Interview with author Elizabeth Rose

Synopsis:

“For her fifteenth birthday, Anoira White’s step-mother bought her a boyfriend.”

So begins the coming-of-age tale of Ann, a young girl with undiagnosed Asperger’s Syndrome growing up under the thumb of her high maintenance step-mother, Hilde. When Hilde forces Ann to enter a beauty pageant in order to continue to be with her friends, Ann will put everything on the line in order to stand up for them- and for herself. But will her hard work be enough to overcome the monumental hurdle of an undiagnosed mental disorder? Or will Ann discover a new way in which to accept the way she was made?

The third installment of the ‘Once Upon a Reality’ series, The Thing About Apples is a modern re-telling of Snow White that re-defines what it means to be ‘fairest in the land’.

Author Bio:

Elizabeth Rose is the fiction alias of a twenty-something Colorado native with a double major in Religious Studies and English. Till the Last Petal Falls, her first full-length novel, was published in 2013. It is the beginning of the Once Upon a Reality series. She has also had several short works published through eLectio publishing, Hirschworth magazine and Crack the Spine.

Mini-Interview:
1. Why a teenage heroine for this one, when the first two books have older women in them?
The goal of the series as a whole has always been to use fairy-tales as a framework within which to talk about the experience of being a woman in the here and now. I don’t think you can really have a well-rounded discussion about that without throwing in the coming-of-age experience- puberty is a tough time for everyone, and Ann has some specific challenges that both make her experience unique, and also make her relatable to readers of any age.
2. If you could spend time with a character from The Thing About Apples, who would it be?
Hunter. He’s a really good guy, and I think he’d be an amazing friend. Though I’d probably want him to have gotten a little bit older.
3. Pen, Typewriter, or Computer?
I write my first drafts all my hand, and then I type them up on my laptop. Then I print them off, hand-edit them, and type them up again. From then on it’s all via computer.
4. Who is your favorite author?
Even though I write nothing like him, my favorite will always be Sir. Terry Pratchett.
5. What’s the next fairy-tale planned for the series?
The next one will be a modern-day Cinderella featuring a girl who was a teen mother trying to get herself through college. I will most likely start drafting on that sometime early in 2017, after all the hoopla of getting married in December passes.