Ellie Marney's Blog, page 10

#LoveOzYAbookclub December 2020 title announcement – THE LEFT-HANDED BOOKSELLERS OF LONDON

Ohmigawd, we made it to the end of 2020!! None too soon for most of us, I imagine – can we get a petition going for a generally nicer year in 2021? That would be really cool, and everyone would appreciate it, I’m sure.

But to see out the year, we usually choose one book to take us from December into January, and this year’s end-of-year pick is THE LEFT-HANDED BOOKSELLERS OF LONDON by Garth Nix. Emmaly and I both noticed that we hadn’t scheduled any male authors this year (oh well!) so we thought Garth’s book might be a nice way to finish off – and I’ve heard excellent things about this book, which a few of our members might be getting for Christmas…

Here’s the blurb:

In a slightly alternate London in 1983, Susan Arkshaw is looking for her father, a man she has never met. Crime boss Frank Thringley might be able to help her, but Susan doesn’t get time to ask Frank any questions before he is turned to dust by the prick of a silver hatpin in the hands of the outrageously attractive Merlin.

Merlin is a young left-handed bookseller (one of the fighting ones), who with the right-handed booksellers (the intellectual ones), are an extended family of magical beings who police the mythic and legendary Old World when it intrudes on the modern world, in addition to running several bookshops.

Susan’s search for her father begins with her mother’s possibly misremembered or misspelt surnames, a reading room ticket, and a silver cigarette case engraved with something that might be a coat of arms.

Merlin has a quest of his own, to find the Old World entity who used ordinary criminals to kill his mother. As he and his sister, the right-handed bookseller Vivien, tread in the path of a botched or covered-up police investigation from years past, they find this quest strangely overlaps with Susan’s. Who or what was her father? Susan, Merlin, and Vivien must find out, as the Old World erupts dangerously into the New.

THE LEFT-HANDED BOOKSELLERS OF LONDON is available to order
with free shipping through Boomerang
Books right here if you use the ‘loveoz’ code. Or you can find the digital
version here.

You can take your time with this one – #LoveOzYAbookclub won’t
be back up and running until the start of February 2021, which means you have
more than a month to read. Enjoy the book! And on behalf of Emm and myself, we
hope your holiday season is festive, and your burdens are light, and that all
good things arrive for our bookclubbers in 2021 – onward to the stars, and see
you in the New Year!

xxEllie

#LoveOZYAbookclub November 2020 author interview: RAWAH ARJA (The F Team)

Hello!
Welcome to our Author Interview with RAWAH
ARJA, author of this month’s title The F Team.

Read on to find out all about the inspirations behind The F Team…

Where did the inspiration for “The F Team” come
from?

I wrote The F Team for two
reasons: reading in my community is often viewed as a school chore and the fact
that I never read as a kid. I found it boring and there were too many words on
the pages. My high school English teacher gave me two books: Does My Head
Look Big In This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah and Looking for Alibrandi by
Melina Marchetta and that changed the way I saw books. It wasn’t necessarily
reading that I didn’t like, it was the fact that I couldn’t find a book that I
connected with.

The F Team came about for
the exact same reason. I teach in the same community that I was born in and so
the lack of reading was and is still prevalent. I wanted to tell my
communities’ story from an insider’s perspective not what people read in the
news. I wanted young boys and girls to feel safe and feel worthy of being represented
in literature.

Why do you write for teenagers?

I write for teenagers because of my own personal
experiences being in high school and struggling to find an interest in reading.
It’s a critical age where you’re trying to find who you are yet juggling all
the pressures that comes with becoming an adult. Also, my role as a youth
mentor allows me a sneak peek back into time where my biggest worries were
everything but what I thought of myself. I want teenagers to be more resilient
and to feel comfortable with who they are not who the world wants them to be. I
believe reading is the gateway into self-belief and faith in one’s potential.

Your book has an awesome title. But what might it have
been called, if it wasn’t called what it is now?

Ooh that’s a tricky question. I’ve honestly never thought
about it. I had my title picked before I knew exactly what I was writing about.
But maybe it would’ve been something around being an underdog?

What are your perfect writing conditions?

My room and peace and quiet. I come from a really big
Lebanese family and so sometimes it’s difficult to navigate through my own
thoughts. If home gets a little too noisy, I like to go to places that remind
me of my childhood where I can almost travel back in time. 

What is a curious or unusual thing about you that most
people don’t know?

For a long time, I wanted to be an archaeologist and live
in Egypt for a few years. I was fascinated with ancient civilisations until I
realised that maybe the dead needed their peace too. 

