Interview with Carol Moreira
Carol on Membranes Book Cover
I love Membrane’s cover – it’s by talented east coast artist Anne Verge (http://www.avcreative.ca/contact.html). It represents the parallel universes in the story (some theorize parallel universes lie within giant cosmic soap bubbles, which may have been Anne’s inspiration) The girl reflected within the globe represents the two 16-year-old girls at the heart of the story who are genetically identical parallel doubles from different worlds.
Carol on Tanya, the main characterThe main character Tanya, or TOT as she is called, has been bullied severely and had to move schools within her hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia. She’s a bit over-sensitive by nature, but bullying has caused her to develop anxiety. She stumbles into another world and meets her parallel double who is much more confident, capable, intellectual and attractive than she is. At first, there’s a lot of conflict between them and TOT calls her double P for Princess as she feels her double patronizes her. As the story develops, TOT grows stronger. TOT was quite a tricky character to get right as she had to be both damaged and vulnerable and resilient enough to carry the story. I balanced her out by making her a sailor and a lover of music – both very life-affirming interests that help her get through her troubles. I was bullied myself as a teen so that’s probably the basis for TOT, and sadly bullying is always with us and in the news. There’s no doubt that bullying damages many people and prevents them becoming their best selves. TOT turns out to be strong and interesting, just like her double, but she has to work harder to be that way.
Carol on the idea for Membrane came
The idea first came to me when I read a book called The Universe Next Door by Marcus Chown in which he writes that, “Physicists are increasingly accepting the idea that there exists an infinity of realities stacked together like the pages of a never-ending book. So there are an infinite number of versions of you, living out an infinite number of different lives in an infinite number of parallel realities.” That struck me as a cool and fascinating tool for looking at identity and the idea is at the core of the story.
Carol on her influences for Membrane
Carol on her influences for Membrane
I have tons of influences! Some writers I currently admire are Yann Martel for his brilliant Life of Pi, Susan Casey, whose non-fiction book The Wave is amazing, and Alan Bradley for his Flavia de Luce series. On the east coast of Canada we have some great writers of YA fiction, including fellow Fierce Ink writer Kat Kruger, author of The Night Has Teeth, Vicki Grant, who writes wonderfully humorous books for teens, and Lesley Choyce who always tells a good story.
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