Olivia with YA-Mag:  Cindi, welcome to the Young Adult Magazine!  I’m so glad to have you with us today to talk about ALL THE BROKEN PIECES.

Cindi Madsen: Thanks so much! Happy to be here.

YA:Poor Liv!  She’s lost everything.  What can you tell us about how she asserted herself as the protagonist?  What about her personality drew her to the forefront of this tale?
CM: Liv was one of the hardest characters I’ve had to write, because she starts out sort of timid and has had this major trama, so she’s been through a lot. She doesn’t have any memories and everything feels so…wrong. Not to mention she’s got these two sides pulling at her, which I know I sometimes felt like that in high school too. It takes Liv a little while to get her footing and learn to stand up for herself. I like that about her, though, because I think it shows growth and my hope for teen girls is they get to that place where they can stand up and be like, here’s who I am, deal with it.

YA:Liv is aided by Spencer, a kid on the outskirts of popular high school society.  What kind of guy is Spencer?  Is he new to the area, or did he know Liv before her accident?
CM: He’s lived in Arizona all his life, but he’s new to not being part of the in-crowd. He’s trying to change some things about himself, but he’s also holding some bitterness and guilt over events that happened the year before. Deep down though, he’s kind, and the more he talks to Liv, the more he wants to. He just worries she’ll see the real him and everything will fall apart.

YA: What sets Liv’s story apart from other YA memory loss tales, like Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac by Gabrielle Zevin or Mary E. Pearson’s The Adoration of Jenna Fox?  What will readers find in you and your latest work that they can’t find anywhere else in YA books?
CM: I think each author, regardless of the premise, brings a new, fascinating way to tell a tale. At it’s heart, All the Broken Pieces is about a broken girl and a broken boy who come together, solve a mystery, and together, aren’t so broken anymore. It’s also about self-discovery for both of them.

YA:  What non-book influences (films, television shows, music, plays, etc) helped spark this story or your writing career in general?
CM: My biggest influence is music. It sets the mood and I love when I find the perfect lyrics that fit with my stories. A lot of songs I picked have lyrics about being broken or lost. I’ve always loved a good mystery, whether in classic literature, serial killer novels (which I used to read a lot of in my teens) or way back to Nancy Drew days. But I also love the romance part. I love when you can feel the tension between the characters, where you’re screaming at the book/tv show/movie to KISS ALREADY! And then you get the butterflies when they finally do. And I’ve always had these stories in my head. I used to lie awake at night so I could play them out in my mind. When I got older, I decided that maybe I should write some of them down, and that was how it all began.

YA: When you were a teen, what was your favorite book (YA or otherwise)?  Now that you’re an author for teens, what is your favorite contemporary YA? CM: I love The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare—I read it multiple times in my later teen years and Nat was my first ever book boyfriend. And before that, I had a teacher realize I was bored with what the class was reading & she introduced me to the Anne of Green Gables books by L.M. Montgomery. Love them! It’s so hard to pick a current favorite contemporary YA. I love Sarah Dessen, Stephanie Perkins, Tammara Webber, Gayle Forman, Anne Eliot, and Something Like Normal by Trish Dollar was AMAZING! (I always cheat when people ask for my favorite anything. I have a hard time picking. Lol) YA: What is the story on the title ALL THE BROKEN PIECES? CM: “Shattered” was the original title. But suddenly a ton of YA books with the word shatter in the title came out. My editor, her assistant, and I went back and forth on titles and for a while, I thought we were NEVER going to find one. We were throwing phrases back & forth, changing one word here and there and then my editor came back with “All the Broken Pieces”. I got chills. It fit. We all agreed. When I dug into edits again, I thought, man, this really is the PERFECT title.

From the Book:

YA: If you could cast the Dream Film Adaptation of your work, who would you cast?
CM: Chris Massoglia with square black thick-framed glasses as Spencer Hale. And Victoria Justice as Liv. Those are the closest actors I could find that fit the images in my head.

YA: Do you have any secret pet projects you’d like to try out sometime soon?  Any books on the table for publication that eager readers should be on the lookout for?
CM: I’m always trying new things. I’ve been so happy that I can write a mixture of adult and YA with Entangled Publishing. I have a short adult romance out in January called Falling For Her Fiancé & a full-length romantic comedy coming out in July titled Cinderella Screwed Me Over. I’ve got some YA projects in the works, but nothing I can announce quite yet.

YA: All right, last one!  Spring is fast approaching!  If you had the chance to spend one beautiful spring day with Liv, what would you do together?
CM: I think it might be fun to go out and ride four-wheelers. It’d be something new, we could enjoy the weather, and then maybe have a picnic.

YA:Thank you very much, Cindi!  And again, from YA Mag, congratulations on your latest novel!  We look forward to hearing a lot more from you in years to come!

 

                                                                                    ~*~

Liv comes out of a coma with no memory of her past and two distinct, warring voices inside her head. Nothing, not even her reflection, seems familiar. As she stumbles through her junior year, the voices get louder, insisting she please the popular group while simultaneously despising them. But when Liv starts hanging around with Spencer, whose own mysterious past also has him on the fringe, life feels complete for the first time in, well, as long as she can remember.

Liv knows the details of the car accident that put her in the coma, but as the voices invade her dreams, and her dreams start feeling like memories, she and Spencer seek out answers. Yet the deeper they dig, the less things make sense. Can Liv rebuild the pieces of her broken past, when it means questioning not just who she is, but what she is? 

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Readers, be sure to check out Cindi Madsen at her website CindiMadsen.com. Or follow her on Twitter @CindiMadsen.
ALL THE BROKEN PIECES, published by Entangled Teen, is now available at your favorite retailers and local independent bookstores!
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Olivia Hennis is a transplanted New England girl dropped by a tornado into the magical Land of Jersey For more info, follow her on Twitter or at her blog, Olivia’s Secret Reading Room.
(Twitter link: https://twitter.com/#!/OliviaHennis)
(Blog link: http://www.oliviahennis.wordpress.com)