Thank
you so much Rawah for answering all our questions and for taking part in our
book of the month!

Stay tuned for our discussion post for The F Team on the #LoveOzYAbookclub Facebook Page in the coming days

Emm
xx

#LoveOzYAbookclub November 2020 title announcement – THE F TEAM

Hello everyone! We are on the home stretch guys, it’s November! Good luck to everyone doing end of year exams at the moment. This has been a year like no other and exams after the interrupted schooling are stressful, but we know you guys will Rock It! A big shout out to all the teachers supporting everyone through this tough year too.

Our book choice for November #LoveOZYAbookclub is THE F TEAM by Rawah Arja.

Meet Tariq Nader, leader of ‘The Wolf Pack’ at Punchbowl High, who has been commanded by the new principal to join a football competition with his mates in order to rehabilitate the public image of their school. When the team is formed, Tariq learns there’s a major catch – half of the team is made up of white boys from Cronulla, aka enemy territory – and he must compete with their strongest player for captaincy of the team.

At school Tariq thinks he has life all figured out until he falls for a new girl called Jamila, who challenges everything he thought he knew. At home, his outspoken ways have brought him into conflict with his family. Now, with complications on all fronts, he has to dig deep to control his anger, and find what it takes to be a leader.

In confronting and often hilarious situations,
Tariq’s relationships with his extended Lebanese family and his friends are
tested like never before, and he comes to learn that his choices can have
serious consequences

Rawah Arja’s work has featured in the Arab-Australian-Other Anthology by Picador and the Sydney Design Festival. Rawah is a Youth Mentor, teaching creative writing at various schools and facilitating after school writing workshops with WestWords. THE F TEAM is her debut novel.

To order your own copy of THE F TEAM you can use the code ‘loveoz’ at Boomerang Books to get free shipping. And feel free to join us in discussions about this and other books on our Facebook group page.

I
hope you enjoy this read for November. Look out for our author interview with Rawah
Arja coming later in the month.

Emm
xx

#LoveOzYAbookclub – October 2020 author tribute: STEPH BOWE (Night Swimming)

On January 20 of this year, Steph Bowe passed away at the
age of twenty-five. She had lymphoma. It’s always tempting to describe illness
as a war – ‘the battle with cancer’ – but struggling with terminal illness is just
that, a daily struggle. Steph described a lot of it on her Facebook page, and
then one day the updates stopped.

We heard the news of Steph’s passing from her mum. The Australian
writing community was devastated. Steph was one of us. She started out as a
talented blogger and young writer, who was shocked and delighted to receive her
first publishing deal for GIRL SAVES BOY at only fifteen.

Steph was good at telling teenagers that they could reach for their dreams. She spoke to teenagers at schools and events, giving wisdom and hope. As Aimee Lindorff notes: “She was always personable and personal, sharing confidences about anxieties and experiences in publishing in a way that was powerful for a young audience…She never hid the complexities of juggling a creative life, education, and growing up. She was honest, which made her so relatable.”

Lauren Rosenberg (former Inkys judge) says: “Steph was always so sunny and so very very kind! Steph wasn’t afraid to stand out – she wore the most colourful and bright clothing. ALL THIS COULD END was part of the 2014 Inky Awards longlist, and as a judge, it kickstarted me into reading YA with the best type of vengeance, and I will always be grateful for that.”

Emily Booth (PhD candidate and bookseller) says: “Steph was the guest author at one of my YABookmeet events after Night Swimming released, and unbeknownst to me, one of my teenage attendees was a massive fan of her. At the event, I interviewed Steph as usual…when I opened it up for questions from attendees, this teenager nervously introduced themselves…Amazing everyone, Steph remembered the teenager from some interactions they’d had online before, and was even able to remember specific things they’d chatted about!…We were all moved by how much she’d clearly impacted this teenager’s life with her books (and before them, her blog). Steph was so warm and genuine…She had far less time than she deserved, but she still affected so many people for the better.”

Steph was so very young! Imagine, being published at fifteen…
What a thrill, but also what a full-on experience. An auspicious beginning –
and pressure to continue as you’ve started. But she managed to get above all
that. She was a respected member of the Australian YA writing community; people
didn’t just admire her for her talent, but for her professionalism and hard
work.

Fiona Wood (Take Three Girls) says: “Crossing paths with Step Bowe at a launch or a festival was always good news. Steph was quiet but confident and she had a lovely sense of humour. As a presenter, she was warm, encouraging and generous. School audiences loved her and so did her colleagues.”

