Today, we're happy to welcome author Megan Crewe to I'd So Rather Be Reading. Megan is the author of the Fallen World trilogy. If you haven't picked these books up yet, I highly recommend them! Megan is here to talk about the similarities between herself and Kaelyn, heroine of the Fallen World trilogy.
Kaelyn and Me
I'm
often asked whether I base my characters on real people, and which
characters I see myself in the most. The truth is that there's a little
of me in all of my characters, especially my protagonists, but Kaelyn
from the Fallen World trilogy is by far the closest. When I was writing
her story, I often felt as though I was channeling my teenage self. Just
how alike are we?
-Shyness
and social awkwardness. I was never overwhelmed in the big city the way
Kaelyn has been, because I grew up in Toronto. But both Kaelyn and I
had trouble figuring out where we fit in among our peers, and often
found it hard to navigate the complicated social politics of high
school. I spent many an hour trying to puzzle out what a random comment
might have meant, why someone might have been friendly one day and not
so much the next, and how to express a crush on a particular guy.
-Fondness
for animals. Like Kaelyn, I've always been fascinated by animals and
the wilderness. While I never devoted myself to making a career out of
studying them, there were several years when I thought I was going to be
a veterinarian. I read all sorts of nature books, put pictures of
wolves and horses on my walls instead of band posters, and had a
menagerie of pets. Kaelyn's ferrets are based on two of mine.
-Expression
through writing. Kaelyn's not a novelist, but she does keep quite a
thorough journal, as did I when I was in my teens. Thankfully I never
had anything catastrophic to report in mine, so it was mostly devoted to
analyzing boy behavior and recounting the fairly normal joys and
set-backs of teenage life. You can even read some of my teenage journal
entries (and see how much you think my thoughts sound like Kaelyn's) in
the Flashback entires on my blog: http://www.megancrewe.com/
-Stubbornness.
When I decide something's important to me, I stick with it one hundred
percent. Kaelyn's very much the same way. It can be to our detriment,
because sometimes there are things you need to let go of and we both may
take longer than is ideal to realize that. But at the same time it
means we're fiercely devoted to our goals and the people we care about.
More About Megan:
Like many authors, Megan Crewe finds writing about
herself much more difficult than making things up. A few definite facts:
she lives in Toronto, Canada with her husband and two cats (and does on
occasion say "eh"), she tutors children and teens with special needs,
and--thankfully--the worst virus she's caught so far is the
garden-variety flu.
Megan Crewe on the Web:
Fun post! I like the topic.
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