Nonfiction Monday: Interview with Author Sara Latta

TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT YOURSELF:
I'm a scientist-turned-science writer, married, mother of three terrific kids, author of fourteen books, and science geek. I'm planning to stop by Philadelphia on my way to visit my daughter in Brooklyn this summer because I've always wanted to visit the Mütter Museum (http://www.collphyphil.org/site/mutter_museum.html), which is all about the history of medicine (Bones! Bleeding bowls! The Soap Lady!). We may also see the touring mummy exhibit there. My family has come to expect this kind of behavior from me.

WHERE DO YOUR IDEAS FOR NONFICTION COME FROM?
I read a lot, obviously. What author doesn't? I try to keep up with the research in the areas of science that interest me, and when I come across something that strikes me as cool and kid-friendly, I file it away in my tickler folder. Also, see travel, above.

WHAT DO YOU CONSIDER THE HARDEST PART ABOUT WRITING?
I'm so easily distracted, it's pathetic. Even if I put Facebook, Twitter, and the many wonderful book blogs, yours included, etc., aside--and I don't--I often find myself falling into research-related rabbit holes, only to emerge an hour later, eyes blinking, with a greater understanding of the decomposition process after death (see the Soap Lady, above), but without the critical details I needed about soap making. The internet is both my blessing and my curse.

WHAT IS THE STRANGEST FACT YOU HAVE LEARNED?
Can I list two? Each of them led to a couple of my favorite books. The first is that ordinary matter, the stuff that we can observe with our eyes and all of our sophisticated telescopes, accounts for only 5% of the universe. Five percent--holy cow! What's the rest? Well, scientists aren't sure exactly, but they've dubbed about 25% of that "missing matter" dark matter. Isn't is just mind-boggling that we know so very little about the stuff that makes up our universe? That fact led to my book, Stella Brite and the Dark Matter Mystery (Charlesbridge, 2006). The other strange fact is that the bacterial cells that live in our bodies outnumber our human cells ten to one--and we are utterly dependent upon the great majority of those bacteria. That one led me to write a proposal for The Good, the Bad, the Slimy: The Secret Life of Microbes (Enslow, 2006). I wanted to show that microbes weren't simply icky, disease-causing bugs (although they are that, too), but essential to life on earth.

TELL US ABOUT YOUR LATEST WORK.
I'm very excited about a series of books on forensic science I have coming out this fall: Bones: Dead People DO Tell Tales; Cybercrime: Data Trails DO Tell Tales, and DNA and Blood: Dead People DO Tell Tales, (all from Enslow, due out Fall 2011). They all use true stories to illustrate the ways in which forensic scientists solve crimes. They're not for the younger reader or the faint of heart--many of the stories do involve dead people, after all.


IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU'D LIKE TO ADD?..
I guess I'd just tell aspiring nonfiction writers to pursue those stories that interest them, even if they're not the trending topics of the day, and to tell those stories in the most compelling way that they can. I got my first big break in children's science writing with an article for Highlights on the search for the top quark (one of the fundamental subatomic particles). Not your usual fare for children's science writing, but I thought it was cool and apparently so did a lot of other people. And finally, thanks so much for hosting this interview--you guys rock.
Interviewed by Laura Crawford.

You can learn even more about Sara at her website or her blog.

This post is part of the Nonfiction Monday Round-Up hosted this week by Ana's Nonfiction blog.