Hi, everyone! Today I'm happy to present an interview with Karen Bischer, the author of the upcoming YA book, The Secret Recipe for Moving On, which releases March 23rd!
The bold font are the questions I asked, the regular font are her answers, and the bold italic font are my comments about her answers.
Would you please describe your book, The Secret Recipe for Moving On, in seven words?
Exes, misfits-turned-friends, romance, self-sufficiency.
What was the inspiration for the book?
It was actually a home economics class I took way back in 7th grade! I was bumped from my group to another when a girl who was friends with everyone else in my first group joined the class (I was not in their clique and therefore apparently expendable!). While I was annoyed by not getting to have a say in that, my moving to the new group was ultimately uneventful. BUT I knew, even back then, that there was a seed of a story idea there. Over the years, ideas for characters and plot points came to me (the classroom setup and even some of the recipes the characters make in class, for example, are based on a cooking class I took in high school), and then I landed on "Ellie gets pushed out of her ex-boyfriend's group and into one full of misfits who become her 'found family,'" and it all came together.
I love the premise of this! :)
Random Question! What are your favorite TV shows?
I have a lot! But the shows I've enjoyed the most recently are My Brilliant Friend, The Queen's Gambit, Insecure, What We Do In the Shadows, and Never Have I Ever. One of my quarantine binges was Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, which is a ton of fun and has maybe the most incredible slow-burn romance I've seen. (I'm a sucker for will-they-or-won't-they in both books AND TV!)
What’s one piece of advice you would give aspiring authors?
Keep honing your writing skills (critique groups are so, so helpful!), read a lot in the genre you write in, embrace revision (even if your book gets published, there will be changes), always believe in your stories, and don't give up. That sounds cliche, but in my case, it's true. The Secret Recipe for Moving On was written in 2010 and went on submission in 2011, but was rejected by every editor it was sent to. I KNEW it had potential, but it just wasn't "the right market" back then for "quieter" YA contemporary. It was incredibly frustrating. But I held onto the manuscript, worked on other things in the meantime, and then decided to submit it to the Swoon Reads site in 2018. I'm always going to be so grateful to the Swoon readers who praised the book enough/rated it high to get it noticed and, in turn, got me a book deal. But it never would have gotten to that point if I didn't believe so strongly in that manuscript in the first place!
Great advice! :)
What are some books you’re looking forward to reading in 2021? And if you’ve already read some ‘21 books, would you like to mention them?
I haven't gotten to read any yet, but there are SO many I'm looking forward to, like Leah Johnson's Rise to the Sun (I adored You Should See Me in a Crown!) and Lost in the Never Woods by Aiden Thomas. I'm also really excited for a bunch of 2021 debuts like Fat Chance, Charlie Vega by Crystal Maldonado, Hot British Boyfriend by Kristy Boyce, Words Composed of Sea and Sky by Erica George, A Pho Love Story by Loan Le, and Sam Taylor's We Are the Fire, which was selected in the same Swoon Reads "season" as mine!
I'm looking forward to so many of the books you mentioned! :)
Thank you to Karen Bischer for participating in this event! :)
Author Bio: Karen Bischer has been writing since she was six years old. She tried to be a journalist, working on the school paper at the University of Delaware, but soon realized she preferred writing fiction, which is way more fun. She has written short stories for Girls’ World and Animal Tales magazines, and a journalism background wasn’t a total loss, since it gave her the copyediting skills she uses in her day job. She lives in her native New Jersey, where she has never encountered Bruce Springsteen in the wild, but does have a cat named after a member of the E Street Band. When she’s not writing, you can find her cheering on the Yankees or geeking out over her favorite TV shows. The Secret Recipe for Moving On is her debut novel.
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Excited to read this book!
ReplyDeleteGreat interview