Interview with young adult author Melanie Bell

Author Melanie Bell is chatting with me today about her young adult LGBTQ+ novel, Chasing Harmony.

During her book tour, Melanie will be giving away a $20 Barnes and Noble gift card to a lucky randomly drawn winner. To be entered for your chance to win, use the form below. To increase your chances of winning, feel free to visit her other tour stops and enter there, too!

Bio:
Melanie Bell is a Canadian multi-genre writer living in the UK. Her books include a short story collection, Dream Signs, a nonfiction title, The Modern Enneagram, and the YA novel Chasing Harmony. She has written for several publications including Contrary, Cicada, The Fiddlehead, and Huffington Post. She loves music, art, and nature, and aspires to see as much of the world as she can.

Welcome, Melanie. Please tell us about your current release.
Chasing Harmony is the story of Anna Stern, a bisexual piano prodigy growing up on Prince Edward Island, Canada. It’s about first loves, high expectations, and the struggle to be true to yourself. I hope it connects with the hearts of people who, like me, have felt like outsiders, or like they haven’t quite “lived up to their potential.”

What inspired you to write this book?
I was traveling across Canada and reading two books at the same time: Melissa Bank’s The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing and Leonard Cohen’s The Favourite Game. All of these influences came together as questions I asked myself: Why do we idealize artists so much that we sometimes see the talent instead of the person? Why does real life so often deviate from and fall short of our expectations? What happens when someone very talented fails? It was also exciting to be moving very quickly through the geography – the perfect situation to create something new. While traveling, I started writing Chasing Harmony in response to the questions circling in my mind.   

Excerpt from Chasing Harmony:
Laine sat down at the grand piano’s bench, leaving Anna to sit at the little one. She scooted the bench in and was tall enough to reach the pedals without a pillow. That had happened about a month ago. “So, you’re Anna,” said Laine. Anna said nothing, wondering if a yes was expected. Her father’s voice in her head: An-na, An-na, in her blue pa-jam-as. No, she wouldn’t tap the rhythm.

“So. Can you play something for me?”

The salamanders in her brain were all saying different things. Für Elise. The Bach So-Na-Ta. Something from the Nutcracker Suite. Mozart. Handel.

“You nervous?”

“No.” She bit her lip.

“How about we talk.” Anna waited for her to say something else while the clock kept time like a metronome. “So, what does your family do?”

“They, they—” the insects choked her off. They’d built nests in her throat, from sand and paper. She turned and her fingers hit the keyboard. The Four Seasons came spilling out, the piece she’d practiced most lately. She loved how the song wasn’t anything else, just leaves and birds and snow and branches hurrying to happen. There was air in her throat again, Vivaldi’s springtime in her lungs.

“Thank you,” said Laine. “Now play it for me slower.”

Anna’s arms felt heavy, but she did. Laine stopped her halfway through Spring. “Let’s hear you play those last two bars again. Pay attention to the order the notes come in. Don’t let them get ahead of each other or muddy each other up.”

But it’s Spring, Anna thought of saying, and Spring is all mud! Of course, she didn’t say that. She was old enough to know that wasn’t what Laine meant, and that this particular song wasn’t about mud. Probably driveways weren’t full of red muck in the Spring where Vivaldi had lived. Probably cars did not get stuck in them.

She played the bars, carefully, handling a glass ball between her fingers. This time, not a single note was mud. “Better,” said Laine. “Now let’s hear you try with the energy back in it.”

She couldn’t do any of this right. Laine got her to practice bar after bar, fix this, fix that. “You have a strong grasp of this piece but you need to pay more attention to technical details.” The little things in fingers and throat that scritch and scratch and grab you. Laine sent her out the door with a list of things to practice.

What exciting project are you working on next?
I have a poetry collection coming out with Read Furiously (the publisher of Chasing Harmony) in 2025! It’s called The Heart Decided to Move. It’s about my experiences moving to the UK – working, traveling, and living through a pandemic, all told through the lens of adapting to a new culture.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?
I’m not sure when I first thought “I am a writer,” but I wanted to be writer from a very young age. I had an early experience of reaching that goal when I was 15 and self-published a poetry book as a 4-H project. Tears for the World (note the dramatic teenage title!) was a fundraiser for Farmers Helping Farmers, a Canadian charity that supports agricultural projects in Kenya. I self-published another poetry collection two years later that raised money for a local literacy organization. This was all in the early 2000s when self-publishing meant getting books printed by a printing company! Chasing Harmony’s publisher, Read Furiously, also gives a portion of proceeds from book sales to literacy charities! After ten years without finding a publisher, my manuscript suddenly had multiple offers of publication at once, and this is one of the reasons I went with them. I feel like my publication journey, and what it stands for, has come full circle in a way.

Do you write full-time? If so, what’s your workday like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
My day job involves writing. I currently work full time as a content writer and editor for Mind Tools, so I get to write about workplace skills and learn interesting things. I work compressed hours over four days, giving me the fifth day (along with the weekend) to focus on my other writing projects.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
I write often, but my writing routine isn’t very “routine.” It varies widely depending on my schedule, what projects I’m working on, how energized I feel by them, which writing groups I’m attending (I love writing with others because it’s a way to add a bit of social life to the work I’m already doing), and whether I’m working to a deadline.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
“A writer” was at the top of my list during most of my childhood. A few other memorable choices were a composer of musicals, the head of a company that made a TV show about a talking cat, and the owner of “one of every kind of animal in the world”!

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
Chasing Harmony has a Spotify playlist featuring many of the songs from the book!

Links:
Website | Facebook | Twitter | Publisher | Bookshop | Barnes and Noble | Target | Waterstones

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