Friend or Foe by Abigail Lee is shortlisted for the 2023 Author of Tomorrow, 11 & Under Category.
Friend or Foe:
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An Interview with Abigail:
WNSF: What is your favourite book?
Abigail: Honestly, I’d read any psychotic mystery book. And whoa, have I read a neck-deep load of them. But nonetheless, one pulled me in more than the others. It pulled me in with its twisted and messed up plot. This book was called The Obsession, by Jesse Q Sutanto. Besides the strange looks I get when I mention this book, everything about it is to my standards of not only a good read, but a perfect read. It’s a sit-down-read-in-one-go kind of book. And as the story moves on, each turn makes the story even more twisted- and boy let me tell you I live for it all. Blackmail. Stalking. Obsession. Murder. It has it all, and I crave every word of it.
WNSF: Who is your favourite author? Or one who has inspired you and why?
Abigail: In 2021, I would constantly go and escape to my own world by reading through Alice Oseman’s books. It was my window to another world, as she inspired me to really put my heart, emotion, and descriptions into any of my writing works. The way she’s able to describe even the most complicated of emotions to the most perfect extent pulls me in every time. Through quarantine, and through my years.
WNSF: What is your favourite subject at school?
Abigail: Social Studies. This may just be me and a few others, but something that always interests me is how terrible people were in the past. The wretched battlefields. How horrible our ancestors and founders were. How brutal things were. How so many deaths were just shrugged off like nothing. People sacrificing their lives like nothing. Sometimes it surprises me still now how horrid people were. “Our” people. Us. The errors in the past keep getting repeated, and all we have to blame are ourselves.
WNSF: What does ‘adventure writing’ mean to you? Why did you choose to try your hand at an adventure story?
Abigail: Adventure writing. We can break this down. Adventures. Somewhere that is not a usual place for a character. Whether that’s finding your own adventure down the city roads, to finding yourself in another universe altogether. Writing in which doing so, is what I would consider adventure writing. Why did I try my hand at adventure writing? I wanted my own adventure in the world of writing. I always wrote realistic fiction and drama, and so a break from that is my own rollercoaster adventure.
WNSF: If you could ask an author anything, what would you want to know?
Abigail: Gosh, I have too many questions. I would love to spend my days in the future writing, but there’s so much of an unknown when becoming an author. Don’t you ever feel like completely giving up? Giving up and never holding that pencil or typing on that keyboard again? How do you overcome that? It feels like climbing and climbing up a never-ending mountain of self-discouragement. So how do you do it? How do you climb that mountain?
WNSF: Who would you consider one of your heroes and why?
Abigail: I get this question often. Therefore, I’ve finally gotten an answer. I’ve always known “my hero” wouldn’t be my parents, as they weren’t “heroic”. Wonderful supportive parents sure, but who was my hero? No one. Simple. No one was my hero. I have no hero who made me myself. I am me. I made me, me. I am not me because of what someone else did to “help me”, I helped me. So, I guess you could say I have no hero. I just have myself. I just have me.
WNSF: What is the most adventurous thing you would like to do, or place you would like to visit and why?
Abigail: This may seem psychotic, but when I’m older I would like to volunteer at a prison. This summer, I visited an island prison called Alcatraz. There I saw the true, authentic life of prisoners. It got me wondering about the thought process of them, and what goes on in their brains. Not all of them were just teens who made “bad decisions”, or whatnot. They didn’t all mess up one too many times. They were people. People who didn’t agree with the rules and spoke their minds about it. So, I would like to speak with them and get into that brave mind of theirs.
WNSF: Where do you find inspiration for your stories?
Abigail: The gears that help the world function inspire me most. These are the life around me that makes the world “the world”, if that makes any sense. Even the small things, like everyday people and interactions are what spark interest and writing works from inside me most.
WNSF: If you could time travel, where would you go and why?
Abigail: I would use my knowledge of the future in use to go to the past. I would become an expert in stocks then go to the past to invest in things such as Bitcoin. I’d rather be rich than in knowledge of the future.
WNSF: What three words would you use to describe your story?
Abigail: True to self.