Malorie Blackman

And, oh, I fell in love with it.

I just thought it was amazing.

And again, it kind of,

It instilled in me a lifelong love of Shakespeare.

After I saw Romeo and Juliet, I sat down and read through all the other tragedies off my own back because I thought they were amazing, still do.

Well, you know what?

It was.

And there was a brief moment when I was writing it and I was in tears and I thought, oh, you numpty, for goodness sake, you're the one writing it.

And then I thought, oh, should I change the ending?

And then I thought, no, you can't.

You can't.

This has got to be the ending.

But there was that brief split second where I thought, oh, should I change it?

But then I thought, I can't, because the whole point is to show that

racism maims and it kills and I thought I can't shy away from that that's the point of writing it in the first place and as I said it was my homage to Romeo and Juliet and you know West Side Story and so on and so I kind of thought I have to keep this ending but

I must admit, writing it, I was in tears, you know, I'm not going to lie.

But it was the only ending for the book.

But I like books that hit me in the feels as it were.

Me too.

I really want to feel with the characters and when they laugh I want to laugh and when they cry I want to cry.