Interview with Courtney Summers, author of 'This is Not a Test'

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Last month I read a truly spectacular book.

It scared me. It made me cry. I wanted the protagonist to survive, even when she wanted to die.

That book was Courtney Summers’s ‘This is Not a Test’; and it was one of those rare instances where, the second my eyes lifted from the last line of the last page, I wanted to speak to the author. It was almost like a compulsion, an itch and a wish rolled into one – I just really, really, really wanted to ask her questions about this book which so affected me.

I felt very lucky when Ms Summers agreed to this little interview. It reminded me that I have, quite possibly, the coolest hobby on earth – how many other people can say that they speak directly to the creators of their obsessions? 

I owe a big thanks to Courtney Summers, who let me unleash my manic fan-girl questions on her inbox to share with you. Enjoy!

P.S. – a very big THANK YOU to Adele Walsh (alias: Persnickety Snark) who told me to: “Read this book. Trust me.” And I did and was rewarded. 

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Q: How were you first published, agent or slush pile?

Agent!  She submitted my book to publishers.  But she found me through her query slush!  I queried her (but only after I did my research and made sure we might be a fit) without any connections at all.  I just had to cross fingers that Cracked Up to Be was right for her and luckily, it was!

 

Q: How long did it take you to write ‘This is Not a Test’, from first idea to final manuscript?

I've always wante to write a zombie book, but I didn't really settle down and try it until after I finished Fall for Anything.  I think it took about... maybe ten or eleven months from idea to final manuscript.  It's all a blur to me now.

Q: Are you a plotter or a ‘pantser’? – That is, do you meticulously plot your novel before writing, or do you ‘fly by the seat of your pants’ and let the story evolve naturally?

It depends on the book!  I was more of a pantser when I started writing novels (I wrote three others before Cracked Up to Be), but gradually, from Some Girls Are on, I've become more and more of an outliner.  Without an outline I flounder too much and I end up wasting a lot of time.  I envy people that can write without outlining, though.  Outlining is not a whole lot of fun for me, even though it's part of my process.  It's a necessary evil.

Q: Where do story ideas generally start for you? Do you first think of the character, theme, ending? Or is it just a free-fall?

That also depends on the book.  With Cracked Up to Be, it was character--Parker's voice was very clear to me.  With Some Girls Are, probably theme--I wanted to write about girl bullies.  The rest of the books have been so close between plot and character that it's tough to call.  

Q: Why do you choose to write young adult fiction? What is it about this genre that you love?

It just seems to be the way my stories come out, but that's not surprising to me because it's the genre I most love to read.  There's something about the immediacy of it that captures me as both a reader and a writer.  That's my favourite thing about it.  Just how sharp and immediate the narratives often are.
         

Q: I was calling ‘This is Not a Test’ a “a horror story within a horror story” – because it could have been a chilling contemporary story about abuse, but turning it into a zombie novel elevated the issues and seemed to heighten the emotions of our already damaged protagonist, Sloane Price. I wonder – was ‘This is Not a Test’ always going to be a zombie novel? How hard was it to simultaneously write about slathering undead and a girl’s suicidal fragility?

I love that description of it!  This is Not a Test was going to be a zombie novel and Sloane's personal story was there from the first page, becoming  more and more pronounced with each draft.  I didn't have as hard a time balancing zombies and Sloane's emotional issues as I thought I would.  That's not to say it was easy, it was a gradual process, but I'm used to writing books that are emotionally heavy.  But even as I say this, TINAT was still one of the hardest books I've written.  That particular balance didn't get me so much as worrying about how people would receive my first zombie book!

 

Q: You write such hard-hitting YA fiction. Whether it be contemporary or with a paranormal spin – you really put your characters through the ringer, exploring deep and dark issues. But I would say your books have a moral backbone (minus any preaching) and there are lessons to be learned through what your characters experience and overcome. I particularly thought this of your novel ‘Cracked Up To Be’. Are you very aware of not ‘talking down’ to your teen readers – and how is it as a writer to put these characters you created through such intense, awful situations?

Thank you!   When I write, my only objective is to be true to my characters and the story I'm telling, no matter what.  I feel I have to forget the audience and myself to do that and I think that prevents me from using my characters to talk down to my readers.  It's also important to me that readers take from my books whatever messages they want, and I don't want my Author Voice to intrude on that or deny them that experience.

