Interview - Karma Bites - Stacy Kramer and Valerie Thomas

INTERVIEW

KARMA BITES AUTHORS

Stacy Kramer and Valerie Thomas

I am super excited to post Reading Vacation’s very first author interview.  Yay!  After scoring a perfect review yesterday, I wanted to showcase the authors of Karma Bites.  Stacy was kind enough to answer my questions on behalf of herself and her writing partner, Valerie.  Sweet!  Here we go…

Stacy on the left and Valerie on the right

What do you hope preteens and teens will learn by reading Karma Bites?

We'd like our readers to realize that sometimes friendship can be difficult, especially in middle, and that the best way to deal with issues that come up is to talk about them right away, not ignore them, as Franny does with Kate and Joey, until she can't bear it any longer. It only makes the situation worse. In nine out of ten cases, your friends will surprise you. They'll listen and be willing to work with you to figure out a mutually agreeable solution. It's that tenth case that can be tricky. But maybe that friend wasn't right for you in the first place.

During middle school, I had a very similar experience to Franny. My two best friends, with whom I'd been an inseparable threesome all through grade school, found new best friends at the beginning of seventh grade. It was very difficult for me to accept that things our friendship was changing, evolving. Instead of talking to them about it, we all drifted apart. I really regret not having said something, we might still be friends today. It's important to realize that friendships do change over the years and one needs to change and adapt with them. Also, tweens and teens need to realize that it's possible for very different people to be friends (like Joey and Kate). There are a lot of different ways to be friends.

We'd also like readers to come away from reading KARMA BITES with more of an understanding and interest in their grandparents. We developed the character of Granny because we feel kids tend to dismiss their grandparents (or just spend less time with them) as they get older (we've certainly seen our own kids do this at times). We wanted to introduce a spunky, hip grandmother in the hopes that kids might realize that grandparents have a lot to offer in the form of wisdom, advice, companionship and just general good times.

How did you come up with the idea of a magical recipe box?

My writing partner, Valerie Thomas, and I had written movies together and wanted to try our hand at something new. We had been talking about writing a middle grade/younger YA book for a while but hadn't been able to hit upon the perfect idea. After a kids cooking show I had developed for Nickolodean didn't ultimately work out at the network, Val and I discussed the idea of writing a middle grade book that would incorporate cooking in some way. We both love to cook and liked the notion of having recipes throughout a novel (as a number of adult books have done). Over lunch one day, in a Brooklyn cafe, we started talking about the movies LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE and CHOCOLAT, both of which use magical cooking to transform their characters. We wondered what would happen if a young girl found a box of magical recipes that had the power to change the social dynamics of middle school. We'd never seen anything like that. We also wanted to write a wacky comedy adventure, something in the mold of FREAKY FRIDAY, CLUELESS or MEAN GIRLS and thought the magical recipes would allow us to have a lot more fun than just ordinary cooking. We were instantly smitten with the idea. We ended up hatching the entire plot of KARMA BITES right there at that lunch. Once we had the magical recipe box idea, the rest of the story just fell into place.

Have you tried any of the recipes in Karma Bites, and if so, how did they turn out?

We've made all of the recipes, in fact, a few of them, like the banana bread and the smoothie are our own original recipes and some of our kids' favorites. Val's mother has not only tried out all the recipes, she's become addicted to the Munchie Mix and now puts it on her cereal every morning.

Use three words to describe YOUR life as a twelve-year-old.

Rebellious, emotional, social (I didn't plan on rhyming that was just what came to mind -- i was an odd mix of a lot of things in middle school and a bit of a border crosser myself).

You have experience writing for TV and movies.  How does that compare to writing a middle grade book?

Writing a novel has been a much more creatively satisfying experience. In movies and television, the writing process is done by committee so it's less about what you want to write and more about what producers and the audience want to see. So you often end up writing what someone else wants rather than what you want to write.  Once you sell your book to a publisher, most likely, your book will find it’s way into the hands (and, hopefully, hearts) of readers. When you sell film or tv idea or script to a studio, it may never make it past your executive’s desk. After years of draining rewrites it can go into turn around, never to see the light of day. While I don’t want to minimize the experience of writing for film and tv, which can be fabulous and rewarding in its own way, writing a middle grade novel was one of the most satisfying, exciting and inspiring writing experiences I've ever had.

The YA world is a unique place for writers, unlike anywhere else I’ve ever spent time. You can connect with your audience in a visceral and immediate way through blogs, twitter, FB, etc. It’s extremely hard to do that in film or tv, where you’re quite removed from your audience. The YA world is a welcoming, positive, supportive place. Sadly, Hollywood isn’t always like that. It can be a closed and cliquey community, where you’re only as good as you’re opening weekend (meaning how much money your film makes when it first arrives in theaters).