I first discovered Cecil Castellucci's work earlier this summer when DC Comics published Cecil’s first comic book, The Plain Janes, as the premier book under their latest imprint, Minx comics.  Minx’s graphic novels leaves the traditional superhero and crime fighting genre behind and resemble independent comics, but are written in an attempt to attract teenage girls to an industry that often neglects them.  Now I must admit that knowing that I was not the target audience for the book, when I purchased The Plain Janes, I did so as an impulse with little to no expectations.  What motivated me to purchase it was the fact that it had been a while since I had purchased a new “independent” book, and I found artist Jim Rugg’s art to be very appealing.  However, bringing the book to a local café, I was surprised how quickly I found myself seduced into the world that Cecil Castellucci created.  The Plain Janes is a coming of age story for a new modern society that is motivated by fear, When a teenage girl named Jane’s family moves to the suburbs after she survives a terrorist bombing, she gives up a chance to sit with the cool girls at lunch in order to sit at a table with three outsiders who, incidentally, also are all named Jane.  While she has the desire to be friends with the three Janes, they rather not have anything to do with her, or even each other, with ambitions to find their own place into the cliques they feel they belong in.  However, Main Jane devises a plan and brings the three of them together by creating a secret society and creating a series of "art attacks” which creates a sense of wonder amongst some in the community, while others are terrified by what they deem terrorist acts.  A number of other sub-plots to this gripping tale absolutely captivated me and I read the entire book in one sitting, unexpectedly making The Plain Janes, in my opinion, one of the best comic book reads of 2007.  And I wasn’t alone.  The Plain Janes was an instant hit for DC Comics, making MINX a success, and getting positive reviews all over the place, including a plug by Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon. 

Weeks after discovering The Plain Janes, I was delighted to actually meet Cecil at the Toronto Comic Book Convention in June 2007.  Cecil proved to be everything that I imagined she’d be – a bit quirky and absolutely charming.  Our meeting was brief, but she let me know that while The Plain Janes was her first journey into the comic book field, it was actually her fourth publication.  Cecil is the author of a series of YA books; Boy Proof (2005), The Queen of Cool (2006) and Beige (2007).  Agreeing to do an interview with us later in the summer, I immediately went and ordered Cecil’s entire body of work and began reading.  It had been a long time since I had read an actual YA novel, but I was delightfully shocked by the maturness of Cecil’s books.  Her books, normally coming of age tales where a girl is forced to take a new look at the world around her in the means to make her a more realistic and better person, are not preachy nor unrealistic, and depict a matter of fact attitude towards normal teenage activities such as drugs and sex.  Starting with Beige, the story of a teenage girl named Katy who, against her wishes, spends the summer living as a stranger in a strange land when she goes to LA to visit her father, who happens to be drummer in a successful punk band, I was, once again, captivated by Cecil’s story and characters.

However, upon doing a bit of research I was surprised to find that Cecil Castellucci is more then just a writer.  She is also an actress, a film maker and a musician.  Thus, I knew we were going to have a lot to talk about,  So, get ready to enter the world of Cecil Castellucci, possibly one of the most ambitious YA authors working today as:

CONFESSIONS OF A POP CULTURE ADDICT PROUDLY PRESENTS

ART SAVES!: 

A CONVERSATION WITH CECIL CASTELLUCCI

I reached Cecil via phone from her home in Los Angeles during the summer of 2007.

Sam:  Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us about your work.

Cecil:  Oh, you’re welcome.

Sam:  I'm really excited about this because for the last couple of weeks I've just thrown myself into your books and your world and your characters and I'm just absolutely enchanted by your vision.  So I was looking on your website and you’re a writer, a musician, a film maker, an actress...how do you have time to do all of this?

Cecil:  Well, I don't really do music right now.  I'm in retirement so I just sort of do projects and the story kind of tells me what kind of project it wants to be so I’m not all of those things at all times.  I mean, right now I'm not doing music.  I was a musician but I'm not doing it right now because I don't have time because I have other things that I'm doing.  Other then that I just do projects and then I just complete them.

Sam:  So right now is writing your primary focus?

Cecil:  Yeah.  It's pretty much writing.  I mean, it's all writing.  Even when I was in a band or if I'm making a play or doing a movie it's all telling stories.  It's all the same thing. 

Sam: But right now you’re putting your creative energy in creating novels and fiction.

Cecil:  Yeah.  Exactly.  That’s how it’s coming out.  I mean, I just did a play last November and December and I just did my first two little comedy shows in May.

