THREE QUESTIONS FOR LISA BULLARD
PHOTO by Katherine Warde |
What made you choose Trav for your hero?
The truth is, Trav chose me! When I
started writing this story, I had actually decided to try something very
different from my past books (picture books and nonfiction for even younger
readers): a mystery novel for adults. But after consistently stalling out
around chapter 3, I decided to take a mystery-writing class from Ellen Hart to
see if I could figure out why I wasn’t able to make any progress. Ellen is a
great teacher (and mystery writer), and the first night she gave the class an
assignment to reimagine our story openings. As I wrote my new opening, a voice
hijacked my story—
the voice of a young teenage boy who I eventually learned was
Trav—and I knew that the story truly belonged to him. It turns out that I WAS
writing a story that was very different from my past books after all, I just
didn’t know whose story it was meant to be right away!
What do you have in common with him?
We don’t share much in the way of
personal or family details, but I think we do have behaviors in common. We both
tend to be a bit snarky—sometimes as a way of being funny, sometimes as a
defense mechanism. He shares my fascination with bad late-night TV. He notices,
as I do, animals in the landscape, and he’s fascinated by their behavior. And
he thinks in metaphors; he can’t help but look for the sometimes obscure ways
that seemingly unrelated things are somehow connected.
When you were a kid, who was your favorite mystery
detective?
That’s a tough question, because I
loved so many different mysteries! But I think my favorite was an old series of
books that were passed down to me from my mom when she was young—the Judy
Bolton series by Margaret Sutton. Judy was a spunky girl detective who was way
ahead of her time in many ways—and I loved the fact that she grew up over the
course of the series. I still love series that follow a character over many
years and through different stages of life. Plus the mysteries were lots of
fun!
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