In case you missed the announcement, over the next few months, we’ll be running a Between Two Lockers special series featuring your fave FYA writers and contributors.
FIRST THINGS FIRST
What’s your name?
Where are you from/located?
Edmonton, AB, Canada
What do you do when you’re not writing for FYA?
I work in a technical field, and it's about as far from the publishing industry as you can get. Which goes really well with writing for FYA, because I can get my science-y fix at work, and a creative outlet through FYA.
What do you look like?
Where can you be found on social media?
THE ACTUAL YA-RELATED QUESTIONS
How long have you been writing for FYA, and how did you start writing for the site?
I started working on sexy behind-the-scenes stuff—Formatting! Tags!—in Fall 2012, and I became a contributor shortly afterwards (although my very first post was a Smarty Pants submission earlier that year). I wrote my first book report and joined FYA HQ full-time in Spring 2013, and I took over FYA Book Club responsibilities in Summer 2013.
How did you come to read YA as an adult?
You can read the full story here, but TL;DR: I wanted to check out those YA books that were receiving so much hype. One great book led to another, and thus began my love affair with YA.
Why do you think YA is an important genre, for both actual Ys and those of us who are more A?
Young Adulthood is universally relatable: kids are racing towards it, teenagers are living it, and everyone else has survived it. And YA manages to tackle a breadth of topics in such an accessible way.
What are five of your favorite YA books?
Omg, how can I CHOOSE?!? OK, I'm going to choose my five for very specific reasons. (Although I could have just as easily swapped out a few titles with some of my faves from the past three years.) In no particular order other than alphabetical:
The Chaos Walking series by Patrick Ness or the Legend series by Marie Lu. OK, this is cheating to combine the two, but either works as my all-time favourite dystopian series (even if I LOVE Catching Fire something fierce).
Firecracker by David Iserson. This was my first review book that I LOVED, and I inhaled it during my first trip to Europe.
The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling. This is my go-to answer whenever I'm asked to pick a favourite book.
Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie Perkins. This was the first book I ever read by one of my now-faves.
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. This represents the YA books I read as an actual YA.
Do you have a favorite YA character or couple? If so, who are they, and why are they The Best?
ANOTHER IMPOSSIBLE CHOICE. I know I helped in choosing these questions, but I really, for the life of me, cannot choose just one of anything.
For the sake of being decisive (which I'm sure I won't be for many of the upcoming questions), I'll go with my first fave couple when I started reading YA as an adult: Katniss and Peeta. Minus the epilogue and the movies, obvs.
THE YA QUESTIONS
If your real life adolescence was a YA book ... What would you, the main character, be like?
The girl who seems all shy and quiet ... until you get to know her, and then you can't shut her up. Gets along with everybody. Can be found in the nerd classes, doing the bare minimum to be an overachiever.
Who is your secret crush?
My best guy friends, or the beautiful but dumb boy that I flirted with for the better part of a school year without any progress. Either way, dudes I should not have been crushing on.
What is your number #1 source of angst?
Lack of boyfriends. And also lack of transportation.
At what point would the reader pump his/her fist in victory?
I don't think my high school experience really had any extreme highs (or lows); it was all pretty consistently great. Maybe that time I told off a guy who COULD NOT take a hint that my BFF wasn't interested in him? Of course, it was done through email so there was no instant reaction. But he did stop bugging her, so it worked!
And who would play you in the film adaptation?
HAHAHA RIGHT because I have a lot of candidates to choose from. My only requirements would be that the actress is bilingual in English and Cantonese, and that she'd be an actual teen.
THE SLUMBER PARTY QUESTIONS
What is your #1 favorite food?
The most recent authors I've asked this to were in absolute agony over this question—and now, I AM, TOO. I shall cheat, as I am wont to do, by choosing Shanghainese cuisine: cold sesame noodles with chicken, dandan noodles,* and XLBs!