Davi Vee (Words and Nerds podcast) says: “I spoke to Steph in the early days of pod. She was lovely, like talking to an old pal. She was refreshingly honest and vulnerable.”

Steph inspired so many teenage book bloggers and writers,
and reminded all of us of what it was like to be secretly scribbling in
notebooks as a teenager, hoping against hope that our writing was ‘good enough’.

Jack Heath (300 Minutes of Danger) says: “The most wonderful thing about Night Swimming is how often it up-ends your expectations…One of the most under-rated skills a writer can have is contrast. Night Swimming is silly one minute and sad the next. It can make you gasp with horror with one sentence…and have you laughing in the very next paragraph. And the whole thing is sprinkled with wisdom and insight…[To be a teenage novelist] you have to bounce back from disappointment after disappointment, working incredibly hard for long hours for many years for very little money. [Steph’s] three novels  – Girl Saves Boy, All This Could End and Night Swimming – are still in print. I think you should buy one. Buy all three…They are some of the best real-world Australian YA you’ll ever read.”

Steph’s gift was that she made each of us feel like we could
be good writers, but above all, nice people.

Last time I caught up with Steph was on a tram. We were both
going to Carlton from the State Library, and we quickly got talking about
family and life, while squeezed into side seats on the packed tram – I was
trying to hold onto all my bags, she was trying to keep her skirt neat. It was
hot, and we were both sweating. We laughed about that. It’s ridiculous to think
that she’s gone. Unbelievable. Surely she is just around the corner, waiting
with a wave and a smile, wearing one of her beautiful dresses, ready to sit
with you and have a chat.

Kate O’Donnell (This One Is Ours) says: “When I think about Steph these days, it’s the little things and the human quirks that come to mind. Her excellent posture, her round, very-Australian vowels, and the almost growly depth to her voice. Silly, maybe, to focus on this. But I like to remember how she took up space, alongside the memories of our conversations and the way she talked about writing, and our last conversation, about music and our mutual love of lady folk.”

Maria Lewis (The Wailing Woman) says: “Separate to her achievements as a writer, as a storyteller, as a creator, Steph Bowe was the kind of person whose presence lingered. You may have met her once, you may have met her  in passing, you may never have met her, yet her presence loomed large thanks to her kindness, sweetness and generosity, that allowed everyone to feel like they knew her…It was that same openness that saw people fall in love with her books as they welcomed you into her worlds like you belonged there.”

The month before she passed away, Steph wrote this:

I have always felt so welcomed and at home in the children’s and YA writing community over the past decade (so many people I am so lucky to know), and this year has been no exception. I was absolutely blown away by the amazingly supportive campaign that Nicole Hayes coordinated encouraging people to share about my work and its significance to them in the lead up to Christmas – when I was in a bad way physically and mentally it has buoyed my spirits very much to know that my writing and involvement in YA still means so much to so many people, and that you all went to such an effort to share that made me feel very much like I am still part of your world. I will endeavour to thank you all individually; know for now that I am so appreciative of the kind words and thoughts of everyone.

There are so many others whose support has been so appreciated, among them my Murder theatre family (who I miss every Monday night!). My wonderful boyfriend Jay. My agent of ten years who is unfailingly supportive. My publisher. So many family friends – I have felt the love of not only people who have known me growing up, but the friends and communities and even neighbours around my mum and grandparents. I am sure that all of your kindness and thoughts and prayers count for something, and that will carry me through to getting well with this transplant once and for all. I only hope to be able to provide the same sense of love and support to others should you go through tough times, and pass on all the good vibes.

If I start trying to encompass everything, to thank everyone, it becomes an impossible task because so many people have been so kind, have offered so much support. It feels inadequate to say I’m grateful. But know that I am, and that your thoughts and prayers and healing energies throughout this year have been a source of strength. It is at times like this that you realise how good people are – both in the amount of support and love we have felt from you all, but also the people I would never have otherwise known. Other patients who have been through this difficult experience and remained so positive and encouraging to others, as well as their carers and families. Doctors, nurses and all the other staff doing amazing work going above and beyond to help people get well, day in and day out. You can really connect with people in a much more genuine way when life gets serious, and its something I’m glad to have experienced. It’s hard not to be honest and authentic in times like this. In a way, it’s the really terrible stuff that makes life feel all the more enriched. Every positive moment is such a source of joy when you feel like you’ve been buried in shit.

