Fun Five: Jennifer Castle

Nov 24, 2011 by shanyn

Fun Five
Jennifer Castle

Author of The Beginning of After

---

1. What is your favorite television show?
It’s currently a tie between “Glee,” “So You Think You Can Dance,” and “True Blood.” And now you know just what kind of a nerd I am!

2. Tell us about your morning routine.
I wake up around 6am and if I’m lucky, get some time to slurp Darjeeling tea and screw around online before my 3-year-old wakes up and starts demanding something ridiculous, like two popsicles at once. Over the course of the next couple of hours I get both of my daughters fed, dressed, and ready for school in between trying to eat my own breakfast and having at least one coherent conversation with my husband. By the time I put my 6-year-old on the bus around 9:15, I’m exhausted! But this is where my day really starts (and I can take a nice deep breath). I do some yoga stretches, take a shower, get dressed, and shut myself up in my office for a few hours of writing before the morning creativity flow sputters out. I keep thinking I should wake up at 5am to get some work done before the kid chaos starts, but, uh, that hasn’t happened yet.

3. Where is your nearest pair of boots?
Front hall closet. They are my winter boots, which I had to pull out during the big October snowstorm a few weeks ago. Every time I open the closet door I give them a dirty look. I will wear them every freaking day once the cold settles in, and I’m just not ready for that intimacy yet.

4. How many pieces of candy did you have on Halloween?
Actually, on Halloween itself I don’t think I had a single piece. Now, AFTER Halloween, after I put away most of my kids’ loot on a high shelf and they forgot about it…well, I’ll let you know the final total when I stop sneaking one or two each day (the chocolate went first), probably sometime around Christmas.

5. What color is your favorite shirt?
You know, I was going to say “black,” because most of my shirts are black. I like black. A lot. But then I realized, when it comes time for something special, like my high school reunion or my first signing at BookExpo last May, I reach for this crazy shirt I bought many years ago at a flea market in Los Angeles. It’s bright red with pin stripes and embroidered flowers and words all over it. It feels like a side of me I don’t show very often, but I like it when I do.

---

About The Beginning of After:
Anyone who’s had something truly crappy happen to them will tell you: It’s all about Before and After. What I’m talking about here is the ka-pow, shake-you-to-your-core-and-turn-your-bones-to-plastic kind of crappy.

Sixteen-year-old Laurel’s world changes instantly when her parents and brother are killed in a terrible car accident. Behind the wheel is the father of her bad-boy neighbor, David Kaufman, whose mother is also killed. In the aftermath of the tragedy, Laurel navigates a new reality in which she and her best friend grow apart, boys may or may not be approaching her out of pity, overpowering memories lurk everywhere, and Mr. Kaufman is comatose but still very much alive. Through it all there is David, who swoops in and out of Laurel’s life and to whom she finds herself attracted against her better judgment. She will forever be connected to him by their mutual loss—a connection that will change them both in unexpected ways.

---

Jennifer Castle’s Website
Jennifer Castle on Twitter
Add The Beginning of After on Goodreads
Order The Beginning of After from Amazon

From JenniferCastle.com:
Going back to fiction was like finding a key I’d lost at the bottom of a junk drawer. Realizing that I wanted to write for young adults was like finding the hidden door that key opened.

Now I’m in the place behind that door, living and working in New York’s beautiful Hudson Valley with my husband, two daughters, a black cat named Louis, and a striped kitten named Angel. It’s fun to watch “The Beginning of After” wriggle into the world; in the meantime, my second novel, also to be published by HarperCollins, is under way. I still tell whoppers sometimes, but only if I have to or am really, really bored.

Related Posts:

• Waiting on Wednesday: The Beginning of After by Jennifer Castle
• Fun Five: Barry Lyga
• Fun Five: AC Gaughen
• Fun Five: J Anderson Coats
• Fun Five: Sarah Tregay