Carina Axelsson
About Author
Carina Axelsson is half-Swedish, half-Mexican and grew up in California. A former fashion model, Carinas jet-setting career saw her starring in advertising campaigns and fashion magazines across the globe, including shoots for Elle and Vogue.
Later Carina moved to Paris, where she studied art and rounded off her days in fashion working as a PA to international fashion designer John Galliano. Her experiences along with a love of Scooby Doo and Agatha Christie inspired her to write the Model Under Cover series.
Author link
www.carinaaxelsson.com; www.facebook.com/CarinaAxelssonAuthor
Interview
MODEL UNDER COVER: STOLEN WITH STYLE
PUBLISHED BY USBORNE
SEPTEMBER 2014
Stolen with Style is the second in the new Model Under Cover series, published by Usborne, which sees upcoming model Axelle going under cover in the world of fashion. Unlike other models, Axelle's greatest ambition isn't to be on the front cover of Chic fashion magazine. What she really wants is to be an ace detective. So when the Big Apple calls for her help to find a stolen diamond, she is straight on the case.
We asked Carina Axelsson, author and former model, about how Model Under Cover came about:
"I have always been obsessed by books and once I thought I might be able to do it, I started to write. As soon as my first picture book was published, I thought that's it, I'm an author, so these days I see myself very happily as an author, rather than as a model or someone in the fashion world.
"Axelle, the main character in my Model Under Cover stories (see also A Crime of Fashion), is a reluctant model and thats definitely how I was. I didn't want to go into modelling but my mother thought it was a great career for me. It did mean I got to live in wonderful cities like New York and Paris but I wasn't ever mad about fashion as a teenager, I was more of a geeky nerd, and as a model I always felt like a bit of an outsider, so I got a lot more fun out of fashion the second time around, as a writer!
"I modelled for a good decade. These days models are often 15 or 16 but I was in my 20's when I started. I do try to convey in the books that modelling is very, very hard work and you have to be physically at your peak for this career. You hear so much about parties and drugs in this world, but that's not something I recognise. You need to be able to handle travelling and working with a new group of people every day so you have to be on top form. Also, unless you're nice, you're not going to get booked again and again. So it's an intense and high pressure way to live.
"For me the biggest problem in being a model was all the travelling. I don't like to travel, I'm a real home body. I love having my books around me, my dog and my tea but working as a model means you're on and off a plane every day. It was the travelling that did me in but I did enjoy working with really creative people at the top end of fashion. Everything is super-fast and non-conformist and it's fun working at that level of intensity - and these people are fun!
"My earlier career meant that, when I started writing books set in the world of fashion, I had a huge amount of my own experiences to draw on. In many ways modelling has not changed since I was working in that world, although fashion changes all the time.
"I'm rebuilding my links with fashion as I write the books. I'm not interested in giving fashion a negative image in these books, there are a lot of good things about fashion and there's a lot I like about it, it can be very empowering and as long as that I make that clear, people in the fashion world are happy to talk to me. That said, I'm not going to gloss over the problems with it.
"My books are mystery stories, which probably comes from my love of mystery stories since I first watched Scooby Doo. When I was older I loved Agatha Christie stories, Wilkie Collins and Sherlock Holmes. But although I've always loved mystery stories I never thought I'd end up writing them. My first book was, as I've said, a picture book, but Axelle came as a bit of a surprise, a model who wants to be a detective. Maybe she filled that yearning I had when I was younger to read about a young girl detective who would take matters into their own hands; all the detectives I read about were old and generally male.
"I do find plotting the stories very hard though, it's a heck of a lot of work to create a good mystery. Often you have to start at the end of the book and work backwards and all the loose ends have to be tied up, everything has to be perfect and all the boxes ticked so in that respect it may be different from writing other types of fiction.
"For this series, I'm taking a year of Axelle's life, from 16 to 17, as that's the year that interests me, and I've an idea of where she'll go, which cities she will visit and which highlights of fashion I'll cover. Axelle is from London because I love the UK. I'm American and right now I live in a house that's in the middle of a forest in Germany but London felt right. New York and Paris are also up there among my favourite cities, but I wanted a character who could speak English, who lived in a major fashion city and who was based in Europe - so London ticked the boxes.
"Axelle has come off the pages for me, she's very much her own person now. In the first book I was trying to create the world, find the right voices and then develop the characters. I drew on my own experiences to create Axelle but I wish I had been more like her at that age. She sticks to her guns and is happy being herself. In the first book, for example, you see her at an incredible party full of fashion people, but she feels uncomfortable so she cuts the hem of the dress she's wearing and puts on her Converse instead of heels. I wish I'd been a bit more feisty that way at that age.
"London will be the setting of the next book, where Axelle will be taking part in a 'pre-Fall' show. Expect a really exciting, thrilling mystery with a dark secret from the past, so she's solving a mystery from the past that is having an impact on someone in the present. The story was very much inspired by London and its history. New York has a much more 'here and now' feel, which you see in Stolen with Style.
"I'd like to say that I write from nine to five but really I'm a nine to five procrastinator! If I look at things like social media it just becomes a big black hole where I can spend hours looking things up and doing 'research' - otherwise I'll be making lots of cups of tea! I try to resist sugary snacks but cupcakes are my weakness, I love making and decorating those - and biscuits.
"To escape, I read and as I have four dogs, there are always dogs to walk and I take them out twice a day. It's good for my plotting to have time to go out and just think things through."
