now by Jennifer Castle

What Happens Now

by Jennifer Castle

Publisher: HarperTeen

Release Date: June 7th 2016

Genre: Young Adult, Contemporary, Romance, Mental Illness

Synopsis:

"I know what it is to want something so badly, you feel like your cells aren’t properly bonded together without it. 

I also know what it’s like to get that something.

And honestly, I’m still not sure which is worse..."

Ari Logan is battling to win her war against depression and the dark night she hurt herself on purpose. It’s not easy: her best friend is drifting away, her mom’s emotionally checked out, and she spends her days playing caregiver to her handful of a half-sister, Danielle. But it’s summer, and anything is possible...

That’s when Camden Armstrong steps onto the beach of Ari’s local swimming lake. 

At first, Ari quietly longs for Camden from afar, seeing in him everything she wants to be. When the two discover a true connection the following summer, Ari lets herself fall not just for the quirky and self-assured Camden but also his friends, tumbling into their world of independence, adventure, and shared sci-fi fandom. As Ari’s romantic dreams come true, she must unlock the mysteries of the very real and troubled boy behind her infatuation, while also struggling with her own demons, obligations, and loyalties.

From the award-winning author of "The Beginning of After" and "You Look Different in Real Life," "What Happens Now" is a touching, insightful novel about learning to heal, learning to love, and what happens when fantasy becomes reality.

Favorite Book?

I don’t actually have one! But the book that had the biggest impact on my when I was a teenager was “The Bell Jar” by Sylvia Plath.

Favorite TV show?

“My So-Called Life”

Favorite movie?

“The Graduate”

Your Favorite Song?

“I Melt With You” by Modern English

Favorite Food?

Sushi

Name 3 fictional places you would move to in a heartbeat.

Middle Earth. Downton Abbey. Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.

Who is your perfect fictional boyfriend?

I’m not sure if he’d be “perfect,” but I can very much see myself enjoying the company of Four from the Divergent series. 

Favorite Quote?

“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” John Lennon was a smart guy.

What do you find yourself “Fangirling” over?

“Star Trek.” Everything “Star Trek.” The Original Series, The Next Generation, the original movies, the new movies. It all just makes me so happy.

If you could meet one author, dead or alive, who would it be?

Charles Dickens

Could you tell our Book Addicts a little bit about What Happens Now?

“What Happens Now” is a summer romance about a girl learning to live with depression, discovering new possibilities in her life, and finding the balance between fantasy and reality when it comes to love. It’s got lots of kissing and cosplay. 

Can you tell us a bit more about your characters, Ari and Camden, and about their personality? 

Ari feels trapped. Trapped by her depression, by her reputation as “the girl who cut herself,” by her responsibilities caring for her younger sister and helping out at her stepfather’s store. She’s ready for some freedom, but she can’t. All she’s been able to do is fantasize about it, and about the mysterious boy she pines for at the local swimming lake. But she’s smart and funny and knows everything there is to know about “Silver Arrow,” the sci-fi series of which she’s a superfan. 

Camden seems to have that freedom: he lives with his artist mom in a converted barn, goes to an alternative private school where he can study whatever he wants, and cosplays with his cool friends. But Camden actually wants exactly what Ari has: stability and a “normal” life. He’s overcoming a childhood trauma and doesn’t know who his father is. 

How did you come up with the story? Did you find inspiration in any other story/movie/show and how has this affected your writing?

The story really comes from two places: (1) I really wanted to write a romance, and I love summer so of course it had to be a summer romance. (2) For the first time with a novel, I wanted to draw directly from my own experience, so I’ll tell you a quick little story. When I was twenty years old and a junior in college, I sank into an unexplained depression. I didn’t know how to get help, and eventually I was in so much pain that I cut myself in order to get the attention I needed to save my life. It worked. I went into treatment with medication and therapy. By the middle of my senior year, I was much, much better...and that’s when I developed an epic burning crush on a boy from school. I didn’t know him that well, but I was able to project onto him all my hopes and dreams for my life moving forward. Eventually, he and I became friends, and I realized he was not at all who he was in my fantasies. I knew I wanted this to be the heart of my book. It’s much harder than I thought it would be, to write something with such deep roots in your own life. But in the end, I’m really proud of how it turned out. It’s like I can finally close that chapter for myself. 

