Multi-character Interview: My Beating Teenage Heart by C.K Kelly Martin

Today the characters from My Beating Teenage Heart and Martin's other novels are stopping my for an interview with moi! Enjoy. =)


1. Describe your ideal mate. 

Breckon (My Beating Teenage Heart) – My girlfriend, Jules. She’s creative, independent, and sexy and you can talk to her about anything.
Ashlyn (My Beating Teenage Heart) – a guy who makes me laugh but is also a good listener. Loyal too. If he’s a good dancer that would be a bonus.
Finn (One Lonely Degree) –  Raine Maida from Our Lady Peace but since he’s taken, somebody who likes good music as much as I do, probably a couple of years older than me and someone who is definitely not a pack animal and doesn’t care what other people think of him. Intelligent, sensitive, funny and all the better if he looks good in a T-shirt.
Mason (The Lighter Side of Life and Death) – someone really down to earth that you can hang out with for hours, doing anything or nothing with without feeling like you’ll run out of things to say. A girl who will be your friend and not just your girlfriend. From experience, I’m going to say she should also probably be pretty close to my age because otherwise it can get pretty messy.
Nick (I Know It’s Over) – I can’t really seriously think about that yet but I used to picture, like, a French girl with a guitar on her back, who had a sexy name like Solange or Anaïs.


2. If you were going to be trapped on a deserted island for 1 year, what 3 things would you have to bring with you?

Breckon (My Beating Teenage Heart) – the world’s biggest bag of rice, lighter fluid and my guitar
Finn (One Lonely Degree) – some kind of survival guide, seeds to grow fruit and veggies and one of those flashlights that you power just by shaking
Mason (The Lighter Side of Life and Death) – a waterproof tent, a bunch of those tablets that purify water and a fishing net
Nick (I Know It’s Over) – a hammer and nails (does that count as two things or one?), a saw and if I can still bring one more thing, a propane container
Ashlyn (My Beating Teenage Heart) – Pretty much what Finn said except I might trade the flashlight for a sturdy tent.

3. What is your favorite book?

Ashlyn (My Beating Teenage Heart) – One Day by David Nichols. I love the idea of seeing where Emma and Dexter’s relationship was at on a single day from every year.
Nick (I Know It’s Over) – I don’t really read that much but Ken Dryden’s hockey book, The Game, was cool.
Breckon (My Beating Teenage Heart) – A graphic novel called Black Hole by Charles Burns. It’s really trippy – it’s set in an alternate reality Seattle in the late 1970s where a gross STD causing bizarre physical mutations has broken out in a group of teenagers.
Mason (The Lighter Side of Life and Death) – If I can pick a play instead I’d choose Twelve Angry Men. It’s amazing. I’d love to play one of the parts in it some day. Otherwise, I’d go with The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams.
Finn (One Lonely Degree) – The Patti Smith book Just Kids about her leaving her family, moving to New York and becoming friends with all these really cool people at the very beginning of her musical career.


4. If you were going to die in 30 days, what would be on your bucket list?

Finn (One Lonely Degree) – I wouldn’t leave Audrey alone until she forgave me. I’d set aside at least a week to see London and New York before I die too. Other things: See the northern lights, meet the members of OLP and Green Day, dye my hair electric blue. Kiss a good looking stranger in the middle of a city street just for the hell of it.
Nick (I Know It’s Over) – If I only had a month left to live I’d want to see Jillian again and see what happens. I’d also hang out with Keelor and Nathan as much as I could, take a road trip with them somewhere – just the three of us – and do something wild like skydive or bungee jump. Drink Absinthe. Deep sea dive.
Breckon (My Beating Teenage Heart) – If I only had 30 days I really wouldn’t want to do anything out of the ordinary. I’d just hang out here with my friends and family and try to spend as little of that time asleep as humanly possible.
Ashlyn (My Beating Teenage Heart) – Too late! This question obviously isn’t meant for me.
Mason (The Lighter Side of Life and Death) – I’d love to do a couple more performances of All My Sons with my friends and if money was no object, fly them all (and my parents too) to New York with me to see something on Broadway afterwards. I’d eat too much every day and have sex outside somewhere, like on a beach or in a forest. Visit however many other places I could in the remaining time – like Japan, Rio de Janeiro, Italy.

5. If you could travel to anywhere in the world, where would you choose to go?
Finn (One Lonely Degree) – London! And I’m sure I wouldn’t want to come back.
Mason (The Lighter Side of Life and Death) – South America including the parts no one usually gets to see. Definitely the rainforest.
Ashlyn (My Beating Teenage Heart) – Tahiti. It looks like paradise.
Nick (I Know It’s Over) – Australia probably. It sounds really cool – lots of weird animals and fantastic weather.
Breckon (My Beating Teenage Heart) – Egypt. I’d look at the pyramids for Skylar. 

My Beating Teenage Heart by C.K. Kelly Martin
September 27, 2011
Random House Books for Young Readers

Ashlyn Baptiste is falling. One moment she was nothing—no memories, no self—and then suddenly, she's plummeting through a sea of stars. Is she in a coma? She doesn't remember dying, and she has no memories of the life she left behind. All she knows is that she's trapped in a consciousness without a body and she's spending every moment watching a stranger.
Breckon Cody's on the edge. He's being ripped apart by grief so intense it literally hurts to breath. On the surface, Breckon is trying to hold it together for his family and his girlfriend, but underneath he's barely hanging on.
Even though she didn't know him in life, Ashlyn sees Breckon's pain, and she's determined to find a way help him. As her own distressing memories emerge from the darkness, she struggles to communicate with the boy who can't see her, but whose life is suddenly intertwined with hers. In alternating voices of the main characters, My Beating Teenage Heart paints a devastatingly vivid picture of both the heartbreak and the promise of teenage life—a life Ashlyn would do anything to recover and Breckon seems desperate to destroy—and will appeal to fans of Sarah Dessen, John Green, and David Levithan.