It was tempting to leave out that last line – the ‘buried in
shit’ line – but that was Steph, too. Unfailingly honest. Yes, she could be
diplomatic and polite, but in her writing, you could hear the realness. The
shit stuff, as well as the good stuff.

Lili Wilkinson (The Erasure Initiative) says: “Steph Bowe was a great writer who had many more stories to tell. I’m devastated we won’t get to read them, but so grateful for the ones we have.”

There is a lot more to say, but sometimes the saying of it makes
the memories seem mundane. Nothing about Steph was mundane, although she was
part of and engaged with the normalness of life. She was ordinary, but also
extraordinary, which is very human.

Steph should have the final word here, so please read this and think of her:

Thank you to all contributors here – much love to you all.

xxEllie

#LoveOzYAbookclub October 2020 – title announcement: NIGHTSWIMMING

Hello to all of you out there in the world

#LoveOZYAbookclub September 2020 author interview – ALICIA JACINSKA (The Dark Tide)

Hello! Welcome to our Author Interview with ALICIA JACINSKA, author of this month’s title The Dark Tide. Read on to find out some of the inspirations and ideas for this great new LoveOzYA debut…

Where did you get the idea for “The Dark Tide”?

I was
inspired by so many things! But I got the first sort of spark when I was watching
Wicked. I really love the dynamic between the two girls in the musical
and I wanted to write my own dark fairy-tale fantasy with witches, but with
queer characters as the leads. The kind of story I didn’t get to see a lot growing
up. The book is also a very, very loose retelling of ‘The Ballad of Tam Lin,’ a
Scottish folktale about a girl who saves the boy she loves from being
sacrificed by an evil queen.

You write very interesting characters. Did you base them
on anyone real or fiction?

I think I’d be in a lot of trouble if I based my characters on anyone I knew in real life! That
said I do sometimes draw from my own experiences, when I’m writing I find it
easier to get into a character’s head if we share something in common. So like
with Lina’s family there’s some little nods in there to my own.

Your book has an awesome title. But what might it have
been called, if it wasn’t called what it is now?

I’m actually really bad at coming up with titles, haha. So
all the credit goes to my agent, editor, and publisher for helping me to come
up with a good one! Previous story titles included: NOTHING LOST, THESE
VENGEFUL TIDES, and THE DARKEST TIDE, before we settled on THE DARK TIDE.

What is a curious or unusual thing about you that most
people don’t know?

When I’m not
spending all my free time writing, I really love hanging upside down &
training aerials! Mostly aerial hoop and dance trapeze, by myself and also
performing doubles with a partner. If you get a chance to try, I totally
recommend it! It’s super fun and a great way to stay fit!



If you could only take 3 books with you on holiday, what
would they be?

Only 3? That’s so hard! I think I’ll have to go with two of
my go-to comfort reads: THE NIGHT CIRCUS by Erin Morgenstern and STRANGE THE
DREAMER by Laini Taylor. And a new favourite I read recently: STAR DAUGHTER by Shveta
Thakrar.

Thank you so much Alicia for answering all our questions and
for taking part in our book of the month!

Stay tuned for our discussion post for The Dark Tide on the #LoveOzYAbookclub Facebook Page in the coming days

Emm xx

#LoveOzYAbookclub September 2020 title announcement – THE DARK TIDE (Alicia Jasinka)

Hello to everyone, and welcome to Spring! We are so excited to announce our September 2020 title for #LoveOZYAbookclub will be THE DARK TIDE by Alicia Jasinka.

The Wicked Deep meets A
Curse So Dark and Lonely in this gripping, dark fairy-tale fantasy about
two girls who must choose between saving themselves, each other, or their
sinking island city.

Every year on St. Walpurga’s Eve,
Caldella’s Witch Queen lures a boy back to her palace. An innocent life to be
sacrificed on the full moon to keep the island city from sinking.

Lina Kirk is convinced her brother is
going to be taken this year. To save him, she enlists the help of Thomas Lin,
the boy she secretly loves, and the only person to ever escape from the palace.
But they draw the queen’s attention, and Thomas is chosen as the sacrifice.

Queen Eva watched her sister die to
save the boy she loved. Now as queen, she won’t make the same mistake. She’s
willing to sacrifice anyone if it means saving herself and her city.

When Lina offers herself to the queen
in exchange for Thomas’s freedom, the two girls await the full moon together.
But Lina is not at all what Eva expected, and the queen is nothing like Lina
envisioned. Against their will, they find themselves falling for each other. As
water floods Caldella’s streets and the dark tide demands its sacrifice, they
must choose who to save themselves, each other, or the island city relying on
them both.