Sam:  Well the way I first discovered your work was through The Plain Janes which has been a runaway success.  It's getting praise all over the internet and I even read on your blog about how they had the big images of your characters hanging in the offices of DC Comics.

Cecil:  I know.  I was so excited.

Sam:  How much success has this book brought you?  Is it just another notch or is it a new high for your career?

Cecil:  Oh it's definatly a new high.  It’s like nothing that I've ever done before in terms of its acceptance.

Sam:  So it's been widely accepted by everybody?

Cecil:  Well, I don't know if its been widely accepted by everybody.  I'm sure there are some people who it’s not up to their tastes but it’s certainly more high profile then anything else I've done to date.

Sam:  Well, as I said, I think it's just fabulous.  I mean, I bought it as an impulse buy, not totally thinking it'd be my kind of thing, but I hadn't read anything independent in a long time, or anything that looked independent, but I read it in one sitting and rushed home to e-mail people about it.  It really captured me.

Cecil:  Well that makes me really excited because I write for teenaged girls.  That’s my audience.  But with anything in the world, just because it’s aimed at one category doesn't necessarily mean that it excludes everyone from enjoying it.

Sam:  That's entirely true, because I am finding that out with your novel Beige because after I'm finished it I have already promised it to a co-worker and I'm even hoping to pass it on to my mother.  I just know so many people who are going to like this book and their all in their thirties and forties.  Now with The Plain Janes, well I think it’s totally wild that Joss Whedon has written about it because I'm a huge Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan and, well, I wish Joss Whedon would read something of mine.  I'm not sure if you’re a Buffy fan or not.

Cecil:  Well the funny thing about how that happened was that I was guest blogging at Newsarama and every Friday I just had to write about whatever I wanted and do a couple of posts and I was just finishing up watching season seven of Buffy.  I had never watched it before because I don't have a television.  I only have a box and my DVD player and I haven't had cable television, or even an antenna, and I can't get anything.  So I missed Buffy and I never knew what the big deal was and then someone said "oh, you'd really like it" so they leant me Season One and I thought "alright, I'll watch this" and I thought it was okay.  So then I watched season two and then I just got hooked and then I started watching Angel so then on Newsarama, well the night before I had watched the final episode of season seven and I wrote how excited I was because now I could start reading the new comic book and how I had never understood what the cult of Joss Whedon was and the only way I had come to it was through Firefly and I thought it was fantastic, so I kind of went backwards.  I watched Firefly, and then I saw Serenity, and then I read Astonishing X-Men and then I watched Buffy.  So I wrote how now I was a convert and I had a huge crush on Joss Whedon and I guess someone put it on the Joss Whedon board and then Jess Whedon posted a comment that the funny thing was that he had read The Plain Janes the day before so it was kind of cool because I was watching season seven of Buffy and Joss Whedon was reading The Plain Janes on the same day!  Well I don't know, but at least I feel like I could say hi to him if I ever ran into him somewhere.  I have such an enormous respect for the way that he writes ensembles and I have enormous respect for the way that he writes women and I just think he’s just fantastic.

Sam:  So The Plain Janes is your first entry in the world of comic books.  Are you a long time comic book fan and reader?  What’s your personal history with the comic book industry?

Cecil:    I'm a long time comic book fan.  I'm French Canadian so I started when I was young with Tintin and Asterix and Lucky Luke and the Smurfs and then my brother read a lot of comic books so through him I read Spiderman, X-Men, Fantastic Four, Superman, Batman...but of course I had a crush on Batman because I loved the TV show when I was growing up.  So Batman was always mine.  So then there was the movies.  The Superman movies and we'd read all the comic books that were lying around.  And then my brother got into the Vertigo stuff when he was older so then I started reading Animal Man and Preacher, Hellblazer and Sandman and all those.  Then when I was in Montreal there was a lot of comic cons and I was working at a cafe that held a bunch of them so people like Seth and Chester Brown and all those people were coming in and I started getting exposed to that kind of thing in my early twenties and a lot of friends of mine were doing mini comics.  And then I stopped because I became very poor when I moved to Los Angeles so I didn't really read comic book at all anymore although I had a healthy appreciation for them.  Every now and then I'd pick something up like The Authority or Swamp Thing so I dabbled but it was too difficult to figure out what I wanted to read.

Sam:  You couldn't afford the fifty dollar a week habit that a lot of us collectors have.

