ETC: The evolution vs. intelligent design debate is such a hot topic in this country right now. What made you decide to write about it for a teen audience rather than adult?

BRANDE: Actually, a lot of adults have read the book and really enjoyed it, so I think I ended up hitting both audiences without necessarily meaning to. But I just feel so much more comfortable in the teen world. I love reading YA--I'm currently devouring Stephenie Meyer's Eclipse--SO romantic and thrilling--and I love to write it. My own memories of high school are so vivid. Maybe it helps that my best friend is still the one I've had since sophomore year. Even though we've both been through so many changes since then--including both being lawyers--we still use high school as our frame of reference.

ETC: Are any of the characters in Evolution, Me, and Other Freaks of Nature like you in high school?

BRANDE: Definitely Mena. From her religious background to her concern with always doing the right thing (and not always getting that right), to her general awkwardness with boys. Although I think Mena ends up being a lot more mature than I ever was. She reaches a lot of conclusions it took me until college--or even later--to figure out. The character I wish I could have been like was Kayla--so funny and smart and outspoken. Completely confident. Those were the kinds of girls who scared me to death when I was young, and yet I SO wanted to be just like them. They just seemed powerful beyond belief.

ETC: Were you a writer in high school?

BRANDE: I was more into acting then. I lived for Drama. I'd stay after school with my friends, hanging out in the theater, playing the most elaborate make-believe for hours and hours. It was so wonderful to find people just like me who preferred fantasy over reality. And I have to say, there's still a strong part of that in me today. It's a good day when I can spend it immersed in fiction--whether it's a book I'm writing or one I'm reading. I love it when I look at the clock and realize I've been sitting there reading for five hours straight. Ahhhh . . .

ETC: What are your writing habits? Do you keep to a schedule?

BRANDE: Hmm, maybe I'm not supposed to admit this, but my schedule seems to be goofing off until my deadline is truly desperately close, then working day and night to finish my book. That doesn't seem like a very good example to set, does it? But I've found if I give myself too much time to work on a book, I end up revising the life out of it. I much prefer the heat of creation, writing a book straight through to the end so I can know how it turns out (I never ever outline--it would completely ruin a book for me if I knew the ending ahead of time). Then I take a few days off, let the thing steep, let myself catch up on errands and chores, then go back in and see what I can do to make it as good as I possibly can. With my first novel (not Evolution, but one of my early efforts), I revised it off and on for about six years. Ugh. Death. I still love the story and want to see it out there in the world, but I'm leaving it alone for now after so much fussing and tweaking, poor little thing.

ETC: Do you belong to a writing group?

BRANDE: Yes, a writing group of two. I met Barry Lyga, a fellow YA author (The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl and his newest, Boy Toy) at a writers' conference in 2002. Originally there were seven of us hanging out at the conference, and then e-mailing afterward, giving each other encouragement. Gradually over time the others dropped off--got discouraged, gave up--but Barry and I kept writing and making deadlines for ourselves and exchanging our work with each other. We both had been caught in that trap of endlessly revising the same novel, and we both decided to bust out and write something new. We took our projects to another writers' conference in January, 2005, and both got agents there. Barry's novel sold within a few months, and mine did not. So I wrote two more that year, the second one being Evolution. And here we are! It's great to have a writing friend and critique partner whose success you can enjoy as much as your own. So I definitely recommend that writers put themselves out there at conferences and workshops and find people with the same level of ambition and craft to push them along. I won't say Barry and I are competitive, necessarily, but his incredible productivity over the years has definitely pushed me to do the same.

ETC: What's the best writing advice you've ever gotten?

BRANDE: I attended a workshop taught by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch, the thrust of which was get over yourself. Stop taking so long, stop letting your insane perfectionism keep you from finishing novels and sending them out. At that point I was in year 6 of rewriting my first novel, so that was a message I really needed to hear. They suggested a program of writing one short story a week, finishing it, mailing it off. Do that week after week, always having multiple stories out there in the publishing world, and soon things will start to happen. If your thing is novels rather than short stories, write 5,000 words of novel every week, do that until the book is done, polish it, mail it off. Their main message was to become a writer who finishes your work and mails it. The thing they said that stuck with me the most was that it might be our 36th novel that was the most important, and that changed the most people's lives. But if we're only writing one novel every few years, we're never going to get there. I came home from that workshop and wrote a novel in five weeks. The dam had burst. I also started writing one short story a week and mailing them out, and sure enough, that worked, too.

ETC: Who are your favorite writers?

BRANDE: Favorite past writer, hands down, Charles Dickens. I love the intricate stories he weaves, the characters you end up knowing so well, the comedy, the deep human dramas--and I love that Dickens was so incredibly prolific. I really admire that in a writer. You see it today with authors like Meg Cabot and Gary Paulsen and Stephen King. Maybe if I stopped goofing off so much I'd get there, too!