Guest Post: Author Michele Corriel

Today I am so pleased to have Michele Corriel here, author of Fairview Felines, a middle grade newspaper mystery. First, I must say I am very sorry because my review was supposed to already be up, but, being insanely stressed over school and work, it slipped my mind. Right now, I am about halfway through the book, and absolutely loving it, so look for a review this week. I asked Michele to talk about her favorite books and inspirations. So, without further ado, here is Michele!

"Going to library was always a big treat for me. My mom and I would walk to the local library and come home with stacks of books. We used to have these cheesy crackers and it’s hard not to remember sitting in my room, reading picture books and being careful not to get my orange-tinted fingerprints all over the books.

I can remember there was one book I took out every time. (It seemed like I took it out every time I went, but I don’t suppose that’s possible!) It was The Best Loved Doll. There was something about that book that just touched my three, four, five year-old heart. I’m sure I had it memorized but I still wanted my mom to read it to me. Maybe I was teaching myself what it meant to be loved.

When I was a bit older I loved the Nancy Drew mysteries. There were other books, Alice in Wonderland, the Phantom Tollbooth, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, A Wrinkle in Time, The Catcher in the Rye, and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings books, but I always had a soft spot for the mysteries. In fact, I can remember keeping the books in my desk, and secretly reading during subjects I didn’t like (ahem, like math).

As I got into high school I read everything that wasn’t nailed down. I loved Henry Miller, Williams Burroughs, James Joyce, (I never got into Jane Austen, the way a lot of my friends did), and I think I read the Tibetan Book of the Dead a few times, and of course I love the Harry Potter books, the Hunger Games, and the Golden Compass books.

I think every time I read a book by Tana French or Jess Walter I want to write just like them. But I can’t. I can only write the books that I can write. Which, I think, is a good thing.

I love the books that you can devour in one sitting, and the ones you don’t because then it would be over.

Books have always been one thing in my life that I could depend on, that didn’t let me down. You can open a book and fall into a story and stay there. I can only hope that my books do that for readers, just so I can pay it forward. "