Alyssa B. Sheinmel
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When I created this website, The Beautiful Between hadn’t even been published yet, so I hadn’t been asked any questions as an author, let alone asked any questions frequently. So I asked a few of my closest friends to come up with questions that they’d like to ask their favorite authors – or just to come up with questions they’ve always wanted to ask me. The results are below.

How does your every day life affect your writing?
Well, on the most practical level, it determines when and where and how I can write. I have a full time job that I love, and I have a puppy, and there always seems to be a slew of books I want to read, and shows I want to watch and movies I want to see – so there are weeks and months at a time when writing just falls through the cracks. But I actually think this schedule suits the way I write: I tend to write in bursts and fits; a few pages here, a paragraph there – sometimes literally just a sentence every few days.

Do you keep a journal?
Yes, I do.  I keep it on my computer, and the name of the file is Dalton, because when I was 17 a boy named Dalton read my diary behind my back! 
Who are your favorite authors?
I have a lot of them, and I discover new ones all the time.  I’ll pick four for this question though: Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Alice Hoffman.

I try to read a little bit of Ernest Hemingway every day.  I know his reputation is for writing short declarative sentences, but I think there are beautiful, fluid and downright flowery tricks of language in his writing.  His attention to physical detail is so precise that I believe anything else he tells me.  I believe his characters are in love, but not because he tells me how and why they fell in love; I believe it because he tells me the exact taste of the oysters they shared at dinner.
F.  Scott Fitzgerald wrote my favorite phrase ever, in Tender is the Night: “Green as green milk, blue as laundry water.”  I repeat that line over and over in my head walking around the city, riding on the subway, lying in bed at night.  The more time I spend poring over those words, the more brilliant they become to me.  I’ve never seen green milk, or blue laundry water, but somehow I know exactly which colors he’s talking about.  And he chose such every day, domestic things – milk and laundry water – and made them extraordinary and beautiful.

I am a fantasy dork (albeit mainstream fantasy): I love Star Wars, Harry Potter, Philip Pullman…And I love The Lord of the Rings best of all.  Reading those books is, to me, the literary equivalent of curling up with a cup of hot chocolate on a cold day. 

I’m kind of ashamed that there’s only one woman in my top four, but I have so many nice things to say about Alice Hoffman that I hope I can make up for it.  Her writing is so lush and rich and green – she seems to mother the very words she writes.  I think my favorite thing about her writing is her ability to weave in magic like it’s the most natural thing in the world, like there’s nothing extraordinary about a dead boy leaving fish in his girlfriend’s pockets, or a widow whose tears run red.  She imbues the every day with the fantastic, and reading her has taught me so much about writing.  And, I feel like she’s taught me to look for magic everywhere.
Connelly, the main character in The Beautiful Between, has an elaborate fantasy life.  Did you have an active fantasy life when you were growing up?
Yes; I definitely drew on my own overactive imagination when I invented Connelly.  I was home alone a lot growing up, but I was never lonely, because I had so many imaginary friends to keep me company.  I actually think that having so much time to myself when I was younger is a huge part of why I became a writer; it turned me into a person who invented stories.

What does the title The Beautiful Between mean?
The Beautiful Between has a few meanings.  It’s the place Connelly has created somewhere between fantasy and reality – she has an elaborate fantasy life, but she’s not cut off from the real world either.  And The Beautiful Between refers to the relationships in the book – between Connelly and Jeremy, Connelly and her mother, Connelly and Kate, and Jeremy and Kate – the things that go on between people.

How do you go about writing a book?
This is a tough question for me, because I think that the process of writing a book is a very personal one.  I know writers who approach writing as a nine to five job – they get up, turn on their computer, set a writing goal for the day and meet it.  And I know writers who like to write away from their homes, in public places, who find the distraction helpful.  (By the way, I think that’s very brave – I’m personally too scared to take my computer out of the house because I’m sure the minute I do, I’ll drop it, or lose it, or it’ll get stolen.)

I like to write only when I’m in the mood – otherwise, I simply don’t write well – so I can’t approach it as a job.  I don’t outline stories before I write them, though I make lots of notes as I write: when I sit down to begin a novel, I know who the characters will be, and where the story will take place, and sometimes I think I know how it’s going to end.  But I find the story tends to take on a life of its own and I just try and keep up.  I’m also a big reviser – once I have a first draft written, I go back in and rewrite it.  I don’t think I could even get a first draft down on paper without the thought of rewriting it in the back of my head.
Sometimes, the hardest thing about writing is reminding yourself to just sit down and do it.  But then, sometimes, it’s even harder to stop myself from writing – it’s so much fun, and to be honest, after a few weeks without writing, I begin to get a nagging feeling that there was something I was supposed to be doing that I forgot about: does the dog need walking?  Was I supposed to meet my best friend at the movies?  Did I leave the oven on?  But I always seem to find my way back to the computer, preferably with my dog sitting at my feet and an idea – for a new story, a new scene, and sometimes just a new sentence – percolating in my head.
What are you favorite and least favorite forms of punctuation?
I love the semi-colon; it’s all over my writing.  But for some reason I really don’t like ellipses.  I try to avoid using that dot dot dot whenever I can.  Sometimes, in my real job, I get into big fights with my boss about the use of ellipses.  (Sometimes I think she uses them just to irritate me.)
What are your favorite and least favorite words?
My favorite word is tintinnabulation.  I never get to use it, but I love the way it sounds (no pun intended, I swear).  My least favorite word is anyways.  I use the word “anyway” all the time, but “anyways” is like nails on a chalkboard to me.  I can’t explain it.

What is your favorite movie?
I have two: The Princess Bride and Manhattan.  I love them all on their own, but I love them even more because The Princess Bride is my mother’s favorite and Manhattan is my dad’s.  Also Field of Dreams and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. 

Where do you write?
I have an alcove off my bedroom, where the walls are lined with my packed bookshelves, and where I keep a desk with my computer on it.  I spent so much time and energy trying to make that little space into the perfect place to write. But the truth is, I mostly unplug my computer and write in bed.
Outside of writing, what are your interests, hobbies, and favorite pastimes?
Anyone who knows me probably knows that my number one top interest is my Australian shepherd, Derby.  I miss him every time I leave the house.  You know how they say that when people die they look back and regret that they’d never traveled to the pyramids or seen Machu Picchu?  I think that when I die, I’ll regret any trip I ever took without taking Derby with me.  He is my Machu Picchu.

I’m also a clotheshorse and a huge nerd; my bedside table is usually covered with a stack of fashion magazines alongside a stack of novels.  I love eating and trying new restaurants, and from time to time, I even take a stab at cooking, which I keep hoping will turn into my favorite hobby.  As I write this, the holidays are only a few weeks away, and I’m gearing up for a month of cooking; I love playing hostess at the holidays and I love when my apartment is crowded with friends eating food that is half-homemade and half-take-out.

I’ve noticed there are a lot of owls in your apartment. Why do you collect owls?
I collect owls because my grandmother, Doris, collects owls.  When I was little I used to try to count all the owl figurines in her house, but I never could count them all, because, at that age, I just didn’t know how to count high enough.