Interview with Becky Laine, Author of The Story of ABBA

For today’s post, I had the privilege of speaking to Becky Laine, author of The Story of ABBA for Young Readers about the book’s superbly redone artwork, how she got into the ABBA fandom, and more.

A: You’re known on the Web “ABBA Fan 456.”  How did you come to call yourself an ABBA fan?

B: It was back in 2010 when I first saw a segment of the Olivia Newton-John TV special from 1978 with ABBA and Andy Gibb performing their hit songs live.  The songs that ABBA were singing really caught my attention and shortly after that I got my hands on ABBA Gold.  That’s when I first became a fan, I guess.

A: What motivated you to revise the book?  What’s different about this new version?

B: Well, when I first wrote The Story of ABBA for Young Readers, I was quite young and my drawing skills weren’t as good as they are now.  Though the first version is really good, I felt the need to completely revise it with new illustrations and improved text.

A: How long did it take you to draw all of the illustrations?

B: It took just over a year to draw all of the illustrations. Normally drawing all the illustrations wouldn’t have taken as long as it did, but I was busy with a lot of schoolwork at the time and there were a lot of pictures that I wanted to draw.  Unfortunately not all of them made it into the book, but I am selling some of the unused ones as prints on RedBubble.

A: I haven’t read a single biographical work about celebrity personalities which didn’t include some sort of scandal; but from what you’ve told me about ABBA, the band members seem like really nice, moral people.   Did you have to leave out much information to keep ABBA’s story kid-friendly?

B: I didn’t have to leave out much since the ABBA members really did lead clean lives.  Of the few things that I did leave out, most of them were simply unnecessary information that didn’t have anything to do with the story.

A: Are you planning on writing other “Story of [X] for Young Readers” books in the future?  I think a kid-friendly biography series in this style would have great potential!

B: The Story of ABBA only became a reality because ABBA’s my favorite band, so I might not be as motivated to work on others, but I’d definitely be interested in writing more kid-friendly biographies!

To keep following the blog tour, you can check out Becky’s blog, abbafan456.blogspot.com for more information!