Publisher's Note: Breaking up with someone is a major pain—-unless you can hire someone else to do it for you! And Amelia demands top dollar for her professional break-up services. Everything's business as usual until David, one of the boys she's been hired to dump, throws her for a loop. Now she must decide if David's intentions are genuine, or if there's something sinister behind his flirting.
My Review: The Breakup Artist by Shannen C. Camp is just the sort of book that will leave you laughing until the very end. The plot is a fun, witty, and it's just the sort of book I love to read. Amelia, a high school teen, has created a very profitable business as a "breakup artist". You can pay her fifty bucks, and she'll dump your current boyfriend, leaving you free of guilt and free to pursue another crush. Amelia runs a professional business, and her busy schedule leaves her no time for relationships of her own, but she'd like to keep it that way. However, when she meets David, a boy she's been hired to dump, her carefully organized world begins to fall apart. Amelia is definitely a character to love. I loved her "professional" manner and her quirky personality. As the story progresses, you begin to realize the "whys" behind Amelia's choice of "profession", and you watch her grow and change until the very end. Author Shannen C. Camp does a wonderful job of building characters and plot. I highly recommend The Breakup Artist and congratulate the author on a job well done!
I have also had a chance to interview Shannen Camp and I hope you enjoy getting to know her better!
Meet Author Shannen C. Camp...
I was going to copy and paste my little author bio here but who needs that when I can give you an 'off the top of my head and slightly inaccurate due to long hours at work' description? I like to write. A lot. I'm sure that's an obvious thing to say but it had to be said. I love to create in any way shape or form. Some days I'll come home and think "I need to create something" whether it's music, paintings, or stories. Is that odd? I can't help it. It's one of those little habits you just can't kick.
I guess I should also tell you the basics, like the fact that I was born and raised in California and I'm trying to cut my bad habit of writing all of my stories in California. I'm starting to know Utah better than CA now so maybe I'll set some stories here! I majored in Film at Brigham Young University and my emphasis was production design and makeup. Although I'm complete rubbish at 'pretty' makeup. I can only do special effects makeup. So if you're bored around Halloween time, come and see me!
I'm married to my high school lab partner and we have 489320842 names for children but no actual children yet... so I use all of the names on my characters :)
When did you first start writing?
I started writing in the fourth grade. It was terrible. I tried so hard to write a Goosebumps type book but I made the mistake of abbreviating the title "Scared to Death" to STD, which I'm sure worried my fourth grade teacher just a little. I should publish that book one day, just so people can get a good laugh at all the horrible ways I accidentally used those three letters. Oops! I continued writing all through elementary school, junior high, and high school and finally finished a YA fantasy book in College. It's poorly written so I'll have to go back and fix it but literally right after I finished that one I wrote "The Breakup Artist". So I just haven't really stopped writing since the fourth grade.
How did you discover the idea for The Breakup Artist?
I remember the exact moment I thought of this book. It was in 2008 and my brother was about to get married. I was sleeping on the floor in the office because of all of the family members who had come into town for the wedding and everyone was talking about love and marriage and relationships and I started wondering if there was some sort of job focused just on relationships. Somehow that led me to the idea of a professional breakup artist and a month later I had finished my book. So thanks, Jared for getting married!
How did you develop Amelia’s character?
I feel like Amelia's character kind of developed herself. Initially she starts off kind of unlikable and snotty. She's got a big superiority complex and at times I found it difficult to balance showing her less-than-flattering side, while still trying to make the reader like her for how confused she was about her life. I feel like she kind of talks through growing up with the reader. She does it without realizing what's happening. I wanted people to see her as someone who didn't want to be awful, she just wasn't quite sure what else to be and she figures it out through slowly letting people in.
What other hobbies do you have besides writing?
I love to paint. I'm terrible at it really but I just love it. I'm a lot like Amelia actually in that I couldn't draw to save my life but I paint all the time. I also love video games, which is very nerdy of me :) My marriage is anti-stereotypical since my husband doesn't play video games at all and I'm a huge gamer. I also love to play music. Back when I had a piano I'd play all the time (apartments don't fit pianos very well) but now I mostly play guitar and flute because they're small and portable, though if you brought me a drum set I wouldn't be mad about it!
Thanks, Shannen!
To purchase your very own copy of The Breakup Artist visit Amazon
To learn more about Shannen visit her Blog at Shannencbooks.blogspot.com
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