Word Out 2012

When I picked up Tempest several months ago, I enjoyed one of my delicious 'lost weekends' when I do nothing but read – I barely put the book down until I was finished!  So I was absolutely THRILLED when I contacted Julie Cross and she enthusiastically agreed to be part of Word Out.  

If you love Tempest visit Julie's blog and check out the Tempest playlist.  And now – ENJOY!!  

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Question #1

Where did you get the idea for Tempest?

Tempest began with an old manuscript that my editor had and he rejected. Eventually that rejection led to him reaching out to me again and saying that he really like the premise for the book, which was basically, guy witnesses girlfriend’s death and jumps back two years in the past and gets stuck there. That was the one sentence that kind of locked him into creating this story and the fact that he was looking for a young adult time-travel novel.  We went back and forth with plot ideas revolving around that premise for several days and then I began writing it. All the details came in phases from that point on.

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Question #2

How did you plan out the structure for the novel and were their ever concerns that it was a bit too confusing for readers?

Tempest started out fairly simple, but as I kept writing the level of complexity increased by several notches. Simplicity was actually my main goal from the beginning but that turned out to be an epic fail for sure. (times 10, probably!) It’s the reason I chose to have time travel not alter the past, but then I’d get excited about a new direction and my editor would get excited about adding on a new reveal or an awesome twist and I like where I was going so much that I was willing to take those big risks.

Tempest takes a lot of risks and opens the door on several occasions for potential plot holes, but once I’d set my mind on that direction, I didn’t want to back off and make it some easy, cookie-cutter book just because it would be work more this way. I had to make a lot of lists and charts. I had to create specific rules for time travel and make sure that if those rules were broken that I explained why and could justify it within the story. There was one point, while working on the second draft that I created a chart for each time jump that Jackson makes and it specifically listed everything that Jackson had on his body and what he was wearing because I kept referencing items that he didn’t have with him or just forgot what he carried from 2009 to 2007.

And yes, I worried a lot that it would be confusing to readers. I think some people are still confused with the time travel, even in the final version. The problem is that it isn’t one of those books you can speed read and skim pages. If you do that, you’ll miss something important and the book will seem confusing. There’s also those reviewers who said that I did the time travel all wrong. So, you really do have to go into the book with a clean slate and not assume that you already know how the time travel should work. I even have a line in the opening chapter where Jackson says, “Hollywood gets everything wrong when it comes to time travel.” And that was my way of alerting the reader right away that this book was a whole new ball game. During the editing process we tried to bring in two to three brand new readers with each draft and then clarified any confusion or issues. That was the most difficult part, the fact that I knew the material and logic so well that I couldn’t tell what might be confusing with out getting fresh eyes to look it over.

But I can assure everyone that I took it very seriously as far as being consistent and following my own rules so I am hoping that when people read it carefully they will see that and I know that with time travel it is always going to be confusing and there's always going to be some people who have trouble grasping it. So we just try to get as many of those things clarified as possible. 

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Question #3

Most young adult novels have younger protagonists. Why is Jackson a college student and not a high school student like other books?

I knew from the beginning Jackson was going to get stuck two years in the past and I wanted it to be two years that created a big contrast for the reader. What better way to do that then send a college student back to high school? Or at least the era of his high-school self. Even though Jackson wards off any possibility of returning to high school, he’s still dealing with being a minor in his father’s eyes and having his girlfriend be in high school and she's living in New Jersey, not commuting to New York city as she does when the two meet in 2009 working at the summer camp on the Upper East Side.

I also loved the idea of making the younger Holly quite a bit different than the older version Jackson first meets. I think it speaks true-to-life. We all change significantly between ages seventeen and nineteen. And Jackson changes quite a bit from his jump back to 2007. Knowing what happened to the older Holly makes him want to grip onto life a little bit tighter, to hold important people and memories closer to him and to say what he never bothered to say when life wasn’t as threatening. I think it’s a lesson many people learn between age seventeen and nineteen but because of Jackson’s privileged life and lack of responsibility placed on him by his father, he hasn’t learned this yet when Tempest opens and his suffering and self-actualization is played out right before the reader’s eyes. You get to walk through it with him and I think that is the essence of young adult literature at it’s most skeletal form. As a YA author, in my opinion, you must have a journey like this somewhere in your book.

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Question #4

What is about Holly and Jackson that appealed to you as you were writing the story?

First of all, I really love this question because Jackson and Holly are such important fictional people to me now and they’re important as individuals but also as a couple. The thing I love most about writing Jackson and Holly is that I decided early on that their relationship would be as realistic as possible and that meant flaws in the characters and sometimes having them say the wrong thing and not be totally sure that they were willing to give up everything for one person. I think it’s those imperfections and doubts that make Jackson and Holly both so sure of what they want by the end of the book. It makes them sink even deeper in-love than your average couple.

With the older Holly, she’s coming off a safe relationship with her high school boyfriend when she meets Jackson and giving that up, changing everything she thought she wanted in her life makes her a little cautious about commitment and Jackson already has that built-in precaution not only because he’s a rich kid without any reason to make important decisions at nineteen years old, but also because he’s experienced the loss of his twin sister and that creates a wall between him and others – like Holly, like his dad.