From a writing stand-point, I like putting my characters through intense, awful situations--as bad as that sounds--because conflict often drives a story forward.  BUT.  I do take writing those situations very seriously and some scenes are harder than others.

Q: With regards to your aforementioned dark and hard-hitting YA novels – have you met resistance from ‘gate keepers’ like teachers & librarians? People who perhaps wouldn’t like to believe that what you’re writing about is a lot closer to the teen experience than they’d like to believe?

Teachers and librarians have been so supportive of my books!  I've heard such encouraging things from them for my last four releases and I'm grateful.  I havegotten comments from some adult readers who say they can't believe teens live the kinds of lives I write about but I think it's more they don't want to believe it. But the gate keepers have expressed quite the opposite view and have been wonderful advocates of my books.  (Thank you, gate keepers!)

Q: Is it hard for you to let go of characters once a book is finished? Do they still ‘speak’ to you, long after the book has hit shelves? Have you ever had the urge to write a sequel for one of your novels?

I am SO done with my characters when I finish a book, hah!  And I think my characters are MORE than done with me, after all the things I put them through. :)  But give us both a little distance, and sometimes I entertain the idea of sequels.  They speak to me a little.  They are a pretty unlikely possibility though, as new ideas always call to me in a much louder voice.  :)
         

 

Q: Your next novel (due out in 2013) is called ‘All the Rage’ – and you completely hooked me, because the Goodreads description likens it to ‘Veronica Mars’ and ‘Brick’ – one of my favourite TV shows, and movies ever. Can you tell us a little bit more about this book?

It's a psychological thriller and it's about a girl who blackmails a wealthy classmate and wakes up on the road the next day with no money and no memory of the night before.  It's still in edits and it's constantly evolving with each round (maybe more Veronica Mars than Brick now) but I am really excited about it.  It's a bit vicious!
         

Q: Favourite book(s) of all time

I am going to say The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier.  So brutal.  So hard-hitting.

Q: Favourite author(s)?

Oh, so many!  Joey Comeau, Robert Cormier, Lucy Christopher, Gillian Flynn, Emily Hainsworth, Stephen King, Melina Marchetta, C.K. Kelly Martin, Blake Nelson, Tiffany Schmidt, Nova Ren Suma, Rachel Vincent, Daisy Whitney and Sara Zarr to name a few...
        

Q: What advice do you have for budding young writers?

To read and write as much as possible.  There is no better way to hone your craft.  And be persistent and don't be easily discouraged!  Publishing is a tough business, and you WILL get rejected a lot, but fiction is subjective.  Believe in your work and keep sending it out there.

'This is Not a Test' by Courtney Summers

From the BLURB:

It’s the end of the world. Six students have taken cover in Cortege High but shelter is little comfort when the dead outside won’t stop pounding on the doors. One bite is all it takes to kill a person and bring them back as a monstrous version of their former self. To Sloane Price, that doesn’t sound so bad. Six months ago, her world collapsed and since then, she’s failed to find a reason to keep going. Now seems like the perfect time to give up. As Sloane eagerly waits for the barricades to fall, she’s forced to witness the apocalypse through the eyes of five people who actually want to live. But as the days crawl by, the motivations for survival change in startling ways and soon the group’s fate is determined less and less by what’s happening outside and more and more by the unpredictable and violent bids for life—and death—inside. When everything is gone, what do you hold on to?

“This is not a test. Listen closely. This is not a test.”

Sloane Price was meant to escape a very different horror story, before she found herself in the middle of another one. She thought her life couldn’t get any worse than it has been these last six months – six months since her sister, Lily, left without her. Six months being her father’s only target. Six months wondering how Lily could do that to her, just leave. Just like that.

And then they came. People with grey-clouded eyes, mottled skin, slathering mouths. They do not die. They just keep coming.

Seven days later, Sloane is holed up in Cortege High with a cast of misfit survivors.

Harrison is only fifteen and new to the town of Cortege – he cries all the time. Grace is beautiful and compassionate, just as Sloane remembers from the brief time when they were childhood friends. Grace’s twin brother, Trace, has a hot temper and he is not accepting the fact that their parents are dead. Cary Chen was a no-hope stoner in school, but has proven himself a skilled survivalist since the world changed around them. Rhys was famous at school – he was an impossibly cool senior, always seen smoking with a bevy of beautiful girls. And then there’s Sloane … who carries a note in her pocket and a dark wish in her heart.

