The Story is About   +  novel

Nova Ren Suma

Books:

• Imaginary Girls

Chloe's older sister, Ruby, is the girl everyone looks to and longs for, who can't be captured or caged. When a night with Ruby's friends goes horribly wrong and Chloe discovers the dead body of her classmate London Hayes left floating in the reservoir, Chloe is sent away from town and away from Ruby.

But Ruby will do anything to get her sister back, and when Chloe returns to town two years later, deadly surprises await. As Chloe flirts with the truth that Ruby has hidden deeply away, the fragile line between life and death is redrawn by the complex bonds of sisterhood.

With palpable drama and delicious craft, Nova Ren Suma bursts onto the YA scene with the story that everyone will be talking about.

I’ve been spilling secrets about my book Imaginary Girls, and now I’ll reveal the very last one I’m willing to share in public. (If you want more, you’ll have to ask me in person!) As the cover of the book says, “Secrets never stay below the surface.” I guess not, because here’s one final secret bubbling up now…

Secret #10: I’ve written parts of this novel before. In fact, you could say I’ve been writing pieces of this novel for over ten years.

Sometimes an idea captures a writer’s imagination and she finds herself trying to write about it over and over. Sometimes the first attempt fails and she throws away all evidence and starts fresh. Sometimes she has to start fresh a few times before she gets it right. Obviously I’m talking about myself, as there is a big piece of Imaginary Girls that I’ve written before. I’ve been trying to tackle it for years, ever since I first started writing fiction.

Here’s what I mean: The very first novel I wrote was my thesis project for my MFA program over a decade ago. It had nothing to do with sisters, and it wasn’t magical realism or creepy or veering into the fantastical in any way. In fact, this novel was written for adults and never ended up getting published. But there’s an interesting similarity between that first novel I tried writing years ago and Imaginary Girls… they both have climactic scenes that occur at the local reservoir. For years, I’ve written about the reservoir I used to visit as a teenager, in new and different ways, with new and different complications and characters. I couldn’t keep myself from it.

So I guess this final secret speaks to how Imaginary Girls really was a long time coming. A very significant piece of it may be something a few people in my fiction workshops have seen from me before, but I guess I needed to take my time with it. Let it live and breathe inside me for a while and then see what came up. It wasn’t until I discovered the characters of Ruby and Chloe that I knew where to go with it, and what to do.