Genre: YA Contemporary Romance
Published: December 10, 2012
Series: #1 (Black Sheep)
Length: 100 pages
“Trying to rescue her son from a destructive environment, where the end of his last relationship almost ended in tragedy, Vic’s mother decides to move them all to a new town. Vic, glad at being able to start anew, takes the chance to create an image that would make his last two years of high school a lot easier.
But that plan is sabotaged when his new best friend, Jack, kisses him on New Year’s Eve, something Vic has been longing for and dreading in equal measure. Vic knows being gay in high school can be hell, and he’s scared sweet and innocent Jack won’t be able to handle him, or his past. It scares him more than anything now that his past has come back to haunt him, metaphorically and literally.
Vic tries to hide the horror of his past as long as possible, knowing that when Jack finds out what happened he will leave him.
As Vic takes a turn for the worse everybody but him realises how strong Jack and his love for Vic actually are. But is that enough for Vic to move on?“
Kia Zi Shiru is a Dutch girl studying English and Creative Writing in the UK. Amongst her interests she finds writing, reading, doing research and learning different languages (including but not limited to: English, Dutch, French, German, HTML, Java, PHP and Assembly). Her writing and reading habits include books with Young Adults, gay themes, strong female or minority characters and fantasy elements (more often then not all at the same time).
Q: Welcome to Little Book Star Kia! Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Thank you so much for having me here, Leigh. Well, as you can see I’m Kia, I’m originally Dutch but write most of my works in English. At the moment I’m studying in the UK while at the same time writing my books. I love stories, both reading and writing them and most of my life revolves around books though I’m an all around creative person most of the time.
Q: How is Black Sheep different from your other book Magical Roads?
Better question would be in what way they would be the same, and that would come down to one thing. I wrote them both.
Magical Roads is a collection of fantasy short stories about teens growing up. Black Sheep is a trilogy of novellas about Vic and his family and friends as they go through fun and bad times. Black Sheep: Letting go of the past is also older than most of the stories in Magical Roads. I finished this novella back in September 2010, which was my first year a university. Magical Roads mostly is a compilation of short stories that I wrote during my university classes.
Q: How did you come up with the story line?
I don’t know any more. It has been more than five years ago since I started writing Black Sheep, but what I do remember is that I felt there was a need for a story like Black Sheep. I could barely find any LGBT books in the stores or library that were my taste (so non-romance and non-adult), but there were some great fan fictions that dealt with things a lot of teens go through. I think that before I wrote Black Sheep I wrote about 200 words of a Remus Lupin/ Sirius Black fanfic, but I realised that I’m no good at that.
Black Sheep started out with two scenes, one was the end of the second part and the other the first chapter. Both no longer look anything like they used to, but I still remember the struggles I had with writing them, since my English wasn’t as good as it is now.
The story itself hasn’t really changed from what it started out as, the story of Vic as Jack finds out about Vic’s past and the ways that Vic tries to protect Jack while Jack is trying to help Vic. And of course all the mess that comes with being a teenager and gay and miscommunications and all the beautiful things of being human.
Q: Does anyone in your life inspire the characters in Black Sheep?
The characters in Black Sheep are not reflections of or inspired by anyone in particular. But they do all have things that I recognize in myself and some people I know. Though I think that if people that know me look at the characters they can sort of see what character has gotten a few characteristics from certain people. Okay, maybe too cryptic.
What it comes down to is this. I took all the pasts, presents, problems, happy times and everything like that from everyone I know and have seen/read about and mixed them up, and what came out were the characters that now live in Black Sheep. There is not one definite source for each character, they are all mixes.
On the other hand, I created some of the characters and doubted how believable they were, and then met someone who was exactly like them. Which was both very fun and very scary at the same time. It’s very interesting to talk to someone and think “You totally sound like one of my characters but you’re not them”. Though I usually don’t tell people about it because I think it would be slightly creepy.
Q: What are some of your favorite things to do when you’re not writing?
What I do when I’m not writing? Nothing.
No, kidding kidding.
I read a lot of books, mostly in the YA genre though not always LGBT. Lately I’ve been a huge fans of the “Pretty Little Liars” series, I love it when people can write strong female characters.
Other than that I play a lot of videogames and I like to knit and crochet. I do a lot of different things when I’m not focusing on my writing or my stories, I’m easily distracted and love trying out new things. I also like things like painting Warhammer figurines and I’ve been beading for quite a few years. I really like to be creative in different ways, it keeps me able to create more and more without tiring out.
Thank you so much for having me here!
“Vic?” Chris knocks on the door and enters. “Jack is here for you. He’s waiting downstairs. Need a minute or can he come up?” “I’m okay. Just need to, y’know.” I pick up my shirt and put on my wristbands again. The little devil takes two steps out of my room and yells, “Vic is jerking off, if you want to see him finish you need to be here quick!” As I lunge for her I see Jack standing downstairs. My eyes go wide and my mouth goes dry. “Sisters are fun, eh?” He smiles up at me and slowly starts walking up the stairs. Oh my, oh my. I hide my face in Chris’ neck. This is so embarrassing. He looks so hot, his hair is styled straight, he’s wearing super-tight black jeans, a fishnet shirt and a black leather choker with studs on them. I wish I had been jerking off, I wouldn’t have this problem in my pants right now. Chris giggles and escapes to her room. So I turn around quickly and walk inside mine to look for a way to disguise my ‘problem’. “You coming?” I ask as I sit on the chair in front of the computer. “Well, if you insist,” he drawls from the hall. Is he flirting? Oh no, this is getting bad. Maybe he doesn’t even realize what kind of reaction my body is having to him right now. And if he does realize and keeps doing this, I might not be able to restrain myself for long. He walks into my room and stops. “How are you feeling? You seem better.” He looks around and then decides to sit on the bed. “I’m feeling okay, I guess. I just woke up.” I look around, trying not to pay too much attention to him.
