Author Interview: Huntley Fitzpatrick + My Life Next Door

I'm really pleased today to be a part of the promotional tour for Huntley Fitzpatrick's contemporary young adult novel My Life Next Door. Thanks to Teen Book Scene, I was able to ask Huntley a few questions about Samantha, Jase, and the entire amazing cast of characters, so I hope you enjoy! This book caught be my surprise in the best possible way (you can read my full review here), and is certainly going to be one I buy a copy of for the keeper shelf so I can read it again and again.

What might Samantha say was the one thing she most admired about the Garrett family from simply observing them? Would she say that one thing changed once she got to know the family as individuals?  

How everything looked easy and was perfect in a more real way than her family defined it. She would say it did change, that every family has its faults and its struggles and its crazy moments that you can’t see from a distance. But those are generally the best and most real of all. 

If you were seventeen again and could have any celebrity or book character climb through your window and fall madly in love with you, who would it be? 

When I was seventeen, having someone climb in through my window and fall for me was a big fantasy of mine. It would have been Pierce Brosnan. I had a picture of him on my wall back then and just thought he was perfect. If I were seventeen now, it would probably be Augustus Waters from John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars. However brief, it would be worth it. I would still open the window for Pierce, though.

Is there one personality trait of Samantha’s (or Jase’s) you wish you possessed, or one you’re most proud of?  

Samantha tries hard to show up for the people she cares about and struggles to do the right thing—I hope I do that. 

What’s the strangest or most inconvenient place you’ve been when an idea for a story has popped into your head? 

I am always ONLY in inconvenient places when I have ideas. On a bike ride, in a shower, at a teacher conference, on a playground with no scrap of paper available for miles. I leave myself a lot of messages on the phone and use my lipstick and store receipts for purposes for which they were not intended.

What’s the very last word you wrote for My Life Next Door and what one word best describes what you were feeling when you wrote it?  

What a great question. The very last word I wrote was the scene at the Garretts where Tim sends Samantha over to talk to her mother and find out what she said to Mrs. Garrett. I’d written the conclusion earlier, but then realized I’d left Tim in the house while all these dramatic things were going on without saying what he was doing. So I figured out he must be outside, smoking. He needed his own last words, so the last words I typed were “Go find out. I’ll man the fort here.” I felt elated and relieved to be finished with the book, but also this sense of incompletion…like…I wonder what happens to Tim now.

Thanks so much for stopping by Huntley! More information on Huntley and My Life Next Door can be found here:

Website
Goodreads
Facebook
Twitter
Amazon buy link

MY LIFE NEXT DOOR (from Goodreads)

“One thing my mother never knew, and would disapprove of most of all, was that I watched the Garretts. All the time.”

The Garretts are everything the Reeds are not. Loud, numerous, messy, affectionate. And every day from her balcony perch, seventeen-year-old Samantha Reed wishes she was one of them . . . until one summer evening, Jase Garrett climbs her terrace and changes everything. As the two fall fiercely in love, Jase's family makes Samantha one of their own. Then in an instant, the bottom drops out of her world and she is suddenly faced with an impossible decision. Which perfect family will save her? Or is it time she saved herself?