Frequently Asked Questions
General Questions — If you are doing a school report on me, this section is YOUR JAM
Q. Where were you born?
A. Miami, Florida. However, I have never lived in Miami, Florida. My parents were staying in a hotel. Clearly I didn’t like the hotel very much. Either that, or I liked the hotel a little too much and wanted to order room service. Yes, that’s probably it.
Q. When were you born?
A. May 5, 1986.
Q. Where do you live?
A. Currently, I live in Los Angeles, California. I’ve also lived in New York City, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, London, England, and Orange County, California.
Q. Where did you go to school?
A. Northwood High School in Irvine, California (I know…suspiciously similar to Eastwood High. I get that a lot). Then, Barnard College of Columbia University. Then, the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
Q. What did you study?
A. As an undergrad, I majored in English with a concentration in creative writing, and pre-med. As a graduate student, I studied bioethics, which means that instead of learning how to perform surgery, I studied the history, philosophy and law of medicine. I have an MBE, or Master of Bioethics.
Q. I’m confused. You’re a doctor?
A. No, I’m a bioethicist. You know how Sherlock Holmes studied medicine but never intended to practice medicine? I did that. And I also studied Sherlock Holmes. And medical narratives. And the intersection of magic and science.
Q. Do you have any siblings? Pets? Partners? Children?
A. No, no, yes, yes. I have a husband who’s a film and TV producer, and an incredibly frustrating poodle who chews books, and probably this is not in your book report.
Q. Are you a full-time writer?
A. Yes. I write books and, occasionally, scripts for TV and film.
Questions about writing (which might also help with that book report you’re working on):
Q. What is your writing process?
A. I use Scrivener, I outline, I start at the beginning and write until I get to the end, and I edit a little as I go.
Q. How do you deal with writers block?
A. If I wind up at a place in my story that feels off, and like there’s nowhere to go, that usually means I made a wrong turn. So I go backwards until I find the last possible point where I can confidently say “all of this is good,” and then I go forward differently from there. The problem is usually much further back than I think, and is usually a moment when there needed to be conflict, but I just glossed right past it with nothing going wrong, which of course made bigger things go wrong.
Q. What are you working on now?
Watching less Netflix and eating less pizza. But, if you meant in terms of writing, I’m working on my next YA novel and a couple of other secret ideas that have been simmering on the back burner of my mind oven.
Q. How did you get a literary agent?
A. I emailed literary agents.
Q. How did you get a publisher?
A. My agent emailed publishers. Or maybe she called them?
Q. You were 18, right? I heard somewhere you got a literary agent and a book deal when you were 18.
A. Yeah. I’m not the biggest fan of my earlier books (they’re pretty mediocre, my advice is spend your money and time on better things), but they are a thing that happened. All four of them. I can’t believe that’s what I was doing in college instead of staying up until 2am drinking bad wine and stargazing and getting my heart broken. So yes, I had a literary agent and then a book deal at eighteen, and I did it by emailing literary agents just like it said to do in a publishing book I found at Barnes & Noble. No special treatment or friends of the family or online contests or shortcuts.
Q. Do you have any advice for young writers who want to get published?
A. My advice for young writers is to write a practice novel or two. Learn how to pace a book, learn what your personal themes are, what it is you write about, and how you write about it, and what your weaknesses are. Then write another book, which will be easier. Evaluate your novels based not on whether they’re good enough to be published, but on whether you’ll still be proud of them in two or three or four years. The rate at which you improve as a writer when you’re young is astonishing. Then set out to land your dream agent, not just any agent. Someone you’d be lucky to work with after you have a couple books to your name. Someone who will guide your career, not just show your book to a couple of assistant editors. Read everything you can about the industry, in a way that makes you more educated about it, as opposed to jealous or discouraged. And remember that social media is a distraction, not a party.
Questions regarding THE OTHER MERLIN
Q. When does the sequel come out?
A. Soon! It’s called The Future King. More information is here.
Q. How many books will be in this series?
A. It’s currently planned as a trilogy.
Q. What is this book about?
A. A young female wizard who’s far more talented than her useless twin brother, and who takes his place as the apprentice wizard in Prince Arthur’s court. Imagine if you put BBC Merlin, She’s The Man, and A Knight’s Tale in a snarky, queer, feminist blender.
