Melissa Keil
About Author
Melissa was born in Melbourne, Australia and worked as an editor, high school teacher and a Middle Eastern tour guide before becoming an author.
Her debut YA novel, Life in Outer Space, was the winner of the 2013 Ampersand Project and won IBBY Australia's Ena Noel award and was shortlisted for the CBCA Book of the Year for Older Readers.
Melissa lives in Melbourne with her cheeky spoodle, Hugo.
Author link
Interview
THE INCREDIBLE ADVENTURES OF CINNAMON GIRL
PUBLISHED BY STRIPES
FEBRUARY 2016
Australian author Melissa Keil's novel, The Incredible Adventures of Cinnamon Girl, brings an end of the world scenario to a backwater town when a video predicting that Eden Valley is the only place that will survive the apparently imminent apocalypse, goes viral.
As the media and hippies descend on Eden Valley, local girl Alba is facing her own endings as her school years come to an end and her friends prepare to leave the only life they have known. Alba, together with her comic creation Cinnamon Girl, must finally face her own hopes for the future, and decipher her feelings for her oldest friend, Grady.
We spoke to author Melissa Keil about her atmospheric and warm coming-of-age story about friendship, love - and comics - and she answered the following questions for us:
Q: You've done a lot of jobs - which of them to date (excluding writing) has been your favourite?
A: Excluding writing, hands down my favourite job has been working as a children's editor. I get to spend my days with incredible authors and illustrators, rescue unpublished talent from the slush pile, and I get to make (and buy and read) kids' books for a living. It's kind of the perfect job, one that I wish I started much sooner than I did!
Q: What are you favourite kinds of books to work on?
A: I always loved working on young adult books, but once I started writing YA, I found that type of intensive editorial really difficult to juggle with my own work.
Fiction editors tend to live and breathe their books and spend lots of time wandering around with other people's stories and characters in their heads, just like writers do, and it becomes a little confusing to have so many made-up people in your head at once! I do enjoy working on picture books though, and children's non-fiction.
Q: How did you come to write for young adult readers?
A: I started my editorial training in a publishing house that had a really fabulous YA list - I didn't know a whole lot about the young adult world back then (this was quite a while ago, in the days before Twilight and the rise of blockbuster YA).
I fell in love with young adult books pretty quickly though - it felt to me like this undiscovered section of the bookstore was full of amazing writing and stories. Once I started writing again (after taking a long break, before I started working in publishing), I knew that this was the audience I wanted to write for.
Q: In this story, Cinnamon Girl is a kind of alter-ego for your main character, Alba. What did you enjoy the most about creating Cinnamon Girl and do you have your own sketches of her?
A: I have no sketches of Cinnamon Girl (at least, none that I have done myself) because I have zero artistic talent! I wish I could draw, but sadly, it is not in my skill set. I did have a really clear idea in my head of what I thought she would look like though, and all the different incarnations she would take as Alba worked out how to draw her.
I think what I loved most about creating her was imagining Alba, my main character, imagining her own character, and this process of Alba working out her story through her artwork, while I did the same as I was writing her book.
Q: Why did you want Alba to be a super-talented comic creator, is that an area you've worked in or had as a hobby?
A: I was really keen to read more comic books and graphic novels and to learn more about that world (I love superhero stories but hadn't really had the chance to read many comics). Part of the joy of writing is having an excuse to indulge in a new hobby!
Q: The reader learns quite a bit about comics through this story, so how much research did you need to do into comic creation in order to write the book?
A: I basically read nothing but comics and graphic novels for a good year while I was working on the book, and also did a lot of research into the history of female comic book creators, which was something I knew Alba would be interested in and have a solid knowledge of.
The breadth of storytelling opportunities that the medium allows is incredible, in every genre and genre mash-up, from the mainstream superhero stories, to tiny indie zines and self-published stuff on the net - there's so much scope for good storytelling. I suppose I was pleasantly surprised to discover just how broad the medium can be.
Q: Why did you want to put your characters into an apocalyptic scenario? Does this reflect the kind of 'end of the world' pressure teenagers feel they are under when making decisions about their future - and is that pressure more than it should be?
A: I think that period in your life, at the end of formal schooling, is just so weighted for teenagers. I remember the enormous pressure of Year 12 (the final year before university in Australia), and this feeling that if you messed up this one year or didn't make the right choice afterward, your life was over.
To some extent, that period felt like a giant drop off a cliff, or an ending with a big blank unknown on the other side. The idea of the world literally ending - compressing all of those difficult, impossible decisions into a finite period of time - felt pretty symbolically apt. I also liked the idea of this group of kids who were isolated from the wide world having the world suddenly dropped on their doorstep.
