An Interview with Keris Stainton

OMG! You wrote about THAT!?

An Interview with Keris Stainton

Debut novelist Keris Stainton is not afraid to tackle issues that others might consider taboo or difficult - particularly in young adult fiction. First time sex, the perils of online social networking, and female masturbation are all covered in her novel, Della Says: OMG! with a distinctive, fresh voice that will leave you wanting to read more of her work.

I'll be honest with you, I'm a sucker for a good cover blurb. When I saw the quote from Meg Cabot on the front of the book, I assumed Keris was an established YA writer that I had somehow missed. So when I discovered that this debut novelist was being endorsed by a favourite writer of mine, well what's a girl to do? Jump on twitter and demand an interview, that's what.

Hello Keris, welcome to the Literary Project. Have you always wanted to be a writer? What made you stop dreaming and actually start trying to write a novel?

I always wrote so I probably should have always wanted to be a writer, but it didn't occur to me until I was in my mid-twenties and then it took me years to get on with it and finish a novel. The crunch came after I had my son and realised I didn't want him to have a mum who was too afraid to follow her dreams. So I got a life coach, started doing freelance journalism, quit my job and then finally wrote a book I was happy with.



Can you talk us through your path to publication?



It was pretty straightforward, I think. The book I mentioned above is called FORGET ME NOT. I sent it out to a few agents and, after a few months, one invited me down to London and offered to represent me. She then sent FORGET ME NOT out to publishers and, again, after a few months (*cough* almost a year *cough*), Orchard Books offered me a two book deal, which I was delighted with. But then my editor said she didn't think FORGET ME NOT was the right book to launch me with and could I write something else, which is when I wrote DELLA SAYS: OMG!, which came out in May 2010.



Why Young Adult?



I don't really know. I didn't start out writing YA, I'd tried a few adult novels, but always got stuck at around 30,000 words. Then I had an idea for a teen novel (based on something I was desperate to do as a teen) and loved writing that so much that I wrote another YA. And another. (And a couple more.)



Young Adult is simultaneously viewed as the hot genre right now – but also as a difficult one to break into. Do you think this is accurate?



Honestly, I've no idea. I know that it's a hot genre, but I don't know that it's any easier or harder to break into than any other genre. I think if your book is good enough it will get through, no matter what the genre.



What advice would you give to someone aiming for publication within YA?



Don't try to write a popular genre just because you think that's what will sell. By the time you've written it, the market will have moved on anyway. But it's so important to write what you love. Apart from that, I'd say read widely - not just YA, but you should definitely read widely in YA.



Do you have an agent? If yes, how did you go about securing representation, and if not, why not? Do you think they are a necessity?



I do, yes. I don't know if they're a necessity, but I never considered going ahead without one - too stressful (also, I'm too lazy). As for securing representation, it was important to me that I could email them - I didn't want to be sending out parcel after parcel only to get them coming back, obviously unread. So I made a shortlist of agents and emailed a query - even if they say they don't accept email submissions you can still email a query. I was asked for three chapters by email (and I sent them by email) and it was only when they asked for the full that I had to print my MS out. Saved a lot of time and trees, I think.



Has anything about the publishing world surprised you? If you could do it all again, is there anything you might change or approach from a different angle?



The thing that's surprised me the most is how reactive it is. I kind of thought that publishers would me making trends, getting behind books and yelling about how marvellous they are, but there's a lot of waiting to see what the retailers think and a lot of chasing the success of other books. Actually, the power of the supermarkets was a big surprise. Della's publication was put back a year because it missed being presented to supermarkets and then the title was changed because a supermarket didn't like it. And then the supermarkets didn't take it, so it was all redundant anyway.



Della says: OMG! Is one of only a handful of books that actually deals with female masturbation. Was it a conscious decision to include this in your novel, and did you realise at the time it was so rare in fiction?



It was absolutely a conscious decision, yes. I'd been completely shocked to read that there were only two YA authors who'd dealt with it before - Judy Blume and Meg Cabot - over a span of 25 years (subsequently learned that it also appears in Aury Wallington's book, Pop) and I just thought that was completely ridiculous. It's one of those things that teen girls worry about doing and I think it's really important for them to know that (almost) everyone does it and it's completely fine. I get so irritated at how male masturbation is, um, everywhere (so to speak), but there's still a stigma with female masturbation. There's a scene in Gavin & Stacey where Stacey's unemployed and she says something about how she's been masturbating a lot ( "Like yesterday, I had three just watching cash in the attic") and Gavin or Smithy (or maybe both) are kind of horrified and embarrassed in a way they absolutely wouldn't be if a man had said it.



Leading on from that, what advice would you give to a YA writer dealing with a topic, like female masturbation, which is far from mainstream, bordering on controversial?



I would just say to write honestly. I did have a few wobbles about the stuff in Della, but I knew it was appropriate for the characters and I wasn't crowbarring it in for the sake of being controversial. As long as you're writing from an honest place, you'll be fine.



Meg Cabot read and reviewed your book... OMG! How did you get your favourite writer to review your work for you, and did you have a fangirl moment when you found out?



Oh I totally did. Meg's my favourite YA author so I was unbelievably excited when I found out. I interviewed her a couple of years ago for Chicklish (along with Luisa Plaja) so I emailed her and asked her to read it. I was really thrilled and flattered that she was kind enough to read and blurb it.



What are you working on now?



I'm rewriting an adult novel I wrote last year. I also wrote a first draft of a new YA novel during last year's NaNoWriMo, so I'll be taking a look at that at some point too.



And finally, can you sum up a key piece of advice for aspiring writers in one sentence?

Er. Saved the hardest question for last, eh? Honestly, the only thing you really need to do is to write. I know that doesn't seem particularly helpful, but if you don't write, it doesn't matter what else you do. It took me a stupidly long time to learn that particular lesson!

Major thanks to Keris for taking the time to answer my questions, and I hope all you budding YA writers out there enjoyed reading through this as much as me. Keris' website can be found over here, she tweets here and you can go grab your own copy of Della Says: OMG! over here