A November 2005 interview with Lara Zeises, author of Anyone But You and Bringing Up the Bones.

It was one of those "one thing leads to another" kind of ideas. Like, I started out wanting to write a book about the best friend of the popular girl - you know, the quiet friend who really has all of the power. Then I started playing the "what if" game, trying to see how to shake up her world, and there was Critter - tall, lanky, goofy, charming Critter. But in trying to flesh out Critter, I thought, "What if he had a sister who wasn't really a sister, and then she became competition for Critter's love interest?" Thus Seattle was born. And then I totally fell in love with her character, and Critter's, so Sarah morphed into something else and took something of a back seat to the Critter/Seattle dynamic.

In the first draft of the novel, there was more sexual tension between Critter and Seattle, but by the end I realized that this wasn't a story of illicit romance. It was the story of a non-traditional family trying to hold it all together. Of course, I couldn't help but throw a little romance in there. ...

What are you reading right now?

RAINBOW PARTY. I'm finding it interesting because I'm about a third of the way through and so far I haven't found anything really scandalous. I mean, there's the IDEA of the party itself, and the characters use "bad" words, but Melvin Burgess's DOING IT was far more graphic and disturbing, and that book won the LA Times Book Award. I still contend that the uproar over RAINBOW PARTY is because it's about girls participating in oral sex, and maybe because of one "straight" boy getting oral sex from his not-so-straight best friend. I think the concepts of these things freak people out more than the book itself, but maybe that's just my liberal opinion.

Okay, I'm going to put you on the spot...sequel or no sequel??

No sequel. Not for ANYONE, and not for BRINGING UP THE BONES. I would love to write a sequel to CONTENTS UNDER PRESSURE, but CONTENTS hasn't sold enough copies for my publisher to let me do one. Don't get me wrong - it's done well - but Random House prefers to see SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS kind of numbers before green lighting sequel.

Are you working on anything now?

But of course! I'm writing the story of Stella Madison, the daughter a reluctantly world famous chef dad and a savvy restaurant owner mom. They're both foodies, and all she wants is a fast food cheeseburger, or some Mac & Cheese from the box. But really, it's the story of how her parents have been separated for six years and never got divorced, remain the best of friends and ... start dating other people.

What do you enjoy most about teaching?

Everything but the grading. I cannot stand grading papers, because I find it so tedious. That's for my freshmen, I mean - I teach an English comp course at UD. When teaching creative writing, as I do for a group of adults, my favorite thing is watching that spark fire up in someone's belly. You can almost witness the exact moment that writing stops being just a hobby and starts being a goal. My students - when I first started the adult class, I couldn't get anyone to write more than a paragraph at a time. Now they're working on NOVELS. I love it. I love them.

If you were a color, what color would you be?

Persimmon. Don't ask me why.

Is there any author in the history of authors (all the way back through all time) that you'd like to give a piece of your mind to? If so, who and why?

Herman Melville. I'd say, "What's up with Bartelby, yo? I mean, come ON. I understand you wanted to write about non-conformity and all, but seriously? If my boss asks me to do something, and I say, 'I'd prefer not to,' and continue to say that any time anyone asks me to do something, I should HOPE they'd fire my ass. Does that make me a fascist? I don't even care. Bad story, Herman. BAD STORY."

How did you celebrate the sale of your first book?

I was working for a textbook publishing company at the time, and had just gotten my master's degree two days prior. I stumbled out of my office and turned to the first person I saw and said, "I think I just sold my book." Then all of my friends and I ducked out of work early and went and had pretty colored drinks at Fire & Ice, and I just felt completely dazed.