Visit with Lisa Rowe Fraustino

http://lisarowefraustino.com/

Today we're visiting with author Lisa Rowe Fraustino, whose newest release, THE HOLE IN THE WALL, was just published by Milkweed on 11/1/10!



Eleven-year-old Sebby has found the perfect escape from his crummy house and bickering family: The Hole in the Wall.

It’s a pristine, beautiful glen in the midst of a devastated mining area behind Sebby’s home. But not long after he finds it his world starts falling apart: his family’s chickens disappear, colors start jumping off the wall and coming to life, and after sneaking a taste of raw cookie dough he finds himself with the mother of all stomachaches. When Sebby sets out to solve these mysteries, he and his twin sister, Barbie, get caught in a wild chase through the tunnels and caverns around The Hole in the Wall — all leading them to the mining activities of one Stanley Odum, the hometown astrophysicist who’s buying up all the land behind Sebby’s home.

Exactly what is Mr. Odum mining in his secret facility, and does it have anything to do with the mystery of the lost chickens and Sebby’s stomachache? The answers to these questions go much further than the twins expect.



*Trailer created by one of Ms. Fraustino's gifted studentsat ECSU, Shauna Guglielmo.

I had the chance to ask Lisa a few questions about her life and writing, and I hope you enjoy her answers as much as I did!

If you could bring any character from one of your books to life, who would it be and why?

Oh, definitely Boots Odum from THE HOLE IN THE WALL. I really want to find out everything he’s learned about the mysterious element he discovered, adrium. Besides, I’m hoping to write two more books around him, one historical and one in the future, so I’d like to get to know him really well. I wouldn’t let him live with us, though.

Your own six-word memoir.

Too many dreams, never enough sleep.

Twitter your newest or upcoming release in 140 characters or less.

Sebby asks: What’s Stanley Odum strip mining across the road? Why’d Jed run away? Will Pa straighten out? THE HOLE IN THE WALL has answers.

You have the chance to spend the day with any character from one of your favorite books. Who would you choose and why?

I’d choose Ender Wiggin from Orson Scott Card’s series of science fiction books. I’ve always wished I could travel through space, live among cool species in faraway worlds, and stay young while everyone else I grew up with gets wrinkles.

What was your favorite book growing up as a teen?

QUEENIE PEAVY for her brains, her guts, and her aim.

When you were young, what did you want to be when you grew up?

Strangely enough, I wanted to be a writer, but I didn’t think smart people from away would ever want to read anything thunk up by a country girl from Maine, so I set my sights on becoming an English teacher. I fantasized about grading spelling tests.

Your favorite subject in high school – and your least favorite.

Favorite: Physics, for the concepts. Here, watch me drop this egg! I loved learning how nature operates. Least favorite: Physics, for the math. Not that I didn’t like word problems—words are fun—but why did it matter how much force the ladder was exerting on the side of the house? I would have loved English the most if the teachers didn’t take weeks to read and discuss books chapter by chapter. Read it all! Read it now!

The one book everyone in the world should read.

These questions are hard! I keep needing to ask for advice. My husband says A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME by Stephen Hawking because everyone should know where the universe came from. My friend says GREEN EGGS AND HAM because everyone should try new things. My mother-in-law says everyone should read my picture book THE HICKORY CHAIR because “Rory likes that one.” (Rory’s my niece.) I guess I’ll go with my mother-in-law’s suggestion. I’d like to be able to afford retirement before my brain gets all used up.

The book you wish you had written.

GO ASK ALICE. The first person who guesses the right reason why will get a mysterious prize. (SEE END OF POST FOR CONTEST!!)

Your five favorite reads from 2010 (books you read during the year; they do not have to have been published during 2010).

1. If you really want to know, THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger. I reread it every year when I teach it in YA lit class, and I love it every time. Such wit, such sorrow. Yes, Holden is whiny, he really is, but he’s also hilariously insightful and has a good heart. I want to be his catcher.

