"I don’t ever see any character as 100 percent good or 100 percent evil…"

“All stories that are centring queer kids and their experiences are all valid whether it’s dealing with the trials of having parents who aren’t as welcoming about it or parents who are totally chill about it, which is obviously the hope for all teenagers. I think there are some things that could be said too, especially culturally, like there’s a lot of stigma in the Puerto Rican community that fathers especially are so hyper masculine that they will always be uncomfortable with their children being gay…”

“Some people like ‘happily ever after,’ but I don’t think that’s me. I’m always writing from some difficult place and seeing how the character survives … or doesn’t. When I really want to be comforted myself what I look for is a story about how somebody could survive something really difficult. There are happy stories out there but I think some of them may raise false expectations for teens…”

“I succeeded in making you care. If you feel nothing, I failed you as a storyteller. I love happy endings, but some readers need the darker stories, too. The stories that don’t make them feel disturbed by their own reality because it doesn’t reflect what they’re used to seeing in fiction. There’s some comfort in harsher stories, and witnessing how one character rebuilds after tragedy can provide hope for the reader.”