Q. What inspired you to write this book?
A. I’ve always loved girl-disguised-as-a-boy stories like Mulan, She’s The Man and so many K-Dramas, but there’s usually this moment that ruins them for me: when the male love interest thinks he’s falling for a guy, and panics at the thought. After that happens, I stop rooting for them to wind up together. I always wished I could find a story with this trope that avoided gay panic, and eventually, I decided to write it myself.
Plus, I’ve never been able to get over my theory that the legend of King Arthur comes into the story too late. You’ve got this straight white boy who’s destined to become king, and who ushers in this golden age of tolerance and understanding. Something had to happen to make a leader like that fight for the underdogs and care about those who are less privileged. So I wanted to write that story — the one where King Arthur isn’t some hero on a battlefield swinging a sword that makes him win every fight. The one where he’s a smart, lonely outsider who sees his friends being mistreated and resolves to do everything he can to fight for them. And that story-behind-the-legend became the focus of this book series.
Q. Your four previous books are YA contemporary. Why did you switch to writing historical fantasy?
A. I actually never meant to become a contemporary YA writer! I’d always dreamed of writing a YA fantasy series about a girl wizard. The first two novels I attempted back when I was a teenager were fantasy, and my TBR pile is usually an even split between contemporary and fantasy. Since The Beginning of Everything was so popular, my team encouraged me to stick with writing contemporary novels, but I always knew that my heart was off questing with magical swords and wizards and it was only a matter of time before my stories went there, too.
Q: What are you hoping that readers will take away from The Other Merlin?
A. I hope my readers know they’d be welcome to join Arthur, Emry, Lance and the gang in Camelot. I remember reading the Harry Potter books when I was growing up, and even though there weren’t any queer Jewish girls at Hogwarts, those stories captured my imagination in a way that left a lifelong impression. I don’t know that I could come back to them in the same way now. So I hope I’ve written a story that captures a little bit of that magic but makes sure readers know that this magic is for everyone.
Questions regarding Extraordinary Means
Q. What is this book about?
A. It’s a love story set at a modern day tuberculosis sanatorium for teens in the last days before the cure.
Q. So I take it this book isn’t a sequel to The Beginning of Everything?
A. No, it’s a stand alone novel.
Q. Is it about a real disease?
A. No. Well, yes. It’s about a fictional strain of a real disease. It’s completely fantasy, it just doesn’t read like a fantasy novel because it’s supposed to be contemporary realistic fiction, so the vibe is more of a sobby teen metaphor-driven coming of age thing. If you’d like to read an academic explanation of what things in the book are real vs. made up, there’s a handy author’s note in every copy which should help you out (with your school paper).
Q. What genre is this novel?
A. I’d call it contemporary realistic dystopian. I’ve also heard this described as alternate timeline fiction.
Q. How did you come up with the names of your characters? Do they have special meaning, or did you just pick them out because they sounded nice?
A. Lane’s name is indicative of his tendency to stick on a prescribed path. His last name means ‘of roses’ which I chose to show that he’s flushed or feverish. Sadie’s name, both first and last, is basically the most obvious metaphor of all the obvious metaphors. I mean, her last name is past tense. (I am many things, but subtle clearly isn’t one of them). Nick’s full name, Nikhil, sounds like “heal” or get better. Latham House is named after a famous tuberculosis researcher, Dr. Arthur Latham.
Q. Why does Extraordinary Means have two narrators?
A. My favorite thing about the book is something that readers might not even notice: the two narrators don’t tell the same story. Lane tells a coming of age story, which begins the moment he arrives at Latham House and ends when he leaves. His narrative is removed and introspective. And Sadie tells a love story. Her narrative begins the day she first sees Lane, more than a year after she’s arrived at Latham House, and it ends after the question of whether or not they want to be together has been answered. So her narrative is more in the moment, and closer to the story. I think writing it that way helped me to understand which parts of the story belonged to which characters.
Q. What do you hope readers will take away from Extraordinary Means?
A. Lane and Sadie are characters who grapple with what exactly counts as living one’s life. For each of them, their TB symbolizes a deeper issue. Lane arrives at Latham House so exhausted from his rigorous coursework that he has become literally consumed by it. Sadie has internalized all of her fears and, instead of taking action, has become afraid of living. But theirs isn’t a story of what it means to be sick so much as a story about how it feels to be an outsider. It’s a story about second chances, and how easily we could miss them. So what I hope readers will find in Extraordinary Means is a story of what it means to have hope that you’ll figure out your place in the world, and that you’ll be strong enough to get there.
