I’m pleased to be able welcome author Frances O’Roarke Dowell to Bart’s Bookshelf today, to talk about her first young adult novel, Ten Miles Past Normal.

Sure. I’m a writer by trade and by inclination, and I’ve been at it since I was a kid, though I started out with poetry, not fiction, and stayed with poetry for many years (I even have an MFA in Creative Writing with a concentration in poetry). I’m a former Army brat, have lived in North Carolina for most of my adult life, and am Southern by marriage and food preferences. I bleed pimento cheese.

Janie has just started her freshman year in high school, but it’s not going as planned. Her initial enthusiasm has been crushed after a series of unfortunately events, most of which involve her family’s farm. She keeps bringing bits and pieces of it to school in the form of goat poop, straw, rashes, etc. Her nickname is “Skunk Girl.” It’s not been a good year so far. Her number one goal is to be normal, and that’s not working out either.

Janie’s secret? She actually thinks her mom is really cool. Okay, I made that up, but I’m a mom so I’m sticking to it.

I love Monster, the bass player with a heart of gold. He intrigues me because he’s basically been abandoned by his pot-head parents, and yet he’s a pretty centered guy. Also he’s one of those cool people who aren’t afraid to invite everybody to the party. In Monster’s world, we’re all welcome.

Now a question I always like to ask. I think it’s a love of characters that misbehave for their authors! Do you keep your characters on a tight leash, or do you allow them a certain amount of leeway to tell their own story? And how well behaved was Janie?

I let my characters go their own way. They always end up doing much more interesting things than I could come up with on my own. Janie sometimes could be too well-behaved, because what she wanted was to fit in. But when she finally let loose, she was a lot of fun.

I write very bad first drafts, send them to my editor; she asks a lot of brilliant questions, and I revise. I love revising. That’s absolutely my favorite part of the process.

I write every day Monday through Friday, from 9-noon. Much of that time when I’m working on the first draft is spent either staring off into nowhere or surfing the Web. When I’m revising, I’m pretty focused the whole time.

I write in different parts of the house, and they’re all a mess. The one place I never write is my desk, so it’s very neat and tidy.

Yes and no. I actually played bass for about three weeks in an experimental art punk rock band. The coolest part of that was buying the bass at a pawnshop downtown. I didn’t actually learn to play the bass, but you don’t have to know how to play when you’re playing in an experimental art punk rock band.

I have an electric guitar, but my husband plays it more than I do, and I have an acoustic guitar that I wish I played better than I do. Right now I’m focusing most of my musical energy on learning to play the fiddle.

All that said, I have very little musical talent, just a lot of dreams.

I’m working on a middle grade novel about an overweight girl who gets bullied and fights back.

One of the things that recently occurred to me is that a lot of my books are about making communities out of outcasts and independent types—beloved communities as Martin Luther King might call them, where what’s central is love and acceptance. When you find yourself with friends who really accept you for yourself, that’s when life gets good.

Frances O’Roark Dowell is the bestselling and critically acclaimed author of Dovey Coe, which won the Edgar Award, Where I’d Like to Be, the bestselling The Secret Language of Girls, and its sequel The Kind of Friends We Used to Be, Chicken Boy, Shooting the Moon, which was awarded the Christopher Medal, the Phineas L. MacGuire series, and most recently Falling In.

She lives with her husband and two sons in Durham, North Carolina. Connect with Frances online at FrancesDowell.com.