JOS: I did, yeah. I had written another novel that was middle grade, which I always thought was what I’d write. I’ve rewritten it about sixteen or seventeen times. I had an agent, but for my nonfiction. I gave my middle-grade to my agent and she said, “I can’t really tell you what it is, but it’s not right.” She said, “If you’re trying to write YA, YA’s all about voice.” I had received some feedback that it was too overwritten, too controlled by the narrator. You could feel it. And so, I decided, “All right, I’m going to write a YA all about voice.”
SRJ: And you succeeded!
JOS: That’s what [Between Two Skies] came out as. So, even though she didn’t sell anything for me, she gave me the advice that created this book. One little bit of advice. You never know where these things are going to come from.
SRJ: Do you have a process?
JOS: My thing is always tricking myself into doing it. I’ll start with “Chapter One Experiment” so I don’t feel like I’m committing to anything. And, like I said, it always starts with a character and a snatch of dialogue, just somebody says something in my head to somebody else. And then I wonder why they’re saying