I have to admit, when I first heard of Sara Zarr, my immediate thought was, “Wow. Is that the coolest writer name ever? Yes, I think so.” Sara and I share an agent, which is how I first found out about her, but I know her fantastic books, Story of a Girl and Sweethearts would’ve come my way and made me a reader and a fan even if we hadn’t had that connection. Not to mention, she’s an extremely nice person and very helpful to this newbie, answering my panicked emails about editing procedure very quickly, and reassuring me it will all work out!

Here are the nine questions Sara wanted to answer.

1. What’s on your iPod or CD player? I just put my iPod on “shuffle songs” to answer this question and here are the first three that came up: (You Come In) Burned by the Dandy Warhols, If We Could Hold Each Other’s Hunger by Peter Himmelman, and One Minute Longer, also Peter Himmelman (so much for shuffle). But, there are 11.2 days worth of music on my iPod, and that’s only like 15 minutes.
2. What do you read in the bathroom? Nothing. The bathroom and reading should never have anything to do with each other.
3. Do you eat right, get plenty of exercise, and sleep eight hours, or do you sit in front of your computer writing all the time? The first one! If I’m not eating right, exercising, and sleeping eight hours I can’t write at all.
4. What’s the riskiest thing you ever did and how did it work out for you? I got married at 19, which I would not generally recommend, and it’s worked out pretty darn well if I do say so myself.
5. What are you reading now? Among other things: Alice Munro’s short story collection RUNAWAY. She is so good!
6. What author or book have you recently discovered that you want the world to know about? I just blurbed a YA novel called The Sky Is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson. I loved it. It was one of those fun/poignant/romantic/dramatic hard-to-put-down books and the main character plays clarinet, which was totally my instrument in grade school and high school.
7. If you could live anywhere for a year, where would it be? And what kind of a place would you live in? Manhattan. But only in a luxury apartment or hotel suite, paid for by someone else, and for no more than a year.
8. When’s the last time you rode a bike? Stationary: yesterday morning, at the gym. Actual: like ten years ago? I’m scared of riding with traffic—cars, people, other bikes, skaters, dogs. I’m sort of scared of a lot of things.
9. Go on, give us some writing advice. You know you want to! Write between the lines. That’s where life is lived. People rarely say exactly what they’re thinking or do exactly what they want to do. Assuming your characters are people, they shouldn’t, either.

Sara Zarr is the acclaimed author of three novels for young adults. Her latest, Once Was Lost, is about a kidnapping in a small town, seen through the eyes of a pastor’s daughter going through a crisis of faith. She lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, and online at www.sarazarr.com

Thanks Sara! And I love your cover!