Kit Frick (Book Coach) releases See All the Stars!

Author Accelerator Success Stories

Jade @ Author Accelerator

Published in

No Blank Pages

4 min readAug 14, 2018

Kit Frick (Book Coach) sat down with us for an interview about her new release!

What inspired you to write this book?

I’m drawn to complex characters, and my writer-brain delights in putting them in very tough situations and empowering them to dig their ways out. The idea for See All the Stars began with a “what if?” question: What if a girl lost all her friends and her boyfriend in one fell swoop — and what if she was partly responsible for what happened? The story unfolded from there.

Tell us one surprising thing about your book

I’ve got two, but they’re related! The title — See All the Stars — is taken from a quote by Chilean songwriter Violeta Parra: “Don’t cry when the sun is gone, because the tears won’t let you see the stars.”

And the book’s first line is: “We went to the party because Ret insisted.”

Both the title and the first line originated with the manuscript’s very first draft, and neither changed throughout the revision or publication process! (And they’re among the only words that didn’t change.)

What was one struggle you had in the writing of this book?

See All the Stars is written in two interwoven timelines in chapters that alternate between “Then” and “Now.” Getting this dual-timeline structure right was my biggest structural challenge. The “Then” timeline follows the main character, Ellory, from the last week of sophomore year through the spring of her junior year of high school and leads up to the explosive incident that shatters her group of friends. The “Now” timeline picks up on the night before senior year begins, after Ellory has been suspended from school (for her role in said incident) and has spent the summer away, off social media, and otherwise disconnected from her friends and classmates. And now she has to return to high school, totally alone and consumed by guilt and regret.

I wrote See All the Stars chronologically — from the start of the “Then” timeline right on through to the end of the “Now” timeline — then attempted to weave the chapters together. At the time, this seemed like the most logical strategy, so that I’d be armed with all the information about what happened in Ellory’s past by the time I got down to writing her present. But what it also meant was that I had no transition points between chapters, no tidbits of information revealed “then” that were about to shed light on something “now,” no synergy between these two interwoven timelines.

So, getting all that right took many, many rounds of revision. I like books with interesting narrative structures; my second book is written in two alternating points of view and my in-progress manuscript incorporates three timelines, two points of view, and an omniscient third. Clearly, I’m only making things harder for myself! But I’ve also learned a lot about outlining and structuring a manuscript since I first sat down to draft Ellory’s story, so this is one struggle from which I’ve taken a lot away!

What do you dream your ideal reader will say to her best friend about your book?

Since this is a story about an epic breakup between best friends, I can imagine teen readers passing a copy of See All the Stars around their group of friends like a cautionary tale. Or one reader might give it to her former best friend as a way of making amends. Either way, it would be accompanied with a whisper: “whatever you do, don’t tell how it ends!”

What’s next for you in your writing life?

Immediately after See All the Stars hits shelves, my first full-length book of poetry, A Small Rising Up in the Lungs, will come out in September from New American Press.

Then my 2019 book, also from S&S/McElderry, is another stand-alone YA thriller about two girls under unbearable pressure from their families and communities — and what happens when they decide to stop compromising. It’s being typeset now, and I’ll be able to share a lot more about it later this year!

Where can readers find more information about you and your books?