faq
(Frequently Asked Questions)
How did you come up with the idea for Allisen’s Notebooks?
When I was younger, my brother and I had a ton of imaginary friends. One of my brother’s friends was Mirisen Zepetto, who had an older sister named Allisen. I had always enjoyed writing stories, stapling a few sheets of printer paper together to make flimsy little books that became my pride and joy. One fall day when I was eleven, I decided I wanted to start a series. I wanted it to be realistic fiction, and I wanted the main character to be a girl around my own age. I decided Allisen Zepetto would be an interesting character to write about, since I could have the first book be about her starting sixth grade with her 8-year-old sister and 15-year-old brother in her class. (Yes, the detail about her older brother being in her class was later changed). The series went from there.
Why are the chapters called “books”?
After I wrote my first Allisen’s Notebook installment, “School Starts,” I included the names of the next three books on the back cover: “Me, A Babysitter?” “Moving Time” and “The Holidays Approach.” I had no idea what those next three books in the series were going to be about, but I figured it out once I started writing them!
The first several books in the original series were written in quick succession. I remember being so excited about how thick the eighth one, “Going to Carolina” was (it was five pieces of printer paper instead of three or four like all the others!), and imagining kids seeing it as the new release in the library and being eager to read it. Even at that time, however, I knew my books were too short to ever actually be published. They were just for me, and occasionally for my family members if I chose to read one out loud to them.
I continued writing the series. By the time I was nineteen, my production had slowed down—I was now writing only a couple per year, rather than a couple per month. But I still enjoyed writing them, and I still loved reading the ones I’d already written. It seemed a shame to keep this series, which had now amassed to over fifty books, including six super-specials written from other characters’ perspectives, as something only I would ever read. That was when I came up with the idea of combining the books into larger volumes of stories. I decided I would turn each set of twelve original books—a year of Allisen’s life—into an actual book book that could be published and sold. I debated with myself over whether I should refer to the individual stories as books or chapters, and in the end I decided to stick with my original label of “books”.
The first several books in the original series were written in quick succession. I remember being so excited about how thick the eighth one, “Going to Carolina” was (it was five pieces of printer paper instead of three or four like all the others!), and imagining kids seeing it as the new release in the library and being eager to read it. Even at that time, however, I knew my books were too short to ever actually be published. They were just for me, and occasionally for my family members if I chose to read one out loud to them.
I continued writing the series. By the time I was nineteen, my production had slowed down—I was now writing only a couple per year, rather than a couple per month. But I still enjoyed writing them, and I still loved reading the ones I’d already written. It seemed a shame to keep this series, which had now amassed to over fifty books, including six super-specials written from other characters’ perspectives, as something only I would ever read. That was when I came up with the idea of combining the books into larger volumes of stories. I decided I would turn each set of twelve original books—a year of Allisen’s life—into an actual book book that could be published and sold. I debated with myself over whether I should refer to the individual stories as books or chapters, and in the end I decided to stick with my original label of “books”.
How long is the series going to be?
Short answer: The finished series will contain seven main books, plus eight super specials.
The original plan was for there to be five Allisen’s Notebooks in all, each containing twelve mini-stories, and thus each taking place over the course of one year of Allisen’s life. However, due to length, I ended up cutting the number of stories in the ninth and tenth grade books down.
That decision caused the tenth grade book to end in April, before the end of Allisen's tenth grade school year. Although I like where I chose to end the tenth grade book, it was never the intention for the series to finish there. I still had plot ideas for what was going to happen afterwards.
It took me a long time to decide how to finish the series, since if I'd stuck to my original plan of sixty mini-stories in all, the final volume would have only contained four "books". Several readers expressed the desire for an 11th Grade and a 12th Grade volume, but I didn't feel I had enough content to orchestrate that idea properly.
The solution I finally came up with was this: there will be one book that takes place after 10th Grade, and it will be called The Sequel. This volume will contain ten mini-stories that bring Allisen from the end of tenth grade up through high school graduation. Each story will take place over several months of Allisen's life, but will be written in the same way as the 6th-10th grade books are. This volume will be released in December 2021.
