YA AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Beck Nicholas, Australian Young Adult Author.

Welcome to my first YA Author Interview of 2019!


I have given the look of these a bit of a refresh for the new year, and have some interesting interviews coming up, which I will hopefully manage to post on a monthly basis like I did last year.

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For my first 2019 interview, I am so excited to be hosting the absolutely lovely Beck Nicholas, who has written a bunch of wonderful YA novels and also happens to live in my city!

So excited to be hosting Beck, and I hope you find her answers as interesting as I did! 
:)

BECK NICHOLAS Interview:
Questions asked by Poppy Nwosu.


One of the aspects I love about your work is how unashamedly romantic it is. ‘The Last Days of Us’ has some beautiful and epic love scenes that would have felt at home in a Hollywood romance drama, (I’m thinking about the epic storm kiss scene in particular). Sometimes I think romance in YA gets a bad reputation, but I am personally such a huge fan of it, which is why I love seeing romantic plotlines so front and centre in novels like yours.

• I wonder how you feel about romance in YA and why you choose to focus on love as such as important element of your stories?

BECK:
Thanks for the compliments *blushes* that's so nice to say! I do love some romance, if it works for the stories and the characters and Zoey and Luc had such chemistry for me from the start. My characters tend to feel a lot about a lot and that includes romantically. It can be huge in a character's world even if it's not so big in the scheme of things. It's all about finding who you are with and even more importantly sometimes without another. Some romances don't help that self discovery, sometimes it can take seeing yourself how someone else does to find our way.
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• What drove you to mix a classic road trip love story with much darker and heavier themes revolving around loss and grief in ‘The Last Days of Us’?

BECK:
I adore a road trip. There's something so nice about not having to 'go home'. I just got back from a big drive around Tasmania and each day is full of new places and adventure. Just after someone close to me passed away I travelled (to Japan actually) and there was a strange clash of seeing these new places while feeling a huge grief. Excitement and numbness and wonder and pain that I couldn't share it with that person. I wanted to bring some of those feelings to Last Days.

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• There is a real focus on music in your latest novel, and I wondered if there was a special reason for this?  

Although I almost always prefer absolute silence to write, music is always a part of my process. Always there are songs or even a playlist that takes me to the book. Most of the important people in my life are music people and it takes up a lot of my headspace and seemed natural for that to come out in the book. Zoey owes a lot to my incredible niece who is an incredible arts graduate and theatre professional so that's part of it too.

• You have a lot of books under your belt, and I was wondering if you found any of your novels harder to write than others, and if so, why?

BECK:
Last Days poured out as I wrote if from a place in my heart that I'd put off exploring for a bit. Sometimes I get stuck and it's usually because I don't know something about a character well enough or I'm not ready to write the story yet.


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• What is a story or novel that has had a big impact on your life, and what was it about that idea that most spoke to you?

BECK:
So many. I've always read a lot so it's hard to pin down to one or two. Looking for Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta had a huge impact on me as it showed me my young Australia and that was worth of writing/reading about.

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• If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?

BECK:
Don't rush! Read and write and read some more. Believe in yourself.
(That pretty much works for my present self too)

• And finally, are you working on anything we can look forward to in the future?

BECK:
I actually just started another road trip story. It seems I can't get away from them. This one's through the red heart of Australia rather than along the coast and is all about how well we know people and how relationships - sisterly ones in this case - might just happen when you're not looking. Oh and about teen pop sensation Chloe Hart and her fans the Hart-attacks.


Thanks for having me to chat!! Great questions!!



Thank you so much for your answers Beck!
It was a pleasure to host you for this interview! :)

ABOUT BECK NICHOLAS:

Beck Nicholas always wanted to write.
Since studying science at university, she’s worked as a lab assistant, a pizza delivery driver and a high school teacher, but she always pursued her first dream of creating stories.
Now, she lives with her family near Adelaide, halfway between the city and the sea, and she’s lucky to spend her days (and nights) writing young adult fiction.

When she’s not writing, Beck will most likely be found reading or watching sport (since participating is beyond her coordination levels). In the early morning, before the day of writing, kid wrangling and reading begins, she runs. When it’s just her and the road (and her protesting muscles) she lets the characters in her head share their problems and a story begins.

Connect with Beck Nicholas:

• Website
• ​Goodreads

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If you want to check out past interviews with other YA authors from this blog, here they are:​ ​

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​Thanks so much for reading!
​I'd love to know your thoughts! :)