Author Showcase - Siobhan Collier
22nd August 2022
Throughout August, I've turned my blog over to five authors who write in completely genres different. Each Monday, you'll read a Q&A about their latest book and writing processes.
The author and I would love you to share the blog on your own social channels and PLEASE tag us in. For everyone who shares and tags us both and includes my site name www.loveofbooks.co.uk, I'll send you a little 'thank you' gift, wherever you are in the world*.
*postal address will be required but, in line with UK GDPR regs, not kept. One gift per household.
Socials: Twitter: @sjbwrites
Facebook: For The Love of Books or Sarah Banham or Siobhan Collier
Linked In: Sarah Banham BA (Hons)
Instagram: @s.j.banham @flutterby_cupcake26
This week, the blog is with Siobhan Collier, a debut author of 'How I Got Here'.
1. Tell me why you chose Chicago as the setting.
I didn’t actually set the story in Chicago at first. Originally, the American characters lived near Las Vegas because I wanted a huge distance from England and I wanted it to feel different for Kayleigh, so she would truly be a fish out of water. But then I researched things I needed for the story and I considered the themes of the story, I knew a connection to Las Vegas wasn’t tenable. So I talked to a couple of friends who are stateside, and some of their friends, and explained the way I saw certain things within the storyline - the housing, the mix of ethnicities, certain laws that would have an undertone without being part of the story - and the Mid-West was the ideal location.
Chicago worked well because it has a similarity to London in the way it’s laid out, so instead of it being too different to what Kayleigh is used to, it has enough similarities that she can settle, but enough differences for her to note them, to jar her when she starts to feel settled.
2. Talk me through your decision to use both US English and UK English within the narrative
Because Kayleigh is fifteen, she’s still learning, and one of the things that will come up in her new lessons would be spelling and word meanings, so I wanted her progression in language to reflect that a little. I have a lot of American friends and consume a lot of their movies and shows so switching between the nuances isn’t always a conscious decision for me, and I did have some previous readers pointing out when she Americanised too early. Also my computer seemed stuck on American English so that made it easier to fight or agree with the spell check! But I think it’s a nice way to show her acceptance of her new world, and how she's making changes in her life.
3. How natural is it for you to write in the YA genre?
Fairly natural, especially when it's almost stream-of-consciousness in the narrative voice. I do believe in the adage "write what you know" but for me that doesn't necessarily mean what I've experienced in life, it's more about what you consume, and I read a lot of Becky Albertalli, Sarah Dessen, Sarah Crossan, Holly Smale, Simon James Green, David Levithan, Judy Blume, Paula Danziger, Sophie Gonzales, Katherine McGee, Patrice Lawrence, people like that.
I love YA for the depth of topics approached in the different styles - whether you're writing high fantasy, dystopian, romance, horror, the approach is always to take on those themes teenagers are just beginning to think about in an analytical way. There are so many POC, LGBT+, political, disability, socio-economic narratives within YA.
I'm always excited by a book with a fresh approach, which is what teenage readers respond to as well. As a YA author, it's just as exciting to tackle these kinds of themes as well, to consider why this character might not agree with a scene, why that character acted the way they did in their scene, how that has its impact on the narrative and the way teenagers and young adults think as a whole.
For instance, in How I Got Here, the main area Kayleigh is tackling is consent and sexualisation of a minor, and she avoids the topic for a long time before realising that maybe her perspective before was lacking the information she really needed before making the decisions she did, and how that has had an impact on her, how she can progress going forward.
4.Which characters became your favourites and why?
My favourite character is Carter, hands down. He's very forthright and confident in his perspective, but he's not cruel though he might seem that way at first. He's very vocal in my head as well, and will change a scene I've planned out, with a very cool "just trust me" after an argument with me. And strangely, when I let him lead a scene, it does work out. I quite like the dichotomy of the twins, where one comes across as kind and friendly but is actually fairly selfish, and the other is hard to crack but is kind and thoughtful behind that shell. But Carter does stand out compared to Curtis for me, and there have been drafts where I alternated between his and Kayleigh's narratives. I stripped that back to get back to the core of the story, but Carter isn't done with me yet!
