By Ritaja
April Henry is an interesting and amazing author, even if you don’t like her books. She can captivate her audience in a few words. It’s like magic what authors like her can do. We found out a lot about her when we asked her a few questions. She became an author by liking to read, and then trying to write a book (yes a whole book). She said it was hard (well duh) throwing herself into the world of writing. For all the 6th graders out there, April Henry had tried to find an agent but couldn’t do so until her second book.
Something many might not know is that she was reading an article about a teen going to boot camp, and wanted to write a book about a 16 year old girl who was good but from a bad place. In doing so she had created a YA (young adult) book instead of the other adult books she wrote. Contrary to popular belief she doesn’t know everything about her books before researching it a little. April Henry does though pay a lot of attention to the things she researches. She told us that she hadn’t seen a full on asthma attack and needed it for her book, so she had searched online and found videos about it and what it looks like. The amount of detail she looks at is insane! In the video she noticed that there is a hollow triangle in your chest when you are trying to breath with the asthma attack happening, and picked up on that and many other things!
A genre that a lot of people don’t know that she likes is humor. You can probably see why that is confusing because she writes murder mysteries. But nevertheless when she finds a good, funny/humorous book she loves it.
Some advice for young aspiring authors, read more critically (which might take the joy out of reading). Also follow the genre you want to whatever it may be, romance, adventure or even murder mysteries! Another thing is don’t be discouraged if you can’t finish your book, she said herself that endings/how to end a book is hard and may take a couple of rewrites and/or edits to get it perfectly right. If you want to hear more about what she had to say to us (Ruina and Ritaja) check out the DW Voice page
DW Voice 