Tell us your favorite quote from What Happens Now.

I don’t think I can choose a FAVORITE favorite, but here’s one I really love:

“In the strange and also strangely intimate minutes that followed, I stared out the window and thought about how getting to know someone is all about learning and unlearning at the same time. For every piece of new information you gain about that person, you might have to let go of something you thought was true.”

Is there a specific scene that you had the most fun to write?

I loved writing the scene that takes place at the Ulster County Fair. I go to this fair every summer (it’s ten minutes from my house), and it’s so much fun. It’s permanently 1978 at the fair! So the scene is already pretty surreal, but the fact that my characters are cosplaying at the fair added to the cool-weirdness of it. Whenever I was working on that scene, it was like I could taste the cotton candy and corndogs. 

If you had to pick one song to be the Theme Song for What Happens Now – Which one would you pick? 

I have 32 songs on my writing playlist; do I have to pick just one? Hmm. It would be either “Collide” by Howie Day or “Demons” by Imagine Dragons.

Imagine that we get to see your book on the big screen (how awesome would that be?). Who would you pick to play your characters?

I would pick Mae Whitman to play Ari. For Camden, I would crossbreed a younger James McAvoy with my college crush guy. Yum!

Is there any recommendations you could give your readers to be in the “perfect mood” to read What Happens Now (specific music, snacks…)? 

If you can read this book during the summer, that’s great. If you can read it near some body of water, that’s even better. As for snacks, I would say an iced tea and salt-and-vinegar potato chips will really get you inside the story. Buy me some while you’re at it.

What would you say to anyone who’s in Ari’s situation?

I would say, people are never who they seem to be on the surface, and that goes for yourself as well. Try to look beyond the day-to-day top layer of your world and see below, to what you really have. It’s probably more than you thought. And if that’s hard because you might be struggling with depression, then get help. Nobody will think less of you for it; you’re not being weak, you’re being strong. Talk to a trusted adult, visit the school counselor, call a hotline if you have to. Know that treatment works, and it can help you embrace the possible that lies ahead of you. It can literally save your life, and you deserve that life. 

What’s next for you? 

Right now I’m writing a companion novel to WHAT HAPPENS NOW. It takes place four months after the end of this story, and focuses on two secondary characters named Kendall and Max. It’s another romance, but a very, very different kind of book. I didn’t want to let all these characters go just yet. They’re too much fun to hang out with!

Something to say to our Book Addicts?

Your passion for YA literature has literally changed the landscape of publishing. Thank you!

Thank you so much for everything, Jennifer!

Follow the What Happens Now by Jennifer Castle Blog Tour and don't miss anything! Click on the banner to see the tour schedule.

Jennifer Castle received her B.A. in Creative Writing at Brown University and worked as a celebrity publicist’s assistant, an advertising copywriter, and a struggling screenwriter (yes, that’s an actual job) before falling into a niche producing websites for kids and teens. Her debut, THE BEGINNING OF AFTER, was a 2012 YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults selection as well as a Chicago Public Library "Best of the Best" book. YOU LOOK DIFFERENT IN REAL LIFE and its companion digital novella, PLAYING KEIRA, were published by HarperTeen in June 2013. Her next novel, WHAT HAPPENS NOW, is forthcoming from Harper in June 2016. She lives in New York's Hudson Valley with her husband and daughters.

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Blog Tour: Love Me Never (Lovely Vicious #1) by Sara Wolf

Love Me Never (Lovely Vicious #1)

by Sara Wolf

Publisher: Entangled: Teen 

Release Date: April 5th 2016

Synopsis:

Previously published as Lovely Vicious, this fully revised and updated edition is full of romance, intrigue, and laugh-out-loud moments.

Don’t love your enemy. Declare war on him.

Seventeen-year-old Isis Blake hasn’t fallen in love in three years, nine weeks, and five days, and after what happened last time, she intends to keep it that way. Since then she’s lost eighty-five pounds, gotten four streaks of purple in her hair, and moved to Buttcrack-of-Nowhere, Ohio, to help her mom escape a bad relationship.

All the girls in her new school want one thing—Jack Hunter, the Ice Prince of East Summit High. Hot as an Armani ad, smart enough to get into Yale, and colder than the Arctic, Jack Hunter's never gone out with anyone. Sure, people have seen him downtown with beautiful women, but he's never given high school girls the time of day. Until Isis punches him in the face.