 “This is not a test. Listen closely. This is not a test.”

‘This is Not a Test’ is the new young adult novel by Courtney Summers. The novel was released in June this year, and I am woefully late in singing its praises.

I should start by saying I was aware of Courtney Summers before this book came out. I read ‘Cracked Up To Be’ back in 2009 and was blown away by it – by this infectiously interesting but unsettling teen book. I made a promise to myself then to read more of Summers’s work, so I’m ashamed to say that I’ve only just fulfilled that promise with ‘This is Not a Test’.

This is a zombie novel. But you must dispel any misconceptions you have about zombie novels before you start reading Courtney Summers’s take. Right from chapter one, even before any flesh-eating undead have lumbered onto the page, readers will quickly cotton onto the fact that our protagonist, Sloane Price, is already living a horror story of a very different nature. Her father has endless rules, one of the biggest being that she cannot leave the house with visible bruises. So she stays home, until they heal, and then he can give her fresh ones. Sloane must also eat everything on her plate before she can leave the table. She does not have friends. She does not talk back to her father. And she desperately wants to kill herself.

Sloane had a very different plan originally, one that included running away with her older sister Lily … but then Lily left without her. When we meet her, Sloane thinks she is at the brink of her life – she can go no further. And then a slathering, limping, mottle-skinned woman crashes through their front window, and Sloane’s horror story changes.

The novel then skips ahead to seven days later. The town of Cortege is burning, and six students may very well be all that is left. They have made a fortress of their High School, and now they wait. And wait. And wait.

Courtney Summer’s novel stings. That’s the first word that comes to mind with this very raw, very brutal but starkly beautiful and original novel. It stings, a little. She writes an incredible balance between Sloane’s personal struggles and dark memories, playing out against a high-octane thrill-ride that’s heart palpitating and scary. She’s also written an intense and fascinating novel about human nature, as these six teenagers come to terms with a crumbling world and their battle for survival.

But Sloane is really the stand out of this novel. She is a most curious character, and it’s a sort of chicken and egg debate as to whether she’s interesting because of the zombie storyline, or in spite of it? For starters, the zombie-apocalypse forces Sloane into a survivalist situation – which is darkly ironic when all she wants to do is die. At one point she muses about her suicidal wish that she’s already dead, she’s just waiting for her body to catch up. Oh! See what I mean about ‘this novel stings’? It’s those sorts of precise little gems that Summers pops into your head and makes you mull over – no matter how uncomfortable the question, you admire her for even asking it.

Sloane also offers an odd dichotomy for readers – because on the one hand, we’re rooting for her – we like her, we feel sorry for her and we know she deserves a better life than the one she has been dealt (even before the zombies came to town). The clash comes because while readers are hoping that Sloane survives in this post-apocalyptic world, Sloane herself doesn’t want to live. We’re barracking for a character who has given up on herself – so we’re just waiting for her to catch up and realize what we, as readers, figured out very early on – that she’s a survivor, and stronger than she could ever imagine. And she deserves to live.

I just love the simple brilliance of a horror story within a horror story. And how often the zombie/suicide storyline crosses over and blurs. The day-to-day of surviving when the world is crumbling, versus the day-to-day of surviving when you are crumbling;

The thing no one tells you about surviving, about the mere act of holding out, is how many hours are nothing because nothing happens.

Of course, this is still a zombie novel. Courtney Summers never forgets that, and certainly never lets readers forget it. But before you claim fatigue with the undead that seem to be over-populating bookshelves at the moment, I would implore you to read ‘This is not a Test’ for a beautifully different zombie-horror story. Summers stills asks sharp end-of-the-world questions;

It’s a while before she opens it and when she does, I glimpse cutouts of actors and musicians taped to the door and I wonder what they’re doing now, if they’re dead. I wonder if they’ve saved all the celebrities. When this is over, society will need entertainment to get past it. We’ll make movies about it, hundreds of movies, and in every one of them, we’ll be the heroes and the love interests and best friends and winners and we’ll watch these movies until we are so far removed from our own history, we’ll forget how it really felt to be here.