Cecil:  No.  You just can't do that if you can't buy the books and understand what’s going on.  There’s just no point so I kind of stopped and was always thinking in the back of my mind that one day I'll acquire the habit but then I was living in Austin, Texas and I found The Deadenders and I just fell in love with it and that was when I was thinking that The Deadenders was kind of like a YA novel and it was the kind of stuff I was writing although I hadn't been published yet and that really made me have this idea that in the back of my head that I would want to do something like that one day.  Like a graphic novel so it was in the back of my head that maybe one day I could do a Vertigo book or something.  So it was kind of cool when Shelly Bond called me because she had edited The Deadenders and she talked about how she was launching the Minx line and was looking for YA writers and see if there was anything that might be interesting.

Sam:  Now did you have The Plain Janes already in your head when she approached you or did it develop afterwards?

Cecil:  I did kind of have it in my head.  I had an idea about four girls named Jane at the reject table at lunch and one of them thought they were all friends while the other three wanted to go to what they thought were the more popular tables - the theatre table or the sporty table or the science table but this other girl was all "I thought we were friends.  Will I see you tomorrow" and the other hree are all "not likely.  I won’t be here" but the day they all end up at that table.  So that was the idea but I didn't think it was a novel.  It was just a loose idea and I didn't know what it was so when Shelly called me and she told me what the Minx line was all about I immediately said "oh, I have this idea bout these four girls named Jane that sit at the reject table" and it just sort of snowballed from there. 

Sam:  Now the Janes are very archetypical.  Now were these characters based on anybody you knew or where they just broad characters that came out of these types of cliques.

Cecil:  I'm glad that you asked that.  I wanted them to be sort of archetypical.  There’s theatre girl.  There’s sporty girl.  But at the same time they transcend their clique.  Even though they are their clique my hope is that they transcend them.  Sometimes when I read some reviews and people are saying "well, they are so cliqued" it's like that’s the point!  The point is that we are all cliqued in a way and in order for them all to have a marked difference. They all have to be the mean girl, the sporty girl, the gay guy.  They have to be like that and its also just a very easy shorthand and that’s one of the things about this comic book medium is that you have that visual short hand that you know that girl and at the same they are bigger then what they seem.  They are much deeper then their clique...I hope.

Sam   Well I think you've succeeded.  Especially with Main Jane because I know I felt the most emotionally attached to her, but then perhaps I was supposed to.  I love the way you dealt with the subject of terrorism in The Plain Janes because it was done realistically and without the kind of overdone cliques that you see in fiction since 9-11.  I mean, it seems for a while the subject of terrorism was such a trendy plot device but you seem to tackle it a lot more tactfully and a lot more realistically and it didn't seem some kind of patriotic "war on terror" mentality.  Did you mean to do it differently?

Cecil:  Well I guess I meant to do it differently in the sense that I purposely made it Metro City and not New York and I purposely made it a different type of event and its sort of a suggestion of where we are today in the world but its not necessarily the world that we live in and I think when we do that we can talk in more universal truths that get closer to the heart of things then maybe when your talking about the exact truth.  I was really interested in fear and growing up, and I have this in Boy Proof, where the main character is obsessed with a post apocalyptic science fiction film.  Her whole world is doom and gloom.  The news headlines are all bad and I just think that is just such a part of being in this world now and I know that when I was growing up it was the cold war and there was this idea that the Russians could kill us at any moment and there was always that fear.  That enormous fear of nuclear war and I think it’s the same fear now but transferred to terrorism.  They can get you at any time.  It's the same thing.  I think that every single generation has dealt with this on some fundamental level.  I don't know.  Look at the French Revolution.  That was pretty terrifying.  I think that its just something that I was interested in trying to figure out how you process that as you are growing up and your dealing with lip stick and boyfriends and your heart and school work and stuff like that because even though your a young person you still live in this world and your not immune to it and your not immune to the good and the bad that’s happening.  I think as a young person I know that I tried to find hope and beauty and stuff and that’s what I wanted to do with The Plain Janes. 

Sam:  Well I think you dealt with it beautifully.  I mean terrorism has the tendency to be a cliqued plot that is old news but somehow you made it one of the more interesting and compelling parts of this book.  I mean, I was interested in reading about how this girl was dealing with it and how her parents are dealing with it and almost the romantic fantasy with the guy in the coma.  Now when I met you in Toronto one of my first questions was if there is a sequel to The Plain Janes coming out.

Cecil:  Yes.  There is a sequel coming out. 

