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(Laughs) But that was even worse because now I had all of these disparate elements in this book, like plumbing, for god’s sake, and morbid obesity, and Kansas! Kansas—I’d never even been to Kansas. And girls’ softball, which I love to watch, but I certainly don’t know any of the technical details of it. And poetry, and strength training—all of these things that I thought oh no, I’m going to have to research all of this, and then figure out how to pull these all together into some kind of cohesive system, a unit, and tie it into lesbian dating.

The thing that has been really fun about doing a novel is this kind of systems engineering that I think goes on. Which is what I’m good at anyway.

AE: You used to be a systems engineer?
JP: Yes, so this was really the first book [where] I thought, “A-ha, I’m really using those skills of systems engineering to pull this all together.” It’s a chaotic process, but that’s what I like about it intellectually. That’s what really keeps me going.

AE: I was really struck by how many of those details really do fit in so nicely. Mike was such an extremely well developed character. Did she just come to you as a completely drawn character like that?
JP: Well, the other thing that I wanted to do was, I wanted to have a butch lesbian as a main character because I really think they’re missing in the literature. They’re really hard to find. And I love them, you know; my partner’s so butch. And yet, I think there’s a vulnerability to them that is so attractive. They seem so strong, especially with Mike. On the inside she really wasn’t that strong. She was at the point where she’s building that internal strength. So she was a very vivid character to me, and she gave the story life.

Xanadu I just hated. She was the person I really had to work on most, just to give her any kind of redeeming quality. I hated to do it (laughing).

AE: So you really do feel that she was lesbian baiting?
JP: I do. I felt that this was a book about first love and obsessing on a person that you’ll never have, and them leading you on…and manipulating you, which is what I think young readers of all ilk are going to find in this book as the universal theme: people who manipulate them.

AE: Did you ever think about giving Mike a lesbian love interest in this book?
JP: You know, that’s not what this book was about. I always like to end a young adult novel at a new beginning. Hopefully she’s at a new beginning, at a place where she can move on from this and be a little more careful. She’ll have a certain wariness now. But you know, she needs to connect with someone who can return her love.

AE: So no sequels?
JP: No sequels, no. (laughs) I have so many readers who write “Please, please, we need a sequel,” but I think it’s because we have such a dearth of literature. It’s so hard to find anything that you can cling to, especially for young lesbians. There’s just so little out there for them. They just want more, they want more. More and more love stories.

AE: So you were a systems engineer, and then you decided to write children’s books. What made you decide to do that?
JP: I hated my job. (laughs) I guess it was a conscious decision because one day my partner came home—this was a Friday, and I said, “Sherri, I quit my job today and I’m going to be a writer.”

“What?” she said. “Have you ever written anything?”

I said, “No. No, but that sounds like a good life.” I would never have to travel, I would never have to deal with office politics. I would never have to talk to another person in my life. That sounded perfect to me! It has of course evolved into something else, but it was a long journey to get to where I am, and I didn’t really know that I had a voice at all. I wasn’t a literature major, I didn’t have any training in that. I took as little English as I had to to get by because I’m a math and science kind of person. Oh, that was terrible.

AE: Why was that terrible?
JP: (Laughs) I remember the first time I sat down to write I didn’t even know how to punctuate a sentence. It was this sentence of dialogue and I couldn’t remember where you put the quotes, you know—you put it after the period, or you quote the he said/she said? I really was starting at zero.

Of course I quit my job so I didn’t have money to go to school to learn how to do this. I actually didn’t even realize there were classes you could take, so it was all about just reading and practicing. So I would go to the library and check out as many books as I could carry and bring them home, especially young adult literature. I’ve always loved reading it. I really just love the passion in it, and I love transporting back to that time in life, when you did live passionately, you lived with velocity. Every day was such a drama. You could have lived your whole life every day, with so many ups and downs! I just loved that time of life. Not that I would ever want to go back there (laughing).

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