Who doesn’t love celebrity intrigue? If you can’t get enough of the Kardashians’ patented brand of chaos, Candice Jalili’s Mashad Family series is sure to deliver. Candice first introduced the Mashads in her debut novel, Finding Famous, where average teenager Josie unexpectedly learns she’s reality TV royalty. Her new spin-off, Seeing Stars, follows Josie’s sister Mona as she finds herself caught between two suitors. Who will win out: high-profile heartbreaker Lucas, or normal guy Kai?
Today, Candice takes us behind the scenes of her latest novel, from the challenges of writing famous teens to the evolution of her writing perspective. Read on for all the juicy details.
About Candice Jalili
Candice Jalili is an Iranian American writer whose work has appeared in Cosmopolitan, The Cut, Rolling Stone, Elite Daily, and more. Finding Famous: A Mashad Family Novel is her YA debut. Candice lives in New York City with her husband, where she is a convenient walk away from her cousins and childhood best friend. She grew up in the Bay Area and spends hours of her days FaceTiming her parents there. You can find her on Instagram @CandiceJalili and online at www.CandiceJalili.com.
Thanks for joining us, Candice! Let’s get started.
Can you tell us what Seeing Stars is about and the inspiration behind it?
Seeing Stars is a love triangle between nepo-baby wild child reality star Mona Mashad, her regular teen surfing instructor Kai Takanasha, and her ex-hookup/the guy she’s forced to be in a fake relationship with — President Jordana Sterling’s only child, playboy Lucas Sterling.
How did you approach writing your characters’ emotional arcs?
I really like to think of my characters as real people and spend a ton of time on their emotional arcs. Personally, I’m a big outliner, so I like to make individual emotional outlines for each of the main characters, then weave those into my more plot-focused outline. I also just try to check in constantly as I’m writing and ask myself over and over again: but how would this make them feel?
Is there a particular quote or line from the book that holds special meaning to you?
There are so many fun lines I could pick from in this book. But I’m going to go with this one: “What happens when something starts as a vulnerable moment and then you commodify it? Which version of yourself is left then?” It’s not the most flashy of the quotes throughout the book, but it’s one I tinkered with a lot as I was writing, and I believe it gets to the crux of a lot of what Mona is struggling with figuring out throughout the book.
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What was your biggest challenge while writing Seeing Stars, and how did you overcome it?
Well, first of all, Mona is absolutely nothing like me. So, it was definitely challenging trying to get in the mindset of somebody who would react pretty much opposite to how I would have in every situation. But, on the flip side, that’s exactly what made writing this book so fun! It was liberating getting in the head of someone who oftentimes defaults to acting first and thinking second. Love triangles are also hard! I wanted both characters to truly feel like viable candidates for Mona that you were rooting for as the reader, which meant that I was also rooting for them both as the writer. I had to really decide on who she was going to end up with from the beginning and force myself to stick to it, or I would have definitely wavered!
How has your perspective on writing changed between your first book and Seeing Stars?
I think I’ve let go of a lot of perfectionism. Or, I guess a better way to put it is I’ve let go of the idea that I’ll ever really feel “done.” The truth is, a manuscript that you care about as much as I care about these two books never really feels “done.” There’s always a sentence that could be tweaked, a plot point you could have hit harder. If you gave me the final draft of Finding Famous or Seeing Stars, I’m sure I could still find things I would do differently or improve upon. But I’ve learned to accept that there’s something sort of beautiful about the fact that the versions that are out in the world are living embodiments of the absolute best I could do at the moment I submitted them to my editors to go to print.
If readers could ask one question to the main characters after the story ends, what do you think they’d want to know?
OK, I have a million that I could ask all of them. But most of them are spoilers. So, to be on the safe side, this is what I think readers might want to ask: Is there anything about you we still don’t know?
What is in store for you after the release of Seeing Stars? Can readers expect another spin-off novel?
For now, I’m working on a different project, but I could do a million Mashad spin-off novels and hope to do just that as time goes on!
Thanks again to Candice for speaking with us! Visit her website or follow her socials to keep up with her work — and don’t forget to check out Seeing Stars!
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