Meet Us At The Crossroads Tour Day 5: Jackie Morse Kessler

1. What inspired you to write Lisa's character?

It actually took me a while to discover Lisa as the protagonist; at first, the heroine was going to be older, and the story was going to take place in the hospital. But it just didn’t feel right. (And getting a horse into the hospital was going to be tricky.)

So I sat back and thought about who the protagonist was supposed to be…and I remembered a friend from long ago. She’s the one who taught me how to be bulimic. But she also taught me wonderful things, positive things. She’s dead now, and that still hurts; long ago we got into a fight, and I never made things right, even when she reached out to me years later.

Lisa in the book is not the friend from my life. But I hope that her spirit is tickled by having someone very (very) loosely based on her as the protagonist in Hunger.


2. What was the first book you read that made you fall in love with reading (past or present writer)?

I grew up reading, thanks to my awesome parents. My dad would read me Nancy Drew stories before bed, and by the time I was in fourth grade I was all about Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary. And Greek mythology—I adored stories about the gods and goddesses. And, of course, there were tons of comic books. Rah, comic books! When I was a teen, I was heavily influenced by Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis’s Dragonlance trilogy, as well as Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.


3. What paranormal author are you currently addicted to?

Neil Gaiman is my god of writing. I inhale Heather Brewer’s Chronicles of Vladimir Tod. Also love Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, anything by Christopher Moore, and Rachel Caine’s Morganville Vampires.


4. What band or artist currently tops your play list?

At the moment? Linkin Park. “New Divide” is the theme song for the book I’m currently writing.


5. Do you have any projects you are currently working on that you are able to share? And can you give us a little teaser?

RAGE is about a teenage self-injurer who becomes War. I’m currently writing LOSS, which, if all goes well, will tie in bullying, Alzheimer’s, and Robin Hood. (No, really.)





HOW THE TOUR WORKS:

Each day of The Crossroads Tour, a new research question will be revealed on The Crossroad Blog Tour main page, and each day the answer to that question will be found within one of the 16 different blog posts by Crossroads Tour authors. Your job is to get the question, read the blog posts, and collect all 16 answers by the end of the tour, on Halloween.