Written by Brooklyn Saliba
Hello lovely readers! I am thrilled to be a part of the AusYABloggers Fierce Fragile Hearts blog tour. Thank you to the team at both AusYABloggers and Pan Macmillan Australia for giving me the opportunity to take part!
Fierce Fragile Hearts is a companion novel to Beautiful Broken Things, which features friendship at its very heart and soul between Suzanne, Cady, and Rosie. As part of this blog tour, I was fortunate enough to interview Sara herself, which was honestly like a dream come true!
Read on to find out what Sara had to say about what inspires her to write, and what made her want to return to these beautiful characters.
I read that you often are inspired to write whilst on the commute, why is that? What motivates you on the train to write?
It’s very simple – the lack of internet! Though I have learned how to tether my phone so I can use the 4G while I’m on the train. Shockingly, I am now far less productive on trains.
What books first ignited your passion for reading?
Literally all of them. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love reading. I was very lucky to be surrounded by books growing up.
Beautiful Broken Things is a story with friendship at it’s soul and core, what inspired you to create Caddy, Rosie and Suzanne?
Suzanne came first, and BBT came from thinking what would happen if she moved somewhere new and how her past would affect her relationships. Caddy and Rosie came as a matched set; the new friends in her ‘safe’ life. She has a lot of emotional baggage that she’s trying to deal with, and it’s being friends with them that enriches her life and allows her to start to see her own value and what goodness there is in her.
What was the moment where you thought ‘Okay, I need to write, this is what I want to do?’
To be honest, I never thought that. I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember, so it was always very natural to me. It wasn’t until I was in my mid-20s that I tried to get something published, though, and that was all because of BBT specifically.
Your portrayal of mental health in Beautiful Broken Things is among the most real and raw that I’ve ever read. What made you communicate that across so effectively in the book?
Thank you! That all comes down the characters, for me. I wasn’t trying to write solely (or even primarily) about mental health, I was writing about Suzanne (and also Tarin, for example). The mental health element came about as a very natural part of her character and what she was struggling with. I think that’s why it resonates so much with readers, because they’re able to relate it to a character rather than as something separate – because of course that’s how mental health is in real life. It’s always about the person first. (Or it should be!)
After I read Beautiful Broken Things, and hadn’t heard about Fierce Fragile Hearts, I had been hoping that there would be another book focusing on Suzanne, Caddy and Rosie, so to be holding a copy of Fierce Fragile Hearts feels like a dream! Did you plan on always writing a companion novel to Beautiful Broken Things?
Writing it was like a dream, too. (I mean, it wasn’t – it was really hard. But being able to do it was a dream!) I hadn’t planned to write a companion novel – BBT was written entirely as a standalone. But the characters never went away like they do with other books (when AQKOT was finished, for example, Steffi, Rhys and Tem didn’t stick around in my head to demand another story like Suze did) and so I always had the sense that there was another story in there. Specifically for Suzanne, because of course BBT is all Caddy’s perspective, so the reader never sees inside her head. I wrote bits and pieces down and it was getting bigger and bigger, and that feeling that she deserved the space to tell her own story got stronger. And then I said to my agent and editor “What would you think about a sort-of-sequel?” and luckily for me they were very supportive and enthusiastic.
Who are some authors that you find inspiration from?
YA authors who are in it for the long haul, like Sarah Dessen and Sara Zarr. Also my friends who are also authors.
I read that when you were little, you went to lots of second hand book stores, something which I love doing – you never know what treasures you’ll find! What books leapt out at you then?
I was a huge Sweet Valley Twins fan when I was younger, so I was always on the hunt for them. I had a big collection and I loved hunting for them in charity shops and secondhand bookshops.
