A #TTBF Q&A with Author Kate Williams
What historical event would you travel back in time to witness?
Ok, so it’s not a real historical event, but I would like to be dropped right into the middle of Dazed and Confused—I love the clothes, the cars and the music, the Moontower, everything! This movie came out the year I started high school, and my friends and I watched it almost every day. Whenever we were hanging out, Dazed and Confused was on in the background, and if we were driving, the soundtrack was in the CD player—Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out” will always remind me of being a teenager, even though it came out eight years before I was even born!
What is on your writing playlist?
This is a tough one, because it changes all the time, especially depending on my mood and the weather, but when writing The Babysitters Coven, I went back to a lot of songs that evoke crystal clear memories from my own teen years: breaking up with my boyfriend and then crying in my car to Third Eye Blind’s “How’s It Going To Be,” or “This is How We Do It” because my best friend got the single stuck in her car’s tape deck and it played nonstop whether we wanted to hear it or not. If you can’t already tell, driving around was a big part of being a teenager in Kansas in the ’90s.
Your book is getting pitched as “The Baby-Sitters Club meets Buffy”. What two pop culture connections would YOU use to describe your book to readers?
I would say that it has the Steve-Dustin-Robin-Erica vibe from Stranger Things, or Superbad but with supernatural powers and better outfits.
Were you at all influenced by TBS, and if so, what baby-sitter were you?
Oh man, I read them all! I wished I was Claudia, but I was probably more of a Mary-Anne or even, gulp, a Mallory. I definitely took a lot of inspiration from Claudia’s wardrobe, especially her wild earrings!
What do you hope readers take away from your book?
I think of The Babysitters Coven as cozy magic—escapism and entertainment to make you laugh. I would also love it if readers came away inspired to have a little more fun when they get dressed in the morning.
If you could choose three books to include on our official “Read Everything” book list for 2019, what would they be?
I’m just going to lean hard on my ’90s theme here, and choose three books that were seminal in making me want to write YA: Witch Baby by Francesca Lia Block, Girl by Blake Nelson, and The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky.