Authorly Love: Meet Clara Kensie & Her ‘Do It Double’ Philosophy

November is now here! While that definitely means it’s time to let go of our diets and break out the Christmas decorations (for you early birds), it also means it is time to announce November’s featured author! Stick around till the end to hear about something very special to me that is taking place over at Blu Bear Bazaar (my bookish shop)!

Clara Kensie grew up near Chicago, reading every book she could find and using her diary to write stories about a girl with psychic powers who solved mysteries. She purposely did not hide her diary, hoping someone would read it and assume she was writing about herself. Since then, she’s swapped her diary for a computer and admits her characters are fictional, but otherwise, she hasn’t changed one bit. Today Clara is a RITA^© Award-winning author of dark fiction for young adults. Clara’s favorite foods are guacamole and cookie dough. But not together. That would be gross.

You can follow her on:
Her website: clarakensie.com
Twitter | Instagram | Facebook

Aftermath
Release date: November 1st, 2016
Publisher: Merit Press
Goodreads | Amazon

Charlotte dreamed of her family every day of her captivity in the attic of a kidnapper: in fact, thinking of them, happy and whole, was her only comfort. When she escapes, its to a stunning loss: that family has fallen apart. Mom and dad are divorced, and her sister is a drugged-out delinquent, and while mom treats Charlotte like a rare orchid, her father wants her to get out there and do a lecture tour. Worst of all, Charlotte can’t prove what she knows is true — that there was another victim. And that girl never got a second chance to live.

First, quick informal questions to warm up 🙂

1. Coffee or tea? Coffee! Every morning. I get coffee shop coffee occasionally, but my favorite coffee is my regular old made-at-home-with whatever-is-on-sale-at-the-grocery-store with fat free French vanilla creamer.
2. Read inside or outside? Inside. I’m not much of an outside person. The weather has to be absolutely perfect if I’m going to read outside.
3. Handwriting or typing? Typing. My thoughts are too fast for my handwriting to keep up and it results in illegible scribbles.
4. Favorite author and/or book? Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man by Fannie Flagg (she also wrote Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café, which was made into a movie). I almost always read books with dark topics, but this book is so funny and sweet. It’s my go-to comfort book. I read it about once a year.
5. Favorite television show? Parks and Recreation. Like with books, most of the shows I enjoy are on the darker side (The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, The Americans, Jessica Jones). Parks and Rec does not fit that description! But it’s my go-to comfort show. I have it on in the background all the time. I know the episodes so well that I don’t have to actually watch it; I can just listen to it and I know what’s happening. I laugh every time.

And onto the “real” questions:

Q: Tell us a little about yourself!

A: I’ve lived my whole life in the Chicago suburbs but I would love to move out of Illinois one day. My dream vacation is a month in a quiet cabin in the autumn woods, where it’s just me, a tower of books for reading, a laptop for writing, and my favorite snacks for eating. I have one husband, two teenage kids, and one trouble-making cat, appropriately named The King of Chaos. I write dark fiction for young adults. I love cookie dough.

Q: The Run To You series and Aftermath are both on the darker side of storytelling. What attracts you to that?

A: I’m drawn to the darker side of storytelling because it’s how I face my fears: safely, through fiction. I started reading Stephen King books when I was very young-—probably eleven years old? I’m not much of a horror reader anymore, but back then, Carrie and Firestarter blew me away (and, in fact, those two books were huge influences on my Run to You series – there’s no horror, but there is a secret government psychic agency hunting the heroine and her family like in Firestarter, and the heroine’s mom is based on Carrie, if she’d grown up without the religious fanaticism and had never gone to prom).

Q: They’re also quite different from each other with one being obviously more fictional with telepathic powers and the other being very real and very emotional. Was it easy to transition from one type of fiction to the other?

A: It’s easy for me to transition between speculative fiction and realistic fiction, because I enjoy reading both. For me, spec fic is easier to write, because I don’t have to follow the rules of reality as much.

Q: Aftermath is about a girl who escaped captivity from the man who kidnapped her. What was the inspiration behind that? What was the writing and research process like for Aftermath?

“Triumph over tragedy is a frequent theme in the books I write.”

A: When I was twelve, a girl my age, from my neighborhood, disappeared on her way home from school. I knew about stranger danger and all that, but until then, I never really believed bad things could happen in my safe, suburban town to girls like me. It was the first time I truly felt unsafe and vulnerable. But I knew that the fear I was feeling was nothing compared to the terror the missing girl must be feeling.

