Katie Maxwell dishes on celebrity encounters, favorite books and what’s in store for Emily

Q: I hear Paul McCartney inadvertently gave you a concussion when you were in London "researching" this novel. How exactly did that happen?

That happened a few years ago (OK, a lot of years ago) when I was living in London and working at Harrods–a very famous, very prestigious department store. I worked in the toy department, and one day near Christmas I was stuck with duty on what I had dubbed as "the loser table." The loser table contained those toys which weren’t selling very well, and which the store manager had hoped would sell if someone was demonstrating them. I was saddled with three absolutely horrible items: a Barbie clone that had green and silver striped hair (ugliest thing I’d ever seen), a little toy stove that had sound effects (a frying pan with fake bacon made sizzling sounds when you put it on the stove), and a horribly gacky yellow plastic duck holding a mylar keyboard that played tunes when you pressed the keyboard "keys."

Bored with trying to arrange the green-and-silver doll to look attractive (and tired of the sizzling bacon noise that would NEVER STOP), I started playing with the appallingly awful duck and its keyboard. The duck came with a little song book so kids could whip out renditions of "Mary had a little lamb" and "Twinkle, Twinkle little star." Since it was Christmas, and since I was so bored at my table of rejects, I took to playing the two Christmas songs in the book over and over again. I serenaded passers-by (none of whom I recall ever buying the beastly duck, which admittedly was probably due more to my mylar keyboard playing skills than to the duck itself), but one day as I was really getting into a spirited rendition of "Silent Night" on the duck, a man stopped in front of me. I was slouched against the wall in between two glass shelving units. The man was laden with bags, but he stopped and smiled at my duck concert. I smiled back and added a little flourish to my duck-playing. He nodded, and after a moment, moved off. It took me about five seconds after he left before I realized that I was standing in Harrods holding a ghastly plastic yellow duck, playing "Silent Night" to Paul McCartney.

When that thought finally did filter through my brain, I whipped my head around to see where he went (with the intention of following him, throwing myself at his feet, and begging him to forget that he had seen me with the horrible duck–PAUL MCCARTNEY! Sir Paul! My fave of all the Beatles [Ringo excepted]!). Instead, I smacked my temple on the corner of the glass shelving unit and gave myself a concussion.

Hours later, as I sat in the hospital emergency room while they made sure I hadn’t done any real damage, I cringed with the thought that I had blown my one chance to appear cool in front of Paul McCartney. To this day, I still have nightmares of embarrassment when I remember the gentle, tolerant smile on his face while he stood there and listened to me play on that repulsive yellow duck.

Q: Emily is a bit of a brat at the beginning of this book. Do you think teens will take offense at the way you've portrayed them?

I think Emily is more self-centered than a brat. She truly does care about other people, but she’s in full crisis mode at the beginning of Loo. She’d just been dragged from her friends and a very important year at school to another country where she doesn’t know anyone, doesn’t know how they do things at school, doesn’t even understand people all the time (it takes a while to catch on to some of the denser versions of the English accent). Naturally, she’s very focused on just how awful her life has become, especially when she finds out that indignity of indignities, she’s being put back a year because of the difference in educational systems.

Emily alternates between being pretty confident, and the absolute conviction that she’s been blighted with whatever circumstance is facing her. Because she has such a supportive home life (she’s very comfortable with expressing herself to her parents), she goes into situations believing that she’s cool and on top of things, but usually finds out that she’s not quite as in control as she thought she was. It’s a form of naivety, really, and one that you can see her losing as she matures throughout the books.

Q: What was your favorite book as a teen?

This is going to sound very topical, but I have a very battered, well-read set of The Lord of the Rings (and I didn’t even have Viggo to drool after then!). I was also a great mystery reader, and loved Agatha Christie’s books. I don’t recall having any one favorite, but I did read LOTR every year so I suppose that trilogy would probably be the closest to a fave book.

Q: How did you go from being a high school dropout to earning a Bachelor of Science in Astrophysics?

Much to my mother’s dismay, I decided when I was fifteen that school wasn’t going to teach me any marketable skill other than typing. I stayed in high school for two weeks to learn how to type, and left after that to find a job. I took my GED as soon as I could (you had to be sixteen to take it), and kicked around for four years working at a variety of places. When I was twenty I decided that what I really wanted to do was to be an astrophysicist, and looked into going to the local university. Luckily they had a program that allowed kids who had poor grades, or who were high school dropouts, to enter college.

Because I came into college with no math or science skills, it took me two years to get up to speed on both subjects, so my four year degree actually took six years. I loved physics from the first day, although I had much less love for math. By the time I was through, though, I had overcome my junior high math block and had progressed from basic trigonometry and alegbra (the first couple of quarters), to math-that-didn’t-exist (math specially created for theoretical physics). The astronomy part of the degree was just icing on the cake–all fun and little work.

Q: What do you hope teens will come away with after reading Loo and the rest of the Emily series?

Other than being amused for a while–surely the goal of any book–I’d like teens, especially girls, to look at Emily’s experiences and know that they don’t have to make excuses for being who they are, or what they look like, or how smart they are. Just as Emily finds out she doesn’t have to hang with the "in" kids in order to be happy, I’d like teens to take pride in themselves as they are.

One of Emily’s charms is that she communicates her thoughts with everyone around her–her friends and family–and she’s not afraid to take an issue that’s troubling her, and talk to someone about the best way to handle it. I think a lot of teens feel very isolated and like it’s a point of honor to handle life without asking friends or family for help or advice. Hopefully, Emily’s (sometimes extreme) verbosity in sharing every little trouble life tosses her way–and admittedly, it tosses a lot–will remind people that everyone can get by with a little help from their friends.

Oops. Beatles reference. Time to move on before I start remembering that horrible duck thing again…

Q: What are you working on now, and when we will be able to pick up your next book?

I just finished the third Emily book, What’s French For "Ew"? (out April 2004), which is set mostly in Paris. I had great fun dredging memories of Paris from the dark, dusty hallways of my mind, and even more fun getting online to look at all the Paris webcams, tourist sites, and pages devoted to Paris oddities.

The next Em book is They Wear What Under Their Kilts, which should be hitting bookstores the first week of January, 2004. Emily and Holly go to Scotland to spend a month doing their work experience on a sheep farm, and have all sorts of interesting adventures (including a little contest concerning an eleven-fingered hottie named Ruaraidh).

The fourth and final Emily book will be out in the summer of 2004, and will cover Emily leaving England and all her friends behind. In addition, I’m bequeathing Emily one of my more interesting jobs for that book, so it should be great fun writing how she deals with all the dead…whoops! Don’t want to give anything away.

For more, visit www.katiemaxwell.com.