*The internet tells me this is Sichuan, but it's always at Shanghainese restaurants that I frequent, so I'm cheating once again.
Tell me about your area of expertise.
I am full of useless trivia, which is a completely unnecessary area of expertise in the age of Google.
If you could assemble your own Ocean's 11 of fictional characters, who would you pick?
I recently put together an all-female supervillain Ocean's 11, but these would be my heist-mates for the real deal (also an all-female edition, because why not):
- The Ringleader: Stella Gibson (The Fall)
- The Muscle: Buffy Summers (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and Jessica Jones (Jessica Jones)
- The Thief: Catwoman (Batman: The Animated Series), who also shows up in my supervillain Ocean's 11 because she's morally ambiguous like that.
- The Brains: Hermione Granger (Harry Potter) and Kestrel Trajan (The Winner's Trilogy)
- The Getaway Driver: Imperator Furiosa (Max Max: Fury Road)
- The Techie: Raven Reyes (The 100). Who better than a girl from the future as the expert on gadgets?
- The Spy/Chef: Melissa McCarthy in a double role as Susan Cooper (Spy) and Sookie St. James (Gilmore Girls). Because, come on—OF COURSE my heist is going to be well-catered.
- The Sleuth: Veronica Mars (Veronica Mars)
What is your best karaoke song?
Um, NONE OF THEM, but it doesn't stop me anyway; the karaoke edition of FYA JAM has the type of songs I usually go for. The ones I kind of (as in, really) want to try are “Hot in Herre” and “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” I think my lack of musical ability might be better suited to talk-singing/rapping.
Tell me something scandalous!
I hate the terms "squad" and "all the feels." Not that I care if anyone else uses them—and I've certainly used them before on this very site, just to try them out—but I avoid using them when I can.
What is your favorite adult beverage?
None of them; I prefer food over beverages. Oh, but I do like Caesars.
What is the most crucial snack food and/or movie/or anything you'd bring to an FYA slumber party?
PIE. ICE CREAM. Or a dessert of some kind, for sure.
What book have you read the most number of times?
I'm not actually sure, since I rarely reread books nowadays. As a kid, The BFG by Roald Dahl, since my copy of that has had much better days. But as a grownup, probably Harry Potter again? Apparently, I have a thing for British orphans.
YA authors are so cool. Who would you give a BFF charm to?
We usually ask this of authors about fellow authors, so I'm going to change it up by giving a BFF charm to a fellow book blogger. And obvs, I'm choosing my ladies in FYA HQ!
Out of all of the characters you’ve read, which one do you most wish you could be?
I'm actually going through the books that I've read and thinking, "Which of these characters have had an awesome life with nothing bad ever happening to them?" I don't think I've read many of those protagonists, though.
OH! Do non-fiction books count? Because then I'd like to be Mindy Kaling. (But we already knew that.)
AND NOW, MASH
Mandy W. made three picks for each category, and I added a fourth. The magic number (chosen by a random number generator) was 3.
M A S H
SPOUSE
Neville Longbottom
Alexander Skarsgard
Charles Michael Davis
Oscar Isaac
HONEYMOON
Athens
District 13
Singapore
Zagreb
# OF KIDS
1
3
2
Boy-girl fraternal twins
JOB
Astronaut
Sports doctor
Travel show host
YA book blogger
INCOME
Paid in wishes
Paid in tasty business
Paid in straight cash, homey
Paid in Magic Mike lap dances
HOMETOWN
Amsterdam
Colby, North Carolina
Tallinn
Prague
PET
None
None
A magical talking cat
None
FYI: a cat would kill me.
Sorry, friend! I hope the fact that it’s magical helps ...
VEHICLE
Jet pack
Teleportation doohickey
Time-traveling DeLorean
The Pig from The Raven Cycle
Do you have additional questions for Mandy W.? Or maybe just want to comment on something particularly awesome that she said? Head to the comments!