Cherry Cheva: 3 quick questions

Cherry Cheva, Author of She's So Money and Duplikate

1. High school is over! Your advice?

ENJOY COLLEGE! Assuming you're going, college is the only time you're ever going to have all the freedom of being an adult with basically none of the responsibility. That's simplifying things a bit, but seriously...like, if you skip class, who cares, nothing's gonna happen, but if you skip work, you get fired. Also, right now you're still young enough to stay up all night and not be a completely nonfunctional wreck the next day, so enjoy that while it lasts. :)

2. Best post-secondary memory?

Like, my best memory of the summer after high school? That summer is a blur! Probably something having to do with hanging out with all my friends before we all started college.

3. Worst post-secondary memory?

See previous answer about blur. :) I feel like it was really fun and not negative at all, although there was definitely this, like, nostalgia feeling, like "oh I'm so sad that all this is over." I mean, high school sucks, but it was still a bummer to know that we were all about to leave all our friends, especially NOT knowing yet how much fun I'd be having just a few short months later.

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Click the titles to see my review for She's So Money and Duplikate. Both a great and light novels with very real protagonists!

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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.

She's So Money by Cherry Cheva

Title: She's So Money
Author: Cherry Cheva
Age Group: Teens
# of Pages: 290
My Rating: 4.5/5

Maya is your straight-A student with her eyes glued on getting into the prestigious Stanford University. She works hard at her parents' Thai restaurant and keeps a perfect record in school. And that won't be changing any time soon. Or so she thinks.

After serving a couple of grouchy customers at the restaurant when her parents are away, she leaves the store as is to clean it up the next day instead. To her horror, those picky customers from before called for a health inspection! And the restaurant is fined... $10,000?!?

Maya is in deep, deep doodoo. Hiding the fine from her family, she must find a way to make ten grand within a month and a half! A couple of days before, she was tutoring the rich and egoistic Camden, who was offering her money to do his homework. She first refused. But now that she thinks of it, she might take up on the offer after all!

Convincing Camden took quite a bit after rejecting him in the first place but eventually he agrees! Except how can Maya earn enough by only "tutoring" one person? Then the two devise a plan. A plan where Maya will have to lie to the people who trust her and to do things that are against her morals.

The very first thing I want to comment on and get out of the way is: I am pretty mad with the cover. The whole time before I started the novel, I kept thinking that Maya was some sort of Caucasian girl. Yes, I knew the author was Asian but it didn't dawn me that she would have her character Asian too. Imagine my surprise when the first sentence revealed that Maya was Thai! Don't get me wrong, I was so happy to see an Asian protagonist (because there is practically none nowadays in YA fiction)! But it made me want to scream at the book and shake it like I'm choking a person, "How dare you fool me?!"

If you guys were around the YA blogosphere in the past couple of months, there had been talks about Justine Larbalestier's Liar cover. It was where her main girl is African American with short hair but the publisher made the cover girl white with long hair. It was like betraying the reader about the novel and that was how I felt when I started She's So Money. But that didn't last long before I got into the story.

I have only read one other review for She's So Money and the reviewer hated it. So when I was reading, the entire time I kept worrying that I was going to dislike it. But surprisingly (and thankfully), I didn't!

What I absolutely love about this novel is that the characters are real. Especially Camden. He may be good-looking but he is not some brooding loner with an air of mystery around him. No, he is cocky, blunt, and doesn't give a rat-ass about your opinion of him. He is a womanizer and any girl within a meter of him will either give him their immense hate or their virginity. And you know what? I frikkin love the guy (never in real life though...)! Sure he is like the enemy-of-all-women, but he is real. I know of some people that are similar to him. But I don't know of any mysterious dude who seems to always pop up everywhere. And you know what else? Camden might be failing in school but he has a mind of a determined businessman if he gets it going. Seriously, you'd want him as your boss. His connections are scary yo.

And Maya is just as real. I have a friend who is exactly like her. They both freak out if they get lower than an A (let alone A-) and is always the goody-goody two-shoes. I mean, normal girls in novels are common nowadays but I guess nerdy Asians aren't as much as they are in real life. But the thing is, Maya is not good from beginning to end. She makes a mistake and learns from it. The hard way. Literally, I'm applauding for her. Instead of some broken character who has a tragic life, Maya comes from a normal family with expectations. And she is flawed because the freedom of her parents got to her head (like any other teen), even when it is brief. Her small mistake has her going off the handle completely! And it's interesting to see how she and Camden grows from there.

I really loved seeing the relationship between the two. Even though their romance was not delved into, I still sort of envied it from afar. There were parts when I went, "Noooo! How can you do that?!?" and then others where I am going "Luckyluckylucky". Sigh.

She's So Money is a fun read between two people who are complete polar opposites. Seeing Maya trying to get 10 grand with Camden makes the reader wonder how they are going to manage. This is the novel for you if any of the points above intrigued you!

Won copy from In Bed With Books.