The Misfit Interviews with Cammie McGovern

Hi there Misfit Booknerds! So it's another awesome time to raise the spotlight to an amazing author! I interviewed Cammie McGovern, author of the newly released novel, Say What You Will! Get to know her more and how she is as an author! *book shimmy*

BASIC DEETS

What breakfast staple do you usually eat?  

• Smoothies!  I’m trying to get healthier!

As per tradition, what is your favorite color?  

• Green

What TV show are you currently addicted to?  

• Parks and Rec and Modern Family are long-time staples in my life.

Who would you like to do a collaboration with if you were given the chance?   

• I have MANY fellow writers I absolutely adore, but it’s hard for me to imagine collaborating on a long project like a novel (I feel like my first drafts are so horrible that I would never want to show them to anyone—I’d be gripped by self-conciousness and then would quickly become moody and hard to work with…) I could see doing something like a collection of essays or stories featuring kids with disabilities or something like that, maybe! There’s an idea!

AUTHOR STUFF

You started your author career with your first novel Art of Seeing but it was really Eye Contact that made you a breakout star! What would you say inspires you to write these fantastic stories?

• You’re right—EYE CONTACT has been my best selling book so far. I suspect this is because it’s the one that’s closest to my own life. It’s about an autistic boy who witnesses a murder after he’s wandered away from the school playground and into the woods. He’s pretty traumatized and can’t tell anyone what he’s seen so it’s up to his mom to figure out his clues and try to solve the murder. As the mom of an autistic boy, I can say your whole life sometimes feels like you’re trying to figure out clues for what your kid is trying to say.

Say What You Will is your current novel and has been compared to bestsellers like The Fault in Our Stars by John Green and Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell. What made you write this story about a girl with cerebral palsy and a neurotic?

• I helped start an organization called WHOLE CHILDREN that runs programs for kids and teens with disabilities which means I’ve gotten to know a LOT of these kids and I want more people to hear some of their stories.  One of the surprising things about teens with disabilities is how much they want the same things as their typically-developing peers—like friendships, love, independence, all of that.  I never would have thought my son was interested in girls and romance and then, bam, he became a teenager and started talking about it!  I was really surprised (and touched.)

When you do research for certain stories, how do you condition yourself for them? Does it take you a while to gather data?

• I read a ton.  Memoirs are fantastic, but you have to make sure you read a few different ones to make sure you aren't copying one person’s story too closely.  I read a lot of books written by people with OCD or some form of anxiety disorder.   It’s fascinating and much more common than you would think!

If you had chance to do a side story of Say What You Will, which of the characters would you wish you can extend the stories of? (Sanjay's story seems great in a way even if he is a jerk)

• What an interesting idea! I love it!   I actually have toyed with the idea of revisiting Amy and Matthew down the line a bit, like when Amy gets toward the end of college, just to see where they’re at.  I LOVED the sequel to IF I STAY where she picked up the story a few years later and the couple are so far apart, so you’re rooting for them to get together all over again.  The thing is, I don’t think I’ll do it any time soon.  My editor says aging the characters too much takes it out of Young Adult and makes it  New Adult book.  So I’d have to think about this more…

Finally, what is your advise for writers (such as myself) who wish to embark in the world of publishing and becoming authors too?

• I think you’re already doing my number one recommendation, which is READ EVERYTHING YOU CAN!  The more you read, the better a writer you become.  It’s as simple as that.  Reading expands your vocabulary, but more importantly, it teaches you about good story development, writing effective sentences, things like that.    My other big suggestion is to write as much as you can and not to get too discouraged when things don’t turn out as great as you were hoping they’d be right away.  This is how it ALWAYS is, even for people who have published many books!  I still re-read first drafts and think, how can I be this bad when I've written books that are good? Terrible first drafts can turn into very good books, it just takes a lot of work. 

DEDICATION

I want to thank Cammie for all of her kindness throughout the process and for giving me the time of day! I LOVE YOU! And you can interact with Cammie too through her social media sites: Twitter, Facebook and her Goodreads! She is really nice!

I wouldn't have done any of this without your support Misfit Booknerds! You are all amazing!

{Blog Tour} Review + Excerpt: Say What You Will by Cammie McGovern

Title: Say What You Will
Author: Cammie McGovern
Publication: Jun. 03, 2014, HarperTeen
Format: ARC, 343 pages
Source: Pinoy Book Tours (Thanks sooo much Dianne)
Buy it on: Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Indie Bound | iBooks |

Synopsis:

Born with cerebral palsy, Amy can't walk without a walker, talk without a voice box, or even fully control her facial expressions. Plagued by obsessive-compulsive disorder, Matthew is consumed with repeated thoughts, neurotic rituals, and crippling fear. Both in desperate need of someone to help them reach out to the world, Amy and Matthew are more alike than either ever realized.

When Amy decides to hire student aides to help her in her senior year at Coral Hills High School, these two teens are thrust into each other's lives. As they begin to spend time with each other, what started as a blossoming friendship eventually grows into something neither expected.

