Today, please join me in welcoming Stephanie Willing to the Mixed-Up Files Author Spotlight! Author of the gripping MG horror novel, She Came Back Different, which has been chosen as a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection, the book follows six young dancers who enter the Stadler Ballet Conservatory and the horrors they discover once they get there. (Spoiler alert: It isn’t pretty.)

Praised by Kirkus as “An appealing blend of ballet, camaraderie, mystery, and frights,” the book is available from Viking/Penguin Random House.

She Came Back Different

MR: Congratulations on the publication of She Came Back Different, Stephanie! Can you tell readers a bit about the book?

SW: Thank you! I like to say that it’s Stepford Wives at a ballet school, with evil plants—but make it middle grade. It’s told through new students Gemma’s and Neve’s alternating POVs. Gemma has always felt too loud, too big, too much—while also never being enough. The school promises to take average girls and perfect them, and she is thrilled at the idea that she might finally be something other than who she is.

Neve has been quietly angry for years ever since she saw her older sister, Bex, go to Stadler and change from a charismatic chaos gremlin into a perfectly proper young lady. She knows something is deeply wrong at the school, and she’s determined to figure out what it is. There’s a lot of botanical horror, but the true villain is the idea that perfection is possible and it will save you.

Dance Life

MR: You were a dance major in college, and you moved to New York to study dance. How did your experience as a dancer shape your understanding of the young dancers portrayed in the book? You clearly have a strong sense of empathy toward them.

SW: Ballet is not the bad guy in my book! Instead, we get Gemma discovering the way the world can fall away when you’re dancing and how movement can be a story as much as a shape or a series of steps. Getting to write about how it feels during a dance class when you nail a combination, and the joy of warm muscles moving you across a studio floor, was an absolute delight.

Of course, access to dance classes and the money to afford them are also massive privileges, something the character of Kris bitterly reflects on in one of Neve’s chapters. I grew up in a small town, and while I was lucky enough to take ballet classes a couple times a week, I didn’t have consistent dance training until I was on an academic scholarship at college.

I also drew from my own experience of feeling like I was the wrong shape, or that I didn’t have anything to offer because everyone else was so much better (in my opinion), while simultaneously wishing that I’d be picked for a solo or a starring role. It’s such a painful place, to feel like if you just worked harder, you could unlock this “perfect” version of yourself. I’m still trying to unlearn that.

All Bodies Are Beautiful

MR: She Came Back Different champions the idea that all bodies belong in the dance world, not just skinny ones. At the same time, it’s no secret that dancers’ bodies are often scrutinized, with undue emphasis placed on the necessity to be thin. From your experience, have any strides been made in the dance world to accept a range of body types?

SW: Dancers like Kayla Hamilton (TWU alum!) and other disabled and differently-bodied dancers have never let a traditional ballet body expectation stop them. My kids and I went to an incredible breakdancing performance at the New Vic Theater this year called Ill-Abilities: No Excuses, No Limits. The dancers spun, flipped, and launched themselves through jaw-dropping choreography and shared their stories of growing up disabled and making their own place in the dance world. “The dance world” isn’t an entity—it’s us, and that includes every kind of body.

Specific to ballet…

I see online is that there’s a lot more focus on anatomical placement and safer biomechanics of movement. That means fewer people are contorting themselves for the sake of a flashy dance move or “perfect” turn-out. I also see dance studios working hard to make their classes inclusive for disabled and neurodiverse kids, which is so important. Dance is for everyone.

I can’t speak directly to the experience of a young dancer now, especially in the world of ballet competitions which has become much bigger than when I was a kid. It seems like there’s an outsized emphasis on how many pirouettes you can do or how high your legs go, and while it’s great to have a goal, I can also see how that could become an unhealthy measurement of someone’s value or ability as a dancer.

Also, can I say? Adult ballet is where it’s at. The competitiveness is gone, and it’s just you and this thing you love, in the company of other people who love it too. IT’S AMAZING.