Fortunately, she was found alive a few days later. She’d been kidnapped by a man who lived a few blocks away, and he kept her locked in a corner of his crawlspace. Following a lead, the police had searched the man’s house, even going into the crawlspace, but the girl’s captor had terrorized her so much that she was too scared to call for help, and the police didn’t see her. They came back later to search the crawlspace again, and she finally found the courage to cry out to them.

The girl and her family moved away soon after her rescue, and I never learned what became of her. But I never forgot about her. I made up a story about her recovery, and that story became Aftermath. I’ve thought of her often over the years. I want to know how she survived, how she recovered, what kind of impact the experience had on her and her family. I became fascinated with the subject of recovery from traumatic events – so much so that in college, I majored in psychology, sociology, and social services, with a minor in criminal justice. Triumph over tragedy is a frequent theme in the books I write.

Although that girl’s experience inspired Aftermath, the book isn’t her story. Aftermath is Charlotte’s story. Charlotte is kidnapped just before her twelfth birthday and escapes when she’s sixteen. The book starts with her escape and follows her journey to recovery, as well as her family’s.

The writing process wasn’t hard – I’d already had the story in my head for years. I wrote it during NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, held every November, where we write 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days) in 2011. The research part was a little more intense. Aftermath is realistic fiction, “ripped from the headlines,” and many people are fascinated with Elizabeth Smart and Jaycee Dugard and others, so I tried my best to get the psychological, legal, police, and medical procedures right. I know a bit about psychology and therapy from college, and I am fortunate enough to have friends in the other fields. I took them out for coffee and asked them questions, and they became my expert consultants.

Q:  Did you ever get emotional while writing Aftermath (because I sure did)? Was there ever a time you had to take a break because of the subject matter? 

A: I’m an emotional person anyway, so I write with a lot of emotion. I got emotional all the time while writing Aftermath. After I wrote the first draft for NaNoWriMo 2011, I put the manuscript away for a few years because I felt such a connection to it that I wasn’t ready to share it with anyone yet. When I took it out again to revise it, I could barely re-read it because it made me so emotional. Every time I re-read a draft, I get teary at the same scenes.

Q: What was it like to write a story from the perspective of Charlotte? 

“I was very careful to write the scenes in a manner that was tactful and not gratuitous.”

A: Sigh I love Charlotte. I wish she was real so I could take her in my arms and hug her and protect her and tell her how proud I am of her and how much I love her.

Writing the abuse scenes, from her point of view, was tough. I was very careful to write the scenes in a manner that was tactful and not gratuitous. The hardest part was striking a balance between being painting a truthful picture of what happened in the attic while not being too graphic. My readers are smart. They will understand what happened without needing explicit details.

But ultimately, Aftermath is Charlotte’s journey from seeing herself as a victim to seeing herself as a survivor. It’s a journey that’s made even harder because many of her loved ones only see her as a victim. Others, who already see her as a survivor, are insensitive to her need to recover slowly. I hope I did her story justice.

Q: Aftermath is a heartbreaking but hopeful story. Is there any specific message you want people to take away after reading it?

A: When Charlotte was in the attic, the only thing that sustained her was thinking about her family, imagining them happy and healthy and whole. She imagined her twin sister Alexa doing everything they’d once planned to do together—cheerleading, excelling in school, going out with friends, just living a normal, happy life—and doing it double, because Charlotte couldn’t do it at all. That’s what I want people to take away from this book: Do it double because some can’t do it at all.

Q: On a lighter note: Will you ever share your diary stories about a girl with psychic powers who solved mysteries? Because I’d totally read that. 

A: Ha! I wish I could! I used to hope someone would read my diary and assume the stories were true and the psychic detective girl was me. I don’t know where the diary is now, or if it even still exists. Maybe it’s in storage in my mom’s basement. I’ll have to look for it next time I’m there. I remember one story specifically, though: I wrote that my friend Kiersten, who lived across the street, was upset because her dog pulled his leash out of her hand while she was walking him, and he ran off. I used my ESP to follow the dog’s path down the block, through a park, and into a meadow. Then I had a vision of the dog’s leash caught on a spike in the railroad tracks, and oh no, a train was coming! I ran to the tracks and rescued the dog just moments before [the] train came. Clara to the rescue!!!

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Do it double because some can’t do it at all

This idea was repeated throughout the story of Aftermath, and even here in this interview. It stood out to me so much, I came up with an idea. As many of you know by now, I opened up a bookish merch shop. Well, I’ve decided to create a design and for every sale of the design, a portion of the profits will go towards either RAINN (Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network) or Missing Kids (The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children®) – with the decision made by the customer. You can read so much more about this design and the foundations HERE. Below are the designs:

I hope you guys love the idea of Blu Gives Back, enjoy this design, & read this book!