Sam:  Now I know DC is very secretive about stuff and I don't expect you to tell us much about a sequel, but can you tell us anything you’re allowed to and give us a time frame of when we can expect to see it?

Cecil:  I don't know when it will be ready.  I hope it'll come out next year or next fall or something.  I have no idea of the time frame because Jim Rugg has to draw it.  But it's called The Janes in Love and a lot of questions will be answered and there will be a lot more new questions proposed.  I mean I'm going to keep going until they stop me. 

Sam:  Now are you planning on bringing out the personalities of the other three Janes and letting us know them a bit more?

Cecil:  Yeah.  Well, obviously the story is from mostly from Main Jane's point of view so she's obviously going to be a little more developed then the other ones so I think one of the really great things about a hopefully continuing graphic novel series or a continuing comic book series or a TV show or whatever is that you get to know those characters better and better. I mean look at season one of Buffy.  It's a little bit unformed.  Or look at season one of the Simpsons where the voices are even wrong!  The more settled they get then everybody gets to shine.  I mean the characters are definatly growing in the second book.

Sam:  You can say the same things about comics like Preacher or Strangers in Paradise.

Cecil:  Strangers in Paradise is such a great comic.  It would be so great to do something like that, or Love and Rockets!  But who knows.  Right now I'm only doing book two.

Sam:  Well I'll tell you if you keep writing them, I'll keep buying them.  Now I wanted to talk about your latest novel, Beige but I'm going to skip Beige for a second and ask you about your second novel The Queen of Cool.  Now while I find Beige to be an older book or something, the Queen of Cool is probably the first YA book I've read since the Nancy Drew Case Files that I was reading when I was in the eighth grade and I am partially shocked, but delightfully shocked.  I think it’s phenomenal the way you deal with sex, drugs, underage drinking and it's not the plot point!

Cecil:  Thank you!

Sam:  It's not Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack.  It's not Go Ask Alice.  It's not an ABC After School Special.  It’s not preachy because kids do this!  Is this a trend in YA books now or is this something you've just developed?

Cecil:  Well right now the whole YA world is going through a golden age.  I mean there are so many different kinds of books.  You still have those kinds of message books that deal with those sorts of things that if you drink or have sex there are certain consequences and those books are awesome as well and they are truthful and amazing.  But then there are also books that aren't like that.  I mean, I don't know if I'm the only person doing this but this is certainly a truth that a lot of teenagers deal with and these are things that they do and its just a part of their life and they get through it unscathed and become fantastic adults and they aren't any worse for it.  I think if you treat kids with respect they are going to grow.  They know what’s cool and what’s not cool.  Everybody knows what’s cool and what’s not cool to do.  I think it is a trend in YA literature.  There’s books like mine that have it as a matter of fact type thing and then there are books that deal out the consequences and I think those are necessary. 

Sam:  Well, you see when I was a kid if a book dealt with any of those topics that was the main point of the plot and it was "you shall not have sex" and "you shall not do drugs" and don't even think about drinking.  Do you ever get any resistance from parents or decency groups?

Cecil:  I got one letter from a parent for The Queen of Cool who said she was reading with her daughter and they were reading it out loud together and they closed the book at page thirteen because of the drugs and the sex and how dare I write a book called The Queen of Cool when I didn't know what cool was.  My answer to that is that Libby, in the book, The Queen of Cool, isn't making really good choices in the beginning.  She’s staring at the black hole that is inside of her and a character can't make good choices or hove a change if she starts off being perfect and ends up being more perfect.  That’s boring.  So sometimes you have to take your characters down or make them do things that are not cool or whatever.  I'm not making any judgment if that’s cool or not but I'm just saying that Libby isn't making good choices for herself and throughout the book she discovers what cool means to her and its not what she thought it was at the beginning.  So it’s a shame that that woman closed the book with her daughter because I think that books that have characters that make bad choices or characters that are making different choices or shocking choices, gives a really great opportunity for a parent or a guardian to open up a conversation with their kid.  I mean, what a wasted opportunity for that woman and her daughter.  They could have had a real good conversation about choices and what is cool and she could have found out something about where her daughter's at.  But instead they closed the book and now that conversation is closed for them and that’s a shame.

Sam:  Now there seems to be a trend in The Plain Janes, Beige and The Queen of Cool about these girls that think they know it all but suddenly realize that once they are dropped in a new environment with a new group of people that they don't have it all figured out like they think they did.  I mean, in Beige, Katy makes my head hurt.  I've just gotten to the part in the book where she is starting to finally come around.  Now I haven't got my copy of Boy Proof yet, which is somewhere on route through Amazon, but does this kind of journey reflect something you dealt with in your own experiences or do you think this is just something that is common for teenagers.

