As you know I’ve devoured the Roswell High Series by Melinda
Metz as part of a Read-a-Thon. It’s been a great journey and to cap off an
excellent series I have *gasp* the Author extraordinaire herself on my blog.
That’s right! Melinda Metz was kind enough to take part in a
Roswell High Interview! And now I get to share it all with you.
Now, in the interest of keeping things on topic the
questions below will surround the Roswell High Novel Series. We will be keeping
questions about the Roswell TV Show to a bare minimum.
And because I am both a reader and an Author we will be
talking about both sides of Roswell High ;)
So, without further adieu...
Welcome Melinda! Let’s
dive in shall we. I always like to break the ice with a silly question. So I
hope you don’t mind JYou’ve
been abducted by aliens. They only have a small spaceship but they’ve allowed
you to bring two books with you, what would they be and why?
Awesome question. I’d
bring The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the
Galaxy, so I’d be as prepared as possible, and Anne of Green Gables, because it brings up great memories of
childhood (and so Earth). It was one of
my mother’s favorite books and she read it to me when I was little, and then I
read it myself a bunch of times when I was older.
Great answers! I’m a
huge fan of Anne of Green Gables. And I love how you’d take a book to prepare
you for your adventure.
I understand the
initial inspiration for Roswell High came from another source, so how hard was
it to take an initial thought, make it your own and run with it?
Pocket Books wanted to do a series called “Roswell High” about
teenage aliens, and they asked 17th Street Productions, now Alloy,
to develop it for them. Laura J. Burns
was working there at the time, and she took on the project. Eventually, I was brought in as the
writer. Laura and I had already known
each other for years. We were both
editors together at another company, and we had worked on a lot of projects
together there. (Later we became writing
partners.) We were creatively in sync
from the beginning. Once I was hired as
the Roswell High writer, we took what
she’d already come up with and did more brainstorming and plotting
together. It was great. Sometimes Laura and I say we share a brain. That made it really easy to work off of her
ideas.
Oh gosh! Apparently I
didn’t do enough research. I didn’t realize Laura played such a huge role in
the creations of the book. I have a sad face now L I
wish I would have included her in this interview! So, a big shout-out goes to
Laura J. Burns, it seems without your help these books wouldn’t have been as
awesome as they were.
The Outsider is a
huge book in terms of setting the series tone and as we know, bringing the
characters to life on the TV Show Roswell in the Pilot Episode. What were the
biggest challenges you faced with the first book?
There was so much that needed to happen in the first book
that plotting wasn’t all that hard. I’d
say the biggest challenge was establishing the six main characters. Also deciding how the aliens’ powers should
work/be described, like that healing would give the healer a rush of images
from the person they were working on.
Right from the start
Max and Liz have star-crossed lover syndrome. They also have many obstacles to
overcome over the course of the novel, did you ever get emotional, and worry
they weren’t going to make it?
Nah, cause I always knew they’d be together. That was never a question. Keeping them apart for a good part of ten
books was a little tricky though.
This series is huge,
as in the amount of important characters. You were able to give each one a
unique voice and personality, but you must have a favourite character from both
a writing standpoint and as simply a fan. Who is it and why?
I love them all. I
really do. If I had to pick one, I think
I’d go with Michael, just because I like characters who are a little damaged. But if you asked me on a different day, I
might pick another one…because I love them all.
I have a soft spot
for Michael too. But I love your answer, characters, often times are like
children, it’s almost impossible to favour just one!
In The Wild One a new
alien comes to town. He captures Isabel’s attention, and turns her life upside
down. How come we didn’t get more of a background on Nickolas, he entered the
series suddenly and left it just the same.
The Pocket Book editor actually asked for a new alien as a
romantic interest. To be honest, I
didn’t think the series needed a new character so early on. She also asked that a glowing ring with
undetermined powers be found at the end of the book. She thought it might be intriguing to readers
and that maybe at some point we’d want to use it. Or maybe not. But Laura and I thought it was too big an
element to introduce without doing anything with it. Figuring out exactly what the deal with the
ring was ended up generating a chunk of story.
This series has a
very tightly woven plot. Each book propels the story forward. Did you have all
ten books planned out right away, or did you plan as you went?
Laura had a story arc for the first six books (that’s the
number the publisher had committed to) and we expanded it together. We
knew that Valenti would be the initial bad guy and that DuPris would later be
revealed as a bigger bad. We also
figured out what part of the overarching story we wanted to reveal in each
book. We talked about how the
relationships would play out. The plots of the individual books were planned
mostly along the way.
When the publisher decided they wanted four more books,
Laura and I figured out an arc for them.
In The Seeker, Maria
gets a little taste of what it’s like to have abilities akin to the Aliens of
Roswell High, if you had to choose one of the abilities you’ve brought to life
on the page and live with it for the rest of your life, what would it be?
I’d want the healing power.
Although in real life it would probably take over every moment of your
life because you’d want to help everyone.
Since the power of
healing would come with huge responsibilities, I’d take the Dreamwalking. I
think one can have a lot of fun with that!
We learn about the
Akino and the Collective Consciousness in The Watcher. This is a plot line that
is carried throughout the rest of the novels and plays an important part in the
end of the series. This is a crazy cool idea, you’ve described it well but how
did you come up with the idea?