When I saw how much the series was being enjoyed by younger readers, I decided to also write a prequel. The complete listing of the Allisen's Notebooks series looks like this:
The Prequel
6th Grade With My Crazy Classmates, My Super Smart Sister, & Me
7th Grade With My Fabulous Friends, My New Neighbors, & Me
8th Grade With My Awesome Adventures, My Various Visitors, & Me
9th Grade With My Expanding Experiences, My Rollercoaster Relationships, & Me
10th Grade With My Interesting Interactions, My Terrific Travels, & Me
The Sequel (coming 2022)
Allisen's Notebooks Super Specials Complete Collection (contains Mirisen, Jack, Shevea, Kim, Harrisson, Stivre, America the Beautiful, and Ellie).
The original plan was for there to be five Allisen’s Notebooks in all, each containing twelve mini-stories, and thus each taking place over the course of one year of Allisen’s life. However, due to length, I ended up cutting the number of stories in the ninth and tenth grade books down.
That decision caused the tenth grade book to end in April, before the end of Allisen's tenth grade school year. Although I like where I chose to end the tenth grade book, it was never the intention for the series to finish there. I still had plot ideas for what was going to happen afterwards.
It took me a long time to decide how to finish the series, since if I'd stuck to my original plan of sixty mini-stories in all, the final volume would have only contained four "books". Several readers expressed the desire for an 11th Grade and a 12th Grade volume, but I didn't feel I had enough content to orchestrate that idea properly.
The solution I finally came up with was this: there will be one book that takes place after 10th Grade, and it will be called The Sequel. This volume will contain ten mini-stories that bring Allisen from the end of tenth grade up through high school graduation. Each story will take place over several months of Allisen's life, but will be written in the same way as the 6th-10th grade books are. This volume will be released in December 2021.
When I saw how much the series was being enjoyed by younger readers, I decided to also write a prequel. The complete listing of the Allisen's Notebooks series looks like this:
The Prequel
6th Grade With My Crazy Classmates, My Super Smart Sister, & Me
7th Grade With My Fabulous Friends, My New Neighbors, & Me
8th Grade With My Awesome Adventures, My Various Visitors, & Me
9th Grade With My Expanding Experiences, My Rollercoaster Relationships, & Me
10th Grade With My Interesting Interactions, My Terrific Travels, & Me
The Sequel (coming 2022)
Allisen's Notebooks Super Specials Complete Collection (contains Mirisen, Jack, Shevea, Kim, Harrisson, Stivre, America the Beautiful, and Ellie).
Where do you get your ideas about what happens to Allisen?
I get my ideas from all over the place! Sometimes I take real experiences from my life, and tweak them to make them work in Allisen’s life (see my "Extras" page for more details on this). Other ideas come from my imagination, things I think would be cool or embarrassing or funny or annoying. For a few of the chapters (mainly the earlier ones), I got the plot idea from the name I gave the “book” before I even wrote it! Nowadays, I get a lot of my ideas by thinking, “What would kids in this age group want to read about? What relatable topic or important issue have I not touched upon yet?"
Did you draw the pictures on the covers?
Not the ones on the published covers. In my Extras and Gallery pages, you can see what my original cover art for the handwritten books looked like. Although I still think a lot of those covers are cute, I wanted something more professional for the published covers!
How did you come up with the character names?
When I was younger, all of my characters either had unusual names or unusual spellings of their names. Allisen’s name has always been spelled with an e, and I saw no reason to change it once I decided to go ahead and publish her series.
Is Allisen based off of you or anyone you know?
Allisen and I share some characteristics. We both enjoy reading and writing, we both come from loving families, we both have straight brown hair. We have a lot of similar interests, and I tend to have Allisen act the way I would in a lot of circumstances. However, Allisen is completely her own character and is not intentionally based off of me or any other real person. Many of the circumstances Allisen finds herself in are things that have never happened to me, and the entire constructs of her family, school, and social life are completely different from mine.
How long does it take you to write an Allisen’s Notebook?
Ha ha ha, good question. Back when the handwritten books were short and I had all the time in the world to write, I could put out several a month, finishing one after another after another. As I got older, my time started being taken up with high school activities, then college homework, and finally, my job, so the books became less and less frequent. A year would pass by without me adding anything new to the series.