Cecil:  I think its something that everybody goes through.  I don't think that it ever stops.  I think that if you are a human your fundamental core is always being challenged.  It’s just very obvious when you are a teenager or when you are dropped in a new environment.  I think that when you go to a new work place, you go to a new city, you go to a new school, you go to college, you go to grad school, you join the army.  I dunno.  Whatever it is your being locked to your core and obviously, as a story teller, you’re interested in characters and how in characters that today is the day that something new happens and I change.  At least it is for me.  I'm interested in characters and I think with teenage characters it’s that they are becoming who they really are.  What kind of a human being they want to become as an adult. 

Sam:  Now in the back of Beige, you write that the inspiration for the setting came when you were dropped into the LA scene and all of a sudden all those old rockers were owning cafes and doing your taxes.  I find that absolutely fascinating.  Can you tell us more about that experience?

Cecil:  This is like ten years ago now but when I moved to LA I was in a band and I was working at Epitaph records because I happened to sit next to Tim Armstrong from Rancid at a Thanksgiving dinner and he lived a couple of blocks away from me at the time and all the people happened to have a connection with Epitaph.  It was sort of like "oh, we can get you a job.  Do you need a job?"  So I started working there part time and I worked in the mail room.  I did all the little odd jobs like marketing and publicity for some of the bands and I worked there for a year and it was just like everybody was so punk when I moved here.  It was so crazy and being an indy rocker I was no stranger to that.

Sam:  Well I just find the idea of someone playing huge concerts one day and being part of a normal landscape the next just fascinating.

Cecil: It is fascinating.  I mean you’re in a band and sometimes your band works out and sometimes it doesn't and sometimes you’re a waiter in a cafe and sometimes your not.  Sometimes you have a comeback.  Its just life.  It’s just the way it is.  In my neighborhood in LA it was all musicians so it was just amazing.  So I wondered what it would be like to be dropped into that world and not know anything about it and what would it be like to have that person as your Dad.

Sam:  Now is there a band that you based Suck after?

Cecil:  Not really, but kinda.  You know how the Germs are sort of a seminal band? Everybody was inspired by them.  Everybody follows and everybody does covers of but they never made it past a certain level. 

Sam:  So Suck is based on the Germs?

Cecil:  Well I didn't really base them on them but more the essence of them because they sort of self destructed when Darby Crash died but they are playing now because that movie is out but for a while it was one of the best kept secrets.  People would cover them but you know.  Anyways.  With that said Suck is not like them at all but it’s more like the idea of them or the experience.  It's like I could say they are the model, but not at all at the same time.

Sam:  Now I love the fact that you named all your chapters after punk tunes.  I actually downloaded all the songs and made a great punk mix CD.

Cecil:  That’s cool.  It's a good mix.

Sam:  It is and I've been playing it in my car and it’s a great mix.  Is that pretty much the kind of stuff you listen to?

Cecil:  No, you know, its definatly stuff that I have listened to growing up and its been on my radar but like I said I'm much more an indy girl then a punk rock girl but I've always had those records around me and I adore it and I probably love punk more now then I did twenty years ago even though I totally loved punk then too.  It was fun coming up with the mix and trying to let the songs have emotional residence with what was going on in each chapter which was what my goal was. 

Sam:  It's a great mix of songs and I bet there is a lot of teenage girls downloading and discovering this type of music for the first time because of Beige. 

Cecil:  And that was the point.  I mean I had my list that I had and some songs that I really didn't know but I pulled every single punk rock person that I knew and I'd ask what their top ten most essential punk rock songs were to introduce people to punk.  Old school or So-Cal and I kept just working from that list. 

Sam:  Now to leaving your novels for a minute, you've done some filmmaking and I need to ask about Starwoids.  Now you filmed a documentary about standing in line for six weeks to see Star Wars Episode One.  Now I've heard of people doing this before but I've never talked to anybody who has actually done this before.  So...uh...why and how was that experience.

