Originally Posted 08 December 2009
First let’s talk about Green in general and then get into more of you, Hayley Anne Perkins, as a person. Here you go.
Breathe Me: What was your inspiration to begin writing Green?
Hayley Anne Perkins: Well, that’s sort of a tricky question. I really have no idea! I never sat down and said, “OK, I’d like to write a novel. I’d like for it to have fantastical elements and historical fiction, and lots of kissyface, and… and…” Instead, Green and the rest of the Metempsyche universe feel very organic to me. It’s the story I was always meant to write.
More specifically, and less cheesily, the idea for the basic identity of Lindy’s character — a high school girl who was literally the embodiment of the universe, of all history — came to me when I was sixteen myself. However, her name wasn’t Lindy, she was a cheerleader, and the rest of the world in which she lived was pretty much nonexistent. Oh, and she was supposed to fight secret agents or something, I don’t know. I tried a few times to write her story, but it never panned out since I didn’t really have any direction. I never got further than a prologue full of shadowy no-ones.
I never forgot about the idea, but I also stopped attempting to do anything about it until one early early morning about six months after my college graduation. I went back to campus to visit my best friend, who writes comic books and comes up with, probably, a story idea a day. I fully maintain that there’s just some sort of fantastical idea-bug in the air wherever she is, because I fell asleep… I woke up at five o’clock in the morning… wrote 25 pages of what was to be Green… and fell back asleep. When I woke at a more reasonable time, I found the pages, reread what I’d written, and just felt that it was right.
BM: How do you feel about people calling your Daniel Haliburton the new Edward Cullen?
HAP: Flattered, embarrassed, incredulous, awed, bemused, and a little terrified. And that doesn’t even get into what I think about it — just how I feel!
BM: The book isn’t even released yet and you have very devoted people wishing to read this, I include myself among this, why would you think that is? What aspects have helped?
HAP: I think that it definitely helps that paranormal romance is so popular right now. People are always looking, right now, for the next book they can really sink their teeth into (pun slightly intended) in the genre, but the typical stories about human-girl-meets-supernatural-boy are becoming overplayed in a lot of readers’ minds. I think that the idea that, while Lindy does meet a beautiful supernatural boy in Green, she’s more powerful than he is, appeals to readers who are frustrating with YA heroines who are little more than dishrags. That’s definitely not to say that’s the fate of all, or even most, YA heroines in the paranormal romance genre, but it is the trope that’s being bandied about the most in mainstream pop culture right now. I think, though, that paranormal romance — and YA in general — have the potential to give their audience protagonists who are hugely positive female role models and literary heroines who are entertaining in their own right.
BM: How long ago did you begin writing the book?
HAP: Well, like I said, I very originally started about seven years ago now, but the actual full text of Green was written in late 2008 and early 2009.
BM: Why do you think the few people who read your book at the July 2009 Focus Group identify themselves so much with Lindy?
HAP: Personally, I think — well, I hope — that it’s because Lindy is very much her own person. My goal was to make her relatable because of her uniqueness — I mean, how many people are actually the universe? — than to go the route of leaving her a blank canvas or vessel. Lindy has definite likes and dislikes, true friendships and friendships of convenience, and reacts to her explorations of the supernatural world in the way that I think I would… with wonder and wit, but also a small struggle to believe that everything is real.
BM: I understand the love story in Green between Lindy and Daniel is a driving force for the novel, was developing it hard?
HAP: Not at all! That was actually the easiest part of the novel for me. Again, I didn’t really sit down and decide that Daniel would exist, or be a werewolf, or love Lindy. He just is, and does. I really enjoy writing them together and I can’t even explain my excitement over people’s acceptance of their story.
BM: You started writing ever since you were three years old, why do you think you were so interested in the written word?
HAP: Probably because when you’re three and can write, it gets you a lot of attention! Plus, I had a really hard time as a child understanding that it wasn’t that my peers didn’t want to talk to me at two or three years old… it was that they didn’t know how!
My parents also made sure that books and reading were a huge part of our home. Every week my dad and I would walk to the library, which was in a white building with vines climbing up the walls, and I was allowed to check out as many books as I wanted. We read together every night, and for a long time, I felt a closer kinship to book characters than to other kids.
Until I was in third grade, I didn’t know that it would be possible for me to create characters. Sure, I sometimes wrote stories with little names that I liked taking the place of my own for the protagonists, but I didn’t really consider them characters — just fake versions of myself. I assumed that I had to write stories about the characters that greater minds had birthed — Gloria Gopher, Kirsten Larson, Karen Brewer, Jesse Bear — because the act of creating a whole new person (or anthropomorphic thing) seemed sacred and mystical. I wrote hundreds of stories in preschool, kindergarten, early elementary school, all using the characters that other people created, just because I legitimately believed that I was not worthy of such a thing. I was just a kid, I couldn’t make a person.
In third grade, my teacher finally told me that I couldn’t keep writing about other people’s characters because it was a breach of copywright.
I… was shocked.
