Author Interview: Cecilia Galante!!!!

Here it is!!!! The interview didnt take long at all, and i am so glad Cecilia Galante really cared about this!!!!! Thanks for viewing! She is the author of The Patron Saint Of Butterflies and Hershey Herself, which are both great books!!

1)Did you always want to be an author?

No, for a long time, believe it or not, I thought I wanted to be a nun!! (There are definite shades of Agnes from Patron Saint of Butterflies in me!) The nun dream died, however, when I fell in love for the first time and decided I just could not live my life without boys.
I realized I wanted to be an author, though, when I was in 10th grade and read The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. For the first time in my life, I felt as though someone was actually speaking to me through a book and I knew that was what I wanted to do some day for someone else.

2) How did you get the whole plot for the book Hershey Herself? Did you know someone in your life that reminded you of Hershey?

The character of Hershey kind of evolved as I got deeper and deeper into the novel. When I first started writing, for example, the only thing I knew about Hershey was that she hated her mom’s boyfriend. I didn’t know she was going to be overweight or have a best friend named Phoebe or a cat named Augustus Gloop. That all came later.
Some of the circumstances surrounding her, though, especially the battered women’s shelter, were inspired from my own life. A long time ago, I had to go live in a shelter very much like the one in the book because of a man who hurt me. It was an experience that I’ll never forget and when I thought about what my next book after Patron would be, I thought how rich that material was and how privy I was to have experienced it. Pretty soon, I found myself creating a girl who had to go live in a shelter with her mother and figure out how to continue living her life.

3) How was publishing your books like? How long did it take?

It took me a very, very long time. TEN years!! At one point, I had so many rejections coming in that I just quit.
For about three days, I ate Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, read trashy magazines and watched Lifetime movies. Then I got out of bed and started on something else.
That’s the thing about being a writer – You have to want it enough to keep going, no matter how many people say no.
Remember, it only takes one yes.


4) Do you have any more books you are writing at the time, or plan to write?

Yes!! I just signed a two-book deal with Simon & Schuster, who published Hershey. I have just written the first one, and am hard at work on the second. They will both be mid-grade novels, for kids around the ages of 9-13.
I am also working on another young-adult novel.

5) What is some advice you could give to people who want to become authors?
Read.
Write.
Don’t take no for an answer.

6) What did you do when you felt you didn’t have any more ideas to write about? Like writers block?

Usually, if the words don’t come, I go for a run. There is something about being outside, moving my body, breathing hard, and listening to my feet slap against the pavement that kick-starts something in my brain again. If that doesn’t work, I usually panic. Or fall into a deep funk. Seriously, I do.
The funny thing is, the words do come eventually, even if I’m sad or freaking out or in some kind of meltdown. If I’m working on something that is really right, I think the story become bigger than me and all my neuroses. It wants to be heard. And it comes out.
Just at its own sweet little pace.

7) Why did you aim more towards the young adult fiction instead of adult fiction?

I didn’t set out to write young adult fiction when I started writing. I just wanted to write a good story. When I sent my agent The Patron Saint of Butterflies, though, she said it was definitely young-adult. At first, I was surprised. Then I was excited. Now I’m thrilled. I love the young-adult world and am honored that such fun, intelligent, and incredibly fantastic kids out there are reading my books!