GETTIN’ LUCKY: An Interview with Kara Taylor, author of PREP SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL

We’re excited to interview Lucky13 author Kara Taylor, whose YA Novel Prep School Confidential is a murder mystery that’s Gossip Girls meets Twin Peaks, and due out TODAY – July 30! Check out the blurb from Goodreads:

Prep School Confidential

Anne Dowling practically runs her exclusive academy on New York’s Upper East Side—that is, until she accidentally burns part of it down and gets sent to a prestigious boarding school outside of Boston. Determined to make it back to New York, Anne couldn’t care less about making friends at the preppy Wheatley School. That is, until her roommate Isabella’s body is found in the woods behind the school. 

When everyone else is oddly silent, Anne becomes determined to uncover the truth no matter how many rules she has to break to do it. With the help of Isabella’s twin brother Anthony, and a cute classmate named Brent, Anne discovers that Isabella wasn’t quite the innocent nerdy girl she pretended to be. But someone will do anything to stop Anne’s snooping in this fast-paced, unputdownable read—even if it means framing her for Isabella’s murder.

1. Mysteries can sometimes be harder to do in terms of plot and unexpected twists – and Prep School Confidential has loads of twists! Did you plot out every detail beforehand, or are you more of a pantser?

I’m usually a panster, but writing a mystery is like a Jenga tower. One wrong move or twist, and the whole plot can come crumbling down! I started with a vague outline for PREP SCHOOL and filled in all the details as I went to make sure everything fit well. But sometimes a twist would come to me as I was writing the book and I’d have to go back over everything to make sure it made sense!

2. Anne is such a smart, sassy MC who’ll match all comers wit for wit – are there any aspects of Anne that are based on your own experiences? What other things inspired Anne (or Anthony or Brent)?

It’s funny (and slightly embarrassing) because family and friends automatically equated Anne’s voice with mine. I tend to be very irreverent and blunt, like Anne is. But we’re also SO different. Anne is at the top of her school’s social hierarchy, and I was at the lower middle. Anne is gutsy and will walk into a dark alley alone, whereas I’m a total wimp. One thing we do have in common though is being an outsider at a school in Massachusetts. Like Anne, I’m from New York. I spent a year away at college in Boston, and I struggled to fit in because people have assumptions about New Yorkers. Also, we talk kind of funny.

3. Prep School Confidential is set in a boardinghouse where everyone’s got secrets. What made you choose this as a setting?

I love the boarding school setting because you have a bunch of kids with almost NO adult supervision. The potential for shenanigans is very high. Having a classmate murdered is terrifying enough, but at a boarding school, where the killer may live across the hall from you? I’m also fascinated by the boarding school relationship dynamics. In PSC, Anne notices that her core group of friends are more like a family. Everyone tries to avoid dating (you have to see the other person EVERY. DAY) which is a VERY foreign concept to Anne.

4. What was the toughest and the most exciting parts of your journey to publication so far?

The hardest part was letting go of the manuscript that landed me my agent. It was so close to my heart, my agent fell in love with it, but then it didn’t sell. I had a really hard time focusing on another project for a while. PREP SCHOOL was the book that pulled me out of my slump. Now, I’m thankful that the other book didn’t sell. I wrote it while I was 19/20, and I was in a VERY different place. I barely recognize the words on the page, let alone the person who wrote them. The book was a growing experience for me, and most importantly, it got me my agent. Most exciting, I would say, was getting blurbs from other authors. Also, seeing my cover for the first time!

5. What fun facts might readers not know about you?

I’m certified to teach middle/high school English, I played Pee-Wee Hermann in an 11th grade play, I write for television, I can recite all of the Honey Badger video from memory, and my father suspects my book deal is a scam.

6. Since this community is “All for One and OneFour KidLit,” we’d like to know what two or three books inspired you as a kid?

EEEP, only two or three? Okay, the obvious one is Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I was seven when that book came out, and I still remember the day my grandmother bought it for me because “everyone was talking about it.” Also, I had a ton of colored-pencil Nancy Drew inspired short fiction in my fourth grade desk. I guess it’s not too much of a shock my first book a teen mystery!

Find Prep School Confidential at any of the following stores!

