BOOKS

AUTHOR CRUSH FRIDAY: COLE GIBSEN

Glitter girls, you have pressing questions for your favorite authors and we have their answers. Welcome to our  weekly segment, Author Crush Fridays.

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We love asking questions and we love the answers from some of our favorite authors. Today we’re talking to Cole Gibsen, author of Life Unaware (Apr. 28, 2015; Entangled Teen).  Thank you for talking to us today, Cole! We’re honored!

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GLITTER: For those who haven’t read your work yet, how would you describe your writing style?  

COLE: Gah. What a tough question! To describe my own writing is like trying to describe my face to a sketch artist. I’m not sure  I can. Though I have been told by an editor that my style can be described as a commercial/literary hybrid. So I’ll go with that.

GLITTER: What one message would you like readers to walk away with when they’re done Life Unaware?

COLE: I’ve always been fond of the saying, “Be more kind than you have to be. Everyone you meet is fighting their own battle.” Now, I’d hate to tell any reader what message to take away from my books. That’s for them to determine. But it was the above saying I kept in mind the entire time I wrote Life Unaware. You never know what battles the people around you are fighting, despite their outward appearance.

GLITTER: How much of your own life experience went into writing Life Unaware?

COLE: Oh gosh. I was bullied all throughout my teen years, both at school and in my own home. I know what it’s like to be laughed at, ridiculed, and tormented on a daily basis. So I drew up on those experiences while writing in what I hope is a very real, organic way. I also suffer from anxiety and panic attacks like Regan, the main character. Her panic attacks are exact descriptions of my own.

GLITTER: What one book do you wish you had as a teen that teens have access to now?

COLE: Too many to list! Anything by Courtney Summer, A.S. King, Cheryl Rainfield, Andrew Smith, Ellen Hopkins, and Heather Brewer just to name a few.

GLITTER: Some might say that your book has a lot of cursing in it. Was it necessary to move the story forward?

COLE: Such a great question. I never cussed as a teen, and that’s not because I was overly polite or anything. I grew up in an abusive household where if I stuck a pinky toe out of line there would be hell to pay. I only recently started cussing–and actually I enjoy it quite a lot–because it’s my own way of proving to myself I’m safe now. I’m an adult and can make my own choices.

I have to admit though, when I began drafting character sheets and developing the voices for each character, I heard them cussing to each other, all snarky, in my head almost immediately. I wasn’t comfortable with it because I still sometimes equate cussing with getting punished. But in the end, I couldn’t censor their organic voices for the sake of my comfort. It was a learning and healing experience for me to the let the characters go and speak how they wanted to.

GLITTER: Did you always want to be an author? Did you ever feel like giving up? Did you receive rejection letters in the beginning? How did you get over them?

COLE: I was writing stories the moment I learned how to hold a pencil. I didn’t give much thought to becoming an author growing up, though. I lived with someone who was fond of telling me how stupid I was. And I was sure you had to be smart to be an author, so I didn’t have the confidence to try until I was in my late twenties.

My first novel didn’t sell. And it took me over two years and two hundred rejections to land my first agent. Then it took another year and over a dozen rejections with publishers to sell my debut. I felt like giving up at least twenty times a day. I felt like I was becoming the failure I was told I would be. Thankfully I have the world’s best husband and a whole group of perfectly damaged misfit friends, just like myself, to encourage me when I stumble.

GLITTER: What is one thing your fans might not know about you?

COLE: I was homeless half my senior year of high school. I spent that time living with friends, sharing an apartment with a stripper, and sleeping out of my 1985 Volkswagen Jetta.

GLITTER: What are you currently working on?

COLE: I’m currently working on a Jane Austin/Perks of Being a Wallflower hybrid that is currently breaking my heart and healing it with every word written.

Cole Gibsen author photo

Cole Gibsen first realized she different when, in high school, she was still reading comic books while the other girls were reading fashion magazines.

It was her love of superheroes that first inspired her to pick up a pen. Her favorite things to write about are ordinary girls who find themselves in extraordinary situations.

www.colegibsen.com

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