Who’s Perfect?

MR: One of the main themes in the book is perfectionism, as the ballet mistresses—or “Madames”—set unrealistic standards for the girls at the ballet conservatory. They dictate how they dress, what they eat, and even how they sleep (on their backs, to avoid wrinkles!). Can you tell us more about this? It’s super creepy.

SW: Obedient and compliant people are easier to control, right? We often need our so-called flaws—our stubbornness, our anger, our snark—to create or hold boundaries. One of the questions of the book is how culpable the Madames are. At one time, they were students full of creativity and chaotic joy too, but now they are part of the system that erases individuality in favor of docile prettiness.

In real life, so many of the enforcers of traditional femininity and the pursuit of perfection are other women. It’s a system that they feel powerful inside of, without recognizing what they’ve lost or the harm they’re passing on. While dance mistress, Madame Orange, is at the height of her power within the school, she’s still hollow, and if things continued the way they always did, she’d face the same fate as Madame Gray, an aging ballet teacher who is relegated to storage as she becomes a fully hollowed-out husk.

DIFFERENT vs. WEST OF THE SEA

MR: Speaking of creepy, your book is a departure from your debut novel, West of the Sea, which has fantastical elements but isn’t horror. What made you take the leap to horror? Are you a fan?

SW: I’m a big fan of MG horror—that’s my speed. I am the biggest scaredy-cat so I don’t usually seek out horror films to watch. And yet, every horror movie I’ve ever watched, I’ve absolutely loved. So…yes? But I’m terrified?

The biggest shift toward writing horror came from my critique group, made up of me, my husband (he writes creative nonfiction), and two of our dearest friends from theater. We started workshopping each other in 2017 and we’re still going strong.

One of those friends is the horror supernova, Nat Cassidy. So I’ve had the gruesome pleasure of workshopping his horror novels at every stage, and that didn’t just give me a stronger stomach for viscera and gore, but made me really grow to appreciate the importance of experiencing fear in a safe way—and the stomach-churning chills along the way.  Then I read Ally Malinenko’s This Disappearing House, which is the number one middle-grade book I always recommend, and I became a MG horror superfan.

Bloodsucking Vines!

MR: While we’re on the subject of horror, I would be remiss not to mention the bloodthirsty vines that suck out the girls’ personalities, rendering them shells of their former selves—like the Stepford Wives but in tutus. Please tell us more.

SW: In the world of the book, the vines are hungry and semi-ambulatory. They grow in and through the walls of the school and they can’t be seen until it’s too late. The native forests around the school block the vines from escaping further into the landscape, and Gemma’s contact with the trees and their fungus network is what gives her the ability to see the vines from the beginning. The vines are drawn toward noise, chaos, individuality—and then they eat the souls’ creative essence down to the roots.

One reason they flourish so well at the ballet school is that the dancers are always in an act of creation, so even the most hollowed-out students still have creative growth for the vines to eat at the end of the day. One way to avoid the vines’ notice is to act as if you’ve already been consumed, i.e., sweet, demure, literally in step with the other girls at the school.  This defense mechanism looks a lot like the result of being consumed—much like the way girls learn early to smile and people-please as a way of staying safe in social situations.

Early in the drafting process, Nat pointed out that the vines had a #MeToo vibe, and once I saw what I was really writing about, I went all in on the gothic elements of questioning reality. Did this really happen, or is she imagining it? If someone warns of a dancer that no one else can see, do the other girls believe her? If a girl broke the rules and got attacked, does she get blamed, or the institution that lets a predator lurk in its shadows?

Stephanie Says

MR: In addition to writing books for young readers, you are an audiobook narrator. How does this influence you as a writer, and vice-versa?

SW: As a narrator who writes, I always carry the knowledge that I’m bringing someone’s precious and hard-fought book baby to life. I want to take very good care of the author and honor their vision, their story, and the characters as they wrote them.