Indiebound – Barnes & Noble – Amazon – Books-a-Million – Indigo Books

Kara Taylor wrote PREP SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL in her first semester of graduate school, in between pulling all nighters and listening to her dad say writing isn’t a real job. Now, she lives on Long Island with a kitten named Felix and a Chihuahua named Izzy and writes full time. She is represented by Suzie Townsend of New Leaf Literary and Media. 

Despite an uncanny resemblance to Japanese revenants, Rin has always maintained her sense of hummus. Raised in Manila, Philippines, she keeps eight pets: a dog, six birds, and a husband. She’s been a time traveler, a Starfleet captain, and a mutant, because real jobs are overrated. Her YA horror, THE UNNATURAL STATES OF DEAD GIRLS IN WELLS (Sourcebooks), pitched as Dexter meets the Grudge, is due out Fall 2014.

YouTube: Vacation Spots by Sara Raasch

For this month’s YouTube videos, we’re talking about ideal vacation spots. Today we’ve got Sara Raasch, author of the YA fantasy SNOW LIKE ASHES, here to satisfy all of your vacation needs.

Sara Raasch has known she was destined for bookish things since her friends had a lemonade stand and she tagged along to sell her hand-drawn picture books too. Her debut YA fantasy, SNOW LIKE ASHES, is coming out Fall 2014 from Balzer + Bray. It does not feature her hand-drawn pictures. She can be found on Twitter at @seesarawrite and blogging over at the Valentines. She is represented by Charlotte Sheedy Literary.

Skylar Dorset: BREATHLESS

We have a lot of fantastic authors at OneFour KidLit and are excited to introduce them all to you. Today we’re talking to Skylar Dorset, author of BREATHLESS, coming in June 2014 from Sourcebooks. One author, four questions. Here we go!

Hey, you’re getting published!  How’d that happen?

I have no idea. Magic?

Which is not to say that I don’t have a practical human story to tell you about the things that I did and then the things that other people did, etc., etc., but I choose to believe that somewhere along the way a bit of magic was added to the process.

I’ve been writing stories ever since I was a little girl, but I started writing BREATHLESS, the novel that’s going to be published, a few years ago, when I was no longer as little a girl. At that time, the story had a different title and a slightly different look but the core idea was there.

After I finished the novel, I thought, “I quite like this novel. Maybe I will try to get it published!” Which had been a long-cherished dream of mine. So I started crafting a query letter. That took months. I am not exaggerating. I had everyone I know read the query letter over. In fact, I think more people have read my query letter than my novel at this point! I edited the query letter and edited the query letter and edited the query letter…and THEN I started to send it out.

I was very orderly in the way I sent it out, and I refused to get dejected early on. People tell me Rome wasn’t built in a day and I guess I believe that’s true. I didn’t want to get myself overwhelmed by the process or fixated on hearing from people so I made myself send the query letter out to one agent per day–no more, no less. I ended up sending my query letter to a total of 40 agents. I was rejected a total of 27 times (and there were a few other agents I never heard from). I got my first request for my manuscript sixteen days after I started sending query letters out, which was SO EXCITING and gave me the strength to keep sending out query letters. My first offer of representation came about two months after that. I ended up signing with the awesome Andrea Somberg at Harvey Klinger about three months after I started querying.

And then I thought, well, of course, the hard part was done and the book would be sold immediately! We went out on submission, and we got back some requested edits. Andrea said it was up to me whether I wanted to edit the book according to the feedback we’d gotten or continue going out on submission. I thought about the edits and decided that they would make the book better, so I took a few months out of the submission process and revised the book. I’m so glad I did, because I think the book is better now. In fact, every time I finish a revision I think the book has improved, so it’s true what they tell you: Revision is hard work but worth it! After the revision, the book was sold to the fabulous Aubrey Poole at Sourcebooks not long after that. And I couldn’t be happier with the way things have turned out so far! (Whether magic was involved or not…)

What’s your debut book about?

When friends and family members who haven’t read it yet ask me this, I say, “It’s about faeries in Boston.” So I guess that’s my short version.

Here’s the longer version:

BREATHLESS is the story of Selkie Stewart, who thinks she’s a totally normal teenager growing up in Boston. Sure, her father is in an insane asylum, her mother left her on his doorstep—literally—when she was a baby, and she’s being raised by two ancient aunts who spend their time hunting gnomes in their Beacon Hill townhouse. But other than that her life is totally normal! She’s got an adventurous best friend who’s always got her back and an unrequited crush on an older boy named Ben. Just like any other teenager, right?