I believe we came up with the Akino when we knew there would
be more books. Honestly, it’s been so
long since I wrote the books that I can’t remember how! I know Laura and I were brainstorming
together. I actually asked her, and she
doesn’t remember either. Sometimes when
you’re tossing out so many possibilities, it’s hard to trace where the final
idea actually came from.
The Intruder shows us
more about Clean Slate, an organization out to learn, destroy or just
experiment on the aliens or perhaps all of the above (trying to keep this
spoiler free) but it doesn’t play as big of a part in the novels as I thought
it would. It’s only mentioned a few times after, why is that?
It was pretty much a matter of needing to wrap up the story
by the tenth book and not ending up with space.
If the number of books had gotten extended again, I’m sure I’d have
revisited Clean Slate.
When I think about
The Stowaway and Mr. DuPris, I think Chicken, Kentucky fried chicken, so I’ve
got to ask, when you wrote his character, well, were you thinking about chicken
at the time?
I wasn’t (maybe because I’m a vegetarian?!), but with his
white suit and accent I can see why you would.
Max and Liz’s
relationship is really what drew me in when it came to the first book and in
The Vanished and The Rebel we see their relationship go from bad to worse.
However, the novel isn’t all about the Romance. How did you decide to equally
balance romance and action into this teen novel?
That was the tone everyone wanted for the series before I
even was hired as the writer. I enjoyed
the mix. (I hardly ever write anything
without some romance!)
The ending to this
series was nicely wrapped up. I think you tied together all the ends into a
nice bow. But was there anything you wish you could have added or explained in
the last book or did it end just how you pictured?
The thing I most wanted to do with the ending was give Max
and Liz a big, big romantic moment and to finally bring Maria and Michael
together. I think I may have almost gone
(or gone) too far, but I was happy with the ending. You brought up Project Clean Slate. It would have been good to wrap that up more
tightly.
I’m sad to see the
series is over and wish it could continue. Did you have any ideas (and if you
do care to share them?) on what would happened next if you were able to add
more books after The Salvation?
I actually didn’t try to imagine what would happen
later. I was just really focussed on
giving the characters the ending they deserved.
As an Author what has
been your biggest struggle when it comes to your writing career?
The way it moves in fits and starts. Sometimes I have books due to publishers in a
cluster, then I’ll have a long dead period.
And I struggle for motivation to write new proposals, because they don’t
have deadlines. This is especially true
with solo projects. When Laura and I
work together, usually one of us will be urging our current proposal onward, so
we can sort of feed of one another’s enthusiasm and drive.
Do you have any words
of wisdom or advice you’d like to share with the aspiring Authors of the world?
Read a lot and study the way authors you like build tension,
create characters, etc. And write a
lot. That’s the way you get better. And don’t worry about getting published or
getting an agent too soon. It’s a distraction. Wait until you have finished a book and can’t
think of one more thing you want to do with it.
And because I think
everyone probably wants to know, what do you think about the Roswell TV show?
Were you happy with how they took your novel and turned it into something quite
different but still captivating.
The pilot was the only episode actually based on one of the
books, and I loved it. It was a total
thrill to watch it and see things like Liz’s cupcake dress appear on the
screen. And there was new stuff I
thought was great, like the scene where Max, Isabel, and Michael watch the
recreation of the crash (where their parents died) with everyone else in the
crowd cheering and screaming. It was
such a great way to show how different they were, and it only took a few
seconds. It was a completely positive,
and quite surreal experience.
As the series moved on, I was always curious to see what the
writers would do with basically the same characters (there are exceptions, like
Valenti and Kyle who were very different) and the same incidents launching the
story. There were some episodes I
thought were amazing, others that I didn’t like as much.
I understand you did
get to be a part of the Roswell TV show in Season 3, is it true that you got to
write an episode? Which one was it and how was that experience?
Laura and I were staff writers for the show during the third
season, which means we were part of the group brainstorming stories and helping
do scene-by-scene breakdowns of the episodes.
Laura and I wrote “A Tale of Two Parties,” the New Year’s Eve episode.
Ahh, yes, Enigma! I
wished more than once when watching that episode they had a kind of party like
that where I lived. That was a great episode!
Is there anything
that you would have done differently with the series if you could go back and
change something?
I’m not sure I would
have had Max heal the man (the one that Valenti shows Liz the picture of in the
first book.) I think Liz should have
been the first person he healed. I would
have liked to have come up with another way for Valenti to try to prove the aliens
were a threat.
Do you have a
favourite scene from the books? Can you share it with us and tell you why it’s
one of your favourites?
Maybe it’s because it was the first one I wrote, but the
scene in the Crashdown where Max heals Liz is my favorite.
Honestly, I think if
you asked anyone out there, they’d give the same answer. It really is one of
those hard to forget scenes.
Can you believe that
your books and the Roswell TV Show still have a huge following? I mean, did you
ever think they’d still be getting read, watched and talked about?
No, I never did! And
it’s so cool. It really is.
It became apparent
early on that the title of each book reflected a character. I tried to guess
which character resembled the title, care to tell me if I’m right, and if I’m
wrong, want to tell me who the character is?
Well, three out of
ten, I suppose that’s not too bad. *hides face in shame*