Questions regarding The Beginning of Everything (aka Severed Heads, Broken Hearts if you’re in the UK)
Q. Is there any chance of a TBoE movie ever happening?
A. I hope so!
Q. Why are there two titles? It is the same book but it has two titles and whatttt?
A. The US title is The Beginning of Everything. The UK title is Severed Heads, Broken Hearts.
Q. Why?
A. Why is Carl’s Jr called Carl’s Jr in California, but Hardee’s in every other freaking state in the US? It just is.
Q. Okayyyy. So, where can I buy this book?
From anywhere books are sold. There are paperbacks and hardcovers and ebooks and audiobooks. Go forth, and please, don’t pirate. Libraries, not websites, are where the free books live.
Q. Why did you feel the need to tell this story, and do you know someone who went through a similar accident?
A. I knew that I needed to write a story about growing up in the suburbs and how it feels to realize that you’re not going to become the person you’d always imagined. I struggled with how to do this until a few years ago, when something terrible happened to a friend of mine while we were on spring break. Our friendship never quite recovered from his personal tragedy, and I eventually realized that so many stories lead up to the disaster and never begin in the aftermath.
Q. As a female author, what made you want to write from a male perspective, and is it difficult?
People are always surprised, when they meet me, that I wrote a book from a boy’s perspective, but the truth is, I wrote a book that was so emotionally autobiographical that I had to force myself to fictionalize it somehow. I was never a star athlete, but I know what it’s like to question the ideas everyone else seems to have about your future. I was never the victim of a hit and run accident, but I know what it’s like when your friends disappoint you. And I never had a mysterious girl break my heart, but I’ve been that girl, and it made me realize just how wrong I was when I wrote about it from the perspective of the lovelorn boy. So I suppose writing from the male perspective isn’t any more difficult than writing from the female perspective. We’re all just stories in the end, and stories don’t have genders.
Q. Are you more like Ezra or Cassidy?
A. Ezra’s inner monologue is very much my own. I like to joke that we have the same soul but different stories. I’m always disappointed when people see Cassidy in me, as she’s a girl whom it’s never wise to be: a cautionary tale masquerading as a person.
Q. I’m from Irvine, and is Eastwood actually Irvine?
A. Yes, Eastwood is a fictionalized version of a town called Irvine, California, where I lived for six years as a teenager, and where, if you were to go looking, you might find a castle park, some geocaches, a Lee’s Sandwiches, and quite a lot of dreary suburbia.
Q. You reference Vampire Weekend a lot in the book and your main character is called Ezra so basically what is up with that and are you a big fan of the band or something?
Here is what you need to know: I went to college with Vampire Weekend. They played in the living rooms of frat row, and they weren’t famous, they were just a really awesome campus band. Most writers are notorious name-borrowers, and I am no exception. For a couple of months in the spring of my junior year, I dated a boy whose cousin was in this campus band. The boy I was dating got upset over a short story I’d written in creative writing class, about a medical student convinced his cadaver was his high school English teacher. The main character was called Ezra. “You can’t use that name,” he said, “because you know my cousin is named Ezra.” I rolled my eyes and asked what other names were “off limits.” He gave me a long list, and I told him that was the stupidest rule I’d ever heard, and the next novel I wrote would have a narrator named Ezra. There you have it.
Q. How did you come up with the names of your characters? Do they have special meaning, or did you just pick them out because they sounded nice?
A. I answered the Ezra question above, but regarding the rest of it- Faulkner because William Faulkner wrote about a fictitious place based on where he grew up, and because it’s a last name that doesn’t at all match the idea of a golden boy jock, and I liked the idea of a disconnect between who you thought a boy with a literary last name would be, and who Ezra was for a long time. Cassidy’s last name, Thorpe, means Hamlet. Do with that what you will. Phoebe is the kid sister of the group, a Catcher In The Rye reference. The town is Eastwood, like East Egg from Gatsby. Those are really the important ones.
Q. Why did you change some franchise names but leave others? For example, you left the HP franchise as it was, but changed the names of some video game series?
