Spotted: CK Kelly Martin + YA Contemporary Giveaway!

Hi everyone! So…it’s been a while since I featured a contemporary author. Today, C. K. Kelly Martin and I have something special in store for you! After reading her novel, The Lighter Side of Life and Death and loving it, I have asked her a few questions. I hope you stick around for a huge giveaway after the interview.

As a female author, how were you able to build Mason's voice?

I’m not someone who sees gender as a binary thing, although we’re overwhelmingly socialized that way. Society loves to box people in! There was an article in the Toronto Star recently about a couple (http://www.parentcentral.ca/parent/babiespregnancy/babies/article/995112--parents-keep-child-s-gender-secret) who are trying to raise their baby in a genderless way, refusing to tell other people whether it’s a boy or a girl. I found it inspiring. In an email the baby’s mother had written on the subject she said, “In fact, in not telling the gender of my precious baby, I am saying to the world, ‘Please can you just let Storm discover for him/herself what s (he) wants to be?!.” Their eldest son, now 5, has also been encouraged by his parents to be who he is without feeling constrained by gender. In a handmade book full of his drawings and poems there was a page where he’d written (in purple and pink lettering), “Help girls do boy things. Help boys do girl things. Let your kid be whoever they are!”

There are definitely very different social rules and expectations assigned to people depending on their gender (and race, age, religion, class, etc.). It’s more socially acceptable for males to be aggressive and angry than it is for them to be sad, for example, whereas females are often regarded as bitchy and overbearing if they act in the exact same way and are expected to be more sensitive and nurturing. Individuals react to the rules placed upon them in various ways depending on their personality.

So mainly I was aware of the different social rules placed on Mason than say, placed on me, and how those would have shaped him, being the person he is, over the years. Other than that his voice, of course, comes from his individual character – that he’s a very easy-going, friendly sixteen-year-old with a passion for acting.

What kind of research did you do for Mason's life as a teenage guy?

I do a lot of sociological reading about teenagers on an ongoing basis and I do things like haunt sex ed sites (to see the types of questions young people are asking) and eavesdrop on real-life conversations whenever I can. But in a way every guy (and not just the guys because like I said, I don’t think people are their gender) I’ve ever hung out with is research. I’m also a big theatre fan (in my case just watching rather than acting) so I felt like I could really connect with Mason’s excitement for the theatre. 

Your book is quite scandalous in the romance department! (But I loved it.) How did you write these scenes? Were you hesitant in some parts? or did it come out naturally?

I’m so glad you liked it! I try to write about sex in an open but not overly graphic way. I don’t want to sensationalize but neither do I want to skip the scenes entirely because it's an important subject that teens are dealing with and thinking about in their own lives. Basically I just aim to be honest. It’s the same way that I’ve written about sex in all my young adult books. It does come pretty naturally but not long ago I wrote a book with a twenty-year-old main character and I noticed that with that book I felt free to go a bit further with the sex scenes so obviously some part of my brain is aware of who the readership for a novel will be.

In writing this contemporary novel, did you base some of the parts on real-life experiences (whether it is yours or other people's experiences)

None of the scenes come directly from life but I think there are always some indirect overlaps, like when I was in university I used to sometimes run into this guy I’d gone to high school with on the bus. He was nineteen and was going out with someone who was twenty-seven and at the time that seemed like a notable age difference to me (though I didn’t consciously think about that when I started writing Lighter Side).

There’s a scene in Lighter Side where Miracle doesn’t want to meet an actor she and Mason just watched in a play because her admiration for him is so strong that it’s freaking her out and I can definitely get like that. When I hero worship someone being in their presence makes me so nervous that I either don’t know what to say or I can’t stop talking. Years and years ago I once waited outside a theatre for Canadian stage actor Brent Carver and thank God he was supremely nice and listened to me rave about great he was in, like, the ten plays I’d seen him in.    

As for Mason and Kat getting together after a party in Chapter One, I think we all either know people who have done things they regret after drinking too much or have been those people ourselves. And I think the worry about crossing a friendship line – that it could either potentially mean a terrific evolution of your relationship or that it could break your friendship entirely – is a pretty common one that I’ve certainly had myself in the past.

What do you want your readers to pick up from your novel?

I think one big thing is that it’s best to be honest about your emotions because Mason and Kat initially aren’t (Mason doesn’t even tell her that it’s his first time!) and later Mason’s expectations of his relationship with Colette are also markedly different than hers are. A lot of things get messed up when people refuse to be truthful.

In my opinion tricky topics are the ones which need talking about the most, dragging out into the light, so although some people will be uncomfortable about the age difference between Mason (sixteen) and Colette (twenty-four by the end of the book) maybe reading this book will show them how a relationship like that can come to happen, whether they agree with it or not. There are a ton of gray areas in life and I would hope my books generally would encourage people not to be judgmental of others because they, or someone they know, might act a similar way in a similar situation.

Thanks very much for the interview, Precious! It’s been fun chatting with you. 

*CLOSED* YA Contemporary Giveaway! *CLOSED*

C.K. was so generous and so awesome to offer her books to two lucky winners! One main winner and one runner up. The best part is that this is open internationally!

Runner up prize pack consists of:

Signed paperback copies of C. K.’s summer books – One Lonely Degree and The Lighter Side of Life and Death

Main prize pack consists of:

• Signed paperback copy of One Lonely Degree 
• Signed paperback copy of The Lighter Side of Life and Death 
• The winner’s choice of an Amazon.com, Amazon.ca or Amazon.co.uk gift certificate for $25 or the equivalent in British pounds (£15) 
• A copy of her upcoming book, My Beating Teenage Heart (C. K. will forward this to the winner when it’s released at the end of September)

Rules:

Be a follower.

Leave your email address (so I can contact you if you win)

Open internationally!

Ends on July 1, 2011!

Extra entries (not required):

+1 Tell me which one of C.K.’s books are you most looking forward to reading!

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