Shannon Lee
Alexander is a wife and mother (of two kids and one yellow terrier named
Harriet Potter). She is passionate about coffee, books, and cancer research.
She spent most of her time in high school hiding out in the theater with the
drammies and techies. Math still makes her break out in a sweat. She currently
lives in Indianapolis with her family.
Find her at
www.shannonleealexander.com
She is the author of Love and Other Unknown Variables as well as its companion novel Life After Juliet. Both are on sale now.
Have
you always been a writer? Who/what first inspired you to write?
I’ve
always been a writer, but I was never brave enough to admit, even to myself,
that I’d like to make writing my career. Love
and Other Unknown Variables is dedicated to the special woman who inspired
me to be brave and dare to dream. My friend Em was diagnosed with ovarian
cancer when we were 23 years old. She underwent treatment and the cancer went
away for many years, but around the time my son was born, the cancer came back,
as ovarian cancer often does. This time around, I went to the hospital for Em’s
chemo treatments.
I was
terrified, but when I stepped inside the infusion therapy lab, Em looked
serene, like a queen on a throne, a beeping, humming throne with tubes and
machines all around it, but still, she exuded a certain peace. What surprised
me, and still gives me chills all these years later, was when the nurse came to
administer the first round of heavy chemo, there was a tiny moment, a flicker in
Em’s eyes, of fear.
Em
quickly mastered the fear and told a joke to shake off the tension. I laughed.
Her mother laughed. The nurse laughed. The room was filled with it. That was
the kind of power Em had. She could always fill a room to overflowing with
laughter.
And that
laughter chased away the fear I saw in her eyes. Later, when reflecting back on
that experience, I realized how ridiculous I was to be afraid of failing at
writing a story, when my Em could master her much greater and important fears.
I vowed to be brave like my Em. Six years later, Love and Other Unknown Variables was on sale in bookstores across
the United States—all because my Em showed me how to be brave.
I tell
this story frequently, but it bears repeating because it’s powerful. I’ve seen
it shake listeners to their core. I’ve had them tell me that they want to try
being brave, too. Most of us, I think, have a thing (or many things) we’re
terrified of trying because what if we fail? Then what? Then we pick ourselves
up and try something new. And we hope for the best. We always hope.
Did
you know from the beginning of Love and
Other Unknown Variables that Becca would get her own story, or did her
story develop later?
Becca got
a chance to tell her story because my editor asked an important question. “What
happens to Becca?”
As soon
as that question was posed, my brain was flooded with questions about Becca’s
life and what it would look like with Charlie off to college and her on her own
again. I didn’t plan on writing a companion, but I’m so grateful that I was
given the chance to tell Becca’s tale in Life
after Juliet.
While it
is quieter than Charlie’s story, it’s just as important. It deals not in the
heart-wrenching stuff of immediate loss, but in the act of putting one’s life
back in order—a new kind of order because there is no going back to the
before—after a loved one leaves.
Are
you a plotter or a pantser?
Pantser.
Outlines creep me out.
Are
any of your characters inspired by people you know?
Not
really, or rather, not intentionally. I realized after finishing Life after Juliet that Max Herrera’s artist
father, Dezi, is very much like an old high school friend’s artist father, Bob
Pittman. And Dezi’s studio was very much a copy of Mr. Pittman’s cramped studio
in the room off the kitchen of their old house. It wasn’t intentional, and Dezi
and Mr. Pittman are not the same man, but their hearts feel similar to me, and
I guess I borrowed from my memories without realizing it.
Is
there one book that first inspired your love of reading? If so, what book?
There are
too many books! I do remember Charlotte’s Web, Bridge to Terabithia, and Where
the Red Fern Grows as being seminal in my love of reading. Each of them made me
cry. I remember being shocked and impressed that I could feel so much just from
reading words on a page.
What
is one piece of writing advice you would give to aspiring writers?
Get a
good (and by good I mean tough) critique group. Everyone loves to be praised,
but we grow from failure not success, so find people who will point out your
writing failures and work with you to turn them into successes.
What
type of research have you had to do for Love
and Other Unknown Variables and Life
After Juliet?
I had to
do lots of math and science research for LAOUV. Math was not my favorite
subject in school, mostly because I had a few mean math teachers who told me I
was stupid. Charlie, the main character in LAOUV, loves math. In order to be
sure I could understand the way he thinks, I had to do some reading on mathematical
theory and physics, too. I really enjoyed it all, despite growing up thinking I
was a math idiot.
I did
less research with LAJ because I spent my high school years hanging out in the
theater. That setting came natural to me. I did do research on welding,
sculpture, and South American folklore. That was fun research. It was easy to
lose many hours looking at beautiful scultptures and imagining how they were
made.
What
do you like to do when you are not writing?
I love to
read. I also like hanging with my husband and kids around the fire pit,
watching movies, or playing board games. I’m also into yoga. Admittedly, I need
to spend more time on my mat though.
If
people could only take away one thing from your novels, what would you want
that one thing to be?
Hope.
Do
you enjoy book to movie adaptations? Would you ever want your novels turned
into films?
I enjoy a
good book to movie adaptation. I love the Harry
Potter movies. And the Hunger Games
movies were entertaining. To Kill a
Mockingbird is one of the best movie adaptations I’ve ever seen. Normally,
I’m pretty good about being able to separate the movie from the book. I try to
enjoy the movie on it’s own and not spend the whole time picking it apart and
pointing out all the ways it’s different from the book. They’re two very
different mediums.
I’d be
interested to see what a talented screenwriter, director, and cast would do
with either of my books. I bet it’d be really strange though to watch something
based off my work that isn’t actually mine.
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