Interview: Mindi Scott (Author of Freefall!)

I was extremely lucky to be able to read Mindi Scott's FREEFALL in June, but I've been waiting (im)patiently to be able to say "Run to your local bookstore and pick up your own copy. Now!" I'm still a bit premature, but FREEFALL will be hitting shelves October 5th in the US so you can at least prepare yourselves! To be super prepared, you might even want to preorder it. Not sure? Maybe my review will convince you. Read it here!

I'm very excited to have Mindi here at The Hiding Spot to answer a few questions about FREEFALL and its subject matter!

__________________________

A Brief Bio

Read more about Mindi HERE.

Mindi Rochelle Scott lives near Seattle, Washington, with her drummer husband in a house with a non-sound-proof basement. Her first novel, Freefall, will be published by Simon Pulse on October 5, 2010.

________________________

The Interview

Give a short statement describing FREEFALL. (This should be in your own words and is meant to draw in readers, so no copying from the book jacket, etc.)
Freefall is about Seth McCoy, a bassist in a rockabilly band whose nickname is “Dick” for arguably legitimate reasons. This is the story of how, two months after finding his best friend dead, Seth is now at a point where he thinks he might be ready to start living and feeling again—he just has to learn how.

To me, Seth was incredibly real, which I found to be commendable, since you are, after all, not a teen boy. I feel like many girls and women feel like they think they know how the male mind works, but guys are forever telling them they actually have no idea. How did you find a way into Seth’s head? Did you find it difficult to make him believable? Was there research involved? Did you have a male “consultant?”
While working on this book, I read lots and lots of other YA with male POVs to kind of get the flavor. My husband was a big help, too. He’d read each of my scenes and sometimes he’d say, “Really? You think a guy would say/think/do that?” Then I’d try again. The thing that was cool is after a few months of working on the project, our discussions shifted from being about whether the narrative was boyish enough to whether it was Sethish enough. I was very proud when I got to that point because it was like, Seth had become a real enough person that “boy” or “not boy” was no longer a consideration. If that makes any sense.

I appreciated the frank portrayal of underage drinking in your novel. Do you think teens fully understand the negative consequences of drinking? What message did you hope to impart by its inclusion in the novel?
Despite the fact that my dad was killed in a collision with a drunk driver when I was four, I know that I didn’t fully understand the negative consequences of underage drinking when I was a teen. For instance, it seemed like puking was a thing that should automatically happen while partying. (It isn’t.) I also didn’t grasp that a 100-pound girl trying to keep up with, like, 175-pound boys was not only stupid, but could be dangerous for a multitude of reasons.

I don’t imagine that it would be a stretch to say that other teens out there might be clueless in the ways that my friends and I were clueless. And, yes, this is probably pretty obvious, but what I really hope readers will come away with after reading this book is that taking care of yourself and making smart choices is never a bad thing.

I loved Mrs. Dalloway and Seth’s Interpersonal Communications class. What was your inspiration behind her character and her often zany lessons?
I took an Interpersonal Communications class in college. Mrs. Dalloway is a less annoying, but more out-there version of my instructor. For the class I took, we had to choose fake names for ourselves and make lists of ways that we would challenge ourselves. I stole those ideas, and also came up with things that I thought would make the format of the class in the book more interactive and unexpected.

Can you tell us anything about your next YA novel?
I don’t actually know what my next published novel will be, but I have a few YA projects in the works which might be contenders. I hope that I’ll know more in the coming months!

My blog is dedicated to my personal hiding spot, books. Who, what, or where can be credited as your personal escape from reality?
A combination of a book and a tropical beach is the ideal hiding spot for me.

__________________________

I urge you to pick up FREEFALL. There's been a lot of talk about the lack of males narrators and "guy" books in YA lately, so Scott's debut is worth picking up for that reason alone, but there are many, many more reasons to pick up this amazing debut. Be sure to check out my review and the book trailer: