Interview

Welcome, and thank you for stopping by! Tell us a little about yourself and your writing goals.

Thanks for having me, Addison! My name’s S. M. James and I’m an author from Aus. My whole writing goal is to create fun, fictional worlds full of characters people can relate to. An all cis, white world seems boring AF to me—there’s no reason diverse characters shouldn’t be the heroes too. So while I wait for my agent to sell my genre works, I’m self publishing contemporary YA that gives LGBT characters their time to shine.

Congratulations on your new release. Please tell us a little bit about it. What’s your favorite aspect or part of the story? Do you have a favorite character? Who/Why?

Yikes, yeah. It’s nerve-wracking stuff, especially as this book kicks off a 6-book series of stand alones PLUS their short stories. So we’ll see how that goes.

That Feeling When is a duel POV YA, which alternates chapters between Landon and Archie as they figure out who they are, and how far they’ll go for love. As for a favourite character, I don’t think there’s any way to pick. I finished writing this book and actually missed these guys, which is one of the totally weird and wonderful things about being a writer. And now I’ve finished writing To Be Honest, I feel the same way about those guys.

As for my favourite part, there’s a certain scene involving a camera, an audition, and a whole lot of trust, that really builds Archie and Landon’s relationship up to another level and was a lot of fun to write. It was great to see Archie finally let go of his insecurities.

What is your favorite under-appreciated novel?

Noah Can’t Even by Simon James Green. Holy moly that book was hilarious and I seriously rec it everywhere I go. I can’t remember a book actually making me laugh out loud before—the situations Noah kept getting himself into just got more and more ridiculous. And the sequel lived up to it, which is always a great surprise. I need to reread this one soon.

Does your research lead to bizarre internet searches? If so, tell us about some of your wackier searches, or ones that would make you nervous if your computer were ever confiscated by law enforcement.

Heh, umm. You could say that. There have been bombs, automatic weapons, and disposing of bodies, because what else do characters in a fantasy novel need to know? For one of my genre novels I had to look up how long it took for a dead body to decompose, and there was this post about ‘Coffin births’ and DON’T LOOK IT UP because gross! So gross! (And if you did look it up, sorry to scar you for life but you were warned.) As you can tell, I’m still not past it.

The most interesting thing I’ve researched for contemporary is anterograde amnesia. Some of the stories from people living with it were almost beyond comprehension. For my next novel, I’m continuing my research into Cystic Fibrosis and the impact it has on day to day life.

Who would play the main characters in a movie about your book?

Haha there’s a reason I don’t cast movies.

I feel like I should have a Pinterest board for this kind of question but it is appallingly hard to find Aboriginal actors. I did watch an interview with Mark Coles Smith once, who may not look exactly like Landon, but had the same kind of boyish charm.

For Archie, man, take your pick. Brenton Thwaites, Billy Unger, Nick Robertson. If they can manage surly and vulnerable, we’re good.

What is your favorite quote?

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry. But why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

(Five guesses what this is from).