Alex Flinn

BIO

Alex Flinn is a former attorney whose fascination with witness reliability and bias led her to write FADE TO BLACK. She is the author of three previous books: BREATHING UNDERWATER, an ALA Top 10 Best Book for Young Adults; Breaking Point, an ALA Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers; and NOTHING TO LOSE, one of ALA Booklist's Top 10 Youth Mysteries. She lives in Miami with her husband and two daughters.

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INTERVIEW

April 12, 2005

Alex Flinn talks to Teenreads.com contributing writer Carlie Webber about the significance of writing her latest book, FADE TO BLACK, from multiple points of view. She explains how being an attorney has influenced her work as an author, and discusses some of the most important issues facing teens today and how she incorporates them into her novels.

Teenreads.com: In your latest novel, FADE TO BLACK, you tell the story from three different points of view. Was this more, or less, difficult for you than telling a story from only one person's point of view? How did it make the book different from your previous works?

Alex Flinn:It was definitely different. My first three books --- BREATHING UNDERWATER, BREAKING POINT, and NOTHING TO LOSE --- were single viewpoint, very close first person, and they were all about being in that one character's head. I saw things with complete tunnel vision, through that character's eyes, even if the way that character saw things might be flawed. With this novel, the point was more to see the story from all viewpoints, and I necessarily had to look at things through a larger lens. The characters couldn't see each other, but I could see all of them.

That said, FADE TO BLACK was, of all my novels, the one where I most felt like the characters were talking to me, telling their stories. I feel this way with all my books, but with FADE TO BLACK, the initial inspiration for the book was so strong…it came to me when I was in the middle of another project (NOTHING TO LOSE) and I felt almost helpless not to write it. I literally felt like the book was already written, and I just had to write it down before I forgot it. I wrote almost nonstop for several weeks until my first draft was finished. Then, I went back and spent a full year researching the issues and fine-tuning the characters' voices, particularly Daria's, to make sure they were all I wanted them to be. So even though I wasn't in any particular character's head, they were still in mine.

TRC: Your books focus on boys who commit acts of violence or who are victims of violent acts. How have people reacted to this aspect of your work?

AF: Because I am a lawyer, my books usually revolve around the legal system, and in this age of "CSI" and "Law and Order" and "Boston Legal," this appeals to a lot of teens. On the other hand, I definitely get the "Why do teens have to read such unsettling books?" comment from some adults, and my answer is always, "They don't have to, but some of them want to." My books, by nature of their subject matter, have strong plots --- there's something happening at all times. Many teens are really attracted to that aspect of the book, or with the "ripped from the headlines" feel of the plots, or they just identify with what the characters are going through. A lot of teens today are dealing with some pretty heavy problems, and I think my books are helpful in either letting them know that there are others who are going through the same types of thing, or maybe letting them know that their problems aren't as bad as they could be.

TRC: Do you think it is tougher to be a teen today than it was when you were growing up?

AF: I think it is different in some ways, the same in others. I know I didn't worry about issues like school shootings when I was a teen. But things like relationships and friendships, family pressures, and pressures at school are very much the same. Robert Cormier, the great author of THE CHOCOLATE WAR, once said, "…emotions remain the same. A bruised heart is a bruised heart no matter what year it is." I agree.

TRC: Did you ever practice law beyond your internship at the State Attorney's Office? Did this influence your work?

AF: I practiced law for eleven years, but not in criminal law. One of the things one learns early and often in law school is that there are two or more sides to every story, and the world isn't black and white. This observation has greatly influenced my writing. I always see the other side. In FADE TO BLACK, it was my knowledge of cross-examination techniques that made me really think about how each character might see what happened that morning.

TRC: What inspired you to write your first book for teens?

AF: I always knew I would write a novel someday. My mother suggested it when I was five (We were filling out a memory book, and it had a spot labeled, "When I grow up, I want to be ____" and my mom suggested, "an author?" I agreed!), and I always just assumed it would be so. I wrote half of a rough draft of a novel when I was in college, then put it away and forgot it. Later, I thought first of rewriting that book. But what happened was that a subplot took over. The subplot had been about a girl with a mean boyfriend and, I guess, my domestic violence volunteer experience made that plot thread more interesting to me. Eventually, that became the novel BREATHING UNDERWATER.

