Q&A with Lisi Harrison!!!

Hey people!

The Clique movie site just posted something too cool! :

Q&A with Lisi Harrison
Posted on 2008-11-10

Hey GLUs, We asked Lisi Harrison, author of The Clique books, some of our most burning questions about THE CLIQUE and we have them here, exclusively for YOU! Lisi is a true Alpha (given) and she’s a total GLU (given!). Aw-nestly, we’re not sure it’s possible to put into words how much we ah-dore her!
After you read what she has to say here, you can get more in depth with Lisi on her blah-g. She updates it every Wednesday and you’ll find it at www.lisiharrison.com (btw she’s got a pretty fantastic giveaway going on right now so go awn and check it out!)
And, in case you weren’t keeping track, ONLY EIGHT DAYS UNTIL THE CLIQUE MOVIE COMES OUT! We’ve got a ton of stuff going up in the next week so keep checking back for more news and special events!
TTYL, The Clique Team

Q&A with Lisi Harrison

Q: How do you describe the story of The Clique?
A: The Clique is a fish out of water story about a girl named Claire, who moves to an affluent town in Westchester County from Orlando, and is suddenly thrust into a very controlled environment with very controlling people. She is completely freaked out by this foreign world when she enters, but the more people want to keep her out, the harder she tries to get in. At its heart, The Clique is really a book about the lengths that people go to be accepted.

Q: How were you inspired to write The Clique book series?
A: Believe it or not, it wasn’t about my time in middle school, it was my experience in my twenties, working at MTV in New York that inspired me. Everybody working at MTV seemed so desperate to be accepted and loved and to fit in, to wear the right things and have the smartest comebacks, and it just reminded me of what everyone goes through in middle school. And so I took my experiences there [I’m afraid young adult sounds too much like the YA category which is middle school]and just transferred them to a middle school environment.

Q: Why do you think so many girls can relate to the series?
A. I think a universal truth is that the need to be accepted is felt by everyone, and honestly, it never goes away. That feeling you have of wanting to fit in so desperately never goes away no matter how old you are and no matter what your experiences are. I mean, my grandmother is telling me that she and her friends are reading them all!

Q: Describe Massie and Claire:
A: Massie is the character that everybody aspires to be like and yet she’s the one that’s the most insecure. Claire, who is coming to new town with none of the things that everybody else has, she’s the one that’s so desperate to fit in, but she is also the one that seems to be the most confident and most sure of herself and most happy with who she is. But Massie’s not just the queen bee mean girl, and Claire’s not just the wide-eyed new girl. They both are layered and have a lot of things under the surface that get revealed throughout the story, and that was done intentionally because I don’t feel like anybody in the world is just two-dimensional. I think that nice girls have a little mean in them, mean girls have a lot of nice in them.

Q: What can people learn from Massie and Claire?
A: The lesson to walk away with is to look deeper at everybody we encounter and try to figure out what fuels everybody to act the way they do. Massie is fueled to be mean because at the root of it, she’s insecure. Claire is fueled to be a little more devious and cunning because, below that surface, she’s a clever girl that knows what she wants and is determined to get it. But it’s not wrapped up really pretty with a bow at the end. We’re sort of left with some hope - everybody’s changed a little bit, but nobody’s completely perfect. And to me, that’s how life is. We take little steps at becoming great people.

Q: How does it feel to have your book become a movie?
A: I am over the moon about the book becoming a film! Who wouldn’t be so excited about that?

Q: What was it like to meet the cast?
A: I met Elizabeth first. She came down to Laguna Beach to have lunch with me and that was just so incredible. That was the first taste I had of the movie being real. I mean, I would get shots of the casting choices, and hear about the locations but none of it seemed real to me until I went to the set. Then it was very surreal, meeting the girls that are playing my characters - they’re just wonderful.

Q: Is the cast like what you imagined?
A: They’re very much like I imagined. I’m grateful because they were cast so well. I think the readers will be very pleased, too, because we’ve lived with these characters for so long and I feel like they’re being done great deal of justice. Mr. Block’s better looking in the movie, though!

I cannot believe that the Clique movie is coming out in 8 days! It's too good to be true!

xoxo,

Anne