Alicia Jasinska is a fantasy writer from Sydney. THE DARK TIDE is her debut novel.

To order your own copy of THE DARK TIDE you can use the code ‘loveoz’ at Boomerang Books to get free shipping.

I
hope you enjoy this read for September. Look out for our author interview with Alicia
Jasinska coming later in the month.

Emm
xx

#LoveOzYAbookclub – August 2020 author Interview: P.M. FREESTONE (Shadowscent)

Hello again, and welcome to our August 2020 author interview
with PM Freestone, the author of our
fantastic title for this month, SHADOWSCENT:
The Darkest Bloom!

SHADOWSCENT is a unique take on YA fantasy, with a glorious danger-filled
world and an entire magic system built on scents and perfume. But how did PM
Freestone put such a world together? Where did she get her ideas? Read on to
find out how she went from the perfumery to the page…

* While researching your book, you found out some crazy
stuff, and it was…

The coolest thing was that the first mention of a perfumer
we have on historical record (which is also the first historical mention of a
chemist) is from thousands of years ago. And it was a woman! Go STEM ladies!
The weirdest thing was that labdanum, a fragrant resin from the cistus shrub
that was highly prized in the same era (and still is today) used to be
harvested by combing the beards of the goats that had spent their days
wandering through and snacking on said shrubs. Yup, prized perfume and incense
ingredients from combing goat beards. Goat. Beards.

* Please share something about your personal connection
to the story you chose to tell in your book…

Neither of my parents finished high school, and, growing up in a less-than-well-to-do outer Melbourne area during a time of deep recession, I wouldn’t have been able to access books and knowledge without my local library. It’s not always in the foreground (though sometimes it is!), but there’s a persistent undercurrent throughout the duology of the key roles libraries and literacy play in our access to knowledge. I went on to university and a full PhD scholarship – I couldn’t have done that without Aussie public libraries and their wonderful librarians. I’m paying tribute to that in Shadowscent.

* Are you a plotter or a pantser? Or something in
between? Do you even believe in that ‘plotter Vs pantser’ stuff?

I’m contrary – I’ve always preferred ‘architect’ versus
‘gardener’. And if we need to talk in those terms then I’m a landscape
architect! I used to be a whimsical gardener, planting seeds on the inspo
breeze, delightedly observing what germinated… and then desperately trying to
nurture the delicate beauties, prune the overzealous vines that got their
tendrils into everything, and locate and uproot the weeds. Now with a couple of
published books under my belt, I like to at least lay out the garden beds, prepare
the soil, consider the angles of the sun and shade, and what may die off in a frost
of reader boredom or confusion. Then I start planting words.

* Your book has been the basis for the development of a
themed dinner.  What’s on the menu?

It would reflect the Empire of Aramtesh – an eclectic mix of
geography and culture drawn together by the importance of scent. A mint-laden
cocktail or mocktail for aperitif. Entrée would be a citrus-dressed salad
topped with a cloud of delicate herbs. Mains would be a’la carte, with
everything from juniper infused stews to rich, spiced coconut curries. Dessert?
Lavender panna cotta. And a rose-strewn green tea for digestif.

* What other media inspired you during the writing of
this book? Songs, TV, movies, other books…it’s all grist for the mill!

When people ask what Shadowscent is about, I often
describe it as if I was reading from a label on a perfume: it has base notes
of An Ember in the Ashes, heart notes of Indiana Jones and
the Last Crusade, and top notes of Perfume. So, you can
probably tell some influences there! But when I’m actually writing, I’m all
about the music. You can look up the songs that were key on Spotify – here’s The
Darkest Bloom playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5NWes9bWF50Wxpw37Iwo9G?si=AVOmmJO8R5qMp0wsCzjt3A.

Thanks so much PM Freestone for joining us for #LoveOzYAbookclub! Hit us
up over at the Facebook
group page to find out more

xxEllie

#LoveOzYAbookclub August 2020 title announcement – SHADOWSCENT: The Darkest Bloom

Hi bookclubbers, and welcome to August! This month we’re reading a title from an Australian author based in the UK – P.M. Freestone. Her book SHADOWSCENT (the first in a duology) is a unique fantasy story in which perfume and scent-magic play a key role…

“In the empire of Aramtesh, scent has power.

When disaster strikes and the crown prince lies poisoned, long suppressed rivalries threaten to blow the empire apart. It’s up to a poor village girl with a talent for fragrances and the prince’s loyal bodyguard to find an antidote.