2. THE BOOK THIEF by Markus Zusak. Wow. The writing from death’s point of view pulled me in, dragged me through, and kept me away from the ShisenSho game on my laptop every night before bed.

3. THE GRAVEYARD BOOK by Neil Gaiman. I confess I didn’t love it the first time I read it—it seemed too episodic and disjointed—but when I reread it to discuss with my creative writing class, I thought it was brilliantly stitched together. Now I want to be a ghost someday.

4. What was the name of that book…? [Pause to Google…] WHEN YOU REACH ME by Rebecca Stead. The only thing I didn’t like about this book was the hard-to-remember title. Sometimes I think the Newbery Committee is like the committee that tried to design a horse and wound up with a camel, but last year they picked a great book, one that has both high literary quality and reader appeal. As someone who grew up watching The $20,000 Pyramid (and who once stole a box of paper clips from the school supply closet), I really identified.

5. The ARC (Advance Reading Copy) of THE HOLE IN THE WALL. There’s nothing like seeing your own name on the cover of a book you’ve been working on for twenty years.

The 2010 or 2011 release you’re most looking forward to reading.

Han Nolan’s CRAZY.

If your mom wrote the author profile for the jacket of your next book, what would she write?

I’m so proud of my daughter! She works so hard all the time, she even wrote part of this book at my kitchen table when she came for the holidays, and she’s smart enough to marry Jeff. He installed a new floor for us and we love it. Awesome.

Your family has the chance to describe you for an interview. What ten words would they say describe you best?

Husband: Yesdear
Son: Pretty
Daughter: Backrubs
Other Daughter:
Sister: Generous
Brother: Laughable
Mom: Good
Dad: Girl
Mother-in-Law: Brilliant
Father-in-Law: Tall
Grammy: You want to know about Lisa Anne? Well, she’s my favorite oldest granddaughter and was always very…oh, you only wanted one word to describe her? Forty-nine.

You have the chance to go back and change a scene from one of your previous releases. What book would you choose, what scene would you change, and how would you alter it?

I would change the first scene of my first book, GRASS AND SKY (Orchard 1994) to begin with the schoolmaster talking to one of the shape-shifting teachers, about how the heroine of the story, Timmi Lafler, is safe in the hands of family on a remote lake in Maine… (I will send an autographed copy of GRASS AND SKY to the winner of a TRT prize drawing.) (SEE END OF POST FOR CONTEST!)

You’ve invented a new national holiday. What is it called, and what does it celebrate? (Plus, would we get the day off of school and work??)

Kids’ Day Off. Parents get a paid day to stay home with the kids, but the kids still have to go to school.

Using the letters J L W (my initials!), create the title of your next bestseller. (For example, Jumping Love Walrus.)

Jeff Loves Wife
(My husband’s name is Jeff, and he thought up this title.)

You’re going off your diet for one day and only eating food from restaurants. What do you eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? (Include the restaurant each meal comes from.)

Breakfast will be a chili omelet at the Wooden Spoon around the corner from where we live in Ashford, CT, oh, and sweet potato home fries on the side. Second breakfast will be sushi at Higashi on our way to the airport . Then we’ll jet off to Mahasarakham, Thailand for lunch at Phai See Thong (meaning “Golden Bamboo”). We’ll have crickets, grasshoppers, ant eggs, fried fish and sticky rice. By then we’ll be pretty full so for dinner will just share a pizza with some panna cotta for dessert at Da Michele in Turin, Italy.

What is your ultimate vacation destination?

Vacation? We took a day off once, lying for hours in the hammock on the porch of our lake house in Maine, talking about what we should do next.

The world has suffered from a one-day only loss of power. You have no cell phone, computer, lights, or anything else that requires a computer, cell battery, or electricity. What do you spend the day doing?

Making sure nobody stands in front of the refrigerator with the door open.

