An interview with Eileen Cook

The release date is February 5th, so order yours now! To celebrate this momentous occasion, here is an interview with the always kind, and definitely hilarious, Eileen Cook. I asked her to answer five questions, but she couldn’t pass up sharing her most embarrassing moment, so you get the answers to six.

Eileen is a transplanted American who now lives in Vancouver Canada. Her first novel, Unpredictable is out in February. Her next book is a YA tentatively called What Would Alice Do? And will come out in spring of 2009.

What were your favorite books when you were a teen?

I was a huge reader growing up. Books I liked included The Phantom Tollbooth and The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and anything by Judy Blume. I also remember liking The Chocolate War. I still love teen books, Meg Cabot is a favorite, the Harry Potter books, and I enjoy Ally Carter’s Spy series.

What’s the best piece of advice anyone ever gave you (or you learned from a book)?

The best advice I got was to stop worrying about what other people thought of me. There is always someone who will say nasty things or try and bring you down. Now I listen to the opinions of the people I admire and my own heart and I’m much happier.

What’s the riskiest thing you ever did and how did it work out for you?

One of the riskiest things I ever did was to move to Europe/Belgium. I only knew one other person and I didn’t even speak French the national language. I used to have to order food by picking out the few words I knew. “hmmm this is chicken. It could be chicken soup, chicken gizzards or fried chicken…..”

I learned so much by taking this leap and not just French! It was living in Belgium that I wrote my first book. It wasn’t very good, but it was a whole book. I knew then that if I kept at it I would be able to write another book and another until they were good.

Where do you see yourself in ten years?

In ten years I see myself still writing books! I can’t imagine doing anything else I would rather do- unless it is writing books while living in an oceanfront home.

Do you use an outline when writing, or just let it flow and write as fast as you can?

I am someone who just writes the flow, but really wishes I were the kind of person to outline. I love the idea of being organized and I often buy all kinds of office supply stuff with the idea that I’m going to use it to write, I have binders with color tabs, index cards and heaps of notebooks. In the end it never works for me- I have to start at the beginning and see where the story wants to go.

What’s the most embarrassing thing that happened to you in high school?

Sadly for me I have a lot of embarrassing moments from high school, so it’s hard to choose just one. If I had to pick it would be “the milk incident.” I really liked this guy in my class. He invited me over to study. We were having a great time, laughing and joking around. I was starting to think he might like me. His mom invited me to stay for dinner. Heck, this was turning into basically a date- I mean we weren’t studying anymore we were eating! Now I wanted to impress not just the guy, but his parents and older sister. We were all sitting around the table and his dad made a joke. This wouldn’t have been a problem except I had just taken this big drink of milk and I didn’t want to laugh with it in my mouth so I tried to repress the laugh. Never repress the laugh. Milk came spraying out of my nose. It splashed down on the table including the roast that his mom had put there to carve. No one said anything and then his mom got up and removed the roast saying we could have sandwiches. I could tell the guy I liked and his sister were trying hard not to laugh and they couldn’t look at me. I wanted to die. I thought I might die because I’m pretty sure dairy products aren’t good for your sinuses, but no such luck. I had to finish the dinner.

The guy never asked me out. Apparently he didn’t find girls who had a nose like a Las Vegas fountain very attractive.

For more hilarity, visit her website.