by C. Leigh Purtill
Young AdultRazorbill
www.LeighPurtill.com
We're giving away 2 signed copies (one of each) on December 5, 2008.
ALL ABOUT VEE
Veronica May (“Big Vee”) is a bubbly, gorgeous, confident, eighteen-year-old theater actress from Chester, Arizona. She is also two hundred pounds. She puts off college, her life, and her questions about her mother’s death twelve years earlier to care for her widowed father.
Then Daddy announces that he’s going to remarry and Veronica feels replaced. She decides, then and there, it’s time for Big Vee to shine! She escapes Arizona and follows in the footsteps of her mother, who was an aspiring actress, to Hollywood.
Between shifts with a cute co-worker at the local coffee bar, Vee auditions, falls in love, dumps a toxic friend, learns to deal with love and loss, and finally, finds her place in the spotlight.
LOVE, MEG
Fans of Sarah Dessen’s Just Listen will fall in love with this gorgeously written story of one girl’s search for her family and herself.
Sixteen-year-old Meg Shanley has to start life over again in Los Angeles because her thirtyyear- old sister Lucie can’t get it together. Lucie is always chasing a new man, quitting her job, and packing up their lives. Meg wishes she didn’t have to count on Lucie, but she’s the only family Meg has ever known.
Then a man arrives on their doorstep and reveals a shocking truth: Back in New York Meg has an uncle, a grandmother, and a father who might not even know she exists. Meg sees an opportunity to have the family she’s always dreamed about. She summons all her will, defies Lucie, and travels to New York.
But happiness, she discovers, doesn’t lie in a new family. Instead it rests in the true source of her inner strength; in a secret that has been buried deep inside her heart.
1) I’ve noticed that both of these books involve a character’s move to Los Angeles. Is there something specific that inspired this?
Yes: me! For most of my life, I have always been the odd girl out, the new kid in class, the fish out of water. My family moved a lot when I was growing up and that sort of led me to the bad habit of changing colleges and jobs and cities as an adult. Since I’m basically a very shy person, all the moves I made led me to be an observer more often than a participant (it’s no wonder I got my undergraduate degree in Anthropology!).
The move from New York City to Los Angeles was probably the biggest I’d ever made and it didn’t occur to me that it was a big deal until about six months in. That’s when I came up with the character of Veronica and her friends, the Vees (ALL ABOUT VEE was written first but published second) and put them in the strange and wondrous world of LA.
Meg (from LOVE, MEG) had a more direct connection to me and my nomadic life: she and her sister Lucie move at least once a year and that impermanence has a very dramatic effect on her personality, much as it did on mine, although I think Meg ends up far stronger than I ever could be given her situation.
2) When you set out to write a book, are you usually sparked by a story idea or a character?
It’s sort of a simultaneous spark of creativity – kind of a “perfect storm” of events in my brain that gives eventual rise to a book: a character and story germ at the same moment. I have, in the past, come up with great characters that I love but I’ve never been able to place them in a story and vice versa, great story ideas that I’ve never found a main character to carry, and those bits have languished in drawers and in folders on my desktop. Every so often, when I’m at loose ends, I’ll revisit those characters and bits of ideas and see if I can make something gel but more often than not, the answer is no – or a short story. Sometimes a great character can handle a short story but not an entire novel.
On those rare occasions when I get the character and her story, then I let them sort of hang out in my brain for a while as I develop the outline and come up with some scenes that I think represent both. Not until the character’s voice is knocking on the inside of my head and that’s all I can hear, do I sit down and begin to write.
3) Any quirky writing habits? Lucky sweat pants? Music soundtrack? Special food?
Readers of my blog know that I cannot write without wearing a bra! Because I work at home (writing at my kitchen table in my tiny apartment), I feel like anything less than being full clothed (i.e. wearing sweatpants or no shoes) means I’m just being lazy. I’m also a firm believer in the power of showers and long walks, and on those occasions when I’m at a loss during a scene and my outline is no help, I’ll jump in the shower or take a walk and usually the answer will present itself. Back when I was in grad school and writing screenplays, I used to take a couple of (very long) showers every day and my landlady used to yell at me: “Why are you in the shower so much? You’re using all my hot water!” I really couldn’t explain to her that I did my best thinking underwater. She had a blind Pekinese dog that walked into walls a lot so she never really took to my responses.
4) I read online that you’re also a ballerina? Does your love of dance rub off on any of your characters?
I did have a couple of short dance scenes in LOVE, MEG, based on a ballet school where I used to take classes in NYC, but so far, I have not been able to translate my love of dance to my books. I tried a couple of times with a book about an older woman (like me!) who becomes a professional ballerina but I was never able to strike the right tone for the book: it was either too flippant or too serious. I think I will eventually (and I do have an idea for a book that does involve dance) but I’m so close to the subject that I get wrapped up in all the details.
5) What’s in store for you next?
I’ve just finished a new manuscript that involves – yes, you guessed it! – a character who moves from a tiny town in Massachusetts to Los Angeles. And while a few big name actors and singers make appearances, it’s not a celebrity-worship story, nor is it a wish fulfillment story. LA is simply there with all of its weird quirks.
I’m also in the middle of an urban fantasy that I really love! I’m very excited about it because it’s the sort of thing that I wish would happen to me! There are not many of my books that I can say that about. Most of the time I thank god my stories never did happen to me!
About the Author:
C. Leigh Purtill was born in Frankfurt, Germany and grew up in various towns on the east coast. She received a BA in Anthropology with a minor in Dance from Mount Holyoke, graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.
She received a Master’s degree in film production from Boston University. She lives in LA, where she works as a standards editor for such shows as The Gilmore Girls and 7th Heaven. (Yes, this means she gets to watch television for a living.)
For more information about Leigh and her novels, please visit: www.LeighPurtill.com
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