Of course, I’ll have a pile of books beside me. If it gets too dark to see, I’ll dig the Coleman gas lamp out of the camping gear and keep reading to all hours like I did at the lake cabin where grew up in the summers without cell phones, computers, or electricity. I loved life there—swimming, hiking, boating, frog catching, playing cards and board games and horseshoes, writing and drawing, doing handcrafts, making up skits, singing around the bonfire. But especially reading.

f you weren’t an author, what job would you be doing?

I’d be a psychiatrist. After all the psychoanalysis I’ve done of characters, it should be easy. Also, I have four cats. Do I even need to go back to school for this?

You get the chance to star in an upcoming film release. What movie would you star in for your acting debut? (If you can’t choose an upcoming film, you can choose a past release.)

It would be a hoot to play Mrs. Weasley.

You’re invited to a White House function, and you have the chance to give a 10-minute speech to the President and everyone else attending. What do you speak about?

The world has so many problems and I have so many ideas to solve them, I couldn’t decide on one, so my husband has jumped in an offered to give a short speech on “A Cultural and Gender Based Analysis on the Question ‘Do You Love Me Even Though I’m Fat?’”

Your publisher has instructed you to write a new series based on an endangered species. What animal do you choose?

Again, how can I narrow it down to one? I want to save them all. So I asked my father-in-law to choose for me. He said the penguin, because he’s always well dressed every morning before breakfast. Sounds good to me.

A movie is being made of ONE of your books. Which book is it, and who will star as the main characters?

It will be a book I haven’t written yet, with Gary Oldman as the bad guy and Betty White as the child protagonist (she’ll be animated). Oliver Platt will play the goofy uncle, and his wife will be played by my favorite actor, Paul Bettany. (I will do Paul’s wardrobe and make-up.)

You’re writing a book where you can change one major historical event. Which event do you change? (For example, Abraham Lincoln wasn’t assassinated, or Japan never bombed Pearl Harbor.)

I know it may not seem major to you, but it would have made a huge difference in my history if those mean girls in seventh grade had been sucked into that black hole in the locker room the day before I moved to town. Oh, but they’re nice to me now at the class reunions. I guess instead I’d have Christopher Columbus get lost.

Remember those “classics” that you were made to read in high school English class? What was your favorite, and which title should students never have to be subjected to reading?

Down with SILAS MARNER, up with MACBETH. Need I say more?

Someone tells you that you’ll never publish another book that you write. Do you still keep writing?

The parrot of self-doubt who sits on the shoulder of my hot pink robe while I write has told me this every morning for years. I haven’t let it stop me yet.

A group of teens ask you the best way to become a published writer. How do you answer the question?

Read, write, rewrite. Repeat repeatedly. Get a good liberal arts education that will expand your knowledge all over the place and sharpen your thinking. Maintain the reading, writing, revising habit. Take writing workshops, attend conferences, learn about the publishing business. Join a critique group with other writers who are smart and well read. When you and they honestly think your work is as good as most of the new books being published in the same genre, start submitting manuscripts to editors or agents. It may take one year, it may take ten, but if you do all that and remain persistent, you will become a published writer. Probably.

Sit in on a session of Dr. Lisa’s Class! Visit Lisa’s web page at http://lisarowefraustino.com/?page_id=283 to read “Putting Your Character in the Driver’s Seat.”

Other class sessions can be found at http://lisarowefraustino.com/?page_id=249.

**Thanks so much to Lisa for visiting with us today! Be sure to check out her website, listed above! As mentioned in the post, we'll be having 2 prizes today for 2 separate winners! One lucky poster will be getting a signed copy of GRASS AND SKY, and another will receive an awesome mystery prize for answering this question:

Why did Lisa name GO ASK ALICE as the book she wishes she had written?

The person closest to the correct answer will win said mystery prize!

So make sure to leave any comments or questions you have for Ms. Fraustino in the comments section; she'll be stopping by later this evening to see what we're discussing!