(WWDay2) Interview with Heather Davis-- Author of Never Cry Werewolf

What's your best Halloween memory?
Halloween was always very popular around my house because my dad is a joker by nature. I guess my favorite Halloween memory is from when I was about eleven. I built an amazing costume in our basement -- a chocolate chip cookie. It was like a "sandwich board" with two flat sides of the cardboard cookie on my front and back side and I wore a piece of my dad's old brown courduroy pants leg on my head tied like a chip. It was so huge and flat I couldn't sit down.

Anyway, I totally should have won the costume contest at the party I went to, but instead a girl whose mother had sewn her Merlin costume took the prize. So unfair! My dad sent me a Halloween card a few years ago, mentioning that cookie costume -- even he remembered it as pretty great.

Does Halloween inspire you to write more supernatural YA?

Not really. I'm always in the mood for a story beyond the ordinary.

How true do you think those werewolf stories are...?

True. Throughout history people have always been cast out of regular society because of genetic problems or deformities. It's so not right. I think that many of the legends we hear about today - vampires, werewolves -- are all about people who lived differently or had physical challenges or oddities.

What inspired you to write a story about werewolves?

I've always loved the duality of werewolves - the "normal" side you show to the world and your "wolf" that you keep hidden. Also, I used to live in a mountain town filled with deep, dark woods -- that really inspired me to say "what if?"

I adored Never Cry Werewolf! What's next for you?

Thanks! The Clearing is coming out in April 2010 - it's the story of a modern girl who moves to the country to her great aunt's farm to reclaim her life after an abusive relationship. There in the misty clearing at the back of the property she meets a boy stuck in a time loop -- it's always the summer of 1944 for him. They form a unique bond that teaches each of them that letting go and moving on is some times the best thing you can do. It's a serious, romantic YA that is quite different from Werewolf, but I think that readers will connect to the emotional heart of the story. After that... who knows?

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Thanks SO much to Heather for the awesome interview; it was a joy to have her. :) Keep an eye out for a review of Never Cry Werewolf later this week!