release date: June 10, 2014
What if your last kiss was with the wrong boy?
Cassidy Haines remembers her first kiss vividly. It was on the old covered bridge the summer before her freshman year with her boyfriend of three years, Ethan Keys. But her last kiss—the one she shared with someone at her seventeenth birthday party the night she died—is a blur. Cassidy is trapped in the living world, not only mourning the loss of her human body, but left with the grim suspicion that her untimely death wasn’t a suicide as everyone assumes. She can’t remember anything from the weeks leading up to her birthday and she’s worried that she may have betrayed her boyfriend.
If Cassidy is to uncover the truth about that fateful night and make amends with the only boy she’ll ever love, she must face her past and all the decisions she made—good and bad—that led to her last kiss.
JAY ASHER: I’d
like to begin our conversation as if we happened to bump into each other on the side of the road. So…
Hey!
Watch where you’re… Oh, Bethany
BETHANY NEAL: Jay!
Great to see ya. Wow, I’m glad I picked today as my one day a week to leave the
house!
JAY: Now,
we’ve been friends for a while online, but really connected when I changed my
profile picture to a Garbage Pail Kid. I think it was Jay Decay. And since you
love GPKs, you changed yours to Beth Death. We thought it would be awesome if
we started a trend! Unfortunately, no one was cool enough to play along. So if
you created a new GPK card for Cassidy, the main character in your book, what
would the card say and why does that fit her?
BETHANY: Unabashedly
Cassidy. Her picture could have her posing with a mallet, bashing her own head
in because she’s so sick of not being able to remember how she died. Brains
could be flying everywhere. It would be awesome—I mean, gross. That would not be so super hilarious that I’d stick
it on my locker door.
JAY: I
thought it was hilarious, and I’m sure intentional, that you can rearrange the
letters in MY LAST KISS to SLIMY TASKS. With my books, the titles always end up
different (and better) than what I first came up with. Was this always the
title for your book?
BETHANY: Hm,
yes, I always intended to title my first book so it was an anagram for SLIMY
TASKS. That was very integral to my creative process. I’ve heard stories about
authors having to submit long lists of alternate titles to their publishers,
but I lucked out and got to keep my original title. My next book is tentatively
titled FOLDED SAUCY. Fingers crossed I get to keep that one too!
JAY: If you were to design the perfect donut, what
would be on and/or in it? And by the way, this donut magically has not
calories. Also, if you’re on any sort of special diet, the effects of whatever
you’re avoiding doesn’t happen with this donut.
BETHANY: I’d
actually prefer my perfect donut to make me gigantic, dietarily speaking of
course. This mythical donut would contain custard (inside) and chocolate
frosting with salted caramel-covered blueberries on top. Oh, man, I’m having an
intense Homer Simpson moment over this fictional donut. Mmmm, donuts.
JAY: Your
initials are B & N, just like Barnes & Noble. Did that have an
influence on you getting into writing? Like, if your initials were A & F,
would you be designing clothes that were sold in stores that smelled funky?
BETHANY: You
know, I never thought about this, but it makes total sense. My alias is Ariel
Eugenides, and I used to do a lot of guest spots on that A & E show The Killing. Mostly dead body stand in
stuff, but it was a solid gig.
JAY: Did
anything surprise you while writing your book? For example, did the tone
change, or a character surprise you?
BETHANY: In
the first draft I had a different character as the Big Bad, but after going
through my standard character development exercises with this person, I ended
up liking them so darn much that I had to cut them some slack. Everything in
the mystery kind of hinged on this person, so I didn’t expect that to happen. Nor
did I appreciate the rewrites, but such is the job. Now they’re only, like, one
third bad. The Medium Bad at most.
JAY: Kind
of the opposite of the previous question, is there a part of your book that
turned out exactly as you hoped it would from the beginning?
BETHANY: I
always knew how Cassidy would die. I had a very vivid image in my head from day
one what that would look like. I also took a long time perfecting the
descriptions of the covered bridge where it happens. I have this desperate hope
that one day I’ll be walking in the woods somewhere and happen upon an eerily
identical bridge and flip my lid. That is literally a dream of mine. I’m so
weird.
JAY: I
read a study that said people who flip ahead to the end of the book enjoy the
story more. While I could never bring myself to do that, I can also understand
it because those people may let themselves enjoy the journey more. So I thought
I’d give you an opportunity to spoil the ending of MY LAST KISS (even though
books are supposed to be read from
beginning to end!!!). If you’d like…
BETHANY: As a joke, one of Cassidy’s friends slipped
radioactive protoplasma into her lip gloss the night she supposedly died, but she’s
not actually dead…she’s Spider-Man!
JAY: You
know what? I’m so glad we bumped into each other. I hope you enjoy your
experiences as a published author!
BETHANY: I'm so glad too. It's always nice to see a friend at the Cooper's Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake. I hope you enjoy the rest of your time in jolly old England.
by Bethany Neal
is available...
NOW!