#MeetTheNewbs Kate Scelsa Author of Fans of the Impossible Life (10 Facts + Giveaway)

Welcome to Meet The Newbies, a co-hosted event from Rachel @ A Perfection Called Books and I, in which we introduce you to all of the new kids in school aka the 2015 debut authors. 

Meet the debut:

Writer of books and plays and performing member of theater company Elevator Repair Service since 2002. Grew up in New Jersey, went to Sarah Lawrence College, and now lives in Brooklyn with her wife and two black cats. Current interests include: angsty singing ladies, interior revolutions and exterior adornments. Also - nostalgia as an art form. And - spiritual conspiracy theories.

Author Links:
Twitter | Website | Goodreads

Meet her debut novel:

Title: Fans of The Impossible Life
Author: Kate Scelsa
Genre: YA Contemporary
Pages: 368
Releases: September 8th, 2015 by Balzar + Bray

Book Description:

This is the story of a girl, her gay best friend, and the boy in love with both of them. Ten months after her recurring depression landed her in the hospital, Mira is starting over as a new student at Saint Francis Prep. She promised her parents she would at least try to act like a normal, functioning human this time around, not a girl who sometimes can’t get out of bed for days on end, who only feels awake when she’s with Sebby. Jeremy is the painfully shy art nerd at Saint Francis who’s been in self-imposed isolation after an incident that ruined his last year of school. When he sees Sebby for the first time across the school lawn it’s as if he’s been expecting this blond, lanky boy with a mischievous glint in his eye. Sebby, Mira’s gay best friend, is a boy who seems to carry sunlight around with him like a backlit halo. Even as life in his foster home starts to take its toll, Sebby and Mira together craft a world of magic rituals and secret road trips, designed to fix the broken parts of their lives. As Jeremy finds himself drawn into Sebby and Mira’s world, he begins to understand the secrets that they hide in order to protect themselves, to keep each other safe from those who don’t understand their quest to live for the impossible. A captivating and profound debut novel, "Fans of the Impossible Life" is a story about complicated love and the friendships that change you forever.

Goodreads | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

10 Facts about FANS OF THE IMPOSSIBLE LIFE

1.     My character Sebby was inspired by Sebastian Flyte in Evelyn Waugh’s book “Brideshead Revisted.” There are a bunch of Brideshead references in the book in honor of the original Sebastian. If you have not read Brideshead or watched the BBC miniseries of Brideshead, it is time to either get yourself a copy or head on over to YouTube where you can find the full miniseries. Quick!

2.     I wrote and edited a lot of FANS when I was performing onstage during a show called “Gatz,” an eight hour long marathon performance that uses the entire text of “The Great Gatsby.” The show took place in an office and I played a secretary who sat in a cubicle for much of the eight hours, so you could only see me from the shoulders up. We performed this show on and off for about nine years, at venues all around the world. Two of the most exciting places we toured were the Sydney Opera House and the Noel Coward Theatre on the West End in London. I got a lot of good writing done in London.

3.     In honor of my time spent performing a “Gatz,”a major plot point in FANS revolves around the end of chapter two in “The Great Gatsby” when Nick Carraway gets drunk at a party at Myrtle’s apartment and seems to not really remember what happens but somehow ends up in this guy’s bedroom looking at his “portfolio” while the guy’s in his underwear. It’s my favorite chapter in the book, because we got to perform it in “Gatz” as a big crazy office party where we kind of trash the place. But in the next scene we would have to clean it up. Which was less fun.

4.     Mountain View, where the book takes place, is a fictional town, but it is based on the area that I grew up in in Northern New Jersey. I wanted to convey that feeling of living so close to New York City but not being quite there. Feeling like a savvy kid for knowing New York, but still being very much a product of the suburbs.

5.     The thrift store that my characters shop in is based on a real thrift store, not in New Jersey but in Minneapolis. When I was on tour in Minneapolis with the theater company I worked for, about ten of us used our day off to go on an epic thrifting binge. We were completely high on thrifting. It was incredible.

6.     I listened to a lot of Diamond Rings when I was writing the book.

7.     I listened to a lot of Fiona Apple when I was revising the book.

8.     FANS is written in the first, second, and third person.

9.     I was working on FANS for so many years that I had to keep changing my references. My characters used to shop at Borders Books. They used to watch DVDs (which I guess technically people still do, but it was starting to seem dated). I had to keep making the drinks at the bar in Provincetown more expensive.

10. When you read this book, you will be inspired to take a pilgrimage to Provincetown, which I refer to as “the gayest beach town North of Fire Island” (many straight people also enjoy Provincetown). I have been many places in the world and Ptown is still the most magical to me. It’s a tiny town at the tip of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. It takes a long time to get there from almost anywhere, and no one just drives through, because there’s nowhere to drive through to. You go to Ptown because you must go to Ptown.

FANS OF THE IMPOSSIBLE LIFE comes out 9/8/15 from HarperCollins/Balzer+Bray

www.katescelsa.com

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