Author Interview: Cherry Cheva

After reading She's So Money, I had to get an interview with Cherry Cheva! Her latest YA novel Duplikate is soon to be released and she also writes the scripts for the popular cartoon sitcom, The Family Guy!

You can learn more about her at http://www.cherrycheva.com/.

What inspired you to write She's So Money?

The time I totally masterminded a multi-thousand dollar cheating ring in high school with this ridiculously hot guy? Yeah, right. :) Basically the very, very original inspiration was to sort of flip the genders in “The King and I” and then the actual story grew from the background fact that my parents own a Thai restaurant, and what might’ve happened if I’d waited tables there in high school. Then the cheating ring was just like, okay, how do you get these two characters to interact who would normally hate each other and never have a reason to do so?

Were there any changes the characters had to undergo before you were satisfied with the results?

You mean from the original draft? No, not really...Maya was always who she was, Camden was always who he was...but the actual characters themselves both did learn a lesson of some sort, if that’s what you mean, and yeah, it would have been less satisfying if they hadn’t.

Did you always wanted to be an author?

Short answer: yes. Longer answer: yes, but I totally didn’t think I could do it. I mean, a career in writing didn’t seem even REMOTELY realistic, so off I went to law school, even though I knew I wanted to take a crack at TV writing eventually. But I’d written short stories as a kid/teenager and always thought writing was LIKE THE COOLEST THING EVER so when the opportunity came up to write a book, I was like HELL YES!

What is the hardest part in writing a story for you? And the easiest?

The hardest is the first draft! Oh, how I hate it! I do the “crap draft” thing where basically you just spit it out, whatever it is, even though you know it sucks, so then at least you have something to type over later when you’re revising. I just hate the blank page staring at you...would much rather have words on it first to work with. The easiest is...hmmm. I guess dialogue is slightly less taxing than, like, writing description, probably because that’s what I’m used to from TV writing. My editors are always telling me to be more describey and in screenwriting they’re always telling you to be less describey.

What is your writing process like?

Disjointed! I’m a terrible, terrible internet procrastinator...I’ll write like three sentences and then be checking email again or looking up pictures of cats. If I have a deadline I’m much better about it, but usually it’s just a lot of clicking back and forth between the internet and my actual document. And the TV. Also, since I have a day job that also involves writing, most of the time at the end of the day when I get home I’m kinda tapped out and the last thing I want to do is work on something else. So I tend to be a weekend warrior when it comes to book stuff. Unless, of course, deadline.

If you can bring any of your characters to life from any of your novels, who would it be?

Camden King, so I can borrow money and throw parties at his house, although it might be weird for a grown woman to be borrowing money from a high school kid, but whatever, we’ll just gloss over that part, because hello, he’s filthy rich.

Are you writing any new stories at the moment? If so, can you please give a quick blurb about it?

Yep, although I’m not really sure I can talk about it right now...but I *can* blurb the hell out of my next Family Guy episode, so I will do that! It’s about Stewie being obsessed with Hannah Montana, and the Evil Monkey finally coming out of hiding and making friends with the family. I think it airs in November.

Lastly, please give an interesting fact about yourself that not many know of!

Oh! Um...sometimes I wear children’s shoes because they’re totally cheaper than adult shoes. This is one of the few advantages to being short.