Q: Is Eden Valley, where it all takes placed, based on anywhere you know? Is there a special place where you would you go if you thought the world was ending?!
A: It's technically not based on any one place or location, but, I did spend some time while I was writing my first novel, Life in Outer Space, on a friend's farm, which was on the outskirts of a very tiny town in rural Victoria.
The town was basically one small main street with some stores and a few streets branching off it - while my first book was set very much in the inner city of Melbourne, I thought that this small, idealized country town would be a great location for a book. I think I had the location in mind before I had much of the rest of the story in place!
And if I thought the world was ending, I think my attitude would be very much like Alba's - there's so many places that I want to see, but in the end I would want to be home with my family and friends.
Q: Your group of characters have some wonderful friends (as do their parents) who they grow up with. Was that based on your own teenaged years or were you creating something you wished you could have had?
A: I love really strong, loyal friendship groups in fiction - give me a well-drawn Scooby gang, a group of people who 'get' each other and have each others' backs, and I'm all in. But there's something particularly appealing in a romance for both people involved to have a strong friendship base - I think friends, and romances that are based on friendships, are far more interesting and appealing than two people who only have eyes for each other.
Q: In your book, Alba needs to notice that one of these friends is in love with her. How hard was it to pace her gradual realisation that this was the case?
A: That's a really interesting question! Alba is caught in this moment of her life which is wonderful and happy, and she's desperate for this moment not to change, despite knowing, deep down, that change is inevitable.
My feeling is that she is in giant, cheerful denial about lots of aspects of her life, including her feelings for her friend (and his feeling for her). So what I wanted to convey was less of a gradual realization, and more of a gradual acceptance of their changing relationship, and an acceptance that change is totally fine and can be welcomed.
Pacing is always tricky - it's a fine balance between allowing your readers to invest in a journey, and not making them super frustrated with your characters indecision and seeming unawareness (I hope it's a balance that I managed!)
Q: Were any of the friends harder to develop than the others?
A: I do a lot of work on developing all of my characters while I'm writing, and I feel like I become quite connected to all of them - but, there is only so much page time you can afford your secondary characters. And while I really didn't want any of my characters to feel like props or devices, it is hard to give all of them the page time they deserve, especially once you know them well - I feel like I could give each and every one of my secondary characters a book of their own!
Having said all that, the character I thought I would have the most trouble with was Eddie, as I've never written a tough 'alpha' boy before, but he turned out to almost immediately have one of the strongest voices, and ended up being one of my favourite secondary characters.
Q: Would you like to follow up on Alba's adventures or do you feel her story is done?
A: Hmm, tricky question - I always feel sad saying goodbye to my characters, and would love to keep in touch with them in future stories - and I think Alba has some amazing adventures ahead of her. But you can't really place a person at the centre of a story unless you're willing to mess up their life a bit - you have to give them trauma and problems to be overcome, otherwise you don't really have a story. And I really liked the place she was at in the end of the book - so, while I feel her story is far from done (it's really only beginning at the end of the book), she probably won't figure as the main character in a future story.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am working on my third novel, which is tentatively titled 'The Secret Science of Magic'. It's been a HUGE job, much more challenging than the last two books I have written, but I'm almost at the end of the road with these new characters - I adore them and I'm looking forward to them being out in the world.
Q: Where do you write and what can you see from your desk / window?
A: I write out a lot, at various cafes in my neighbourhood. When I write at home I work in a little nook in my bedroom that perfectly fits my desk. I'm surrounded by my various pin boards of inspirational materials for my new book - at the moment there are a handful of pictures and postcards, a couple of maths problems, some scientific sketches of Birdwing butterflies, an article from Playboy magazine, some playing cards, and a couple of Trivial Pursuit question cards. All of which figure, in some way, in the new story.
Q: What is your favourite escape?
A: Hanging out in the park with my dog. Sitting in cafes with friends. Reading. Binge watching Netflix. Listening to podcasts, particularly of other people reading stories. Buying comic books. Playing with my niece and nephew. Eating cheese.
Q: Which top five Australian YA titles would you recommend to readers in the UK?
A: Oh, five titles only is SO difficult! There really is an amazing wealth of talented people down here, and so many amazing books on my shelf (my #LoveOzYA pile is ginormous). But, if I have to pick just five:
- The Every series by Ellie Marney
- Graffiti Moon by Cath Crowley
- Nona and Me by Claire Atkins
- The Piper's Son by Melina Marchetta
- Six Impossible Things by Fiona Wood
Thanks very much for having me!
The Incredible Adventures of Cinnamon Girl
