Q&A with Melanie Dale

  

 

 

Melanie Dale is the author of the new middle grade novel Girl of Lore. Her other books include Calm the H*ck Down. She lives in the Atlanta area.

 

Q: What inspired you to write Girl of Lore, and how did you create your character Mina?

 

A: I remember when my son was in middle school I gave him a boxed set of some of my favorite horror classics, books like Dracula, Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Call of Cthulhu, etc., and he gamely tried to plow through Dracula but petered off when Jonathan Harker was still trapped in that castle and I thought, “What if I could make this story more accessible for him? What if these characters were teens living in Georgia?”

 

Girl of Lore is a love letter to my favorite genre and the stories that have shaped me. I love gothic literature! My favorite novel is Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Mina Murray is my favorite gothic character. She’s so smart and underestimated by the men.

 

My Mina is smart like her namesake, but underestimates and doubts herself. I’m really excited about the journey she goes on in Girl of Lore, within her own brain and with her family and friends. Navigating high school is hard, even without paranormal challenges.

 

Q: How did you create the world in which the novel is set?

 

A: Give me all the haunted houses and monsters and creeping dread! When I went to create my London, I brought it home to where I live, combining elements from several small Georgia towns around me into the perfect Southern gothic setting for lore to come to life!

 

Mina spends a lot of time in the graveyard, so I visited graveyards around where I live and also toured them in fun places like New Orleans and Edinburgh.

 

One of my beta readers early on said the book felt like it could be anywhere, so I really started focusing on what makes it Georgia.

 

For starters, I looked at the critters around me. My backyard is basically a swamp. I live in a town bursting with flora and fauna, and I brought a lot of that world into the book, huge spiders, armadillos lumbering around like rubbery dinosaurs, things that go bump in the night, even an alligator.

 

I wanted to create the feeling of the kudzu vines choking everything and how the summer humidity hangs on around here well into the fall.

 

Q: Why did you decide to focus on OCD and mental health in the book?

 

A: I’ve struggled with OCD since I was a kid and am only just now as an adult starting to unpack the way my brain works and learning how to separate truth from OCD thoughts.

 

I really wanted to invite readers into Mina’s brain and let them feel what she feels, the constant doubt. It can be really scary inside an OCD brain!

 

I hope by highlighting OCD through Mina’s character and the ways she learns to deal with it will help others struggling with it, and for readers who don’t have OCD, to understand a little more of what it’s like, rather than the stereotype of people who like to clean and organize.

 

I remember talking to my agent about wanting to explore Mina’s OCD but worrying that it would be too scary. She told me to go for it, and then when Jessi Smith – my editor at Aladdin, who also has OCD – got hold of it, she helped me continue to flesh out Mina’s inner thoughts.

 

I’m really excited for readers to have a character they can root for and maybe identify with who struggles against these scary intrusive thoughts but keeps working and doesn’t give up.

 

Q: How was the novel's title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: Jessi Smith, my editor, gets the credit on that one! I originally called it Mina Murray’s Compendium of Monsters. We loved the word “lore” and Lore Club plays a huge part in the book, so Jessi came up with Girl of Lore. I love it so much.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m back in the world of London, Georgia, having grand adventures with Mina and Lore Club! After Girl of Lore ends, there are so many new…ummmm…developments to explore, so much lore to investigate.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: Ooh, well, I don’t want to give anything away, but there are a couple relationships in the book that I’m really excited for readers to discover.

 

One is a beautiful friendship, the kind of love and loyalty you fight for, that grows with you, and one is maybe more of a romantic relationship, with all those pulse-pounding feelings of getting to know someone new. I’m grinning just thinking about these two different people in Mina’s life.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb