In a frank discussion, actress-writer Kate Ellison opens up to us about her evocative second book Notes from Ghost Town, sharing thoughts on inter-species star-crossed lovers, her undying wanderlust and the often thorny path to successful writing.
YOUNG ADULT: What is your earliest memory involving writing?
KATE ELLISON: When I was about eight, I remember using writing as a way to get back at my brother, Paul, and win my parents’ affection. Paul, who was thirteen at the time, was receiving a lot of attention at home for a story he’d written for an English class assignment, so I promptly rushed upstairs, ripped open the thesaurus, and wrote an extremely angsty poem, changing as many simple words as I could to more complex ones. I suppose I believed that using big, multi-syllabic words would make my parents love me more by virtue of thinking me very smart. I remember just one line from the thing: “…off a bridge, into the water, then begins the horrible slaughter.” I’m sure that, even in context, it would make absolutely no sense.
YA: Tell us a little bit about your latest work. What does Notes from Ghost Town bring to the table that we haven’t seen before?
KE: Notes From Ghost Town explores the world of Olivia Tithe, a sixteen-year-old who loses both her best friend (and recently-realized love-interest) Stern, and her mother, in the course of a single night. They’re lost to her in different ways, of course—Stern is murdered, and her mother—his piano teacher, and a schizophrenic prone to blackouts and random violence—is accused of murdering him. On top of that, Stern’s ghost presents itself to Olivia early in the book, insisting her mother was not his murderer. Olivia spends much of the book alternately trying to parse out the truth of the murder, absolve her mother, and question whether or not the whole thing is just delusion—a clear indication she’s got what her mother has.
I wanted to write as honestly as I could about issues of mental illness within a family, about loss, and about a young woman who, in the midst of grieving two very important people, is still just a teenager, living her life. Despite some paranormal elements and whatever else transpires plot-wise, Olivia is elementally still a teen girl starting to grapple with things like love, the weird contradictions of close friendship, and the very real possibility that she might be losing her mind. She’s aware that schizophrenia is often an inherited condition, and one that is often spurred between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five by a traumatic life event. She’s terrified, and rightly so. She wants to be sane; she wants her life to rewind and return to the way it used to be; she wants to be loved. And she’s seeing the ghost of her dead best friend, who she loves, and who might not even be real. Ay. I don’t envy her.
YA: Take us through a typical writing day for you.
KE: It varies, of course, but I’d say the most typical writing day involves me pressing snooze a bunch of times on my alarm clock, despite my best attempts to wake up early, getting coffee, writing my “morning pages”—an exercise from The Artist’s Way—which involves free-writing three pages of text, by hand, without worrying about their content, going to a cafe in my neighborhood (because I find it very distracting to work at home), reading a bit of something that jogs the writing-impulse in me (I was reading and re-reading passages from Cherry, a memoir by Mary Karr, while I was writing NFGT, which proved good inspiration during the process), and then really getting to work. There’s usually first re-reading what I’ve done the day before to catch myself up, doing some re-working, adding content. There’s lots of stop and start, and lots of ways to get distracted, and lots of attempts to reign myself back in. There are days, of course, when things feel good and flowing, and the work goes quickly, and many days where I’ve got to basically flagellate myself in order to concentrate and get done what needs to get done.
YA: Can you describe the path to getting this work published? What were the challenges? What was easy about it?
KE: After we sold The Butterfly Clues, I signed a two-book contract with Egmont, so the path to getting NFGT published was a pretty easy one. Of course, my editor had to approve it, and suggest changes and all that, but I was lucky (and also sort of scared) to know this was something that I had already agreed to do long before I even knew what I’d be writing about. In terms of getting the initial deal, I’ve been working with some very cool, skilled women through Paper Lantern Lit who helped me, basically, start-to-finish. I’d come out of a theatre conservatory in Chicago a couple years before and had been mostly writing for fun up until the point at which The Butterfly Clues came together. I would have had no clue how to insert myself into the New York publishing world without all of their help.
YA: Where do you see the sub genre of paranormal romance in young adult fiction going next?
KE: I’ve got no, clue. Really. I’m sorry if that seems flippant; I don’t mean for it to be. I think classifications like “paranormal romance” are something invented by bookstores to sell more books. So, who knows, maybe more types of creatures or ghostly visitations will come into the mix. Maybe we’ll see some Romeo and Juliet/West Side Story-type stuff involving species from different worlds falling in love and their families being up-in-arms about it.
YA: If you hadn’t become an author, what path would your career have perhaps taken?
KE: I was an actor before I ever thought of pursuing writing in a real way. I’m still an actor, I guess, though I spend more time at the moment writing than I do performing. I also work as a college sex-educator during the school year. I love being an author, but I definitely don’t see it as the only thing that defines me. I’m not sure where my life will lead me, which is something I find exciting. I plan to keep writing, but there are so many things I’d still like to do and be. I’d really love it if someone would pay me to travel, and write about it. I can think of few things that sound better that that…
“When sixteen-year-old artist Olivia Tithe is visited by the ghost of her first love, Lucas Stern, it’s only through scattered images and notes left behind that she can unravel the mystery of his death.
There’s a catch: Olivia has gone colorblind, and there’s a good chance she’s losing her mind completely–just like her mother did. How else to explain seeing (and falling in love all over again with) someone who isn’t really there?
With the murder trial looming just nine days away, Olivia must follow her heart to the truth, no matter how painful. It’s the only way she can save herself.”
Website: http://kateellison.com