As a writer who narrates, I’m very aware of vocal descriptors. Authors sometimes get very fantastical in their descriptions like, “His voice was the sound of the sea over crushed glass,” and as a narrator I just stare and think, How am I going to do that??? So when I wrote Gemma as having a distinct accent from my part of Texas, I was internally groaning as I thought about how I’d have to perform that and keep it consistent across her chapters. (Curious about Stephanie’s narration style? Check it out here.)

MR: What is your writing process like? Do you have a specific routine? Also, are you a plotter or a pantser?

SW: I’m a plantser! I love a good outline—I think of it as daydreaming on paper—but I don’t stick to it rigidly. And I wish I had a routine. Maybe when my kids are older! I prefer to write at coffee shops (fewer interruptions, no chores tugging at my metaphorical sleeve), but I would never finish a book if I waited until I was at a café to get started.

At home, I’ve tried to trick my brain into thinking I’m at a coffee shop by making my writing space a high narrow bar against the wall with a comfortable stool and my back to the room. (It only sort of works.)

Regardless, the writing process usually looks like me with earbuds, listening to a playlist of cinematic music that I’ve listened to so many times I don’t hear it anymore, and drinking a lot of coffee.

Up Next

MR: What projects are you working on now, Stephanie?

SW: Inside every writer there are two wolves… kidding, but I do have at least two projects pulling me in different directions. One is a Southern gothic fantasy, a sort of a grown-up and darker take on magic-users and mythic beings in the same world as West of the Sea. But I’m also working on a cozier romantic fantasy for adults. My kids (eight and five) want me to write something for them, so I’ve also got a younger chapter book in mind. We’ll see!

Lightning Round!

MR: No MUF interview is complete without a lightning round, so…

Preferred writing snack? Does coffee count?  I don’t tend to eat while writing at home—my fingers feel gross on the keyboard otherwise–but if I’m at a café, I love having a blueberry scone or a fresh croissant. 

Coffee or tea? Coffee every time, in every lifetime.

Zombie apocalypse: Yea or nay? I love a funny zombie apocalypse.

Favorite ballet? Giselle. Give me all the vengeful female spirits dancing in the woods!

Superpower? The ability to speak any language after hearing it once. A  very long time ago, I wrote X-Men fanfiction about myself as a character with this ability.

Favorite place on earth? Can I pick two? On my back deck watching my flowers and their pollinators while my kids careen around nearby. And walking the streets of NYC on a perfect autumn day with an iced coffee in my hand on my way to meet up with a friend.

You’re packing a dance bag with six items only. What are they? These days all I need is a water bottle and my ballet slippers, but back when I was training seriously I also would’ve had my pointe shoes (Chacott or Russian Pointe), gel toe pads, Harmonie knitwear, and an elastic theraband for stretching.

MR: Thank you for chatting with me, Stephanie—and congratulations on the publication of She Came Back Different!

Bio

Stephanie Willing is an author, audiobook narrator, and a lifelong dancer. She has a BA in Dance from Texas Woman’s University and an MFA in Writing for Young People from Lesley University. She lives with her husband, two kids, two cats, and a goldfish in New Jersey. When she’s not writing or recording, you can find her reading, making snacks for her kids, or working in her butterfly garden in the backyard. Learn more about Stephanie on her website and follow her on Instagram.

MELISSA ROSKE is a writer of middle-grade fiction. Before spending her days with imaginary people, she interviewed real ones as a journalist in Europe. In London she landed a job as an advice columnist for Just Seventeen magazine. Upon returning to her native New York, Melissa contributed to several books and magazines, selected jokes for Reader’s Digest, and received certification as a life coach. In addition to her debut novel Kat Greene Comes Clean, Melissa contributed to the Jewish middle-grade anthology, Coming of Age: 13 B’Nai Mitzvah Stories. Learn more about Melissa on her Website and follow her on Facebook and Instagram.