Sarah Beth Durst: Into the Wild

Title: Into the Wild
Author: Sarah Beth Durst (www.sarahbethdurst.com)
Hardcover: 272 pages
Publisher:  Penguin
ISBN: 978-1595141859

1. First off, congratulations on the big novel sale! Give us the elevator pitch. What’s your book about?

Thanks so much! And thanks for interviewing me. My book INTO THE WILD came out last June from Razorbill, the newest YA imprint at Penguin Young Readers. It’s the story of Julie, an ordinary 12-year-old girl with a not-so-ordinary family. Her mother is Rapunzel (yes, from the fairy tale — long hair, tower, prince, the whole deal), her brother is Puss-in-Boots (he’s a cat; he’s adopted), and her grandmother is the
(former) wicked witch of fairy-tale fame. You see, long ago, the fairy-tale characters escaped the fairy tale to live in secret in our world. But now the fairy tale wants its characters back. And it’s up to Julie to save them.

2. Most new novelists have an interesting story to tell about their journey to publication. What’s yours? Did you use an agent? Make sure to tell us about the day you found out you’d sold a book.

I have wanted to be a writer since I was ten-years-old. Before age ten, I wanted to be either Wonder Woman or a Unicorn Princess. (I’m still not sure if I meant I wanted to be a princess with unicorn friends or an
actual royal unicorn. I think I would have accepted either.) In comparison to my early career goals, “writer” seemed perfectly achievable. Still, it took a long time. For my journey to publication, I took the old-fashioned route: a straight-forward uphill slog. There were no tricks and no shortcuts. I wrote a manuscript, sent it out, got rejected, wrote another, sent it out, got rejected, and so forth until finally I found my current agent, Andrea Somberg from the Harvey Klinger Agency. Once she became my agent, she sent the manuscript for INTO THE WILD out to various publishers, and it was a short six weeks from that point until I got “the Call” from Andrea telling me an editor had made an offer on my book. I had imagined that moment so many times over the years that after I hung up the phone, the very first thing I did was check caller-ID because I was convinced that I’d just been having a really vivid, really cool daydream.

3. Do you have another book in the pipeline? What are you working on now?

Yes! OUT OF THE WILD (the sequel to INTO THE WILD) will come out this June, also from Razorbill/Penguin. It centers on a magical road trip across America and includes a flying bathmat, a very drowsy princess, a
fire-breathing dragon, and several thousand magic beanstalks. I had so much fun writing a sequel. It was like visiting old friends. And then turning their lives upside down.

4. What’s your writing process like? Morning writer, night writer, or something in between?

I am a write-anytime-I-can writer. I don’t believe in waiting for inspiration — if you want to be a writer, you have to write whether or not you feel like it and whether or not it’s going well. There’s always
a point in every project when you feel like you’re doomed, it’s doomed, everything’s doomed!!! The trick is to write anyway. I also don’t believe in waiting until you have that perfect stretch of uninterrupted time. That kind of “spare time” is a myth for most of us. If you want to write, you need to make the time. I’m not saying it’s easy — things get sacrificed, like sleep and yardwork — but writing is my dream so
I’ve convinced myself that it’s okay that my dining room floor is a wee bit crunchy and that weeds and moss really do look almost just like lawn from a distance if you squint…

5. There seem to be an unusually high percentage of writers who own cats. Here at the First Book, we’re doing a study to find out if there’s a direct relationship between writing success and cat ownership. Do you own a cat? If so, tell us about him or her. If not, tell us what you have against cats.

My cat’s name is Perni (short for Copernicus, which we decided was inappropriate once we found out she’s a girl). She likes to wind around your ankles and then roll over onto her back to expose her fluffy, white
belly. When you reach down to pat her, that’s when she lunges at your bare skin with her teeth and claws and tries to rend your flesh from your bones. She’s kind of socially maladjusted. But I love her anyway.