Guest Post by Alice Kuipers, author of 40 Things I Want To Tell You

Today I have the pleasure of sharing with you a great guest post by Alice Kuipers, the author of YA contemporary novel, 40 Things I Want To Tell You. I have reviewed 40 Things I Want To Tell You on the blog today, for my review click here (or scroll down a little bit, it's the post under this one). 

Make sure to stop by Bookish at the end of month, you can win a wonderful prize pack (sponsored by Harper Collins Canada), consisting of a copy of each of the following: 40 Things I Want To Tell You, Never Fall Down and Running on Empty!

Enjoy the guest post and make sure to leave your feedback about it! :) 

ALICE KUIPERS' GUEST POST

     I'm very pleased to be able to post on your website. It's a terrific site for readers (and writers) and I'm going to pick up copies of the Goddess series after reading that great interview.

     I thought I'd take the opportunity today to write about why I write contemporary fiction for teens. 

     I started writing when I was in my late teens (well, I'd written lots before for school, but as I got a little older, it became clear to me that I enjoyed writing for its own sake, not just because I had to do it for teachers.) I wrote stories and poems, a play, a novel, another novel. I was finding out what it was I wanted to say, trying different things, testing out my voice. I wrote a play with some friends about a girl who falls in love with a toothpick. I wrote a novel about a woman who splits in two and another about a girl who is kidnapped by someone’s imagination and a third about a woman who lost a child. None of these books are published as they each had some fatal flaw within. At the time I wrote them, I believed they worked, but now I’m not so sure. I was and still am the sort of writer who has to write lots of words to find the essence of what I’m trying to say – there’s a quotation by Shaw that reads: I’m sorry this letter is so long, I didn’t have time to make it shorter. Well, that describes me as a writer. I have to pour out words and then later on, I have to edit them. Those first few books were all about me learning to edit.

     When I wrote Life on the Refrigerator Door, my first published novel, the difference was that I had finally found a main character who I was utterly in love with. Claire, the teenager in the book, is someone who lives through a terrible event. As she does, she finds out (and so do we, the readers) who she is going to be as an adult. I realized that I liked writing about teenagers and I liked discovering what sort of adult they were going to become. It seems to me that our teen years are the years when we really define ourselves as people, and so for a writer that is fertile ground for stories. Having characters who truly transform excites my imagination. I like how my protagonists are one person at the start and another by the end. This transformation is magical to me and for now, I enjoy rooting the magical in reality. All my books are situated in ordinary places in ordinary worlds. Don’t get me wrong, I love reading fantastical works and I love exploring the imaginations of other writers in YA who dare to try out invented places and extraordinary beings. But in my writing I’m interested in how we deal with the quiet tragedies and dilemmas of ordinary life, and hopefully my characters are made extraordinary because of it. In my most recent book, 40 Things I Want To Tell You, Amy has to deal with a major problem of her own making. At the start of the book, she's terribly controlling. By the time the novel is finished, the events of the book have shaped her, and she's had to discover all sorts of things she didn't know about herself, learning along the way how to set herself free.

     Now I'm going to go and curl up with Wither which is one of my favourite books for teens right now. I want to re-read it before I start reading the second book in the series. Writing YA and reading it is such a thrill for me that I can't sometimes quite believe it's my job!

     Here's a link to my website, www.alicekuipers.com, and here's the address of the Wattpad Workshop Series I'm running for your readers who want to write:

http://blog.wattpad.com/post/23941414637/welcome-to-the-wattpad-workshop-series

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About the author:

I was born in London, England, and I moved to Canada in 2003 when I fell in love with a Canadian. We live in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, which took a while for me to learn how to spell. I have two children, a girl and a boy.

My first novel, Life on the Refrigerator Door, was published in 28 countries, won several awards and was named as a New York Times book for the Teen Age. My second is called Lost For Words in the US, and The Worst Thing She Ever Did everywhere else. It won the Arthur Ellis Award, was shortlisted for the White Pine and Willow Awards, and was published in eight territories. 40 Things I Want To Tell You is my newest novel for young adults. The Best-Ever Bookworm Book by Violet and Victor Small is my first picture book. It’s in production with Little, Brown Books For Young Readers, and a sequel will follow.

I’ve had non-fiction published in Easy Living Magazine, the Sunday Telegraph and the Bristol Review of Books; several short stories turned into radio productions; and one short story which was used to inspire a short film. I won the LG award in Saskatchewan for most promising artist under 30, when I was under 30, not soooo long ago.

(taken from the author's website)

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Giveaway~! 

Come back on June 30th to win this fabulous prize pack!

This guest post is posted as part of the Contemporary Fiction Month feature!

Click on the picture for full schedule.

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About the Author

Evie is the Blogger behind Bookish. She enjoys reading many different genres, especially YA, Paranormal, Contemporary Fiction and Fantasy.

She loves talking to authors and is always happy to welcome them for interviews, and guest posts. She also likes spreading the love for awesome books and  chatting with fellow book-worms.

You can find Evie here: Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads | Shelfari | The Library Thing