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QUESTIONS FROM READERS

informationwiz@yahoo.com: How much does the current political climate in America towards the Middle East affect your telling of this story?

Alicia Erian: It was after September 11th, as this country prepared to go into Afghanistan, that I began to think about setting TOWELHEAD during the first Gulf War. It seemed like a wonderful opportunity to define the characters in the book and provide constant conflict.

Deb1teach@aol.com: What experiences do you have with thirteen-year-old girls that gave you the idea to write a story in this particular manner?

Alicia Erian: I guess my main experience is that I myself was once a thirteen-year-old girl. I feel that I can be most authentic in my work when drawing on my own experience.

JCoop2Sew@aol.com: What is the source of your inspiration? Several of the situations portrayed are so hard for me to imagine that it seems they must be based on reality.

Alicia Erian: This is a pretty big compliment. Or, I take it that way. Some of the things in the book are true, but many aren't. The basic premise for the book is a what-if scenario. My mother sent my brother and I to live with our father when we were nine and eleven, respectively. Then, when it didn't work out very well, she came and got us. I always thought that if I were ever to write a novel, I might write about what might've happened if my mother hadn't come and gotten us. I like this comment because I think good fiction should be hard to imagine. I think the world is such a particular place where things go on that we can't even conceive of. I have an idea, however, that if someone can conceive of it, then perhaps it really is going on somewhere, at least to some degree.

MJWeish@kc.rr.com: Why did you decide to make Jasira so sexually active at such a young age?

Alicia Erian: I wanted to tell a story about a lonely girl who was not going to be able to find love or affection in any kind of typical way. I also wanted to acknowledge the fact that many young people have sexual lives of one kind or another, whether or not their friends or family know about it. On a more general level, writing about sex is something I do quite a bit. Often I feel that sex appears in fiction as a sort of segregated act, this thing that happens separate from the actual story, as opposed to being fully integrated into the narrative. I am very interested in narratives in which sex plays a more major role, where it acts as more than just punctuation for another scene.

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