‘This is Not a Test’ is a scary, scary book. The undead are only ever just outside the High School doors and a succession of plot twists and OH-MY-GOD curveballs will have you holding the book in a sweaty-handed death-grip. As fascinating as Sloane’s inner turmoils are, Summers is equally brilliant at the action and base horror. Cortege High becomes ‘Lord of the Flies’ when there are power-struggles amongst the three boys and the undead start pounding on the doors.

‘This is Not a Test’ stings, just a little. It’s unsettling and thought-provoking, beautifully crafted with equal-parts human story and horror story. I must send out a big ‘thank you’ to Adele Walsh, for recommending me this book. And now I must read every single book in Courtney Summers’s back list. She’s one to watch, you mark my words.

5/5

'Cracked up to be' by Courtney SUMMERS

From the BLURB:

Perfect Parker Fadley isn't so perfect anymore. She's quit the cheerleading squad, she's dumped her perfect boyfriend, and she's failing school. Her parents are on a constant suicide watch and her counselors think she's playing games.but what they don't know, the real reason for this whole mess, isn't something she can say out loud. It isn't even something she can say to herself. A horrible thing has happened and it just might be her fault. If she can just remove herself from everybody--be totally alone--then everything will be okay...The problem is, nobody will let her.

This is one of the best Young Adult novels I have ever read.

Parker is a prickly character, and I’m not sure why I liked her so much. She has a biting wit that she mostly turns on new head cheerleader, and former frenemy, Becky. Becky was a hanger-on to Parker’s popular posse, but has since stepped up to become ‘Parker Lite’. At one point Parker makes this dry observation about Becky;

I’ve never met a girl so content to be a growth.

Parker is a bitch, and I don’t know why I found her so endearing, but I did. So do most of the characters in the book – new boy Jake doesn’t understand why he likes her so much, but he does. Her ex-boyfriend is still in love with her; despite the fact that she stole $300 from him during the worst phase of her teenage rebellion melt down. Her parents are clinging to the hope that once a week meetings with the guidance counsellor will set their honour-role daughter back on track. Even Becky still begrudgingly turns to Parker for cheer advice. As a reader it’s difficult to understand why so many people are still holding out hope for Parker, despite her thorny behavior. Parker is just as curious. Through her narrative we learn that Parker meticulously planned her alienation from friends and family – and she’s a little shocked that it’s not yet working.

Granted, Parker doesn’t do anything too hellish, and her self-destructive behaviour occurred before the events of the book take place. As readers we are left in the wake of Parker’s failed suicide attempt, when she is determined to at least graduate from high school and leave it all behind.

Through Parker’s narrative we are also offered snatches of flash back to a night months ago that was the catalyst for Parker’s downward spiral, and the morose atmosphere of her High School.

This is Courtney Summers debut novel and the reason it’s such a good YA book is that it doesn’t talk down to its audience. Parker plays the school guidance counsellor like a violin, and Summers wisely refrains from writing any scenes that have such bandaids work miracles on Parker’s damaged psyche. And she is damaged; readers will deduce this much from Parker’s subtle narrative slip-up’s and character mannerisms. While it may be easy enough for readers to discern Parker’s problems, the brilliance is that Parker herself is forcefully unaware. This makes for fascinating reading as we watch scenes of Parker’s manifesting neurosis and witness characters around her start to pick up on her problems.

Summers also writes very successful flash back scenes. Sometime the ‘flash back’ can be a contrived piece of lazy writing, but Summers puts it to good use, letting it play like a rewind button. Small triggers set off the same memory for Parker, and she replays said memory again and again… gradually lengthening the scenes as she comes closer and closer to an unknown precipice.

This book can perhaps be best summed up in a question Jake poses to Parker during one of their reluctant heart-to-heart’s;

“How do you get to be an eighteen-year-old who’s done something so unimaginably horrible it can’t be fixed? I mean, seriously?”

Another reason this YA book is so good. Summers firmly grounds her plot and characters in reality. Be warned, there are no happy endings, no clean-cut resolutions and Parker’s secret is exactly as bad as she imagines it to be. That’s not to say there isn’t a moral backbone to this book, or a lesson to be learned. There is, Summers has just written it in such a way that’s not preachy, contrived or over-wrought.

5/5