Interview With Krysten Lindsay Hager

I am delighted to be welcoming Krysten Lindsay Hager on the blog for an interview! She's been here before, but since the questions have changed I wanted to interview her again. Here's a bio about here:

Krysten Lindsay Hager writes about friendship, self-esteem, fitting in, frenemies, crushes, fame, first loves, and values. She is the author of True Colors, Best Friends...Forever?, Next Door to a Star,  Landry in Like, Competing with the Star, Dating the It Guy,  Can Dreams Come True, and In Over Her Head: Lights, Camera, Anxiety. True Colors, won the Readers Favorite award for best preteen book and the Dayton Book Expo Bestseller Award for children/teens. Best Friends…Forever won the Readers’ Favorite Silver Medal. Competing with the Star is a Readers' Favorite Book Award Finalist. Landry in Like is a Literary Classics Gold Medal recipient.

Krysten's work has been featured in USA Today, The Flint Journal, the Grand Haven Tribune, the Beavercreek Current, the Bellbrook Times, Springfield News-Sun, Grand Blanc View, Dayton Daily News and on Living Dayton.

And onto the interview!

In your own writing, which character of yours do you relate to most?
Cecily is a lot like me in terms of our sense of humor and how we look at the world. She’s a lot more organized and worried about schoolwork than I ever was though! Landry was a lot like me in middle school and Emme is a lot like me in high school.

Do you read your own genre? Is it a favourite?
I love reading YA. I tend to reread YA books a lot, too. I also love mysteries and biographies.

If you had to describe your style in three words, what would they be?
My books always contain humor, hope, and make you feel like the storyline could really happen even if it involves a dating a rock star! I got a review once that called my writing, “funny, lively, and very real,” and that’s become my tagline.

What was the first story you ever told?
When I was a kid, I used to watch soap opera dramas and I would get frustrated with the cliffhangers, so I would go and get my Barbie dolls and act out how I wanted the storyline to go. That’s how I got started writing stories in the first place.

Was writing always your dream choice of career?
I always loved making up stories as a kid. I also thought about being a screenwriter. I did work as a journalist for a while, but writing was always my first love.

Do you have a writing space? Pictures or descriptions!
I have an office and the back wall has my bookcases. That’s big for me because we moved around a lot and in the last house, I just had a desk in the great room and my books had no permanent home. I love having bookcases so much! I organize my books by genre. I think it’s cute when people do it by color, but that wouldn’t work for me as I like to know where everything is in case I need it fast. I have a desk in the middle of the room and a big table under the windows that I have been using to work through my plots. There are notebooks everywhere.

Playlists? Yes or no? And why?
Love playlists because they’re soundtracks to the books. I make one for each book I write because there’s always a song inspiring me and my writing. The fact the Cecily Taylor Series deals with her dating a musician really brings music into the story as she fell for Andrew as a singer/songwriter way before she ever met him. She feels like he understands her through his lyrics and that’s how I felt about certain songwriters growing up.

Organised or not?
To give you an idea, there’s a pile of notebooks and papers stacked so high on my desk that I had to move them to see the screen. I recently got a new table in my office because my desk isn’t big enough and now my piles of paper have grown—haha!

What's your favourite book you've read?
I loved The Great Gatsby, but not until I read it as an adult. We were assigned it in 7th grade and again in 9th and I couldn’t relate to it then. I read The Bell Jar for the first time in high school and liked it a lot. I like Edith Wharton a lot, too. My favorite YA book is Good-bye Glamour Girl by Erika Tamar.

You can follow Krysten on her website, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

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