Sensational 7 Q & A with Phoebe Kitanidis!

Have you ever wanted to know what it would be like to hang out with your favorite author(s)? In an attempt to get a better understanding of authors, my Sensational Seven Q & A takes a closer or more personal look at these authors to give you a glimpse of the personalities behind the writing of your favorite books.

“Talent alone cannot make a writer. There must be a man behind the book; a personality which, by birth and quality, is pledged to the doctrines there set forth, and which exists to see and state things so, and not otherwise.” By Ralph Waldo Emerson

Phoebe Kitanidis is a Greek-American writer, author of the YA novel Whisper. She is currently at work on a second teen novel titled Summer Falls. Phoebe grew up in a variety of places, including Athens, Greece; the American Midwest; and the San Francisco Bay Area. She attended five elementary schools and has moved more than twenty times. After her graduation from U.C. Berkeley, she taught Language Arts, then worked in a few high-tech corporate offices. In 2004, she earned her M.A. in Communication from San Jose State University. That year, she also traded the Bay Area's sunshine for cloudy Seattle, where she began her writing career.

A six-year contributor to Discovery Girls magazine, Phoebe Kitanidis wrote Fab Girls Guide to Friendship Hardship as well as dozens of articles for tween girls. Now a full-time novelist and settled Seattle transplant, she lives with her partner, Robert, and their grey cat, Myst. Her current novel, Whisper hits shelves April 27th!

If you were given a chance to travel back in time, what year or place would you go / Why?

Ooh, great question! Assuming it's not a permanent deal, and that I could push the red emergency button anytime and wake up in my apartment in 2010... I'd want to take it all the way back--Paleolithic, baby. I know; the dawn of humanity puts people off, on account of its butterfly life-spans, intense exercise, mammoths goring you to death all the time... but that's just the downside. Stone Age hunter gatherers actually lived in the environment our minds evolved in. Unlike us, their descendants, who inherited all their weird instincts but don't know what to do with them. They also enjoyed more leisure time than any more modern societies have since. Time for art, music, and ritual. Who am I kidding? I wouldn't last five minutes without my laptop.

Describe your novel in seven words or less?

Teen sisters hear people's wishes: danger ahead.

Please share with us about your favorite book and fictional crush to date?
Despite the fact that I read hundreds of novels per year and not even one tenth as much poetry, my favorite book is The Collected Works of Rumi.

My crushes, they're a bit nerdly. How nerdly? Like, Wolverine (or maybe I just have a crush on Hugh Jackman). And then there's my bipolar, alien, dwarf boyfriend, Miles Vorkosigan. If the above two suggest a pattern, I seem to crush on characters who cannot help being freakishly different, but who turn it into a strength and use that strength for good. (Characters who aren't a force for good in the world get uncrush-worthy for me really fast.)

If you could be any character in fiction, whom would you be / Why?
Truthfully, if a character is fully developed and real and human, then I wouldn't want to step into their shoes. I'm already human, and not at all anxious to trade my own flawed hand for someone else's. I'd pick a simple icon... James Bond, say. (Yes, really. It's time there was a female Bond anyway!) He's constantly being plunged into thrilling new experiences, from which he always comes out unruffled and unscathed. The only thing I can compare that to in real life is... being a reader.

If Hollywood made a movie about your life, whom would you like to see play the lead role as you/ Why?

Hmm. Ask me again in thirty years, because at the moment no one in Hollywood looks remotely like me. It's a miracle my self esteem is intact! :) Seriously though, I do hope that before my career's over mainstream movies will be celebrating and including a wider variety of ethnic looks and body types. I do think it's headed in that direction and that makes me glad for girls growing up today.

For actresses, I'm thinking someone with a good sense of humor and who isn't afraid to look silly onscreen--like Drew Barrymore

If someone wrote a biography about you, what do you think the title should be – please explain?
"Guaranteed To Blow Your Mind." No, just kidding. I would like for each of my books to make readers think about something in a whole new way, but I don't see myself as biography-worthy... so a good title might be, "OMG: We Don't Know What Possessed Us to Publish This Tome About Some Writer Lady."

How would you describe yourself/life in seven words?
I'll steal a line from one of my favorite musical artists, Ben Folds, from his classic song "Philosophy:" "Crazy, but I get the job done." That goes for me and life, equally.

Bonus:

**Is there any additional info you would like to share with your readers about what’s next for you and your books?**.

Right now I'm working on a second YA paranormal called SUMMER FALLS. It's got a lot more romance than Whisper did, and is set in a creepy little tourist town with ghosts, pretty waterfalls, and malfunctioning memories. I am having the time of my life writing it and can't wait for it to be out there next year.

Thanks Phoebe for stopping by!

For more information about Phoebe Kitanidis and her books, please visit her website here.