TRC: What do you think are the most important issues facing teens today, and how do you work those issues into your writing?

AF: That's a tough question, because there are a lot of issues facing teens --- which one is most important depends on the individual, who they are and where they are in their lives. I recently visited a school in an affluent suburb of NYC, where the biggest problem was that the kids felt incredible pressure to be perfect --- get perfect grades, look perfect, emulate their perfect multi-millionaire CEO parents. This probably wouldn't seem like a big problem to someone who is growing up in the inner city, but this feeling of not being able to compete was clearly leading to all sorts of self-destructive behavior from these teens, and during my visit, I heard about their drug use and suicide attempts and all sorts of things that were a result of that feeling.

For another example, I visited a school last year where several girls confided in me that they'd stay with a guy who didn't treat them right because they want a boyfriend, and all over I see examples of how girls today are willing to subjugate themselves to guys in various ways (such as hooking up with guys who have no interest in them other than sex) because they're afraid of being alone. This, largely inspired by those girls, is part of what I'm writing about in my work-in-progress, DIVA, which I'll talk about below --- that need to be with someone, anyone, that was always there for girls, but that seems to be even stronger with teens today. But is that a bigger problem than school violence? Maybe, maybe not. The issues I write about in my books are important ones, and because I am only one person, I can't write about all the important issues, so I have to pick and choose.

In FADE TO BLACK, I wrote about two issues that I feel are very important to teens today. The first one is obvious because the one-sentence summary of the book would include the term HIV, which is a huge issue facing young people today. 50% of new HIV diagnoses in the USA are for people under age 25, and part of the reason for this is that many young people think HIV can't happen to them because it only affects ________ (Fill in name of demographic group that isn't them). But the thing is, it does…and that is why I didn't make the main character in FADE a member of one of those higher-risk groups.

The other issue, which isn't one that makes headlines but is one that affects a lot of teens, is the struggle to fit in and the feeling of invisibility that a lot of teens have. The characters in the book all feel that they are invisible, aren't part of the world around them in some way --- either for an obvious reason like the main character, Alex, who knows that people avoid him because he's HIV-positive, or less obvious reasons like Clinton, who has friends but feels like they don't know the real him and don't understand a lot of the issues he's struggling with.

I hope that my novels will speak to teens who are going through some of the experiences portrayed there, or just interested in learning more about that. However, my main goal in writing a novel is to write an interesting book that readers will want to keep reading.

TRC: You have a wide range of interests. If you couldn't be a writer, what do you think you would like to do?

AF: If writing doesn't work out, I always have opera as a fallback (I was a music major in college). No, that's not true…the last few times I sang opera in the shower, my abdomen hurt because I'm just not used to breathing that way anymore. It was better than doing crunches. But honestly, writing is the only thing I want to do.

TRC: What authors had an impact on you when you were growing up?

AF: It sounds like a cliché, but Judy Blume. Up until that point, I'd been reading a lot of fantasy --- P.L. Travers and Roald Dahl, or what I'd term sort of idyllic realistic fiction, like Beverly Cleary. But Judy Blume's books were realistic and they weren't happy. I read BLUBBER a dozen or more times, and when I read it recently, it still struck me as one of the harshest but truest things I ever read. Her books are bitter with just the right amount of fun, and that's how life is. A lot of people don't want to acknowledge that life is like that, but it is.

TRC: What advice do you have for aspiring writers?

AF: Try to write something that only you could write. There are so many people out there trying to write the next (fill in the blank: Harry Potter/Dr. Seuss/Series of Unfortunate Events). It sounds clichéd but it's much better to be the one and only you.

TRC: What are you working on now, and when can readers expect to see it?

AF: I'm working on DIVA, a companion novel to BREATHING UNDERWATER, in which Caitlin goes to a performing arts school and deals with her problems with boys and with her mother. She's studying to be a singer, and this is what made me try singing again --- to remember how it felt so I could write about it.

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