Interview with A.Robinson

Today we have an interview with the very talented A. Robinson, author of the upcoming novel VAMPIRE CRUSH!


1. If you could time travel any time period in the world, where and when would it be?

I’ve always been interested in the British Victorian era, even though I’m sure the clothes would kill me and I would faint in the street. Still, there was so much happening in the world then, and Britain had its fingers in a lot of it (even if they were oftentimes bad fingers. Bad fingers!) And the some of the social customs, like the locks of hair and the mourning rings, are fascinating, even if they are, in fact, creepy.

Ultimately, I think this is probably why I think Vampire Crush has a Victoria-era vampire stalking around the hallways of the high school, filling out quizzes in magazines and wondering if she should give the boy she likes a lock of her hair.

2. Publishing is a hard business, how was your publishing experience?

This is embarrassing for me to say, but compared to a lot of writers out there, my publishing experience was pie. I knew my agent before she was an agent, and so I got to skip the soul-deadening process of querying. I know! I expect a piano to fall on my any day now to make up for all the luckiness I used while getting Vampire Crush off the ground.

That said, waiting for editors to bite felt like an eternity, and the rejection letters always seemed to come right when I was Having A Moment. But ultimately, it got sold to a great publisher and editor, so again, not much to complain about.

3. Are you a full-time writer?

I actually work in the publishing industry on the editorial side, writing copy and rejection letters. (Again, a piano! Any day now!) But the books I work with are a lot different than Vampire Crush. Fewer vampires, for sure.

4. How did you come up with the idea for VAMPIRE CRUSH?

I’m a big fan of the Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg movies Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, which take popular genres like zombies and buddy cop flicks and twist them into something that both pays homage to the genre and works as an example of the genre. . . . Basically, that is a complicated way of saying, I wanted to write a funny teen vampire romance. I started asking questions like, “What if the mysterious new guy who showed up at school one day was a jerk instead of your one true love?” and “How would you react if you found out that one of your best childhood friends (and okay, sort of crush) was now a vampire?” From that, the plot of Vampire Crush was born. We have Sophie McGee, an aspiring high-school journalist, who uncovers a dastardly plot led by her school’s hot new It Boy, while dealing with the return of a very changed James, the boy who used to steal her flip-flops and once surprise-kissed her in her family’s hammock.



5. Which character in VAMPIRE CRUSH do you most relate yourself with?

As predictable as it is, I have to go with Sophie on this one. She likes to make jokes to deal with difficult situations, which Sophie does in spades, especially when all these vampires start messing with her goal of being the next editor in chief.

6. What can we expect from you in the future in books?

I’ve been working on getting what I like to call “Random Ghost Project” off the ground. It’s either going to be about ghost hunters in early 20th-century New York or ghost ex-boyfriends in modern upstate New York.


Thanks for the great interview!

-Ana