Cecil:  Well, I'm a really big Star Wars fan and the reason that I'm a writer is because of Star Wars.  When I saw Star Wars and at the end when Darth Vader goes spinning off in A New Hope it was the first moment I understood that a story could continue and that it was someone job to write that story of what would happen next.  That was what cemented for me that that was what I wanted to do.  I wanted to be that writer.  So when I was in my band Nerdy Girl I wrote a song about Star Wars.  I collect the action figures.  I go on the BBS boards buying Star Wars stuff.  I have a Star Wars comforter, Star Wars bed sheets.  I mean I really like Star Wars.  So when the new movie was coming out I was so excited and when I found out people were going to camp out, well, first of all I thought it was stupid.  I mean it was retarded.  It was. stupid.  I mean what were they doing?  But then I couldn't bear the idea of not being there because it was so huge and I just felt like it would be an adventure.  I'll go for one night and if I hate it I'll leave.  But it was a great experience and the people I was in line with were fantastic.  The producer of the feature film I made, I met her there.  She was on line as well.  We did our little indy movie together.  I met a boy while I was on line and he was making a different documentary about the people on line waiting for Star Wars and I fell in love and I was engaged to him and it didn't work out but still.  I went out with him for two years.  It was fantastic.  It was Star Wars!  I was living on the street! It was crazy and wonderful!

Sam:  So it was a real positive experience!

Cecil:  Yeah.  And then I saw the movie.

Sam:  That was my next question.  You saw the movie and....

Cecil:  I never waited in line for Star Wars again.  

Sam:  Did you feel like you were punched in the gut like I felt?

Cecil:  I did feel like I was punched in the gut but what are you going to do?  That’s okay.  It was still a great experience and I still get excited about Star Wars.  I just went to the Star Wars 30th Anniversary celebration thing they had here in LA and I fell in love with Star Wars again.  I'm always going to have a healthy love for Star Wars.

Sam:  Well I understand the way that works.  That’s just a part of fandom.

Cecil:  Yup.  It's like you can break my heart but I'll still love you.

Sam:  Is your film available on DVD?

Cecil:  You can order it on Amazon

Sam:  Well let’s go back to your books one last time.  Now I haven't received my copy of your first novel, Boy Proof, yet.  Can you quickly tell us about it and if you could tell us how you got your first novel sold.

Cecil:  Boy Proof is about a girl named Victoria who calls herself Egg after her favorite character in her favorite science fiction movie called Terminal Earth and she dressed up like the main character to go to school every day and she’s basically a total dork.  She belongs to the science fiction and fantasy club.  She has a pull list at the comic book store.  She loves comic books.  Mostly Vertigo titles and she is just a big old geek.  One day a new boy comes to finish out his third year of high school and he wants to be a graphic novelist and he’s her kindred spirit and she hates everybody and it’s what happens when you meet your kindred spirit.  So that’s that.  So and how I got published.  Well I wrote two novels before I wrote Boy Proof and those two novels got rejected.  I also wrote some picture books and some easy readers that also got rejected. It took about seven years before I wrote Boy Proof.  I just kept writing and sending stuff out.  I think sometimes what happens is that people write and they think if they don't sell that first book then they have to keep rewriting that first book and I didn't think that.  I just felt that each little book opens that door a little more and that my job is to continue working.  Your art work is just a document of where you are at that time.  So one of the things that I did because I write for kids is I joined the Society of Children Book Writers and Illustrators which anybody can join and they have conferences and writers retreats where you can meet editors and agents and that’s where I got my chance and that’s where I got my editor.

Sam:  So that’s where you got your editor and they picked you up and you've been working with them ever since?

Cecil:  Yup.

Sam:  And it took you seven years.

Cecil:  Seven years.  I have a theory that you have to get in line and be serious.  You can't be like "I want to be a writer one day."  You have to say "I'm a writer" and then you get in year and it’s like going to the BMV.  Sometimes you get cut.  Some people’s lines go quicker but it’s basically a ten year waiting list but basically you got to get in line and do your work and everybody gets their turn but its like ten years.

Sam:  Well that’s pretty much everything I have here but, once again, thanks for taking the time to talk with me and to share your thoughts with me.

Cecil:  Oh, you’re welcome.

Now with the promise of more Plain Jane graphic novels on the way, I know we are going to see lots more of Cecil Castellucci in the future.  However, do yourself a favor and make sure to check out all of her books: Beige, The Queen of Cool, Boy Proof and, of course, The Plain Janes,.  I mean, it doesn’t matter how old you are, a good story is a good story.  I absolutely love Cecil’s entire body of work.  Also, make sure to check out Cecil’s web-site for an updated journal and more information on her literary works and other projects at http://www.misscecil.com.  

All content copyright Sam Tweedle 2006.