What kind of books did you read as a child and what authors did you look up to?

I read very widely as a kid. I grew up without a TV in the house, so my primary source of entertainment was books. I was a big fantasy reader – Tamora Pierce was hugely influential on me as a teen. But it wasn't until I read Meg Cabot's The Princess Diaries at 13 or 14 that contemporary fiction really got its hooks in me, both as a reader and a writer.

What is your strategy for writing? Do you set aside time, or just do it when you're in the right frame of mind?

When I'm on deadline or drafting, I write 5,000 words a week. I don't do well with daily word count goals, because if I don't make the count at the end of the day, I feel like I've failed and get all drama queen about it. And I spend a lot of time editing as I go, so some days my word count falls, rather than rises. I like to take a 300-word scene and then spend 5 hours carving it down to 150 (hopefully) better words. I try to write for an hour or two in the morning, usually outside on one of the many benches I have scattered across my little chunk of the woods. And then I try to write a few hours at night, usually after 10 or so, when my dogs are finally asleep and not drooling all over my laptop.

What made you want to be an author and was it your intention when you first started writing to end up writing for teens and young adults?

With the exception of a few romance novels written in college, YA has always been what I've written. Probably because I started writing as a pre-teen. I had a really tough time as a teen. I struggled a lot with depression and suicide and self-harm. By the time I was fifteen, I'd tried to kill myself twice. And I would've tried for a third and final time if a certain YA book (Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak) hadn't come into my life. It saved me. It gave me a light at the end of the tunnel I was in. So I promised myself that if I made it through that tunnel, I would dedicate the rest of my life to writing the kind of books that saved me.

One of my strongest beliefs is in the life-saving and transformative power of YA fiction. I am proof of it. I would not be here now without it. There is rarely a time of more turmoil and pain and confusion and ecstatic joy than the teen years. To find something that speaks to you during that time – that lessens your pain, that gives you hope, that makes you feel and laugh and relate – is a gift every teen deserves to be given. I'm deeply grateful to have the chance to contribute to that, in any small way that I can.

What inspired you to write a murder mystery?

I am a great fan of Hitchcock, and my Gramz was quite the mystery buff. I spent a lot of time with her as a kid, watching old movies, and some of my favorites were the noir films from the '30s and '40s. I also really love puzzles. Far From You was influenced by two of my favorite puzzle narratives: Tom Stoppard's play Arcadia, which takes place in the past and the present simultaneously on stage, and the 1944 film Laura, which is about a detective investigating a murder in which glamour girl was shot in her apartment… Or was she?

In Far From You one of your characters is gay, and another bisexual; what made you decide you wanted to write about a gay relationship and the issues that gay people face?

Representation is a big thing for me. My life (like lots of people's) is full of family and friends of all sexualities, and everyone deserves to see themselves in books. I'm bisexual, and I hadn't read a ton of YA books with bisexual characters (though there are some great ones! Malinda Lo's Adaptation, for example), so Sophie's bisexuality was important to me personally. Also, I really like writing about girls kissing other girls.

I was very excited when you had a positive portrayal of a home-schooled character, as I have always been home-educated. Are you in any way connected to home-education? If not what made you write about a character that was?

That is so nice of you to say! I was homeschooled too – which is why you won't often see me tackling a book set in high school! I really credit my homeschooling for giving me the opportunity to become the writer I needed to be to get published. Well, homeschooling and my mum. She took me seriously when I told her I wanted to be a writer, which looking back is not a small thing at all. I was maybe 12. I could've just as easily changed my mind, but by being taken seriously and being homeschooled, I was able to dedicate a lot more time to learning and reading and honing my craft. I also had the freedom to explore and experience stuff that in-school kids might not have because of their schedules. A lot of writing is about experiencing things… sense-memory. Inspiration comes from anywhere and anything, and getting out there and experiencing life is one of the best things you can do as a writer.

There were lots of different religious views in Far From You: Mina believed in a heaven and looking down on your friends and family once you're dead, Sophie believed you just died and that was the end. And Mina was scared to tell her Mum the truth about her sexuality because of her Mother's religion. Why did you want all these characters to have such different religious views?

I'm fascinated by religion because I was brought up in an atheistic family and am an atheist still. But I have the best and most interesting conversations with my friends of all different religions, and I was very intrigued by the idea of exploring grief with faith – and without it.

Sophie has a lot of core elements that I took from my teen diaries, specifically her relationship with chronic pain and her body, and the raw kind of grief you feel when you don't believe in an afterlife… when you wish you could, but you're just not built for it. No matter what, it's hard to lose anybody in your life, but Sophie doesn't have the comfort of thinking that Mina is somewhere beautiful and safe, like Trev does. I think it fuels her determination to find Mina's killer, because that's something she can actually believe in.

Some of the characteristics of the characters in the book really reminded me of myself and people I know; are any of the characteristics of your characters inspired by people you know?

Sophie definitely has some of my traits, I was a competitive swimmer who got derailed by chronic pain. But her injuries are actually based on my father's, who was hit by a drunk driver when I was young. When I was in college, he decided to stop taking the heavy-duty pain medication he'd been on in favour of a more natural approach, and I helped take care of him during the last few months of tapering off the pain meds. It was a very difficult experience – for both of us – and his determination always stuck with me.

You managed to get Sophie's emotions across really well and I was really moved by her feelings, were you ever worried that you wouldn't be able to write about the characters feelings well enough to make the readers feel the character's emotion?

Thank you! I always worry about getting the emotions right and getting the readers to feel. I tend to load a lot of problems onto my characters, and sometimes I wonder, "Is it too much?" This is why revision is my best friend and where my fondness of stripping a scene down to the barest it can be comes in. Striking the right emotional balance is hard!

Can we expect another book from you and if so should we expect the same kind of topic, murder mystery, or will you go for a different theme?

I am hard at work on my second book. I wouldn't describe this one as a mystery as much, though it does have a few twists. It's about two best friends who are more like sisters, and the choices you're faced with when you have someone who loves you enough to die – or kill – for you.

There may or may not be a murder in it.