Not only COULD I create characters… but I was SUPPOSED to invent these people for the stories in my mind? I could put names to the faces that crowded mental corners and give them likes and dislikes and backgrounds and histories and parents and siblings and favorite foods and enemies and quirks like preferring to wear socks with pom-poms (which one of my first independent characters did)?
It was, perhaps, the most profound epiphany I had ever had.
It may still be. It’s debatable.
At any rate, my writing career really started with, oh, seventeen years of writing fanfiction.
BM: When writing a story, what do you think is the most important aspect to have in mind? Complete Plot? Character development? Character relationships? Dialogue?
HAP: Character relationships, because otherwise, there’s no way to anchor the flow of the plot, the development of said characters, or the basis for the dialogue.
BM: If you could choose a character from a book to bring to life and speak to him/her, who would it be and why? It can be any character from any book ever written.
HAP: Ray Smith of The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac, because… he is Jack Kerouac. Anyone who thinks or speaks with the rambling beauty of Ray Smith/Jack Kerouac is someone who fascinates me.
BM: There are many people in my class that have never finished a book because they find no interest in them, what book would you recommending for young readers like them to become more fond of reading?
HAP: I will never not recommend Harry Potter. To anyone. For any reason. Platform 9-3/4 is where already more than one generation set out on their journey towards reading, and for very good reason. Harry Potter is the only book (series) I can think of that can appeal equally to children, teens, and adults; women and men; all races, religions, and nationalities. Every person wants to believe that one day, an owl will swoop in through their window and tell them that after everything else is said and done, they are special, because they are loved.
BM: Name your favorite art piece.
HAP: Michelangelo’s Pietà
BM: Name your favorite book.
HAP: Argh! WAY too many to name. See http://www.hayleyanneperkins.com/recommended.php and name any book there, and it has been my favorite at some point in my life.
BM: Name your favorite mythological creature.
HAP: Hmm. I don’t know if I can share without spoiling! I’m getting a little anxious trying to decide on one, because it feels unfair to the rest of my characters. Haha!
BM: Who is your favorite author? Does he or she inspire your writing in any way?
HAP: My two favorite authors are JK Rowling and Jack Kerouac, and they both inspire me hugely in different ways. JK Rowling is, to me, the epitome of “the author.” The difference in my mind between a writer and an author is the depth of the world they created, how much they respect that world, how much they respect our world, and how much they respect their readers, who bridge the two. JK Rowling’s Harry Potter universe is as multilayered and rich as our own, and she stays very consistent within it — she always has a clear and logical reason or history behind every decision that affects her characters within it. She also has shown so much social responsibility and understanding of her influence in “the real world,” and she never condescends to her readers, even when the series she never intended to be for children became popular with kids. She’s an amazing inspiration and to be like her will always be my ultimate, unattainable goal. When I lose faith in the world, I read Rowling. Jack Kerouac, in contrast, just reminds me every time I read him of how beautiful words can be. When I lose faith in words, I read Kerouac.
BM: Roberto Bolaño used to say that it is very important to write different stories at a time, would you agree with him or would you say that it is better to focus on just one story at a time?
HAP: I think that’s true, but there will always be the story that’s tied most into your soul and your bones and your heart that will bubble up to be the strongest and clearest and best. I worked on all four books in The Metempsyche Novels simultaneously, but focused the most on Green; now, I’m focusing the most on Red, but also working on the next two books, the short stories of the secondary characters, and a few other things.
BM: J.K Rowling, for example, wrote the epilogue for Harry Potter before starting the books, did you do something like that for The Metempsyche Novels or are you just letting it be?
HAP: I do know the epilogue, but I haven’t written it, just because I don’t want to jinx anything being cut by the publishers when it’s time for a final editing.
BM: When you write a book with this much magic and creatures, is it harder to write because you have to think of a deeper reason for everything or is it easier since you can practically do anything?
HAP: Oh… my… gosh, I have never researched anything in my life as much as I research every aspect of every particle of dust in the supernatural world of the Metempsyche novels. The mythos of every supernatural creature is very inspired by existing legend, available science, historical ideas… and of course, all of Lindy’s past lives are as historically accurate as I could make them. Writing this series is not exactly a Saturday afternoon frolic of the imagination, that’s for sure. In my opinion, reason is the difference between a good book and a great book (which is another lesson from JK Rowling!). The deeper you can get into the world of your characters, the more places they can lead you in developing their story, rather than you having to try to force along a plotline that is as thin as dental floss. If you really understand your characters and their environment, then their linear arc can split off into a great golden web like Priori Incantatem, and your work can feel round and complete. It’s the difference between a book you love and a book that changes the way you approach reading, writing, and seeing. The most successful stories know exactly why their mythologies function the way they do (even if it’s just convincing technobabble!). If you don’t know the parameters of your magical beings, they’ll stretch and stretch until suddenly things sparkle that probably shouldn’t. To break the rules, you need to know which directions they already bend.
BM: Who was the first person, apart from you, to read this book?
HAP: My friend Jacee and my editor Suzanne read it as I wrote, to keep me progressing forward instead of editing too much and impeding my own goals.
BM: Now for a typical question, what advice do you give young people that aspire to be writers some day?
HAP: Read. And write.
