Danielle, a 26-year-old author and teacher who is living in Perth, WA(Australia). Her first novel, "Friendship on Fire" was published in March 2011 by Sid Harta Publishers. YAY. She has a ranga cat and a husband who loves her. Isn't the world grand.
Who is Daisy? An in-depth look at the main character from Friendship on Fire.
Daisy Brooks lives inside my head. Not as an imaginary friend would, nor an alter ego. She is someone I created but still very much has a mind of her own. She starts off as a fiery yet impressionable seventeen-year old with accidentally dyed red hair at a conservative school where she is school captain with her best friend, Roman. Through her experiences during her final year of school she changes into an eighteen-year old who has her own honey blonde hair colour back, her identity challenged, is wiser, more mature and knows what she wants out of life, love and herself. But how did she get there?
Daisy came to me on the tail end of a dream while I was living in Melbourne in 2009. At the exact moment the words started flowing in my mind, I was filled with a duplicit feeling of dread and excitement; dread because I knew I didn’t have time to write the epic tale that was forming at 7am on a Sunday morning, and excitement because I knew the story was inspired and I absolutely couldn’t not write it down. I remember making a bargain with the man upstairs: if I give the energy to write this book, you better allow people to be able to read it. So I sat on the couch next to my husband and he let me live in another world for a few hours every day.
For the next 3 months, everything I had to do outside of writing was a chore. Daisy’s voice was so strong and her story so clear that I swore I could have finished the story in a week - but of course that would have been near impossible and would have rendered my wrists utterly useless with RSI (which it did anyway). I wanted to take the laptop with me everywhere but my husband wouldn’t have been too impressed if I was typing while he was playing an important game of basketball.
I didn’t have trouble with ideas for Daisy’s world: I just had to call on my life as a seventeen-year-old and all those angsty feelings. I tried to establish a contemporary Australian environment: Daisy’s home town ‘Twin Rocks’ is a mixture of my favourite places in Australian cities, be it parks, shops, supermarkets, beaches, houses…Daisy’s job at McDonalds came from 3 years of working with my brothers during school to make that extra pocket money. Daisy’s supportive parents and hilarious older brothers are from my memory but only as a sentiment, of being loved as well as teased incessantly. The hot new guy who can do anything – play soccer, choose perfect dates, steal and drive his dad’s fancy car to best friend’s party, was so much fun to write because I got to use my imagination. The best friend of the opposite sex in supporting character Roman came from more recent experiences rather than a specific high school person, but I can’t say any more than that!
Where else did Daisy come from? My friends have said Daisy is an extension of myself; my mannerisms and expressions…and I suppose this is true in the purest sense of the idea. My sense of humour, my strong sense of justice; but my experiences aren’t Daisy’s and nothing happened to her that directly happened to me. It was a pretty good assumption of ‘what would I do if this was said to me?’ or ‘what would hot arrogant guy from when I was 17 have said to a girl if she challenged him on this?’ type of thing.
What I’m trying to say is, I didn’t have to go too far outside my own realm of experience or comfort in order to write the story, and I think in a lot of ways this is what makes Friendship on Fire and the characters in it so relatable to people. They have enough time to immerse themselves in the 471 pages and live out Daisy’s last year of high school with her, rather than being rushed through a story and left wondering the answers to more questions than having a feeling of satisfaction at the end. I wanted readers to feel satisfied by Daisy’s life, and that is very much a ‘me’ sort of thing.
NOW for the GIVEAWAY!!!! One person will win a copy of the book all you have to do is be a follower of this blog and Danielle's blog and comment below about this post make sure to leave your email address. The winner will be selected via Random.org on MAY 2
I love reading about the inspiration behind books. I also love stories about growing up, so Friendship on Fire definitely sounds like my kind of book. Plus it's set in Australia & I love reading about it because I would love to visit!
ReplyDeleteI am a follower of both blogs, as well as Twitter & the facebook page. Thanks for the giveaway!
danceislove27(at)gmail(dot)com