Caroline Leavitt and I met through social media. She has additional writing experience as a screenwriter
About Bio
Caroline Leavitt is the New York Times Bestselling author of Pictures of You, Is This Tomorrow, Cruel Beautiful World and 10 other novels, many of which have been on the Best Books of the Year lists. A writing teacher online at both Stanford and UCLA Writing Program Extension, she also works with private clients. Caroline reviews books for The Boston Globe, the San Francisco Chronicle and People Magazine. Her work has appeared in Real Simple, New York Magazine, Salon, The Manifest-Station, and more. A New York Foundation of the Arts Fellow, she is also a Goldenberg Fiction prize winner and a finalist in the Sundance Screenwriters’ lab.
Tell us about yourself
I am a two times New York Times Bestselling author and I write fiction. I believe in karma so I have made it my goal to help other writers when I can. I also am a screenwriter (I have a screenwriting partner, the excellent novelist Gina Sorell, who wrote Mothers and Other Strangers, and we have a film agent shopping our pilot right now.) I’m addicted to books, and I am also a bonafide movieholic, and can sit through four movies in one day. Happily, too.
When did you know you wanted to be an author?
When I was a lonely little asthmatic girl who couldn’t go out to play. I stayed in the library and read and read, and then began to write. Nothing was more fun or more soothing to me! I knew early on that I was going to be a writer, and my sister and I even wrote “novels” together—long stories with chapters that we created and illustrated.
What genres do you like to read? Are these the same genres you write in?
I love literary fiction, and yep, that is what I write in. But I also love psychological sci-fi, too!
Is your book for adults, young adults or children?
Adults.
What is your current release or project?
I have a novel called With or Without You that will be published by Algonquin Books in spring 2020. It’s about a fading rocker, his nurse wife who wants to settle down, and what happens when she has a drastic personality change that dramatically impacts her life, his life, and the life of the young doctor treating her.
Tell us about the key characters
Lucy is a young free spirit in the late 1960s who falls for her high school teacher. Her older, more stable sister, Charlotte is the one who feels she must find her baby sister and rescue her.
What is your blurb or synopsis of the book?
Cruel Beautiful World is set at the time when the peace and love of the late 60s morphed into the dangers of the early 70s. It tells the story of a young high school girl who runs away with her teacher to a supposed back-to-the-land paradise, only to find it a nightmare.
Share an excerpt
https://www.bookbrowse.com/excerpts/index.cfm/book_number/3465/cruel-beautiful-world
Do you have a favorite scene?
Oh, that is like asking me if I have a favorite child! (I do, actually—my one and only child!)
What advice would you give a beginner?
Never ever give up. No matter what anyone says. No does not mean no for everyone—it just means no for that one particular person.
Social media links:
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/carolineleavitt
Twitter @leavittnovelist
Instagram caroline leavitt
Other website carolineleavitt.com with link to my tinyletter newsletter.
Blog link carolineleavittville@blogspot.com
Purchasing links www.indiebound.org