Alex Flinn

NOTE: If you would like to contact me, please visit my Facebook, Twitter, or website or e-mail me (alixwrites@aol.com), but DO NOT MESSAGE ME THROUGH GOODREADS. While I have a bio on Goodreads as a service to my readers, I do not visit Goodreads on a regular basis. Like literally twice a year.Okay, bio.I was born on Long Island and grew up on a street called Salem Court. This probably influenced my interest in witches (It also means I can't use that as a password or security question -- and no, I won't tell you my first pet's name). When I was five years old, my mom said that I should be an author. I guess I must have nodded or something because, from that point on, every poem I ever wrote in school was submitted to Highlights or Cricket magazine. I was collecting rejection slips at age seven!I learned to read early. But I compensated for this early proficiency by absolutely refusing to read the programmed readers required by the school system -- workbooks where you read the story, then answered the questions. When the other kids were on Book 20, I was on Book 1! My teacher, Mrs. Zeiser, told my mother, "Alexandra marches to her own drummer." I don't think that was supposed to be a good thing. Nonetheless, I learned how to read, and my second grade teacher, Dr. Gross, was much cooler. He was the one who handed me a copy of Ellen Tebbits and said, "I think you're ready for this." I didn't know what that meant, but I was VERY EXCITED.My family moved to Miami when I was in middle school. I had a really hard time making friends, so I spent a lot of time reading and writing then. But unlike Christopher Paolini or Amelia Atwater-Rhodes, I never finished writing a novel (Note to teen writers: It's okay not to finish your novel in high school). That was also when I learned to be a keen observer. By high school, I'd made some friends and gotten involved in various "gifted and talented" performing arts programs. I studied opera in college (I'm a coloratura -- the really loud, high-pitched sopranos.) and then went to law school.It was law school that probably helped with my first novel. Breathing Underwater deals with the serious and all-too-common problem of dating violence. I based the book on my experiences interning with the State Attorney's Office and volunteering with battered women. I thought this was a really important topic, as 27 percent of teenage girls surveyed have been hit by a boyfriend. I'm happy that the book is so popular, and if you are reading this bio because the book was assigned for school, I'm happy about that too. There is a companion to Breathing Underwater, in Caitlin's viewpoint. It is called Diva.I started writing an early (and laughable) version of Breathing Underwater in college (I was really bored on a car trip with my parents). I later learned that my mom tossed it out when she was cleaning my drawers. Thanks, Mom! I didn't get back to it until I had my first daughter, Katie. I'm self-taught. I went to the library and took out books on writing. Then, I read a lot of young-adult novels by writers I admired. I write my first drafts longhand, then I type them.I think I write for young-adults because I never quite got over being one. In my mind, I am still 13-years-old, running laps on the athletic field, wearing this really baggy white gymsuit. I’m continually amazed at the idea that I have a checking account and a mortgage. So I try to write books that gymsuit girl might enjoy. It’s a way of going back to being thirteen . . . knowing what I know now.Right now, I live half a mile away from my old middle school, in Palmetto Bay, a suburb of Miami, with my husband, daughters, dogs, and cats.