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When Jodi Picoult landed on our shores a few months back  to promote her new book, Change of Heart, we ran a competition giving one nzgirl the chance to interview the best selling author herself!
Our lucky winner was Melanie Honeycombe, she got to meet Jodi and ask her all the questions that she (and most probably you!) have ever wondered, from what inspires her to her best pearls of wisdom…
How do you go about choosing a storyline for a book?
A lot of people think I go through the newspaper and choose a story that is controversial but that’s not how I work at all. I wait for a story that keeps coming up, a question or topic that keeps me up at night, something I’m worried about as a mother, a woman. If the topic is still on my mind weeks later, characters just start popping up and it goes on from there.
 If Change of Heart became a movie who would you choose to portray the characters of Shay, Father Michael, June and Maggie?
This is a really difficult question to answer as the characters have personalities of their own and to choose someone else to portray them, that’s tricky. Let me think... Johnny Depp as Shay, just so I could meet him on the set. Plus he’s deep, dark and mysterious. Father Michael, well he’s rugged around the edges so it would have to be George Clooney – no he’s too old. Brad Pit – no, he’s too young. Joaquin Phoenix. Yes I’d choose him as Father Michael. Laura Linney would be June. So now I need Maggie. I don’t think they have anyone over weight in Hollywood that I’d pick for Maggie!
Why do you think your books have been so successful?
I think it’s been a slow success and it’s really important to say that because a lot of people assume that I became a huge seller overnight and I haven’t. I’ve been selling books for 15 years. It’s been very graduated and what happens is its word of mouth which is one thing you can’t buy.
Out of all the books you have written, what character do you most identify with?
Nina Frost in Perfect Match who is not, I might add, a very nice character. People have a really hard time with her because she is very forthright. She has very strong opinions. She’s a tough woman, all of which are great qualities to tell you the truth but she is also a totally fierce mother and she will do anything for her kids. When you were starting out as a writer, which authors inspired you? After college one of the first writers I fell for was Alice Hoffman and she is still my favourite writer. She is a fantastic writer and she makes writing look really easy even though it never is easy.
What advice do you have to all the budding writers out there, those who are starting out and wanting to be where you are now?
I actually have a lot of advice. The first thing is, you should carve a bit of time out of your day, every day to write and it could be 20 minutes in the morning or right before you go to bed but during that time don’t do anything but write.
Make sure you keep reading because that’s very inspirational and when I read something great, my first instinct is I want to do something just as good. I also recommend taking a writing workshop at some point in your life. You don’t have to keep taking them. You don’t need a Masters Degree in writing but you need to become your own best editor and that’s the kind of thing a programme like that will teach you to do.
Can you tell us anything about your next book?
It’s called Handle with Care. It’s a story about wrongful birth suits in America. Right now if you have a child that is born disabled, in about half of the states of America, you can sue your obstetrician for not telling you in advance with the premise that you’ll stand up in court and say “if I’d known this I would have terminated the pregnancy. I would have had an abortion.” In my book Charlotte O’Keefe is a mother who has a child that has Osteogenesis Imperfecta, which is more commonly known as Brittle Bone Disease. This means that throughout her lifetime she will have hundreds to thousands of bone breaks in the course of her lifetime, only grow to about three fett and have rods in her femur and spurs in her spine.... For more information on Change of Heart or any of Jodi’s novels click here to visit Jodi's website.
Mel Honeycombe
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