I also like Becki, much like Kayleigh does. Becki was a character who I based on a couple of people I know, which isn't my usual MO. Back in my high school, there was a group of three girls, all very kind, sweet, intelligent girls. They were my acquaintances, and each others friends, but when I was coming up with the story, I really liked the idea of that constancy the girls had being a positive influence in Kayleigh's life when she had so much turmoil with friendships before. I also think it's an important theme especially in teen and YA books to have positive female friendships, and when I first drafted the story I had thought Kayleigh would end up closer to Fearn, but I could see quickly why Kayleigh gravitated more to Becki as a close female friend.
And of course I love Kayleigh. Years ago, I wrote a fanfic and had a character called Louise interacting with the ... I think it was a band? But Louise was very much the blueprint for Kayleigh. I feel like her protective older sister in a strange way, even though I am also technically the cause of her pain too. Louise had different issues, but she had the same approach as Kayleigh to handling them, and like Louise, Kayleigh finds her strength and comfort in her friends.
5. Which did you like the least and why?
I don't know if I dislike my characters. I remember sitting down, when I had Kayleigh's cousin Fiona playing a much bigger role in the story than just being someone she mentioned occasionally, and I was thinking about Fiona's motives for exploiting her younger cousin. And I got thinking about people's motivations in general, and how our perspectives of whether someone is acting in a good or bad way is linked to how their choices affect ourselves or others. No one is just good or evil, they're working to their own agendas and sometimes that makes them seem nasty, sometimes it makes them seem wonderful. But in the end, everyone is human. So saying I dislike a character almost feels like I don't understand them well, and that would make me feel like I failed them. In that perspective though, I would probably say I don't like the choices that Alex (Carter and Curtis' dad) makes, the archaic pressures he places on his sons, the way he is on the road so much but tries to dictate the way the household should be when he comes back home. I can see why each son reacts the way they do to their father, and why they might seem to come up short in his eyes, and I know there are parents like that, but he is not the parent I would want to be.
6. Will there be more from you about Kayleigh’s life going forwards?
It's definitely something I've always wanted to do! I am working on something from the universe at the moment, but it's not from Kayleigh's perspective. It's a dual narrative from the twins in the summer between the end of high school and the start (perhaps) of university. I can see at least the core characters as adults, and I don't know what those stories will look like as a defined narrative yet, but I don't think I could make this story a stand alone. I've drafted other stories, that need a lot of work still, but as I said - this world isn't done with me yet!
7. How did you cope with so many characters?
I probably did better than readers, though I hope its not too bad as a reader experience! In the earliest drafts there were a lot more characters, and a lot of subplots I gave a lot of time to, but that meant that the entire point of the story - Kayleigh coming to terms slowly with her actions of the previous couple of years - was watered down and not given the depth I wanted for it. For instance, she once had a younger brother, who I realised wouldn't work out in the story (I loved him, but he was too angry at her and wouldn't resolve those issues and I felt that stunted her growth), and as I said before, Fiona had a bigger role in previous drafts.
I felt like having a lot of characters worked for the story though, because we do come across a lot of people in different pockets of our lives, and when you're feeling overwhelmed, you do feel like there are a lot of people to deal with, to keep track of. It's a way of connecting the reader to some of what Kayleigh is feeling herself.
For me to keep track of them, I would think of them in terms of importance, when it came to the point of the story. Kayleigh's parents, her new friends, they were the important people for her to interact with. Characters like Skylar and Stacey, or Ashley, were characters I love who I wanted to support those important characters, who just weren't as relevant to what Kayleigh was experiencing as others were. And then there are characters like Curtis' other friends who were on the periphery so were people Kayleigh would have a low level of interaction with. I don't know if I explained that well, but thinking of the point of the story and the relationships between the characters helped me work out how to juggle that. I have a notebook where there are just lists of people and their connections to each other in the story, and I think that more than anything helped me get those levels of importance structured in my head.
