Rooms: Author Interview
We're excited to welcome the author of Rooms, Lauren Oliver, to Reading Lark today. She's her to dish on her new adult novel.
Andrea @ Reading Lark: How do you go about finding the different voices for your characters?
Lauren: That's the fun part. That's a question of really playing around on the page, listening, generating memories and watching the character materialize. It's kind of like meeting someone on a misty marsh--the voice and character might at first be ill-defined but eventually, as you approach, the outlines take shape.
Andrea @ Reading Lark: Did your writing process change in any way as you wrote for a more adult audience?
Lauren: My process is different for every book. Certain books are harder or easier depending on the story and how it comes to me. Rooms did take me much longer than usual, but that had more to do with the intricacy of the structure, and the variety of the perspectives, than it did the fact I was writing for adults. In some ways it's harder to write my YA books, since I am an adult, which means my modes of thinking and speaking are quite distinct from those of my adolescent characters.
Andrea @ Reading Lark: If this novel was a cupcake, which one would it be?
Lauren: A layered one! Or possibly a red velvet cupcake. There are some southern gothic influences in there.
Andrea @ Reading Lark: I love that this novel has a ghostly connection. Do you plan to write more paranormal works?
Lauren: My children's book, Liesl and Po, features a ghost (and a ghost-pet). I love ghosts and am fascinated by ideas of what happens after death. So I certainly wouldn't rule it out.
Andrea @ Reading Lark: It's a tradition to ask - What is your favorite bird?
Lauren: Crows, probably. Or maybe the albatross.
About Lauren Oliver
Lauren Oliver is the author of the New York Times bestselling YA novels Before I Fall, Panic, and the Delirium trilogy: Delirium, Pandemonium, and Requiem. Her books have been translated into thirty languages. She is also the author of two novels for middle-grade readers, The Spindlers and Liesl & Po, which was a 2012 E. B. White Read-Aloud Award nominee. Lauren's first adult novel, Rooms, will be published in September 2014. A graduate of the University of Chicago and NYU's MFA program, Lauren Oliver is also the co-founder of the boutique literary development company Paper Lantern Lit. You can visit her online at www.laurenoliverbooks.com
About the Novel
The New York Times bestselling author of Before I Fall and the Delirium trilogy makes her brilliant adult debut with this mesmerizing story in the tradition ofThe Lovely Bones, Her Fearful Symmetry, and The Ocean at the End of the Lane—a tale of family, ghosts, secrets, and mystery, in which the lives of the living and the dead intersect in shocking, surprising, and moving ways.
Wealthy Richard Walker has just died, leaving behind his country house full of rooms packed with the detritus of a lifetime. His estranged family—bitter ex-wife Caroline, troubled teenage son Trenton, and unforgiving daughter Minna—have arrived for their inheritance.
But the Walkers are not alone. Prim Alice and the cynical Sandra, long dead former residents bound to the house, linger within its claustrophobic walls. Jostling for space, memory, and supremacy, they observe the family, trading barbs and reminiscences about their past lives. Though their voices cannot be heard, Alice and Sandra speak through the house itself—in the hiss of the radiator, a creak in the stairs, the dimming of a light bulb.
The living and dead are each haunted by painful truths that will soon surface with explosive force. When a new ghost appears, and Trenton begins to communicate with her, the spirit and human worlds collide—with cataclysmic results.
Elegantly constructed and brilliantly paced, Rooms is an enticing and imaginative ghost story and a searing family drama that is as haunting as it is resonant.
Tour Schedule
Sept. 15: Reading Lark
Sept. 16: Midnight Garden
Sept. 17: Icey Books
Sept. 18: I Swim for Oceans
Sept 19: Fiktshun
Sept. 22: Fiction Fare
Sept. 23: Read My Breath Away
Sept. 24: Ella Bee Reads
Sept. 25: A Dream Within a Dream
Sept. 26: Anna Reads
Sept. 29: Katie's Book Blog
Sept. 30: Sweeps 4 Bloggers
Sept. 31: Mod Podge Bookshelf
I LOVED Liesel & Po, so if this story Rooms is any comparison, well, I was sold at seeing it is Lauren's book anyway. Love all the books I've read so far.
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