Featured Author: Christy Goerzen

Bibliography at Orca

Explore: When Mike Longridge gets himself in trouble yet again, he is given a choice: juvenile detention or an outdoor program called Explore. He opts for Explore, but soon finds himself wondering how he is going to survive ten months with the hippies and keeners in the program. He's never felt so out of place and is certain he will never get the hang of the outdoor activities. Will Mike go back to his old trouble-making ways or will he finally find a place to belong?

Interview

What kind of research do you do before you write a book?It depends on what I’m writing. Explore, for example, required quite a bit of research. It’s about things that I have no idea about: skiing, tracking animals, and other outdoorsy and otherwise sporty stuff. I’m more of a coffee shop, library and movie theatre kinda gal – in other words, you don’t often find me in hiking boots, climbing up a mountain. Luckily, I love researching and learning new things, and I have my husband and other sporty people in my life that I can grill for details. For Explore, I constantly questioned my incredibly patient husband on the finer points of rock climbing, telemark skiing and other outdoorsy-type things. I also watched lots of videos from the 1980s on those topics. It was all pretty entertaining.

Do you put your family and friends in your books? Bits and pieces of people in my life show up in my characters, but I’ve never fashioned a character entirely out of a real person. Parts of me are in the main character in Explore – Mike doesn’t like team sports or group games, and I’m the same way. I always hated PE class. I never understood the rules, but everyone else seemed to naturally know them. What’s up with that?

What is your favourite children's book?I still have three perfectly preserved picture books from my early childhood that are very dear to my heart for various reasons: Norbert Nipkin, Benjamin Budge and Barnaby Ball, and A Victorian Mouse Family Album. Don’t ask me how these books escaped the wrath of two younger sisters, dirt, tomato soup and felt pens with no lids, but somehow they emerged unscathed.

What are the best and worst things about writing books?Best: Staying up until three a.m. because I’m so sucked in to my writing that I just can’t stop and go to bed. Worst: Staying up until three a.m. because I’m so sucked in to my writing that I just can’t stop and go to bed. And then having to get up at seven a.m. the next day to go to work. Thank god for espresso

Biography

Christy Goerzen has been writing since the age of two, when she forced her parents to be the scribes for her long, convoluted stories about sheep and faeries. Passionate about everything to do with reading and writing, Christy holds a Master of Arts in Children's Literature from the University of British Columbia. She has worked as a book reviewer, copywriter, marketing consultant, television writer, bookseller and writing mentor. She is currently the communications manager for the North Vancouver District Public Library, where she is blissfully surrounded by books and gets to work with the coolest children's librarians ever. She loves daydreaming, dancing in the kitchen, wearing costumes, and goofing off with family and friends. Explore is her first book. Born and raised on the West Coast, Christy lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, with her wonderful husband Joshua and two funny cats.