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| Romiette and Julio |
Summary:
When Romiette Cappelle and her best friend Destiny, decide to order The Scientific Soul Mate System from the back of the Heavy Hunks magazine, they're not sure what they're getting into. But Destiny, a self-proclaimed psychic, assure Romi that for $44.99 plus shipping and handling, it's the only way they're ever going to find out who their soul mates really are. If nothing else, maybe Romi will get some insight into that recurring dream she's been having about fire and water.
But they are never expect that the scented candle and tube of dream ointment will live up to their promises and merge Romiette's destiny with Julio Montague, a boy she's just met in the "cosmos" of an International chat room. It turns out they go to the same high school, not to mention having almost the same names as Shakespeare's famous lovers! Sweet-scented dreams of Julio have almost overtaken Romi's nightmares...
......when suddenly they return , but this time in real life. It seems the Devildogs, a local gang, violently oppose the relationship of Romiette and Julio. Soon they find themselves haunted by the purple-clad shadows of the gang, and the fire and water of Romiette's dream merge in ways more terrifying-and ultimately more affirming- than even Destiny could have foreseen.
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Introduction:
Do you feel the soul of another calling to you? Do you know in your heart that your destiny and his were meant to merge in the cosmos? We can help you find him.
General Questions:
1. Your book Romiette and Julio is like a retelling of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet or the musical West Side Story, but through a contemporary American perspective. How did it feel to be rewriting Shakespeare--in a way, seeing the story of a male Elizabethan playwright from your perspective?
Since students usually groan when the subject of Shakespeare is introduced in class, I wanted to show that Shakespeare's ideas were not old and outdated, but still fresh and vital. So I decided to modernize it once again (there are dozens of modernized and updated versions of the tale) and make it a contemporary retelling for today's students. I do not claim it to be a word-for-word translation-it just takes the ideas and characters and makes them real for today's students.
2. Romiette and Julio was based on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Are you going to do another book that's based on a Shakespeare play?
I really enjoyed writing Romeo and Juliet. I suppose my second favorite Shakespearean play is Macbeth. I'd love to write a young adult version of it, but it's a pretty violent story, so I'm not sure if I could pull that off. Another Shakespearean play that would be fun to modernize is Much Ado about Nothing. It's all about love and romance and romantic confusion. I think that would be fun to make that one into a young adult story.
3. Did any one of your students have an influence on Romiette and Julio, and what was the influence they had on you?
No, all of the characters are my own creations. I made them up. Sometimes fictional characters can seem so real that the reader might think they are real people, because good fiction is based on reality, but the characters in my books are just that-fictional. I have taught Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet dozens and dozens of times-I can probably quote it. I even acted in it once-I played the role of Juliet's mother. So I feel VERY familiar and extremely comfortable with the play.
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