Jack’s met his match. Suddenly everything is a game.

The goal: Make the other beg for mercy.

The game board: East Summit High.

The reward: Something neither of them expected.

What would Isis do? by Sara Wolf

Thanks for having me! I’m Sara Wolf, and I’m super excited to talk to you all about my favorite character; ISIS! She’s from my new book, LOVE ME NEVER, and the topic today is what would she do if her heart was broken, which is an awesome subject. 

I’m not exaggerating here when I say Isis is the master of heartbreak. She’s a wizard, a maven, the absolute president of Heartbreaksville. Her heartbreak is a major theme of LOVE ME NEVER, and the whole book in general, so I’m psyched to talk about it. 

Isis was pretty young when her heart was broken – newly fourteen. The urge to fit in is so strong during that age, and the urge for love and affection as a human is pretty constant for most people. So Isis was looking for both, especially since her parents were in the middle of an ugly divorce and she hadn’t had much affection in a while. Isis turned to Will Cavanaugh, a boy she had a crush on, blindly doing everything she could to make herself attractive to him – by doing everything he said, going everywhere he went, trying hard to be friends with his friends. When he broke her heart and betrayed her, she closed up pretty hard. She was disgusted with who she’d become for him, so she changed everything about herself; going so far as to lose a bunch of weight and changing her hairstyle. She lashed out pretty hard at this time towards the people who were friends with him, starting fights at her school. These things aren’t necessarily healthy, but when you get your heartbroken you don’t tend to think clearly, or do things that are good for you. Her self-worth was shattered completely. 

There’s a lot of stages of heartbreak, and once Isis’s anger phase faded a little, she got into the mourning phase. She built strong walls of sarcasm and wit around herself, decorating it with a deep distrust for men, or anyone who tried to get close to her or compliment her. She’s so disgusted with the girl she used to be, the girl who was used and abused, that she genuinely can’t believe the good things people say about her, much to Jack’s frustration. In LOVE ME NEVER, she’s still a long way off from the acceptance stage of heartbreak, but she’s taking small baby steps using her own willpower and getting helped along the path by Jack, who knows similar heartbreak. 

I wrote LOVE ME NEVER knowing Isis was damaged and in denial, but I didn’t know just how much until the story unfolded. Heartbreak is the worst, and the recovery can take months or even years, and only with the help of a lot of people who love us no matter how ugly our pain. Good friends and good family can help you so much, and Isis makes a little bit of both in LOVE ME NEVER. Isis definitely learns that only when our hearts are mended can we open them up again to other people. 

“Who are you waiting for?” Knife Kid asks.

“That obvious, huh?”

“Jack, then. Screaming at him wasn’t enough?”

“He was the one who put the pictures of me all over school. Hell no, screaming isn’t enough.”

Knife Kid nods. “I saw the pictures. I had fun slashing them with my protractor. Nobody should be made fun of like that, I think.”

I don’t know whether to smile at how sweet he sounds or become extremely concerned at how creepy he sounds. I settle for a little of both just as Jack comes in. He walks right by and settles in his desk behind me. I turn and watch him take off his backpack.

“Hi.” I wave.

It takes him a moment to recognize me. Or a million. He focuses his gaze on me, then looks boredly to the window. He puts his chin in his hand, studies a pigeon in a tree with utmost intensity, and then all at once his eyes go wide. He swivels his head slowly back to me.

“You,” he murmurs.  

“Me!” I chirp.     

“What the hell are you doing in that?” he asks, eyes sweeping down to my chest, my legs, and up again.

“Damage control.” I smile. “Do you like it?”

“I’ve seen pigs dressed better.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt that, considering you see one in the mirror every morning.”

Don't miss anything of the LOVE ME NEVER blog tour! Click on the banner below to see the tour schedule.

Sara Wolf is a twenty-something author who adores baking, screaming at her cats, and screaming at herself while she types hilarious things. When she was a kid, she was too busy eating dirt to write her first terrible book. Twenty years later, she picked up a keyboard and started mashing her fists on it and created the monster known as the Lovely Vicious series. She lives in San Diego with two cats, a crippling-yet-refreshing sense of self-doubt, and not enough fruit tarts ever.

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