I don’t remember exactly how long it took me to edit the first twelve stories into 6th Grade with My Crazy Classmates, My Super Smart Sister, & Me. It took a few months, because I had to type everything as I went, changing dialogue and narration and sometimes even major aspects of the plot as I went. 7th Grade with My Fabulous Friends, My New Neighbors, & Me probably took me about the same amount of time, maybe a little bit shorter. As I moved on to editing the later-written stories, editing became easier because I did not have to change as much.
Here’s a fun fact: Although I have altered the entire plots of some of the original stories, none of the chapter names have been drastically changed from the names of the original sixty books. (A few have evolved slightly over time, such as "Best Friends Forever" into "Friends Forever!")
I don’t remember exactly how long it took me to edit the first twelve stories into 6th Grade with My Crazy Classmates, My Super Smart Sister, & Me. It took a few months, because I had to type everything as I went, changing dialogue and narration and sometimes even major aspects of the plot as I went. 7th Grade with My Fabulous Friends, My New Neighbors, & Me probably took me about the same amount of time, maybe a little bit shorter. As I moved on to editing the later-written stories, editing became easier because I did not have to change as much.
Here’s a fun fact: Although I have altered the entire plots of some of the original stories, none of the chapter names have been drastically changed from the names of the original sixty books. (A few have evolved slightly over time, such as "Best Friends Forever" into "Friends Forever!")
Do Fun House schools really exist? Is Learner’s Academy a real place?
No and no. When I was about eight years old, my brother and I made up “The Fun House”, a place we went to hang out with all of our (imaginary) friends. The Fun House was a school, but it also had several pools, playgrounds, restaurants, stores, and other things. We used to say it was a cross between a school, a mall, and a YMCA.
When I was ten, we moved from Bloomington, Indiana, to Nashua, New Hampshire. Since the Fun House was in Bloomington, we couldn’t go there anymore, but that was okay, because we had decided that Fun Houses were all over the place—there were hundreds in each state. The one closest to us in Nashua was called Racecar’s Rook. We started “going” there and made a whole bunch of new friends, including a very smart, very clumsy girl named Mirisen Zepetto. Mirisen and her siblings—Allisen, Harrisson, and crazy big brother Pete—had originally gone to a crazy Fun House called Anemone (this is the school referenced in 6th Grade with My Crazy Classmates, My Super Smart Sister, & Me—the crazy one they went to for fifth grade), but had switched to Racecar’s Rook because they all liked it better (except Pete).
In all the original Allisen’s Notebooks (the handwritten ones), Allisen’s school was referred to as “Racecar’s Rook”. In the earlier ones especially, there were a lot of references to some of the original aspects of the Fun Houses we had created—such as the fact that every kid was assigned a dormitory and could sleep over at the Fun House whenever they wanted, or that if you were really bad you could get “trunked” (meaning you were stuffed in a trunk for a few hours). As my brother and I grew older, we realized that aspects such as these were unrealistic, so over time, traces of these things started no longer showing up in my Allisen’s Notebooks either.
When I started typing and editing the first set of twelve books into the first current Allisen’s Notebooks volume, I originally kept the name of Allisen’s school “Racecar’s Rook”, since that was what it had always been (although I had already removed trunking and dormitories and all the other residue). I think it was only after I’d finished typing and editing all twelve books that I realized the name “Racecar’s Rook” didn’t make much sense, and decided to change it to “Learner’s Cove”. I also came up with the name “Learner’s Academy”, and couldn’t decide whether I liked that one or Learner’s Cove better, so I decided Learner’s Cove would be for the kindergarten through sixth graders, and Learner’s Academy would be for the seventh through twelfth graders. I could have had Allisen just go to a regular public or private school, but that wouldn’t have been as much fun. I like having her go to Learner’s Academy because then I can make up my own rules about how the school operates, and decide for myself what is and isn’t there.
When I was ten, we moved from Bloomington, Indiana, to Nashua, New Hampshire. Since the Fun House was in Bloomington, we couldn’t go there anymore, but that was okay, because we had decided that Fun Houses were all over the place—there were hundreds in each state. The one closest to us in Nashua was called Racecar’s Rook. We started “going” there and made a whole bunch of new friends, including a very smart, very clumsy girl named Mirisen Zepetto. Mirisen and her siblings—Allisen, Harrisson, and crazy big brother Pete—had originally gone to a crazy Fun House called Anemone (this is the school referenced in 6th Grade with My Crazy Classmates, My Super Smart Sister, & Me—the crazy one they went to for fifth grade), but had switched to Racecar’s Rook because they all liked it better (except Pete).