What Jackson and Holly fall into, in 2009 is supposed to be a summer fling, but neither of them can let go by the time fall begins and Holly knows she’s in love with Jackson, but she also knows that Jackson has no clue what he’s doing. He’s several steps behind her and the only reason she holds on to this relationship is because she’s the kind of person who can see, already, what Jackson has the potential to become, even if he’s not there yet. That's probably one of my favourite aspects of their relationship. I have several scenes from 2009 that didn’t make it into the final version of Tempest – the part where he's stuck in the past  and in one of those, on September 30, 2009, Jackson shows up at Holly’s dorm after being totally MIA for a week, doing experiments in Boston with Adam. He finds Holly at a party and she brushes his radio-silence off and they have this cute conversation where they pretend like they don’t know each other and are meeting for the first time in front of her dance team friends. Holly knows better than to push Jackson because he’s pretty clueless about his feelings, he doesn’t plan to stay with Holly but he doesn’t plan to break up with her either, he just doesn't plan. Somehow he keeps finding himself seeking out her company and wanting to be around her even just to talk complete nonsense. I’ll read a little part of that deleted scene just to give you an idea of where Jackson is mentally and emotionally when Tempest opens:

            As I opened the door to the stairs, leading up to the roof, I hesitated for a second. How long had it been since I’d talked to Holly? A week, maybe? With all the time-travel I’d done lately, days and weeks had started to blur together. I don’t even think she knew that I went to visit Adam at MIT. She had only called me once and I texted back that I had to study.

            But this was Holly, not some over-emotional, shrine building freak of a girlfriend. Even if she had wanted to talk to me, wanted to see me, she had enough self control to not keep calling.

            I took a deep breath before taking the stairs, two at a time because I knew, more than anything else, I really wanted to see her. Tonight. Right now.

            The music filled my ears before I even opened the door. The rooftop was packed with college kids. I only had to stand there about ten seconds before I spotted Holly, clear on the other side of the roof talking to a couple of girls and two guys I didn’t know.

            A small part of me wanted to turn around and leave because there’s no way I’d ever stand in line and wait for a girl to talk to me. But did I have to wait for Holly? Or was I entitled to some kind of priority, V.I.P. listing or something? This is exactly why relationships are so complicated. You have to constantly evaluate where you stand with someone. And then you have to draw lines all over the place and remember what you can and can’t do. All I wanted right now, was to talk to the blond girl clear across the floor and pretend like I hadn’t ignored her for a week.

            And right then, I realized that Holly wasn’t a summer fling anymore. And every part of me ached to go back in time and do it all over again. But nobody ever gets to do that. Not for real anyway. Not in home base.

So, when Jackson gets stuck in 2007 after leaving Holly on the floor bleeding to death, at first he can’t look at the younger Holly without seeing that moment in the future and feeling like he’s looking at a ghost. Then, he just wants to make her safe and by doing this he starts noticing and memorizing all the tiny details that make her Holly underneath. After a few incidences of hanging out with the younger Holly, Jackson knows at that point he’s not going to stop wanting to be around her any time soon. It's really cemented at that point.

And the younger Holly first meets this more intense, more responsible version of Jackson. A person that’s willing to open up to her and to be vulnerable. It’s a really amazing contrast to write the change in Jackson’s character and the two versions of Holly. It comes with its own high level of emotion that is really hard to top as a writer. That’s probably a huge part of what I love about writing these two characters.  

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Question #5 and Conclusion

What would you like readers to take away from your series?

I can probably answer this question simply by quoting the last line in the book and that is, “Have no regrets.” From the instant Holly is shot in 2007 and Jackson panics and leaves her there bleeding, this becomes the theme of the book. Ironically, in the first three chapters, Adam tries to convince Jackson how important it is to write everything down, not to leave any detail out or anything unexplored but Jackson brushes it off as Adam worrying to much about the future, which is exactly what Jackson is sentenced to while stuck in 2007—worrying about the future.

But generally speaking, from the feedback I’ve received about Tempest, there’s a multitude of concepts and themes that can be taken from the book depending on the reader…there’s the love story, the family drama, the moral and ethical debates that arise from the science fiction and time travel aspect in addition to the coming of age story, Jackson grows up in this book. So, really, I just hope readers get something from Tempest that sticks with them long after reading that final page.  

Thank you so much for choosing Tempest for your summer reading list, I truly appreciate the thoughtful questions and I hope you found this audio question and answer session helpful!

I feel that 'Thank You' is one of those statements that can (and probably should) be said more than once and so a heartfelt THANK YOU to Jule Cross for her delightful interview! 

Thanks also to Crystal from Raincoast for putting me in touch with Julie and for recruiting the fabulous bloggers Wendy from A Cupcake and Latte and Angel from Mermaid Vision Books who organized the interview question for Julie. Finally thanks to Saffron from Ampersand for contacting Crystal.