A. Good catch- Quite a lot of things in TBoE are made up. The town. The floating movie theater. Most of the slang they use. When Ezra mentions Harry Potter, he’s talking about something that was a big part of his childhood, and I wanted it to resonate with readers’ own experiences. When he mentions a game he’s playing on his phone, it doesn’t really matter what game.
Q. Did you ever consider putting in an Ezra and therapist conversation in the book?
A. There are quite a lot of things that Ezra chooses to narrate around, rather than through. Things that he finds embarrassing, or painful. He downplays his physical limitations and avoids discussing them. He also avoids specifics in sex scenes. A therapist conversation, like a lot of the hospital scenes, are not in the book because they’re not part of the narrative as Ezra chose to tell it.
Q. I don’t live in the US, Canada, or the UK. Where else is your book available?
A. Foreign language editions of the book are available in many countries including Spain, Brazil, France, Germany, Turkey, Romania, Czech Republic, Indonesia, Serbia, and possibly a few other places I might have missed. It’s also available in the Philippines in an English language edition.
Questions about School and Library Visits
Q. Will you visit my school or library?
A. Sure! Your teacher or other in-chargeish person needs to arrange it, so please let them know that you would like me to visit and have them get in touch.
Q. I am a librarian/teacher/etc. How can I schedule a visit?
A. Please drop me a note through my contact page.
Q. Do you charge a speaker fee?
A. Yes, my rates as of 2022 are $300 for a virtual school visit including one presentation and Q&A, $1,500 for an in person full day visit including multiple presentations, classroom visits and book signing, $800 for a half-day, such as two morning presentations or a presentation plus signing, or a smaller honorarium that we can arrange personally, provided there is limited or no funding and the students have purchased copies of my book. If you would like for me to visit in person outside of the Los Angeles, Ventura, or Orange County area, you will also need to pay for travel, food, and accommodations. You are welcome to partner with another school or library in your area and split the cost of travel.
Q. Will you also do Skype or Zoom visits?
A. Yes. If you are a book club or library group that has read my book, I can offer a limited amount of free 15 minute sessions. If you would like to arrange a longer chat or Zoom or Skype classroom visit, the cost is $200. For either option, please use my contact form.
Q. Is there a reading guide for The Beginning of Everything?
A. Yes. My publisher made a book club guide, which you can find here.
Questions about Bookstore And Conference/Festival Visits
Q. Will you do bookstore visits?
A. Yes. I am happy to do a solo visit, a visit in conversation, or a panel. I am also happy to moderate a panel or interview another writer at their event local to Los Angeles/Ventura/Orange County. Please use my contact page to arrange.
Q. Will you speak at conferences?
A. Yes. I am happy to keynote, host workshops, or otherwise speak at your event. Please use my contact page to arrange. Travel and accommodations will need to be provided. My keynote fee is $2000 for a small conference <5,000 attendees, $2500 for a large conference.
Q. Will you come to a book festival or fandom/nerd culture festival?
A. Yes. I am willing to speak on a panel, moderate a panel, do a main stage event, a signing, or a meetup. Travel and accommodations will need to be provided. Please use my contact page to arrange.
Q. What conferences have you been a guest or panelist at previously?
A. Many, including Yallwest, Bookcon, San Diego ComicCon, ABA Winter Institute, and LATFOB.
Industry Questions
Q. Are the film/tv rights to the The Other Merlin available?
A. Yes.
Q. Are the film/tv rights to the Beginning of Everything available?
A. Yes. There’s an awesome existing screenplay with a small penalty against it.
Q. Are the film/tv rights to Extraordinary Means available?
A. Yes.
Q. Are the film/tv rights to Invisible Ghosts available?
A. Yes.
Q. Are the film/tv rights to You Don’t Live Here available?
A. Yes.
Q. Do you blurb?
A. Occasionally. For traditionally published YA authors, please have your agent or editor contact my agent. Again, please don’t contact me directly, it will get buried, and I’ll feel awful for missing it. If applicable, make sure to have your rep list whether or not your book is based on your own lived experience as a marginalized writer (own voices), and whether it has undergone at least one sensitivity read. If I say no to blurbing your book, please don’t take it personally. I owe my publisher a fully-edited 500 page manuscript each year! I do try to blurb 2 or 3 debut novels each year.
Q. Do you have any available properties?
A. Yes. You’ll probably want to visit my contact page.