A couple of years ago I developed a fear of death that was beginning to affect my everyday life – a lot like Sydney’s. Mine wasn’t initiated by the same event as hers, but the fear was the same, so I wanted to write a story about a girl overcoming that fear (because therapy is expensive). From there, June appeared, and Heath and Olivia and Leo, and then it became about a lot of other things that I thought were important: sexuality and truth and grief and abuse and all kinds of death, not just capital-D Death.

There’s also the whole other dynamic of Sydney not even being able to grieve properly because she’s convinced there’s a killer on the loose, which offered a fun challenge: writing a story where the thriller elements serve as a backdrop to something more grounded in reality.

Were there any parts of the book you particularly loved to write, or scenes that were particularly challenging?

I loved writing Sydney and June’s interactions, to the point where I would sometimes just write scenes of them talking to each other about whatever, knowing that they wouldn’t make the final cut. The second chapter, when Sydney is really in the depths of her grief, was difficult to write because of how dark of a place that is to inhabit for long stretches of time.

Did any particular books, writers or other art forms influence or inspire you whilst writing TTAKS?

I read a lot of YA while I was writing. A foolproof way of unsticking myself whenever I felt stuck was to escape into someone else’s work: Jandy Nelson, particularly in I’ll Give You the Sun, writes with such control and purpose that you can’t help but take notes; Nina LaCour’s We Are Okay, for similar reasons; Alice Oseman, for when my teenagers started to sound like themes dressed as teenagers; E. Lockhart for taut, sophisticated storytelling. Additionally, I’m not sure TTAKS would have been written had I not read Looking for Alaska by John Green in middle school. For bite-sized inspiration I liked to read poetry – mainly Fernando Pessoa and Sylvia Plath.

Do you have any particular writing habits? Are there times or places where you write best?

I usually write in bursts; I’ll have, for example, twenty minutes of uninterrupted ‘on’ time, where I’ll write without stopping, and then ten minutes of ‘off’ time where I can do whatever I want. I’ll do that for a few hours every day.

I get fidgety when I’m in the same environment for too long, so I don’t have one particular spot that I like – there’s five different places in my flat that I cycle between – and I think I write best in the very early morning/very late night; there’s something about feeling like the only person on Earth that helps the words flow.