Alison Cherry Books

Middle Grade and Young Adult Author of Red, For Real, and other books.

The Next Big Thing, Week 22

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This week, fellow Random House author Elsie Chapman invited me to participate in The Next Big Thing, a blog hop in which authors answer questions about what we’re writing next. Since I’m about to turn in the first draft of my second book tomorrow (*gulp*), I will celebrate by telling you a little bit about it! Here we go…

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At the moment, it’s called FOR REAL. I have yet to run this by my editor, though. 🙂
When I was trying (and trying, and trying, and failing) to get representation for my never-to-be-published first manuscript, I was moaning to a friend about how hard it was to break into the publishing industry. She said something akin to, “Yeah, it’s pretty much impossible to publish fiction these days unless you’re, like, a reality TV star or something.” And my brain went, DING DING DING! I loved the idea trying to get on a reality show as means to a more lofty end… so I wrote a book about it.
  
Contemporary with a healthy dash of bizarre, much like RED.
I picture my protagonist, Claire, as sort of an Ellen Page type. Her sister, Miranda, is more of a Kate-Hudson-ten-years-ago type.
FOR REAL is about reality TV auditions, sibling rivalry, and why you shouldn’t date actors.
I’m represented by the glorious Holly Root of Waxman Leavell, and the book will be published by Delacorte.
I don’t really do first drafts—I edit as I go, so by the time I finish writing the final chapter for the first time, the rest of the book is already in its third or fourth draft. It took me about a year to go from zero to an editor-ready manuscript, but I wasn’t working on it consistently—I also did all my rounds of edits for RED this year, plus I drafted a middle grade book. If you subtract all the time I spent working on those other things, FOR REAL probably took about seven months.
I’ve heard my writing pitched as a cross between Stephanie Perkins and Libba Bray, which is far too kind, but we definitely have stylistic similarities. I just finished reading MESSY by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan, and those ladies have very similar sensibilities to mine as well.
The fact that it was under contract. 🙂 FOR REAL sold at the same time as RED, so I’ve known it was due this November the whole time I was writing it. That has definitely been a motivating factor!
There’s a reality show in this book called Speed Breed. That’s all I’m giving you for now. 🙂
I was supposed to tag five more authors for next week (Week 23,) but then there was a hurricane and everyone lost power, so things didn’t quite work out as planned. But I can promise you at least one—the lovely Claire Legrand, author of THE CAVENDISH HOME FOR BOYS AND GIRLS—who will answer these same questions about her own work-in-progress on her blog!

A Continuing Challenge of Counterfeit Remedies

Comments

  1. This sounds like so much fun, Alison! I read a reality show YA recently (THE REAL REAL) and really enjoyed it, and this sounds like a really fun take on it! Can't wait until it and RED are on shelves!