Author Interview With Ann Stampler

Today I have Ann Stampler, debut author of Where it Began, here on the blog!

What was your latest epic win? Epic fail?

Epic win: It's one in the morning and I come upon the last Pilot pen with any ink in it at the bottom of the last handbag I search, and I can keep writing. 

Epic fall:  Clothing malfunction.  Think of the most embarrassing female clothing malfunction possible (hint: It involves the back of a skirt.) and being somewhat exposed but not realizing it until a total stranger tells you.  That clothing malfunction.  At a large public event.

What are your thoughts on your book being turned into a movie?

I love movies!  I'm a huge movie fan.  So if Where It Began could be turned into a movie without perverting the whole point of the book, I'd be happy.  

What is the last book you read?

Jenny Han's "We'll Always Have Summer"

In three words describe yourself:

Oh no, summary!  Uh: No can do.  Bad at summarizing.  Defies brief description.  Experiencing mounting panic.  Into channeling characters. Loves her family.  Serious dog person. Deeply values compassion. Grateful for life.

Let me back up for a minute and explain this.  I'm American, but when I was a teenager, I spent a year going to school in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, where we were regularly assigned to read and summarize passages.  I'd never done this before and I was slower at it than probably anyone in the history of summarizing.  I was used to being a very good student, but every time I faced an in-class summary, I started to panic.  So there you have it, I was traumatized at an early age.

One question you wish you had a definitive answer to:

OK, this is kind of meaning-of-lifeish, but I'd like to know about the afterlife -- if, what, how, where?

A quote you live by:

Don't want to get boring as this is on my Simon-Pulse profile as well, but my quote is, "If not now, when?"

In Your Perfect World…

Serious: Peace, justice, health and love for everyone.

Less serious: Chocolate cake is highly nutritious and the basis of a sound diet.  My dog replaces his penchant for eating paper and bits of leather shoes with a craving for highly nutritious chocolate cake (which is no longer bad for dogs).  Airfares plummet to the point that transportation for weekends in Paris or Manhattan or Montreal or Prague is around the price of a pair of extremely nice socks. My husband and I take walks along the Seine every other weekend, when not renovating an Italian farmhouse or eating chocolate cake in romantic restaurants.  Writers block is banished for all eternity.

If you could be a superhero, what would you want your superpowers to be?

Flying.  Absolutely no doubt about that.  I survived primary school by imagining myself levitating out of my seat and floating through the window, where I'd go and what I'd see.

If given a time machine would you go back to the past or into the future?

I'd like to be able to go back if I could change events in history.  There are some horrible events I wouldn't mind changing.  Although this would probably require a time machine plus superpowers.

Do you have any projects in the works? If so can you tell us about any of them?

I'm finishing up my next novel, a new YA  for Simon Pulse, set in Los Angeles and concerning a tight, crazy friendship between two quite different girls and maybe a bit of a triangle.. 

Thanks so much for stopping by Ann! You can follow Ann on Twitter here and stalk her blog here. Don't forget to check out her book. Description below.

Gabby Gardiner wakes up in a hospital bed looking like a cautionary ad for drunk driving and lacking a single memory of the accident that landed her there. What she can remember, in frank and sardonic detail, is the year leading up to the accident.

As she takes us through her transformation from invisible girl to on-trend Girl Who Dates Billy Nash (aka Most Desirable Boy Ever), she is left wondering: Why is Billy suddenly distancing himself from her? What do her classmates know that Gabby herself does not? Who exactly was in the car that night? And why is Gabby left alone to take the fall?

Putting the pieces together will take every ounce of Gabby's strength. As she peels back the layers of her life, she begins to realize that her climb up the status ladder has been as intoxicating as it has been morally complex...and that nothing about her life is what she has imagined it to be.

Where it began comes out on March 6th. 

just sayin,

-Kare