The first ever Author Q&A here on kitchen frolic was with the lovely and talented Tara Dairman (you can read that Q&A here), so I’m very excited to be today’s blog tour stop for The Stars of Summer and have Tara back for a second Q&A (aka ‘The Sequel’)!

I fell in love with Tara’s debut book, All Four Stars, and her main character, young foodie Gladys Gatsby, so I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the sequel, The Stars of Summer. You can read my reviews of All Four Stars here and The Stars of Summer here.

Quick bio: Tara Dairman is the author of All Four Stars, which was named an Amazon Best Book of the Month and a Mighty Girl Top Book of 2014 for Teens and Tweens. She is also a playwright and recovering world traveler. She grew up in New York and received a B.A. in Creative Writing from Dartmouth College. After surviving the world’s longest honeymoon (two years, 74 countries!), she now lives in Colorado with her husband and their trusty waffle iron.

When you started working on your first book, All Four Stars, did you always have a sequel planned out? Was it always going to involve summer camp?

You know, I started working on ALL FOUR STARS so long ago (in 2005!) that it’s hard to remember. I don’t think I had a sequel idea right at the beginning, but I definitely did by the end. Once I got to know the main character of Gladys, I definitely wanted to see her story continue. And considering how much she didn’t want to go to Camp Bentley in the first book, it seemed only right to force her to go there in THE STARS OF SUMMER.

Why does Gladys have a lobster backpack (which I totally want, by the way). Why not a cupcake or a hamburger?

Ha, great question (and I totally want one, too!). I think I made it a lobster so that it would have a mouth for an opening. I thought there was comic potential in the idea of stuffing your possessions down a lobster’s gullet.

Tara Dairman. Photo credit: Tiffany Crowder – Crowded Studios

Did you attend summer camp as a kid? What were your experiences like?

I did NOT go to camp as a kid, actually! I spent a handful of nights at a sleepaway cheerleading camp in high school, but that’s as far as my personal camp experience goes. I definitely quizzed friends on some of the details of their day camp experiences while writing THE STARS OF SUMMER. As a kid, I spent most of my summers at the public library.

As we already know from our previous interview with you, your honeymoon spanned the globe. Did you eat a lot of different versions of ‘hot dogs’ while travelling?

I did — in fact, I’ve eaten all of the specialty and international hot dogs Gladys tries in the book. I’ve included some pictures of hot dogs I sampled in my travels!

What is your favourite type of hot dog?

It’s so hard to choose. All of the dogs I had Gladys write about in THE STARS OF SUMMER are favorites of mine, but if I had to choose one, I’d probably go with the Chilean completo Italiano. Avocado on a hot dog is pretty delicious.

completo italiano from Chile

If someone handed you a regular American hot dog and you could only have one topping on it, what would it be?

Relish! Though I’d also be perfectly happy to eat it plain if it was a good-quality hot dog. I’m a fan of kosher, all-beef dogs.

If someone created and named a sandwich after you, what would it consist of?

Oooh, what a fun question. It would probably be pretty close to the sandwich Gladys makes for her fellow campers: good bread, homemade hummus, some sort of fancy cheese, and a spicy green like arugula.

crispy-fried Thai hot dog

Has writing gotten easier or more difficult now that you’re a published author?

I work best under deadline, and I’m lucky that my publisher has continued to give me new book contracts, which all have deadlines in them. 🙂 More seriously, I would say that writing books about Gladys Gatsby and her friends and family have gotten easier, since I know the characters so well at this point. However, starting a brand new book, and having to create its world and characters and conflicts from scratch is as hard as it ever was for me.

What’s next for little Gladys Gatsby, food critic? Will this be a trilogy? A series?

There will be a third book in the series! It doesn’t have a title yet, but it’s scheduled to be published in Summer 2016. I don’t want to reveal too much, but I can say that Gladys will be starting middle school, and will get an unexpected houseguest.

A very special thank you to Tara for agreeing to do a sequel interview for kitchen frolic! You can learn more about Tara on her website or by following her on Twitter @taradairman.

If you haven’t already picked up The Stars of Summer, what are you waiting for?

You can purchase The Stars of Summer from The Book Depository (free worldwide shipping) or Amazon.

As I mentioned at the start of this post, this interview is part of The Stars of Summer book blog tour. You can follow check out all the tour stop details via Tara’s blog!

All images used in this post belong to Tara Dairman and are used with her permission.

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