Keren David
About Author
Keren David's contemporary teen fiction draws on her long career as a journalist working for national newspapers. She started out as a teenage messenger girl, gave up a place at university to be an apprentice reporter, and eventually became a news editor and then a commissioning editor for comment at the Independent.
In 1998 Keren, her husband and their two-year-old daughter went to live in Amsterdam. They stayed for eight years, and Keren had another baby, worked for a photographic agency, studied art history and learned to ride a bike - although she failed to learn to speak Dutch.
When they returned to London, Keren signed up for a course of evening classes at City University in Writing for Children. The course cost 140 and resulted in Keren's first book, When I was Joe, and a contract with publishers Frances Lincoln - so it was a great investment.
When I Was Joe and the sequel Almost True have been highly acclaimed and selected for numerous awards, many voted for by teen readers.
Keren David has never won more than 12 on the lottery, but remains optimistic.
Author link
Interview
LIA'S GUIDE TO WINNING THE LOTTERY
July 2011
Published by Frances Lincoln
Teenager Lia's life sucks - her mum is a pain and she's getting nowhere with the mysterious Raf. Then she wins 8m on the lottery and her life changes - but does money bring happiness?
Q: What took you from writing gritty crime books like When I Was Joe to a book about the lottery?
A: I didn't want to get pigeon-holed as a writer of 'gritty crime books' so I thought I'd do something more light hearted and fun.
What I try to do in my books is put real people in situations that bring in wider themes and if you're writing about the lottery there are lots of interesting questions that come up about luck and destiny, and relative values.
But I also see it as a kind of girl power thing, to give a girl so much money just as she's coming into her own power.
Q: There's a lot of shopping in the story!
A: But things like shopping and money are big subjects. Look at the levels of debt in the world around us - that needs to be discussed.
For young adults, money and debt are going to be big issues. We have enormous inequality now around university fees. In the story, Raff says, 'You'll need to be a millionaire to go to university now.'
Q: Your main character, Lia, isn't that nice at times - so how did you make her appealing?
A: My last main character was a boy but I found that when writing about a girl, I had to keep her separate from myself and my daughter; I had to stop myself from writing down and repeating verbatim conversations she was having with her friends. Although my daughter does say things that Lia does like, 'No offence but...' and then goes on to say the most offensive things possible.
I remember being a difficult 16 year old and I spoke to some friends about their 16 year old daughters, and started writing this character who is 'difficult' but I went over the top and made her really horrible and my daughter hated her. So I had to also show how confused and vulnerable Lia was by writing from her perspective.
I also surrounded her with more sympathetic characters and through them, you get to start to like Lia.
Q: You play with the idea of paranormal romance in the relationship between Lia and Raff - are you a paranormal fan?
A: I read quite a few of those books and noticed how they copy each other. I also wondered about the behaviour of the characters - the paranormal boys act in quite a deranged way. So no, I'm not really a fan - I think they make being dead and the afterlife better than being alive - but I had some fun making Raff appear 'paranormal'.
Q: Which character did you enjoy writing about the most?
A: I found this book as a whole harder to write than When I Was Joe because it was my first experience of writing to a deadline and also writing comedy is hard - jokes lose it after the fourth time you've read it.... but I enjoyed the light-hearted feel of the book and loved writing about Raff being 'mysterious' because I knew what was really going on. But I also felt really sorry for him and I don't think he's out of the woods yet. Lia was annoying though, and writing about her was annoying too....
Q: Have you ever had your own life-changing experience, like Lia's lottery win?
A: My husband got a job in Amsterdam and we went to live there for two years - but it turned into eight years. I lived the expat life where someone else pays for things like your school fees and hotels, and I was surrounded by very rich people. I remember one neighbour telling me they'd hired a private jet to go shopping in Zurich!
We came back to reality with a crash when my husband was made redundant and we had to return to the UK - but it was also a bit of a relief to come back into the real world and make our own way in it.
Q: What would you do with 8m?
A: It would be so nice! There would be a lot of investing and I'd have a house with its own writing room! I guess my husband would want to go and study film and we'd go on some nice holidays. Of course there'd be money for good causes, too.
