Joining us today is Melissa Burmester, author of the young adult novel, Ginger High. Melissa is presently living in East Moriches, NY, with her twin brother George, her parents and their cat Cosmo. Melissa has been writing about vampires and the supernatural since the age of twelve. She has written a few short stories, but Ginger High is her first novel. She is presently attending Westhampton Beach High School, and is entering the tenth grade. She is planning a career as a writer and a teacher.
Q. Thank you for this interview, Melissa. Can we begin by having you tell us why you chose young adult fantasy to write?
In young adult fantasy you can put whatever you feel like it. You could put aliens, vampires, werewolves, and other nonexistent beings. You don’t need to look up anything and you can make the whole thing up.
Q. Did you outline before you wrote your book or did you just go with the flow?
The first rough draft was the outline for the book but there were a lot of great changes from the draft to the book now. Many of the unnecessary characters were removed and the flow of events was made smoother. The first draft made no sense and a lot of necessary items were left out so I was glad when I rewrote it.
Q. Who was your favorite character in Ginger High and why?
My favorite character in this book is Amanta’s younger brother, Taeru. No matter what happens, he still finds a way to make people laugh even if he is making a fool out of himself to cute ladies passing by.
Q. Who was your least favorite character?
This question goes to Siege. Siege confuses other people and he also confuses himself at times. Siege ends up giving the main characters advice even thought he despises them.
Q. Can you tell us about the setting and why you chose it?
About half of the book’s setting is near where I live (Long Island) so it was easy to write because I knew already where everything was and what places were best for certain parts in my book. For the location of the school, I chose near the Hudson River because it was the closest river in New York from Long Island. I could have used the Mohawk River but it’s a small river and not as well known as the Hudson. For the parallel world, Animist, I based it on the middle ages. The age where there were Knights and Kings really amazed me. Animist means the belief that nature has a soul and during the Kings Age (Middle Ages), there wasn’t much toxics and chemicals from cars or power plants going into the atmosphere so I thought Animist would be a perfect name for that world.
Q. What was the hardest part to write?
There was no hard part to write for this novel. The only hard part was the editing progress. This is my first novel so I missed putting some important information in the book. My editor, Michelle, took the time to help me through it.
Q. What was the inspiration behind the story? Where were you when you came up with the idea?
The anime show Mew Mew Power helped me think of the idea for this book. I watched the show when I was about eleven and loved the idea of young girls being able to turn into animals to save the world from Aliens. I was sitting on the couch with my brother watching the show when I came up with the idea. For the character names, Amanta was taken from a lesson in Social Studies when I was in sixth grade. At first his name was spelt with an H but over the years I kept on forgetting to put in the H so it ended up Amanta. I don’t remember where I got the idea Taeru because I didn’t have that name in my sixth grade writing journal. I had Amanta, Daisy, Rachel, Ricky, and Chris but not Taeru, Matthias, or anyone else.
