Greetings Younglings,

For this month's edition, we had the chance to talk with @ClarissaNorth about her featured rivals' romance stories!

About The Author - @ClarissaNorth

Hi, I'm Clarissa 'Clary' North, and I'm from the UK.

I love to read romance, both adult and young adult, Jane Austen, and young adult paranormal romance which is great because I love to write in all these areas too.

I'm also a cat lover, mechanical keyboard enthusiast, miniature artist, avid tea drinker, and I dabble in needle felting.

I first started creative writing when I was around seven years old and finished my first full length novel at sixteen. It was awful, we won't talk about it, but it turned into a lifelong hobby and then a potential career path.

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About the Book Of The Month - Worst Impressions

My most popular YA romance on Wattpad is Worst Impressions.

I'm a lifelong Jane Austen fan and her messages about love, tolerance, overcoming differences and class divides, prejudices and finding your place and purpose in the world resonate with every era and generation. I know that when I was a teen I struggled with finding my identity, grappling with what the future might hold, and how to be a better person.

Pride and Prejudice felt like the ideal story to adapt for a teen audience because it deals with all these things. I put a few extra twists into it, but all in all I wanted to tell the tale of someone who feels different and uses sarcasm and hostility as a means of protecting herself, who learns to let down her barriers and love herself and the people around her.

I'm so happy that it's proven popular on Wattpad, because it passes this story and its messages down to a new generation in an accessible, fun way.

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1. What made you start writing on Wattpad? Also, do you have any favorite young adult romance-related stories on Wattpad that you recommend?

I'd been writing fanfiction for a while and a friend of mine name dropped Wattpad as a site I could post to. I was really excited to discover that there was a huge original fiction community because I'd been writing offline for years and never shared my original work with anyone. I jumped straight in and found a supportive, vibrant community with a voracious appetite for literature. If you're a fan of M/M YA romances you should check out Fighting Fire With Fire by EdenY_ because it's fantastic!

2. Your story is an adaptation of Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice'. What made you pick this one particular classic? What were your initial thoughts while writing?

I've always loved Jane Austen adaptations and I grew up watching them. Pride and Prejudice was on in our house at least once a year because my Mum had a bit of a thing for Colin Firth in a wet shirt. By the time I was a teen, so did I! It was one of the few shows we liked watching together and then I came to love the book later. I've always loved Lizzie's headstrong and steadfast attitude, how she loves her family and all their flaws. She's so fiercely honest and loyal, and a true strong female lead, and her struggles with overcoming pride and prejudice are as relatable today as they were when the story was written. When I wrote Worst Impressions I wanted to capture a girl who has that headstrong nature but is also guarded and still trying to figure out her place in the world like most teens.

3. If you had to put Elisabeth Bennett and William Darcy in a different classic but with the same characteristic, where do you think they would fit? And why?

You know, I love vampires and I would love to see them in Dracula. I could see Darcy as a proud and isolated vampire who changes his ways when he falls for Elisabeth in place of Mina Harker. It would take a lot of character growth for her to have to overcome her prejudice against vampires and all that they've done in the past, but I trust that their love would overcome the obstacles in their way.

4. Which type of young adult or romance concept intrigues you the most?

With Young Adult, I'm most intrigued by the concepts of experiencing things for the first time and the significant character growth. It also feels like a really amazing place to play with genres because the characters are caught between childhood and adulthood, so you can have real world concepts such as first love, planning your future, friendship, family, found family, and house them in a grounded world or a fantastical one. Plus, because characters are often doing things for the first time, like falling in love, everything is so BIG. If you break up with your significant other, it feels like the end of the world. Every love is true love. If you lose your friends you feel like you'll be alone forever. High school is everything. Teens have such big characters and personalities, and they change every day, and revisiting that time of my life is such a blast.

5. Can you share with us your favorite movies or TV shows?

Well, Jane Austen adaptations of course. Umbrella Academy, Only Murders in the Building, What We Do In The Shadows, The Lion King, I will sometimes rewatch Twilight and I make no apologies about it, Red Dwarf, Blackadder, The Vicar of Dibley, Father Ted, Only Fools and Horses, Doctor Who, Bones, and the Underworld movie series.

6. In your writing, we've seen that you have a hopeful and wistful approach to love. Hopeless romantics encounter difficulties in many aspects of love and relationships, so what advice would you give our readers about love?

Oh dear, I've given away that I'm secretly a hopeless romantic! Love in fiction and TV shows is great fun and usually high drama, but keep in mind that what you're seeing is a honeymoon period, and often the relationships portrayed aren't realistic or healthy. Yes, I love love, but in real life certain elements of a fictional relationship would be red flags. So I guess my advice for real life relationships and love would be:

- Don't be someone you're not in a relationship with, you and your partner should love every part of each other including your flaws, not in spite of them.

- Have open communication.

- Trust your gut feelings about another person.

- Be honest, faithful, and talk through problems like adults. Neither of you are mind readers, and it's okay to talk.

- In a long term relationship, love is a choice. You may have days when you don't feel as in love with your partner, but you choose to be faithful and to stay because you know that love changes.

- Further to that; you will both change, and you can either change and grow together and let that make your relationship stronger, or you can grow apart. And if you do grow apart, don't stay and resent each other, let each other go so you can each find happiness.

- Even if you have no interest in your partner's hobbies, listen to them. Be happy for their interests and success because it makes them happy, and if you love someone, you really want them to be happy.

- Lastly, understand that after the whirlwind honeymoon period, things will settle down. You can still be romantic, give each other little surprises, but love stops being a tempest. Instead, love becomes a calm, soothing ocean where you feel safe, happy, and at peace.

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Thank you for chatting with us!

Check out the author's works in the profile account ClarissaNorth

Have you read their works? Any author to suggest to us for next month? Comment below!