At 20 years old, Kassidy Caroline is smashing her expectations of following her dreams. After initially resigning from the Prospectus to publish her first book by the age of 22, she has thrown her inhibitions to the wind and enlisted the help of friends and family to make her dreams a reality.
After sitting with our former Editor-In-Chief, we became enraptured in the queer-centered tale of “The Shadows We Hide.” The outdoor seating of The Literary here in Champaign served as an appropriate backdrop for our many laughs and squeals about the writing process, soundtrack curation, wishful Netflix adaptation, and slight spoilers.
With the book hitting the shelves tomorrow, Aug. 27, we hope to galvanize you to support an up-and-coming author.
What inspired you to write, and how did that translate to “The Shadows We Hide”?
I think my serious writing started when I was in 8th grade. I started writing poems. I had a teacher who encouraged me to express myself through creative outlets such as writing… So I started doing that. I started using poems to express feelings and emotions and events in my life that were happening. That continued to grow from there.
As for how it translated into The Shadows We Hide, one day it had just blizzard-ed out and I was taking care of a friend’s dogs. I was walking back from taking care of them and it was extremely cold. I was trudging through the snow and I just kind of thought to myself, “Days like this, I wish to be somewhere else.” And that just spiraled into something more. I went, “why can’t that be something more?” That line felt so poetic to me. The first line of the book basically popped into my head. And then at the time, I had also been reading this book with this anti-hero main character. I wanted to create my own sort of anti-hero main character.
What book was that?
It was “Diary of an Oxygen Thief.” Which is a great book. A great series. But it’s basically a character where you want to hate them, but you start to see things about them, where you start to see the humanity in them as the book goes on. And I wanted to create a character that was similar to that. You know, they’re not easy to like. Or for some people, maybe they are easy to like. I wanted to make someone who was complicated.
One of the first things I noticed about the book was that there are time stamps instead of traditional titles. What inspired that decision?
I don’t really know what inspired that. I think I just kind of was like, “It’s 7 a.m. and she’s waiting for the bus.” That’s it. That’s the start. I felt like that had more meaning to it. I felt like that had more impact than just saying, “It’s chapter one.” By saying, “It’s 7 a.m. on this day,” it placed you into the story with the character rather than saying, “oh it’s chapter one.” I think that’s why I did the time code. And as I did that more and more, it became kind of like a diary almost. Like the character was writing to herself. To her future self. It was like, “All of this stuff is happening. It’s going down, and it’s happening at these times.” I think as I went along with the time stamps, it became more and more like that.
Another especially interesting element was incorporating the multimedia element of music and giving that to your readers. How did you decide on those [songs], and in what way do you hope they will impact people?
When the shape of the character came into my mind, the very first song that came into my mind was “Silence” by Marshmello. And I was like, “this is her song. This is who she is. This embodies her as a character.” I immediately was hearing it constantly as I was writing her in the beginning chapters. It helped guide me in terms of where I wanted her to go, how I wanted her to act, the way I wanted her to react in certain situations because I had this song that fit her so well. So it was nice to have that there to keep me focused and on track and to tie it into the story so well.
I noticed those throughout the story as well. How do you feel those impacted chapters as you wrote them?
Once I had that song, I started searching for more songs to create a soundtrack to help me develop the story in a bigger way. The more songs I found to expand on the story, the more I found songs that fit certain moods or certain chapters. Or certain moods of certain characters that I was trying to create. For example… I found a song called ‘Lighthouse’ by Callum Scott. As I listened to it, this scene just created itself in my head.
Oftentimes when I listen to music, I create these scenes in my head. These movie scenes in my head where I can see things happening… For example, I could see my character, and this is a bit of a spoiler, but I could see the main character running through traffic to get to the love interest so that she could confess her love and tell her that she made a mistake. And that was something that I hadn’t come up with prior to listening to the song.
Since you have an entire soundtrack with time codes laid out, have you ever dreamed about getting a Netflix or movie adaptation of some sort?
All the time! When I first started writing the book… the first person that I envisioned Ryn looking like was Hailee Steinfeld because I envisioned her character having the attitude of – I’ve never seen the movie so I don’t know how accurate this character is to Ryn’s character, but – I imagined her being like Hailee Steinfeld’s character in [The Edge of Seventeen]. I imagined her looking like Hailee Steinfeld but with bright green eyes! Haha! So I was like, “this is the character!” And then she changed along the way and became her own person, but when I first started writing the book, I was like “Hailee Steinfeld is this character!” I very much would love it to be turned into a movie.
What was your favorite part in writing “The Shadows We Hide?”
I think my favorite part was getting to know Ryn. Ryn is essentially this person who exists now. She is somebody. She is a person that exists in a world created by me, but she is her own person who has her own likes and her own dislikes and I got to get to know her along the way in my writing process. I think that’s special because it’s like getting to know a friend.
So I am also wondering, do you feel like you’ve become solid in the YA genre, or do you feel like you might hop around a little bit and experiment later?
I’m definitely hopping around and experimenting because […] I have my hand in a couple of different pots currently. I have a story on the backburner that I have ideas for. Recently, I have started writing another story that is sort of an adult romance that I am going to be writing at the same time as “Duke’s Story,” so that’s also going to be something that I’m very excited about.
There was a little teaser at the end. What are we looking forward to regarding “Duke’s Story”?
Yes! That’s a little surprise for readers. [It’s] very exciting! “Duke’s Story”! People who read the story will get to know Ryn’s best friend, Duke Ballinger, and they are in for a little treat because Duke is going to be getting his own story! He is definitely giving me a run for my money because he is not as easy for me to write as Ryn was… With Ryn, I was writing from my own experiences a little bit. But with Duke, Duke’s story is a love letter to my sister. And that is harder because I’m not writing from something that I, myself, know. I’m writing from something else that someone else has experienced from a different angle. Basically, Duke is this golden retriever child that everybody loves and everybody expects so much from. And he is expected to be this great leader who takes on all of this responsibility all of the time. And it puts this immense pressure on him constantly.
Finally, he just gets to a point over the summer, before he starts college, where it is starting to break him. And he doesn’t know who he’s supposed to be outside of these roles because it’s all he’s ever known. He doesn’t know who he is outside of what everybody expects him to be. So he has to start asking himself the question, “Who am I other than what everybody wants me to be?” And I think that’s going to be something that’s really fun to explore and something that a lot of people really need to explore within their own lives. I feel like there are a lot of people [in my sister’s position]… who have these expectations thrust upon them… I feel that’s true for a lot of older siblings. They have these expectations thrust upon them that they didn’t ever ask for. It’s like, “How do you deal with being your own person and then also deal with not letting everybody down?”
Finally, the last questions for you are: Where do we find you? How do we keep up with you? And what can we look forward to in the future?
Anyone can find me on social media @kassidycarolinetheauthor. Or my website, which should be up by the time you publish this article. That will be kassidycarolinetheauthor.com. Also, you can find my book at barnesandnoble.com or amazon.com called “The Shadows We Hide.”