Misfit Review: 
*The book was provided by Pinoy Book Tours in exchange for an honest review.

When I read the synopsis and saw that it was a mesh of John Green's The Fault In Our Stars and Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor and Park, I just knew that I had to read it. And I have no regrets.

The story is about Amy Van Dorn who has cerebral palsy who has to talk through a computer called a Pathway. She also has trouble walking so she needs a walker. All she wants is a normal life in high school where she can have friends to prove that she'll be fine once she enters college. Enter Matthew Malone, a lanky, quiet boy who is part of Amy's "peer group" project, where he spends one day being Amy's peer aide. Matthew is not normal, not in the way Amy is not normal physically. He has OCD and it's getting into his head. We are taken into the world of these two fascinating teenagers as they learn that through their own problems, they would learn to lean in on each other for help. I think that this relationship was enough to say that I was gravitated towards the book in an instant.

"I ALREADY KNOW THE NAME OF MY PROBLEM. IT'S NOT A BIG SECRET."

Amy is  the adventurous sort. She wants to try out new things and be friends with every body. And she doesn't really care about having CP, or maybe she does a little bit but she doesn't want it to be the cause of her becoming a total introvert in the eyes of such daunting teenagers. She wants to experience all sorts of things and she challenges herself, much to her overprotective Mom's chagrin! I don't really like Amy's mom, Nicole but I guess parents are like that especially if you have some sort of complication which in this novel is highly suggestive of Nicole's role.

Matthew and Amy are bonded through this problem of hers. And later discovers that Matthew himself has a problem that he's been keeping in the shadows for a long time.

" IT'S NOT A MILD CASE AND YOU AREN'T GETTING BETTER. I SEE YOU COUNTING ALL THE TIME. WHISPERING. TAPPING LOCKERS. IF ANYTHING, IT'S GOTTEN WORSE."

To be rather blunt, I felt extremely attached to Matthew and his problem. I could relate to some of the things he's going particularly, his unnecessary fears. He's too afraid to venture the world because he thinks that he does not deserve it. He likes things in ritual, and I do too, though I do stuff randomly, there are times when I think that Matthew and I go into a fit when we don't get to do what we have to do. I've told my Dad that he has OCD, and I think that I might have a slight case of it.

In the novel, as I have said, Amy and Matthew help each other out, being that Amy needs Matthew's help as a peer helper while Matthew needs Amy's help to overcome his condition. But with all this helping out, Amy is realizing that she's falling for Matthew. Big time... And I'm afraid to say, I was too.

*minor spoiler alert*

There was this scene in the book where Amy described Matthew, with his brown hair falling to his face, with  his beautiful eyes and him wearing a black t-shirt with a faded guitar logo. Please, you may now imagine my reaction. I suddenly went into a spastic fit and started to really imagine Matthew for real and he was supeeeeer handsome! My heart fluttered endlessly. And it's not just his looks, but also his personality. He's shy but he cares about people...maybe a bit too much! Because of his OCD, he has a tendency to over think things and he won't calm if he does not get his answers.

Bad things would happen if he skipped it.

Matthew has this thing in his head: a voice you might say and it's entertaining as heck dear gosh! Say What You Will is a book that doesn't exactly challenge your mind in a difficult way but you will end up curious about their situations at least and why certain peer pressures lead you to do things out of the ordinary.

The writing at first was a bit slow for me but started to get really interesting as the characters opened up about themselves further. The supporting characters didn't really overshadow the main characters but I would've wished for more of them to have carried a spotlight. But all in all, the characters were enticing and not boring at all.

McGovern's style is really light and subtle. Although, make sure you prepare for plot twists. Plot twists make every story much more gratifying and also worth your time, and I think that the plot twist here was handled in a not-so harsh treatment. It was kind and well justified, so kudos to Cammie McGovern.

"My point is: you know what you wanted to say. A lot of people don't. You might not even realize this. A lot of us are still trying to figure out what to say."

A lot of people have a hard time saying what they have to say. Cammie McGovern's new novel is a new take on this that whatever should happen, there will always be someone there for you. It's just a matter of how you should say it. Everything else will fall through.

Read The Excerpt

About The Author:

Website | Twitter | Goodreads | Facebook

Cammie McGovern was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford and received the Nelson Algren Award in short fiction. Her work has been published in Redbook, Seventeen, Glimmer Train, TriQuarterly, and other publications.

Thank you for sticking around misfit booknerds! More wonderful reviews and authors to chat with soon! And please, do follow the tour for Cammie's Say What You Will.

Stacking The Shelves #3: T'was MAIL WEEK

Stacking The Shelves is a feature hosted by Tynga’s Reviews where bloggers share what books (both physical and digital) they received, won, bought, and borrowed.

It was an unbelievable week. Pretty much for someone like me who is fairly new to the book blogging stint, receiving stuff from authors is a huge deal for me. I know I sort of pushed some authors in the process of this (t'was a light push). But they were so kind. I am expecting more mail to happen in the following months and years to come!