8. One family has 6 boys, did you base them on anyone specific?
Yes, and no. I'm from a large family - the 6th of 7 - and whenever I see large families in books or on TV, they're always portrayed as harmonious and helpful with each other. It never felt realistic to me, to see these large, happy families, living on top of each other and having no issues. My own experience of a large family is that your friends and enemies can change within the family dynamic in moments. I think the way Cole interacts with his younger brothers is most similar to what I've experienced with my brothers and sisters. The twins are based both on my cousins, who used to fight when they were younger (they're fraternal/unidentical twins) and on myself and my older sister. We used to share a room, just like Carter and Curtis, and fought from being in too close quarters with each other frequently. We get along great now, but back then we were worse than Carter and Curtis!
Large families can bring a lot of differences to the forefront too, and that's what I wanted to do with the Fennigans, show that you can have big personalities like Carter, and quieter people like Callum, all come from the same place, but have very different experiences and approaches to life. But having said that, none of the brothers are based on anyone specific in terms of their personalities. They developed based on the circumstances I gave them.
9. Have you ever met anyone like Kayleigh who has moved countries?
Yes, and they're my initial inspiration for this story! When I was in year three, the local Ford plant expanded and brought over some staff from Michigan, and their kids needed a school to attend while they were in England. Two girls ended up in my class, Ashley and Lisa. I wasn't close with Ashley who was there for a year, but Lisa was one of my best friends and she stayed for three years. I remember that it was the first time I'd heard of immigrating, and I had a lot of questions. Lisa had a really strong accent too, but she was patient with me asking her to repeat things. I wanted to immigrate as well, but my parents were less enthused about that idea. It's something I wouldn't be able to do now, but my characters still can.
10. Has your son read it and if so what did he think?
He has a copy and he's read some of it, but he's just done his first couple of GCSE's and is working hard at animation projects. He likes Carter so far. My eldest niece is about the same age and has a copy, but like Noah she's been given a few GCSE's this year so has been preoccupied as well. Another, younger niece has decided she wants to be an author so we've talked about my book and her plans for her books. She's seven, so not old enough to read it yet!
You can buy Siobhan's novel via Amazon. Click this link to go to Siobhan's book
The author and I would love you to share the blog on your own social channels and PLEASE tag us in. For everyone who shares and tags us both and includes my site name www.loveofbooks.co.uk, I'll send you a little 'thank you' gift, wherever you are in the world*.
*postal address will be required but, in line with UK GDPR regs, not kept. One gift per household.
Socials: Twitter: @sjbwrites
Facebook: For The Love of Books or Sarah Banham or Siobhan Collier
Linked In: Sarah Banham BA (Hons)
Instagram: @s.j.banham @flutterby_cupcake26
This week, the blog is with Siobhan Collier, a debut author of 'How I Got Here'.
1. Tell me why you chose Chicago as the setting.
I didn’t actually set the story in Chicago at first. Originally, the American characters lived near Las Vegas because I wanted a huge distance from England and I wanted it to feel different for Kayleigh, so she would truly be a fish out of water. But then I researched things I needed for the story and I considered the themes of the story, I knew a connection to Las Vegas wasn’t tenable. So I talked to a couple of friends who are stateside, and some of their friends, and explained the way I saw certain things within the storyline - the housing, the mix of ethnicities, certain laws that would have an undertone without being part of the story - and the Mid-West was the ideal location.
Chicago worked well because it has a similarity to London in the way it’s laid out, so instead of it being too different to what Kayleigh is used to, it has enough similarities that she can settle, but enough differences for her to note them, to jar her when she starts to feel settled.
2. Talk me through your decision to use both US English and UK English within the narrative
Because Kayleigh is fifteen, she’s still learning, and one of the things that will come up in her new lessons would be spelling and word meanings, so I wanted her progression in language to reflect that a little. I have a lot of American friends and consume a lot of their movies and shows so switching between the nuances isn’t always a conscious decision for me, and I did have some previous readers pointing out when she Americanised too early. Also my computer seemed stuck on American English so that made it easier to fight or agree with the spell check! But I think it’s a nice way to show her acceptance of her new world, and how she's making changes in her life.
