I knew a lot about the street life just from my own experience growing up in Victoria and hanging around downtown when I was a teenager. Some of the characters are based on legendary girls whom everyone talked about or knew. “The Red Zone” is a term actually used by probation officers. There really was an Empress Hotel and a King’s Hotel, even though all those names are so overtly symbolic that they sound invented. As for research, I went to the juvenile detention center and some trials and in order to observe and learn more about what the practical reality is like for “criminals.” But mostly, I imagined and invented the world, or underworld, of the book, and my version is probably much less gritty than the actual street life of Victoria. I wanted Sara’s world to have a heightened beauty—to be more like the surreal places heroines find in fairy tales.

“I knew a lot about the street life just from my own experience growing up in Victoria and hanging around downtown when I was a teenager. Some of the characters are based on legendary girls whom everyone talked about or knew.”

Seamus’s biggest fault is that he feels too much. You wrote: “‘Don’t care,’ Sara wanted to tell him. ‘Just shrug your shoulders. Don’t love your daughter so much. Don’t be moved by scenery.’” The reader really feels for both Sara and Seamus here. Did you want the reader to feel the same compassion Sara feels toward Seamus, so he wouldn’t be judged too harshly for abandoning his teenage daughter?

“The scene in ‘The Red Room,’ where the girls cut themselves, was difficult—I’ve actually never been able to reread it.”

I was interested in that dilemma. What happens when you feel too much? What happens when you don’t feel enough? It’s something explored through every situation Sara gets into. She’s scared by vulnerability, which she sees as weakness. She wants to be tough because she wants to survive. But she keeps having these eruptions of feelings, of empathy, and that’s her conflict.

Which scene in the book did you most enjoy writing? Which was the most painful?

I enjoyed writing the “Blue House” chapter. It was fun to try to re-create that kind of drunken abandon, where everything is a little out of control and wild, and I wanted the reader to get caught up in her good time. The scene in “The Red Room,” where the girls cut themselves, was difficult—I’ve actually never been able to reread it.

Sara’s voice is unusual—both colloquial and poetic. What was your intention in regard to her distinctive language?