Ballads of Suburbia by Stephanie Kuehnert

BALLADS OF SUBURBIA

by Stephanie Kuehnert

Edgy Young Adult
Young Adult
www.StephanieKuehnert.com

3 Signed Copies will be given away on Friday, August 7, 2009!



About the Book:

Kara hasn't been back to Oak Park since the end of junior year, when a heroin overdose nearly killed her and sirens heralded her exit. Four years later, she returns to face the music. Her life changed forever back in high school: her family disintegrated, she ran around with a whole new crowd of friends, she partied a little too hard, and she fell in love with gorgeous bad-boy Adrian, who left her to die that day in Scoville Park....Amid the music, the booze, the drugs, and the drama, her friends filled a notebook with heartbreakingly honest confessions of the moments that defined and shattered their young lives. Now, finally, Kara is ready to write her own.




Read our exclusive interview with Stephanie Kuehnert!

1) Ballads of Suburbia deals with a pretty weighty topic: a drug overdose. What compelled you to tackle this subject matter?
I didn’t necessarily set out to write a book about drugs, but that is the direction it went, so I followed my characters there. I’m not afraid to go into the dark places even though it is very hard to do as a writer sometimes because you go through the emotions and experiences with your characters, or at least I do. And for me, it meant reliving some experiences in my own life that were very difficult.

In real life, toward the end of my teenage years and into my early twenties, I watched addiction destroy the lives of people I cared about. To quote Social Distortion, “I got friends who are in prison/Friends who are dead…. I can’t help but wonder/Don’t ya know it coulda been me.” When all that was happening, when I was struggling with self-injury and my friends were struggling with other addictions, I kept looking for an honest story about it. Not an afterschool special that was preachy, but something real. I often say I write the stories I was looking for as a teenager and that was definitely the case with Ballads.

2) This is ultimately a book about coming home and facing what you left behind. What’s the biggest challenge you’ve ever had to face in coming back to your hometown?
Like Kara, I had to face old memories and old fears. I left my hometown when I was 17. I graduated high school early just to escape it. I came back when I was 21 because I wanted to go to a nearby college with an excellent creative writing program. When I got “home,” I had to put into perspective who I had been and who I’d become. I was a very troubled teenage girl who’d gone through an abusive relationship and responded to it and to other problems in my life by abusing myself or escaping into substances. When I ran into people I used to party with, I had to remind myself to stay in control or to walk away from them completely in order to stay productive. When I encountered my abuser--every day for a month on the L platform I would take to school--I had to stay strong, pretend I didn’t know him and I didn’t care because I was a different person. I was someone he couldn’t touch. It was good to come back though and see for myself that I could reach my dreams even in the place where I’d lived through so many nightmares.

3) This is now your second novel, the first was I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone which has been nominated for TONS of awards! Was it true what they say about “the second book curse?” Was it infinitely harder to write than the first?

It was harder, but not in the ways you’d expect. You see, I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone took so long to sell that I’d already written a draft of Ballads by the time it did. So I wasn’t worried about all the marketing type stuff or how this book fit with my first one or anything when I did the initial writing at least.

Of course by the time I was doing revisions on Ballads, IWBYJR had come out and I had the voice of critics in my head and I took that criticism very hard, which was both good and bad. I wanted to surpass IWBYJR. I wanted the book to come across as authentic and real as possible and that meant really get closer and closer to the emotions of the characters. They deal with some painful things, things I coped with myself as a teenager, so I had go into that headspace again and it was really, really hard. I joke (though it’s not really funny) that I had a few nervous breakdowns while writing this book because I was trying to make it as honest and raw and real as humanly possible. I think that ultimately it is a much better book than IWBYJR and I hope other people will to and it won’t be cursed!

4) Punk Rock music is a common theme in your books. Does this come from a personal love of the genre?

Yes. I fell in love with punk rock when I was 12. I was kid who didn’t feel like I fit anywhere, and I saw those feelings and my inner frustrations reflected in the sound and lyrics of punk music. Punk saved my life, helped me find my voice, and it will always be the type of music I love the most.

5) What’s up for you next? Will there be a book 3?

I’m in that early phase where I have a bunch of different ideas and I’m struggling to figure out what I like best. But yes, as long as publishers keep buying my books there will be a book 3 and books 4, 5, 6, etc. Book three will probably be another realistic, contemporary fiction story. But I also am toying with my own re-telling of the Persephone myth and of a post-apocalyptic story of sorts. So expect some different things in the future though I’m sure music and punk-rock sensibilities will always make their way into my books.

6) And I just have to ask, how do you pronounce your name???

Hee, hee, it’s Key-nert. Such a simple sound from such a complicate spelling!

Also, be sure to check out Stephanie's first novel, I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone


About the Author:

Stephanie Kuehnert got her start writing bad poetry about unrequited love and razor blades in eighth grade. In high school, she discovered punk rock and produced several D.I.Y. feminist Õzines. She received her MFA in creative writing from Columbia College Chicago and lives in Forest Park, Illinois. This is her second novel. Visit her web site at: www.StephanieKuehnert.com

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