Sat. Oct. 11

 “I wanted to write about invisibility and put an original spin on it,” says author Tonya Hurley, “and what better way than have a dead girl trying to be popular. I thought about the most dramatic scenario I could have. It’s a story about a ghost, but it’s not a ghost story not a traditional ghost story.” What it is is “ghostgirl,” which concerns the life, death and (mostly) after-life of Charlotte Usher, a teen who choked to death on a gummy bear and must negotiate her way through Dead Ed – orientation for newly dead teens – and learn how to “possess” someone still living to get inside her skin. She also must wrestle with who she was in life and who she seems still to be in death: an outsider, a nobody. She root for her but she’s not entirely sympathetic. Her obsession with a still-alive male jock continues to burn on in the afterlife. “I did take her to an extreme,” says Hurley. “I wanted to make her a real character, not two-dimensional. I tried to develop her as a person and she is annoying at times … but it is the tale of the heart.”
     Hurley, 38 and a former Boston area resident, comes to Salem Saturday Oct. 11 at 1 p.m. to read and host a discussion Cornerstone Books. She has done a few of these appearances and says, “I’m surprised at how smart and astute teens are. I’ve enjoyed going out and meeting teens. Things haven’t changed that much, even when you throw technology into the mix. The deep-rooted feelings of inadequacy and invisibility are still there. “
    The book – pitched to teen girls, but a good read for all - is a hit, a Top Ten New York Times Best-Seller. It’s also received high marks from critics with Publishers Weekly calling it “a glittering comedy, a prime exemplar of what might be called demento mori … polished dark-and-deadpan humor.”
    Hurley says she took inspiration from “Beetlejuice” and Tim Burton, Edward Gorey and David Sedaris. As to the topic, death and what happens next, she says, “I made short films where I explored the topic of death and people ask me if I’m obsessed, and I guess I am. Everybody has their own idea what death is but nobody really know. This book is based in fantasy and reality; it’s not a vampire story. None of us are getting out of here alive. It’s also a John Hughes-like cautionary tale for teens.”
     Hurley grew up in a small Pennsylvania town. She was popular, she says, but “I understood the cliques.  I was sort of an outsider on the inside – I could see things going on. In high school, you’re celebrated for being the same. Once you’re out of high school, it’s the more different you are, the more you seem excel. This is kind of the book I wish I had in high school, the invisibility and acceptance and learning to celebrate your difference of who you’re trying to be. It’s the best time of your life and the worst.”
     Hurley worked in the music industry for a while. She grew up listening to the Cure, the Smiths and Depeche Mode, and she uses lyrical quotes from them and others to begin chapters. Because of her time in the music biz, she got to know a lot of artists she once listened to, and, in fact, her sister married Erasure’s Vince Clarke. “Music has always been a big part of my life,” Hurley says. She regards some of the rock lyrics she uses as poetry, and says “a lot of people turn to music because it’s the only thing you understand at a certain point of your life and the only thing that understands you. These artists really inspired me. I’m hoping the lyrics can connect to kids today.”  (Not all her name-checks of bands are ‘80s groups; she also has My Chemical Romance and Boston’s Dresden Dolls in there.)
    “ghostgirl” closes with The end? It is, indeed, not the end. Hurley will publish “Homecoming,” with Charlotte as the main character and some of the others reappearing along with a few new ones.
    “Life, death,” says Hurley. “We live our own stories, they have an ending and we don’t have any idea what will happen. We’re just characters.” 

45 Lafayette St., Salem 978-744-1831 www.cornerstonebooks-salem.com