BEHIND THE BOOK
Watch this video of me chatting it up about Tangled. Click here »
I thought of the idea for Tangled several years ago. I pictured four teenagers, two boys and two girls, who meet on a trip and somehow all of their lives are drastically changed because of it. Early on, I knew the boys would be brothers, but I wasn’t sure how the girls would know each other. Maybe cousins? And then, a-ha, I realized their moms would be old friends and the girls keep getting forced together even though they don’t have a thing in common.
At first, I pictured them meeting on a plane en route to Paris. I spent a semester in college there and I definitely would have welcomed a research trip back. But every time I thought of Paris, all I could see were a bunch of teenagers at the top of the Eiffel Tower, one maybe threatening to jump off, and it wasn’t working for me. But then, when my son was about a year old, we went on a vacation to a lovely resort in the Caribbean. While we were there, I kept noticing teenagers trekking around the grounds, especially a boy with shaggy hair who wore thoroughly ironic moccasins even though temperature was eight-five.
Here we are, wandering around the resort.
Here’s the little ferry that Jena and Dakota ride on. For some random reason, I made the boat in
Tangled red instead of blue.
One night, I was soaking in the hot tub and reading a book by dim light, and Moccasin Boy walked over and climbed into the hot tub, too. I didn’t say a word to him, but it was another a-ha! moment. I thought, That’s Dakota. And I decided that one of my girl characters would be in the hot tub – the shyer one who has less experience with boys. But the big question was, how would they end up talking to each other? Once I came up with the answer – they would discover a suicide note together – that’s when the story started getting exciting in my head.
I was working on Guyaholic at that time, so I couldn’t start writing immediately. But once I did, the story just poured out. I loved getting into the heads of all four characters – Jena, Dakota, Skye, and Owen. And it took me on some of the most amazing research jaunts. For Dakota, I interviewed police officers about how they would handle drinking and trespassing. For Skye, I got to sit in on casting sessions at a swank office in Manhattan, watching real teen stars auditioning for a movie. I stayed at a hotel in Syracuse around the time I was revising Owen’s section, so I got some definite inspiration there. And guess what? We recently went back to that resort in the Caribbean! I’d already finished Tangled, so I kept hoping I’d gotten all the details right. Other than the color of the ferry, things were pretty much the same. No Moccasin Boy, though.
My amazing publisher, HarperTeen, created this e-card. When I saw this, I thought, “I would want to read this book.” Hopefully you will, too!