To succeed, the pair must uncover secrets – cryptic, ancient tales as well as buried truths from their own pasts – in an adventure that will ignite your senses…”

I have read this one already (and loved it!) and I can’t wait for you all to enjoy it. You can grab a copy of SHADOWSCENT through Boomerang Books and get free shipping with the ‘loveoz’ code. You can also find a digital copy of the book here.

And keep an eye out for our interview with P.M. Freestone later in the month! You can join us at the #LoveOzYAbookclub Facebook group page anytime, if you’d like to talk OzYA books – see you there!

xxEllie

#LoveOZYAbookclub July 2020 Author Interview: KAY KERR (Please Don’t Hug Me)

Hi everyone, welcome back for our July 2020 author interview with Kay Kerr for her awesome book PLEASE DON’T HUG ME .

What
gave you the idea to set “Please Don’t Hug Me” in the last months of
High School?

I think I’d always looked back at the end
of Year 12 as one of the hardest periods of my life, and writing this book was
a way for me to examine why. In writing ‘Please Don’t Hug Me’, and receiving my
autism diagnosis during that process, I figured out that a lot of that came
down to struggling to deal with change, or to know how to adequately prepare
for change. Erin’s story is different to my own, but she goes through those
same milestones I did, like exams, formal, her driving test, graduation and all
the hype around Schoolies.

Writing her through those times was really
cathartic in a way, and very emotionally tolling as well, because I think I
hadn’t entirely forgiven myself for all the ways I ‘got things wrong’ at that
age. I can now see that is how I processed my challenges being undiagnosed
autistic, and I’ve let go of the shame of not always knowing how I was supposed
to act or what I was supposed to do. The last three months of high school are
rich in terms of material, with high emotions and funny stories and absurd
moments, which is what I love most about YA, and LoveOzYA in particular.

Your
book has an awesome title. But what might it have been called, if it wasn’t
called what it is now?

Thank you! I do very much love the title,
and when it popped into my head I knew that was definitely going to be it. It’s
in relation to a certain event in the book, and Erin’s very strong opinions
around the politics of hugging. But I didn’t come up with the title until maybe
the third or fourth draft, when I was writing a particular scene. Before that,
it was called ‘Book One’ for a long time, and ‘Deadlands’ for a short time,
which is the not-so-affectionate nickname we used to call The Redlands, where I
grew up. I think when I came up with that title I was still very much in the
headspace of feeling negatively about my teenage experience, so I probably
wanted to blame that a little bit on the place I lived. Once I worked through
that and figured it all out, I didn’t want to name-call my hometown because it
wasn’t actually the place’s fault at all.

What
do you enjoy doing in your spare time when you aren’t writing?

I like to spend a lot of time in nature
when I’m not writing, either in the rainforest or at the beach, both of which
are close to where I live now on the Sunshine Coast. It’s like a sensory reset
for me, and a really good time to both step away from the work, but also to
process ideas or work through plot problems too. My family and I spend as much
time outdoors as possible. I can’t imagine going back to living in a city now.
I don’t think I slept properly until I moved here. When it’s quiet at night,
it’s actually quiet. I’m also an avid reader, but that’s probably a given for a
writer.

If
you could dream cast the movie of your book who would you cast in the lead
roles?

Ahh I love this question but I’m not sure that
I can adequately answer it! If I ever sold the film rights to ‘Please Don’t Hug
Me’ it would be really important to stipulate that the role of Erin be played
by an autistic actor. There aren’t enough opportunities for disabled actors,
and I always cringe when I see a non-disabled actor in those roles. So that
would probably be an open-casting situation. But I do love Chloe Hayden, who is
an autistic Youtuber and actor I follow on Instagram. She would be a great
Erin. But I don’t know a lot of Australian teen actors, so maybe people could
help me dream-cast it! I feel like this is a job for Jenna Guillaume.

What
are the key themes (or maybe just the key feels!) that you hope readers take
away from your book?

I hope readers connect with the themes of self-love
and authenticity, because, amongst other things, ‘Please Don’t Hug Me’ is about
how much better life gets when you can start living it as yourself. I also hope
neurotypical people come away with a better understanding of autism (the
disclaimer being that I am only one person writing from the lived experience of
one life) and hopefully some autistic people feel a little more seen and
represented.

Thank you so much Kay for talking with us
this month!

Please keep your eye out for our discussion
post for PLEASE DON’T HUG ME on the #LoveOZYAbookclub Facebook page

Emm xx