Interview with Cherry Cheva!

Today on MarjoleinBookblog, I am very happy to welcome Cherry Cheva, author of She's So Money!

What inspired you to write She's So Money? The original grain of an idea was something along the lines of a reverse “King and I.” Then it was just trying to see how to get these two characters to interact when normally they would never even run in the same circles. Hence, the homework-for-money thing—which, I’d like to add, is based absolutely ZERO on my own high school experience! :) Although my parents do have a Thai restaurant (actually two).

What were your favorite books as a young adult?
Hmmm. I definitely had a window in middle school where I was reading a bunch of V.C. Andrews and a bunch of Agatha Christie. Also around that age I discovered The Catcher in the Rye and of course loooved it. By the time I got to high school I can’t remember doing much reading other than whatever I had to read for class, which is sad, although at some point I got into those Spenser mysteries by Robert B. Parker. And as a younger kid I loved The Swiss Family Robinson, and of course anything by Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume.

What's your favorite and least favorite part of being a writer?
Favorite, just getting paid to write! I mean, what? I wrote stories for fun as a kid so this is essentially the same as paying me to play with Barbies. The least favorite is probably how little job security there is. As in, there’s none. Okay, that’s depressing, so let’s focus on the part about getting paid to make stuff up. :)

What do you like most about writing for young adults?
The audience! Everyone in the YA community is so nice. I mean, I’ve never written an “adult” book so I have nothing to compare it to, but for the most part, YA authors and readers all seem to be super-enthusiastic and supportive of each other, which is great.

Since you are a YA writer can you tell us what you were like as a teen? Does that influence your characters? How?
Maya was definitely influenced by how I was in high school (very studious, very focused on getting into college, not being allowed to date but doing it anyway…). I actually think Maya doesn’t totally hate high school though, whereas while I was going through it, I definitely hated it. Looking back, it doesn’t seem that bad—my parents were really strict, but I still managed to get around that and go out and do stuff and have a lot of fun with my friends—but at the time it seemed like a total nightmare and all I wanted to do was get away to college.

If you could be one of your characters for a day, who would it be?
Camden. It would be hilarious to be a hot, rich dude for a day (hopefully not a school day, although if it were I’d just skip).

Can we expect more fabulous books by you in the future?
Well, shucks, I don’t know if they will be fabulous, although I certainly hope so. :) But yes, I have a new book called DupliKate coming out in September! You can see the cover on myspace.com/cherrycheva under the photos section, or it’ll be my facebook photo once I finally get around to joining facebook. It's also available for pre-order on Amazon although the picture isn't up there yet either.

Do you have a dream, something you’d love to achieve with your writing? Well, obviously I’m very happy with just what I’ve been able to do so far—I mean, seriously, I’m just psyched that anything I wrote is even out there in the world at all, much less being read/watched (I'm also a TV writer) by actual people. But overall my dream would be to keep my writing career going for a long while. Like I said before, there’s no job security in this business, and tons of people are in it and then out of it before they’re even very old. I would much prefer to be in it and then not out of it until I’m VERY old. Like tiny and shrunken and wizened:). ***********************MANY THANKS CHERRY**************************