But as the story developed and Bubby’s role within it grew, I used more and more baseball moments as a language between her and Rain. I’m not a Red Sox fan – I’m not even a baseball fan, so I had to familiarize myself with the team and the game. SR: I actually did quite a bit of research for Playing with Matches. TWM: Did you have to conduct any research for this book? What and how? But waiting to get back to the world of my imagination can be a great motivating factor in getting my deadlines done. Sometimes it’s strange going back and forth. In general I tend to split my writing time between my freelance work and my fiction. My publisher, the fabulous ECW Press, helped me fine-tune the story into a tight structure. Ultimately she is an agent of her own change. I wanted her character to mature and grow as a result of her misdeeds. (Do we detect a pattern here? As in, how awesome is WRONG!) And I put those scenes together in a story of a girl who needs to survive a year in exile in order to return to her beloved Manhattan.

SR: For this book I came up with crazy scenarios – a date gone wrong – a wedding proposal gone wrong – a senior’s party gone wrong. TWM: Please talk about your writing process.

He also plucked the chapter titles out of each chapter. I have a friend who is a wild genius who decided that the working title was a bit tame. SR: I can’t take credit for the brilliant title. What would happen if there was a renowned anonymous Internet matchmaker with legendary matchmaking superpowers? And what if no one had any idea that this matchmaker was just an 11 th grade high school student! The possibilities just seemed so awesome. Suri Rosen (SR): A thought flew into my head as I sat on the couch with my teenage daughter one Friday night. The Whole Megillah (TWM): What inspired you to write this book? This is Suri’s debut novel in which Raina Resnick, a 16-year-old transplant to her aunt’s home in Toronto, grapples with her past, her rocky relationship with her older sister, and her budding gift as a matchmaker. Suri Rosen is the author of the YA novel, Playing with Matches, published by ECW Press in 2014.

Playing with Matches by Suri Rosen