In honor of the paperback release of SEA CHANGE, Aimee Friedman has stopped by to talk about the inspiration for her characters in her books. I read SEA CHANGE over a year ago and LOVED it.  Check out my review.

For a writer, it’s pretty tempting to create a main character based entirely on one’s self. There’s an instant familiarity, a voice and a worldview that comes naturally. In my book, The Year My Sister Got Lucky, the main character, Katie Wilder, is very much me at fourteen: a daydreamer and an aspiring dancer. But when I sat down to write Sea Change, I set out to make the main character, Miranda Merchant, my opposite.

It was an exciting challenge, right from the start.  Sure, there were some basic commonalities.  Like Miranda, I grew up in New York City, and attended the Bronx High School of Science. But unlike Miranda, I sort of sucked at science (in fact, it’s a miracle I passed physics). I was prone to flights of fancy and fits of drama (I still am). By contrast, I wanted Miranda to be logical, sensible, and even-keeled. I loved the idea of a female character who was a burgeoning scientist: a girl who relished math and numbers, and valued reason over fantasy. As a reader, I hadn’t found nearly enough female characters who fell into that category.  I actually based Miranda on many of my high school classmates —those who could recite the periodic table in a heartbeat, who could understand the world through a microscope lens. I admired and envied their cool-headedness.

However, as I wrote Sea Change and got to know Miranda better, I began to learn that things are not so cut-and-dried. Scientists can be — in fact, should be —creative, and wildly imaginative. (Albert Einstein said it best: “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”) There’s plenty of room for drama in science, just as there’s room for logic in fiction. Miranda learns something similar as she absorbs the legends and lore of Selkie Island, and starts to fall in love with Leo. She learns to open herself up to the mysterious and the unknown, while still staying true to who she really is. In her own way, she begins to believe the legends of the island.  In the end, then, I think Miranda is a lot more like me than I first envisioned her to be — a girl who gets swept away by stories.

About the Book:

Sixteen-year-old Miranda Merchant is great at science…and not so great with boys. After major drama with her (now ex) boyfriend, she’s happy to be spending the summer on small, mysterious Selkie Island, helping her mother sort out her late grandmother’s estate.

On the lush, beautiful island, Miranda finds new friends and a community with a mystical history, presenting her with facts her logical, scientific mind can’t make sense of. She also meets Leo, who challenges everything she thought she knew about boys, romance…and reality.

Is Leo hiding something? Or is he something that she never could have imagined?

About the Author:

Aimee Friedman is the New York Times bestselling author of several books for young adults, including South Beach, French Kiss, Hollywood Hills, A Novel Idea, and, most recently, The Year My Sister Got Lucky.  Born and raised in Queens, New York, Aimee attended the Bronx High School of Science, but she always wanted to be a writer, never a scientist. Though she does not know how to swim, she loves living on the island of Manhattan, where she also works as a book editor.

For more information, visit:

http://www.aimeefriedmanbooks.com/

http://www.thisispoint.com/books/seachange.asp

Be sure to stop by THE STORY SIREN for the next and final stop in the SEA CHANGE Blog Tour.