In all the original Allisen’s Notebooks (the handwritten ones), Allisen’s school was referred to as “Racecar’s Rook”. In the earlier ones especially, there were a lot of references to some of the original aspects of the Fun Houses we had created—such as the fact that every kid was assigned a dormitory and could sleep over at the Fun House whenever they wanted, or that if you were really bad you could get “trunked” (meaning you were stuffed in a trunk for a few hours). As my brother and I grew older, we realized that aspects such as these were unrealistic, so over time, traces of these things started no longer showing up in my Allisen’s Notebooks either.
When I started typing and editing the first set of twelve books into the first current Allisen’s Notebooks volume, I originally kept the name of Allisen’s school “Racecar’s Rook”, since that was what it had always been (although I had already removed trunking and dormitories and all the other residue). I think it was only after I’d finished typing and editing all twelve books that I realized the name “Racecar’s Rook” didn’t make much sense, and decided to change it to “Learner’s Cove”. I also came up with the name “Learner’s Academy”, and couldn’t decide whether I liked that one or Learner’s Cove better, so I decided Learner’s Cove would be for the kindergarten through sixth graders, and Learner’s Academy would be for the seventh through twelfth graders. I could have had Allisen just go to a regular public or private school, but that wouldn’t have been as much fun. I like having her go to Learner’s Academy because then I can make up my own rules about how the school operates, and decide for myself what is and isn’t there.
are nashua and hollis real places in new hampshire?
Yes! I live in Nashua, and Hollis is the next town over. For those of you who also live in this area, some of the places Allisen goes throughout the series may be familiar to you. Others (such as Allisen's neighborhood) are made-up.
Why does the first book take place in 2005-2006, even though it wasn’t published until 2015?
The original versions of those twelve stories were written in 2005-2006, so they were current at the time. Even as I kept writing in 2007, 2008, 2009, and the difference between the Allisen’s Notebooks timeframe and the real life timeframe became more and more pronounced, I kept the series on the same time track as it had started—each book representing a month of Allisen’s life. I was very particular about keeping things realistic—as I wrote each Allisen’s Notebook, I constantly referenced my personal diary from that year to see what day of the week each day was and, in some cases, what the weather was like. So (fun fact), any time Allisen has a snow day, there really was a snow day in Nashua, New Hampshire on that day in history!
When I started typing and editing the books into their current form, I did consider making them take place in a more current time frame, or at least not specifying what year it was. But it’s a diary—who doesn’t specify what year it is in their diary? I decided against changing the year for three reasons.
When I started typing and editing the books into their current form, I did consider making them take place in a more current time frame, or at least not specifying what year it was. But it’s a diary—who doesn’t specify what year it is in their diary? I decided against changing the year for three reasons.
- Even if I did say that the first book took place in, say, 2015, that would be outdated in just a few years anyway. By 2021, 2015 is old news and may not feel as current to readers.
- Depending on what year I changed it to, I may also have to change the dates in the book (for example, September 5 in the first book may no longer be a Monday). I like using a real calendar to base my dates on as a way of making sure I don’t have any inconsistencies (like saying that a certain day in January is a Saturday, and then having a date exactly five weeks later in February be a Tuesday. That would bother me). Also, I like having holidays such as Easter and Thanksgiving be realistic in when they occur. And the fact that I actually kept track of which days were snow days and stuff like that—that’s cool! Even though I can’t imagine anyone going on the Internet and trying to figure out whether there really was a blizzard on a certain day or not, I like having the weather be consistent with how it actually was on that specific date.
- Finally, there’s the difference in lifestyle. Ten years is a long time in regard to culture and technology. Allisen as a middle-schooler doesn’t have a cell phone. That wasn’t too out of the ordinary in 2006, but 2016 middle schoolers would find it totally weird that Allisen doesn't even ask for a phone during her entire time in middle school. I didn’t want to go back and change my writing to incorporate smartphones and iPads and all the things the modern world uses. But it would be unrealistic to call it 2015 and not mention people having smartphones and iPads and everything. I decided that keeping the books set in the early 2000’s would be a fun time capsule for modern kids—kind of like a historical fiction series set only a decade ago :)