3. How natural is it for you to write in the YA genre?
Fairly natural, especially when it's almost stream-of-consciousness in the narrative voice. I do believe in the adage "write what you know" but for me that doesn't necessarily mean what I've experienced in life, it's more about what you consume, and I read a lot of Becky Albertalli, Sarah Dessen, Sarah Crossan, Holly Smale, Simon James Green, David Levithan, Judy Blume, Paula Danziger, Sophie Gonzales, Katherine McGee, Patrice Lawrence, people like that.
I love YA for the depth of topics approached in the different styles - whether you're writing high fantasy, dystopian, romance, horror, the approach is always to take on those themes teenagers are just beginning to think about in an analytical way. There are so many POC, LGBT+, political, disability, socio-economic narratives within YA.
I'm always excited by a book with a fresh approach, which is what teenage readers respond to as well. As a YA author, it's just as exciting to tackle these kinds of themes as well, to consider why this character might not agree with a scene, why that character acted the way they did in their scene, how that has its impact on the narrative and the way teenagers and young adults think as a whole.
For instance, in How I Got Here, the main area Kayleigh is tackling is consent and sexualisation of a minor, and she avoids the topic for a long time before realising that maybe her perspective before was lacking the information she really needed before making the decisions she did, and how that has had an impact on her, how she can progress going forward.
4.Which characters became your favourites and why?
My favourite character is Carter, hands down. He's very forthright and confident in his perspective, but he's not cruel though he might seem that way at first. He's very vocal in my head as well, and will change a scene I've planned out, with a very cool "just trust me" after an argument with me. And strangely, when I let him lead a scene, it does work out. I quite like the dichotomy of the twins, where one comes across as kind and friendly but is actually fairly selfish, and the other is hard to crack but is kind and thoughtful behind that shell. But Carter does stand out compared to Curtis for me, and there have been drafts where I alternated between his and Kayleigh's narratives. I stripped that back to get back to the core of the story, but Carter isn't done with me yet!
I also like Becki, much like Kayleigh does. Becki was a character who I based on a couple of people I know, which isn't my usual MO. Back in my high school, there was a group of three girls, all very kind, sweet, intelligent girls. They were my acquaintances, and each others friends, but when I was coming up with the story, I really liked the idea of that constancy the girls had being a positive influence in Kayleigh's life when she had so much turmoil with friendships before. I also think it's an important theme especially in teen and YA books to have positive female friendships, and when I first drafted the story I had thought Kayleigh would end up closer to Fearn, but I could see quickly why Kayleigh gravitated more to Becki as a close female friend.
And of course I love Kayleigh. Years ago, I wrote a fanfic and had a character called Louise interacting with the ... I think it was a band? But Louise was very much the blueprint for Kayleigh. I feel like her protective older sister in a strange way, even though I am also technically the cause of her pain too. Louise had different issues, but she had the same approach as Kayleigh to handling them, and like Louise, Kayleigh finds her strength and comfort in her friends.
5. Which did you like the least and why?
I don't know if I dislike my characters. I remember sitting down, when I had Kayleigh's cousin Fiona playing a much bigger role in the story than just being someone she mentioned occasionally, and I was thinking about Fiona's motives for exploiting her younger cousin. And I got thinking about people's motivations in general, and how our perspectives of whether someone is acting in a good or bad way is linked to how their choices affect ourselves or others. No one is just good or evil, they're working to their own agendas and sometimes that makes them seem nasty, sometimes it makes them seem wonderful. But in the end, everyone is human. So saying I dislike a character almost feels like I don't understand them well, and that would make me feel like I failed them. In that perspective though, I would probably say I don't like the choices that Alex (Carter and Curtis' dad) makes, the archaic pressures he places on his sons, the way he is on the road so much but tries to dictate the way the household should be when he comes back home. I can see why each son reacts the way they do to their father, and why they might seem to come up short in his eyes, and I know there are parents like that, but he is not the parent I would want to be.
