Today I'm excited to welcome T E Carter to my blog for a Q&A as part of the All We Could Have Been blog tour! Be sure to follow the tour and check out All We Could Have Been on Goodreads.
All We Could Have Been follows Lexi as she moves to a new town and starts a new school again. Every year her past catches up with her and she has to move on. Will this year be different?
To start, what five words best represent All We Could Have Been?
Conflict, Trust, Forgiveness, Growth, Survival.
The premise to All We Could Have Been surrounds Lexi’s life in the wake of her brother’s terrible actions. What kind of research did you do?
Unfortunately, the premise of the novel was based on something real. In the town where I grew up, something similar happened when I was younger, and the aftermath played in many of the same ways. It’s always something that’s weighed on me, and I felt like it was something I wanted to explore in the wake of my own experiences as I got older. There’s a lot that’s been changed from the true events, but there was no research really since the premise was already there, and I shaped the rest from experience.
Lexi sees her brother through a ‘prism’ and there are different versions of him in her head. How did you find balancing the memory of him and the version of him she now knows?
I would argue that the challenge is that there aren’t different versions for Lexi, and that sets up her biggest conflict. There’s her brother before the events – the brother she always knew and loved – and there’s her brother after the events. But this version – the after – is only someone she knows through other people (media, people in the community, etc.). She’s had no relationship with him or experiences with him after the events to shape a new version, so she has this constant struggle to reconcile what she knew with what everyone else knew.
How was the writing process for All We Could Have Been different to I Stop Somewhere?
Starting out, my goal was to remain a bit more detached with this book than with I Stop Somewhere. My first novel was extremely personal, and I set out to write something with more of an observer’s eye. As the story started to take shape, though, I realised I wasn’t detached, and really I was writing about trauma in a different way. In some ways, I feel like I was even closer to Lexi than I was to Ellie in I Stop Somewhere. I share a lot of the experiences Ellie had, but with Lexi, I share a lot of how she thinks – and that felt very revealing for me.
Both of your protagonists are victims. What is it about this perspective that inspires you?
I am inspired by transforming the concept of a victim to a survivor’s story. In counselling, we focused a lot on changing the terminology and the way we looked at experiences, and that’s a key part of what I want to do with my writing. I want to show survival, but I want to do it in an honest and authentic way. It’s easy to go too far into the heroic narrative that isn’t what many survivors experience. Instead, I wanted to show survival in the slow, early stages of the process.
Mental health and PTSD are explored in this story. Why do you think it’s so important for readers to discover these stories?
There aren’t enough stories that feature characters struggling with their mental health in a way that shows them as full people. There are plenty of stories that turn mental health into a horror trope or use it as a means to victimise characters, but there simply are not enough – in any medium – that show the day-to-day life of people who exist and face mental health as part of their regular experience. A significant number of people live with depression, anxiety, PTSD, etc., and yet if you surrounded yourself only with the fictional narratives of the characters in popular media, you would continue to feel like it was just you. I’m not okay with that.
What keeps you writing through the hardest moments?
In the interest of complete transparency, I don’t generally write in the hardest moments. I have struggled for the last year in working on my next novel, because it’s been a bad year. What keeps me going mostly is accepting that there will be good years and bad years, good weeks and bad weeks, and good days and bad days. Focusing on getting past the bad sections is first and foremost, and writing can pick up when that’s passed.
Friendship is such an important aspect of the story. What do you think makes a great friend?
Trust. There is really nothing else required of a great friend. Some great friends make you laugh when you’re struggling, while others are empathetic and provide support. Some great friends take you out and make you step away from your comfort zone, and others come to you and let you curl up and hide from the world when you need to do so. But the common thread is that you can trust them.
Do you have any recommendations for fans of I Stop Somewhere and All We Could Have Been?
I’ve been kind of saying this to everyone, and it’s not a book, but Life is Strange and Before the Storm. They’re video games, but they’re not hard or anything, and the narrative is beautiful.
Do you have any hints for what you’re writing next?
I finally got into a place where something is speaking to me, but it’s still in its infancy. We’ll have to see how it plays out! I’m sure it will be another contemporary about outsiders, though.
All We Could Have Been by T.E. Carter is out 2nd May (£7.99 Paperback, Simon & Schuster UK)
T. E. Carter was born and raised in New England. Throughout her career, she has done a lot of things, she has always loved to read and still loves stories in any medium (books, movies, video games, etc.). When she’s not writing, she can generally be found reading classic literature, obsessing over Game of Thrones (100% Team Lannister), playing Xbox, organizing her comic collection, or binge-watching baking competitions. She continues to live in New England with her husband and two cats. All We Could Have Been is her second novel for young adults.
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I received a copy of this book from the publisher for review.
