Under the Cover #2 – with Amara Sage, author of Influential

Happy Thursday my lovely friends, today I’m really excited to be bring you my second post of my new author series, Under the Cover.

Under the Cover is where I interview some of favourite authors and authors I’ve recently read and discovered. I’m trying to refresh my blog and I love interviewing authors and getting an insight into their storytelling, hence Under the Cover was born.

I’m really excited to be interview Amara Sage who has written her debut novel Influential which I reviewed recently. I loved it. Amara Sage reminded me of Holly Bourne’s writing when creating impactful and real storylines. If you haven’t picked it up then you need too.

So sit back, grab a coffee or tea and delve into the mind of Amara with an in-depth look behind the scenes of the book and its origins.

Interview with Amara Sage

1. I feel like there’s a massive gap in YA books which explores topics like yours. So how did you know you wanted to write for teenagers? 
   
   I generally tend to connect with the stories that YA novels tackle the most; transformative, dramatic, gritty stories based in reality and centred around family dynamics, self-identity, and first loves. And it’s because I love reading YA books so much that when I started writing them, I knew my voice had found its home in giving my teenaged characters their voice, characters I wish had been explored more in YA books from the 00’s so I’d have been able to relate to them during my own adolescence. Writing for teenagers flowed naturally and felt good. I knew I wanted my writing to always provide representation and allow readers the space to explore the complex issues affecting young people today, I believe to be social media toxicity, body image, and mental health.

2. Influential is a really important YA novel, as your debut book what made you want to write this book?
   
   I had the character of 17-year-old reluctant influencer, Almond Brown in my head already. I knew she was feeling sad and wanted out of her life in the spotlight, but it wasn’t until we all got locked down in 2020 and I got reacquainted and real invested in the YouTube community again that I realised I wanted to write a book where all the darkness of the internet was written as the antagonist. I noticed a definite change across social media during that time and it’s hard to pinpoint specific incidents that inspired Influential, it was more of a cacophony of negativity I was witnessing rage across the internet. It was a storm of social justice, cancel culture, internet pile-ons, deepfakes, commentary channels, internet ‘drama’, doxing, the media’s treatment of Caroline Flack, hate forums, and influencers jetting off to Dubai during lockdown that made me want to write this book!

3. With hard hitting topics and themes – what message do you hope for readers to take away from your book?
   
   That social media tells a lot of lies. I know that most people are aware that selfies get manipulated by filters and Facetune, and that influencers are essentially walking advertisements for big brands, but I hope Influential sheds a light on the actual person behind those picture-perfect posts, that they’re not just a number of likes or followers, not a corporation or a business, but a human being, who is probably feeling just as lonely, insecure and afraid as we all do sometimes. I think the message is to not just be kind to others but  to be kind, unjudging and patient with yourself too. Social media can so quickly hack into our self-esteem and sense of worth.

4. During your writing process, what research did you have to do and how did this influence your plot?
   
   I’ve kind of always been doing the research! I’ve been consuming online ‘content’, from daily vlogs to charity shop hauls, since I got my first computer. I’ve always been fascinated by the subsect of ‘family vloggers’ but for a while before I wrote the book I’d begun to question the morality of sharing a child on the internet before they can consent to their image being shown to thousands, sometimes millions of people. The older I got the more I started to consider the long term affect such an exploitative level of exposure would have on a child as they entered young adulthood having shared their childhood with an audience and been paid to do so. So, I was simply watching the same YouTube videos and liking the same Instagram posts that I always had done, but though a more questioning, critical, and empathetic lens. 2020 was quite a pivotal time for social media and cancel culture, which in turn encouraged influencers to be more honest and vulnerable about online hate and harassment. Seeing more evidence of the damage this overexposure was having on young content creators really influenced how severe I chose to portray the consequences of Almond’s deteriorating mental health.

5. What were your highlights and challenges to writing your debut novel?
   
   Perhaps my biggest highlight was actually getting to write ‘The End’ after working on countless abandoned projects and ideas for books that hadn’t worked out; I was so chuffed to be able to finally say, I did it! I also loved getting to write my way into Influential under the guidance of my amazing mentor, Lucy Christopher, on Bath Spa’s Writing for Young People MA, which also provided the perfect environment to workshop excepts with other children’s writers. It was so inspiring and integral to me finding my voice. One of my biggest challenges was (and still is) to just to get to the end of a draft without picking apart every little sentence! I get so in my head about minute details and sentence structures that it takes me a while to complete a story.

6. I loved the cast of characters in the book, especially Joss and Heather. If you could write a story from a different character perspective who would it be and why?
   
   Thank you! I think Heather has so much to say about diet culture, body image, and self-acceptance. I always knew that I wanted to explore the topic of diet culture in a book for young people as it had such a profoundly negative impact on my own teenage years, but it was writing Heather’s reasons for being in group therapy that developed the idea further. With Heather, I think she could really give a brutally honest take on the toxicity of slimming clubs and the complexities of the body positivity movement across social media.

7. What’s your experience been like as a writer so far? 
   
   Wonderful, affirming, literally my dream since I was eight years old coming true, but it’s also been pretty hard graft. I was pregnant for most of 2022 during the final stages of editing and all the fun of choosing cover designs and taglines, and my son was born exactly a week before Influential was released, so I’ve made things extra challenging but all the more rewarding for myself. I feel so incredibly grateful to have been offered amazing opportunities such as speaking at Hay Festival next month, and it makes me feel all glowy to know that my little boy will get to see me speaking about my book on stage.

8. You’ve written your first book, what is next for you? Do you want to dip into different genres? 
   
   At the moment I’m working on my second novel for young adults. Inspired by the experiences Heather hints at in Influential, I’m going to be unearthing how 2020’s diet culture (think contrasting expectations to always feel body positive as a plus-sized person, whilst still being bombarded with dieting ads) interacts with dating and relationships for young people. I think I’ll always want to write for a YA audience but at some point I would love to try and craft a thriller, or even play with writing in verse. 

9. Finally, if you could recommend 3 books to read, what would it be? 
   
   This is such a hard question for me, I’m not good at picking favourites and what I’d recommend changes all the time, but today it’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, The Loop by Jeremy Robert Johnson – a book I accidentally stumbled upon when a friend of my recommended The Loop to me but meant the book by Ben Oliver, still I’m so glad I made that mistake, I loved Johnson’s book – and A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman, because I recently saw they made a film of it starring Tom Hanks, and I’m 99% sure the book is better, just from seeing the poster. 

Thank you so much to Amara and Faber Children’s for being part of my series.