6. Will there be more from you about Kayleigh’s life going forwards?
It's definitely something I've always wanted to do! I am working on something from the universe at the moment, but it's not from Kayleigh's perspective. It's a dual narrative from the twins in the summer between the end of high school and the start (perhaps) of university. I can see at least the core characters as adults, and I don't know what those stories will look like as a defined narrative yet, but I don't think I could make this story a stand alone. I've drafted other stories, that need a lot of work still, but as I said - this world isn't done with me yet!
7. How did you cope with so many characters?
I probably did better than readers, though I hope its not too bad as a reader experience! In the earliest drafts there were a lot more characters, and a lot of subplots I gave a lot of time to, but that meant that the entire point of the story - Kayleigh coming to terms slowly with her actions of the previous couple of years - was watered down and not given the depth I wanted for it. For instance, she once had a younger brother, who I realised wouldn't work out in the story (I loved him, but he was too angry at her and wouldn't resolve those issues and I felt that stunted her growth), and as I said before, Fiona had a bigger role in previous drafts.
I felt like having a lot of characters worked for the story though, because we do come across a lot of people in different pockets of our lives, and when you're feeling overwhelmed, you do feel like there are a lot of people to deal with, to keep track of. It's a way of connecting the reader to some of what Kayleigh is feeling herself.
For me to keep track of them, I would think of them in terms of importance, when it came to the point of the story. Kayleigh's parents, her new friends, they were the important people for her to interact with. Characters like Skylar and Stacey, or Ashley, were characters I love who I wanted to support those important characters, who just weren't as relevant to what Kayleigh was experiencing as others were. And then there are characters like Curtis' other friends who were on the periphery so were people Kayleigh would have a low level of interaction with. I don't know if I explained that well, but thinking of the point of the story and the relationships between the characters helped me work out how to juggle that. I have a notebook where there are just lists of people and their connections to each other in the story, and I think that more than anything helped me get those levels of importance structured in my head.
8. One family has 6 boys, did you base them on anyone specific?
Yes, and no. I'm from a large family - the 6th of 7 - and whenever I see large families in books or on TV, they're always portrayed as harmonious and helpful with each other. It never felt realistic to me, to see these large, happy families, living on top of each other and having no issues. My own experience of a large family is that your friends and enemies can change within the family dynamic in moments. I think the way Cole interacts with his younger brothers is most similar to what I've experienced with my brothers and sisters. The twins are based both on my cousins, who used to fight when they were younger (they're fraternal/unidentical twins) and on myself and my older sister. We used to share a room, just like Carter and Curtis, and fought from being in too close quarters with each other frequently. We get along great now, but back then we were worse than Carter and Curtis!
Large families can bring a lot of differences to the forefront too, and that's what I wanted to do with the Fennigans, show that you can have big personalities like Carter, and quieter people like Callum, all come from the same place, but have very different experiences and approaches to life. But having said that, none of the brothers are based on anyone specific in terms of their personalities. They developed based on the circumstances I gave them.
9. Have you ever met anyone like Kayleigh who has moved countries?
Yes, and they're my initial inspiration for this story! When I was in year three, the local Ford plant expanded and brought over some staff from Michigan, and their kids needed a school to attend while they were in England. Two girls ended up in my class, Ashley and Lisa. I wasn't close with Ashley who was there for a year, but Lisa was one of my best friends and she stayed for three years. I remember that it was the first time I'd heard of immigrating, and I had a lot of questions. Lisa had a really strong accent too, but she was patient with me asking her to repeat things. I wanted to immigrate as well, but my parents were less enthused about that idea. It's something I wouldn't be able to do now, but my characters still can.
10. Has your son read it and if so what did he think?
He has a copy and he's read some of it, but he's just done his first couple of GCSE's and is working hard at animation projects. He likes Carter so far. My eldest niece is about the same age and has a copy, but like Noah she's been given a few GCSE's this year so has been preoccupied as well. Another, younger niece has decided she wants to be an author so we've talked about my book and her plans for her books. She's seven, so not old enough to read it yet!
You can buy Siobhan's novel via Amazon. Click this link to go to Siobhan's book