Today, Olivia from YA-Mag had a chat with Lisa McMann, the awesome author of CRASH!
Jules lives with her family above their restaurant, which means she smells like pizza most of the time and drives their double-meatball-shaped food truck to school. It’s not a recipe for popularity, but she can handle that.
What she can’t handle is the recurring vision that haunts her. Over and over, Jules sees a careening truck hit a building and explode…and nine body bags in the snow.
The vision is everywhere—on billboards, television screens, windows—and she’s the only one who sees it. And the more she sees it, the more she sees. The vision is giving her clues, and soon Jules knows what she has to do. Because now she can see the face in one of the body bags, and it’s someone she knows. Someone she has been in love with for as long as she can remember.
Olivia with YA-Mag: Lisa, welcome to the Young Adult Magazine! This first book in your Visions Series sounds like the perfect mix of the old ‘Early Edition’ tv series and the ‘Final Destination’ movies!
YA: Let’s talk about Jules. What about her personality made her the perfect protagonist for this tale, ready to take on this heart-wrenching vision?
Lisa McMann: Jules is a strong girl who gets stuff done from the start. Her dad’s a hoarder who suffers from depression; she always smells like pizza because they live above their pizzeria in a suburb of Chicago; and she works after school and weekends in the restaurant, so she doesn’t really have any close friends. Plus, she’s not allowed to talk to the only guy she really cares about because their families are rivals in the restaurant biz. So she’s already been through a lot of hard stuff–and the good side of all of that is that she is very close with her brother Trey and sister Rowan. When Jules starts seeing a vision of a truck crashing into a building and exploding, and then nine body bags in the snow—and she realizes it’s not something that has already happened but is something that is going to happen–she feels compelled to do something about it! She’s even more motivated when she gets a glimpse of who is in one of the body bags.
YA: What sets Jules’s story apart from other future-seeing fantasies, like ‘The Future of Us’ by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler or ‘Poison Princess’ by Kresley Cole? What will readers find in you and your latest work that they can’t find anywhere else in YA books?
LM: I haven’t read Kresley’s book yet, but I understand it’s apocalyptic and affecting a population. So that’s quite a big difference there. Jules is seeing an individual event in our world that we know today, a single neighborhood tragedy where lives are lost. It’s Jules’s job to put herself in danger in order to change the inevitable event in hopes she saves some lives. I read and loved “The Future of Us,” and that’s very much a “should I alter MY life” kind of story, where CRASH is very much an “I’m an ordinary girl who’s supposed to be a superhero to save other people’s lives…but I don’t have any actual powers” kind of story.
YA: What non-book influences (films, television shows, music, plays, etc) helped spark this story?
LM: I’m going to cheat a little here. The idea behind CRASH originally came from the response I was getting from readers of my WAKE trilogy who wrote to me saying they wanted more about lucid dreams and wanting me to write something similar. I had read a news story about a narcoleptic and was inspired by that to pen a rough draft about a boy with narcolepsy who saw visions when he involuntarily fell asleep. The story as it was didn’t work the way I wanted it to. It was too close to what I’d already written about sleep/dreams, so I shelved it and wrote Cryer’s Cross instead. Recently, when it came time to pitch the next thing to my editor, I remembered this manuscript and that’s what inspired me to write about a girl with visions — but no sleeping/dreaming involved this time around.
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?
LM: When I was a teen there wasn’t much pegged as YA at all, but I adored “Watership Down” by Richard Adams. Anybody who can make a story about rabbits interesting to teens and adults is a freaking hero, I say. My favorite current YA? Oh dear. So many to choose from. Recently I totally fell for “Code Name Verity” by Elizabeth Wein. Wonderful story. Loved it. Probably my favorite of 2012.
YA: I’m fascinated with how authors decide on a book’s title. Sometimes a title sticks from rough draft to published novel; sometime the author works with their agent or editor to find the perfect title. What is CRASH’s story?
LM: Ultimately, it’s the editor/publisher’s decision on whether to use a working title or to change it to appeal to the right audience. In this case, we needed individual titles and a series title. CRASH was my working title for book one. Since I knew it would be a 4-book series, I worked with my agent, Michael Bourret, to come up with and pitch titles for the rest of the series as well, and they stuck. The series title took a bit longer to decide on. We threw out dozens and dozens of options before settling on the Visions series. Those who are fans of my Visions Series Facebook page already know the title (and have seen the cover) of book two. Check it out: https://www.facebook.com/VisionsSeries
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YA: Tell us a little more about this next story in the Visions series! Will Jules be back, or are there more people in your world capable of seeing into the future? YA: If you could cast the dream film adaptation of CRASH, who would you cast in the main roles? YA: Do you have any secret pet projects you’d like to try out sometime soon? |
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YA: All right, last one! Valentine’s Day is almost upon us. If you and Jules were to spend the day together, crazy visions of doom aside, what would you do together?
LM: We certainly wouldn’t go out for pizza. 🙂 In fact, since I love to cook, I might cook something for her. However, I just remembered I’ll be on book tour on Valentine’s Day, so I may just have to drag her along to my events to be my special guest. And then, when we are done working, I’ll buy her a cape and make her my own official superhero. She don’t need no steenkin’ powers to be my superhero!
YA: Thank you very much, Lisa! And again, from YA Mag, congratulations on your latest series! We look forward to hearing a lot more from you and the Visions series in years to come!
LM: Thank you so much for the terrific questions!
Readers, be sure to check out Lisa McMann at her website www.LisaMcMann.com. Or follow her on Twitter @Lisa_McMann.CRASH, published by Simon Pulse, is now available at your favorite retailers and local independent bookstores!
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When Olivia Hennis is not investigating the latest in the Young Adult world for us here, she is part of the Papercuts Podcast team! For more info, follow her on Twitter or at her blog, Olivia’s Secret Reading Room.
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(Twitter link: https://twitter.com/#!/OliviaHennis)
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