When Selkie goes in search of the mother she’s never known, she gets more than she bargained for. It turns out that her mother is fairy royalty, which would make Selkie a fairy princess—except for the part where her father is an ogre, which makes her only half of anything. Even more confusing, there’s a prophecy that Selkie is going to destroy the tyrannical Seelie Court, which is why her mother actually wants to kill her. Selkie has been kept hidden all her life by her adoring aunts, with the help of a Salem wizard named Will. And Ben. Because the boy she thinks she’s in love with turns out to be a fairy whose enchantment has kept her alive, but also kept her in the dark about her own life.

Now, with enchantments dissolved and prophecies swinging into action, Selkie finds herself on a series of mad quests to save the people she’s always loved and a life she’s learning to love. But in a supernatural world of increasingly complex alliances and distressingly complicated deceptions, it’s so hard to know who to trust. Does her mother really wish to kill her? Would Will sacrifice her for the sake of the prophecy? And does Ben really love her or is it all an elaborate ruse? In order to survive, Selkie realizes that the key is learning—and accepting—who she really is.

What inspires you to write?

EVERYTHING. Anything can strike a chord of inspiration with me; I never know what it’s going to be. The idea for BREATHLESS (the title, btw, is subject to change!) came to me in a dream. I sometimes have dreams that I think would make great stories. And then other times I have dreams where I’m with Emma Watson and we’re watching a group called Emo Vodka Hippopotami perform ballet. (Wait, actually, that could be a great story, too…)

I also get inspired by the things around me. I find certain places very inspiring. Some buildings I step into and feel a little frisson of excitement, thinking of all the stories that could happen in there. Little moments that happen in my life also sometimes make me think, “What if this had happened instead?” For instance, the other day my sister had a clogged pipe in her house and had to have a camera stuck into the pipe to see what was clogging it. I said, “What if you see a monster down there?” She didn’t. BUT SHE COULD HAVE. And that’s where my stories come from.

Sometimes I can just hear someone’s voice in my head, a first line, a little snippet of dialogue, SOMETHING. And I won’t be able to think of anything else until I sit down and figure out what that story is about.

What are you most excited about in the debut process?

Meeting people! I’ve already gotten to meet my fellow debut authors, and now I can’t wait to meet readers! (And other authors, too, of course!) I love hearing other people’s stories, and I can’t wait for all the good ones I’m going to get to hear in the years to come! And I hope some of them are inspired by the stories I tell you!

Skylar Dorset is a born-and-bred New Englander, which is why Boston was a natural setting for her debut novel, BREATHLESS (Sourcebooks, June 2014). Skylar shares her home with lots of Mardi Gras beads from the time she spent living in New Orleans and a harp she’s supposed to be teaching herself to play. She’d like to get a dog.

GETTIN’ LUCKY: An interview with Corey Ann Haydu, author of OCD LOVE STORY

Today on the OneFour KidLit blog we’re welcoming, Corey Ann Haydu, author of OCD LOVE STORY. This is shaping up to be an amazing year for young adult contemporary fiction! Here’s the short version of Corey’s story:

When Bea meets Beck, she knows instantly that he’s her kind of crazy. Sweet, strong, kinda-messed-up Beck understands her like no one else can. He makes her feel almost normal. He makes her feel like she could fall in love again.

But despite her feelings for Beck, Bea can’t stop thinking about someone else: a guy who is gorgeous and magnetic… and has no idea Bea even exists. But Bea knows a ton about him. She spends a lot of time watching him. She has a journal full of notes. Some might even say she’s obsessed.
Bea tells herself she’s got it all under control, but this isn’t a choice, it’s a compulsion. The truth is, she’s breaking down… and she might end up breaking her own heart.

Tell us a little bit about your path to publication. Was OCD Love Story your first novel? 

When I was first seeking publication I queried with a different novel, my first YA attempt that I had written during my first semester of graduate school at The New School. It’s a novel I still love, and it got some interest from agents, but they all pretty much wanted to know what else I was working on. One agent, Victoria Marini, gave me a big revision to do on that novel, which I took a lot of time to work out. After I turned that in to her, she also asked if I had any other projects I was working on. Luckily, the querying process was a very long, drawn out one, so I had already written 100 pages of another novel, OCD LOVE STORY! Victoria had a good feeling about our compatibility and wanted to see those 100 pages even though I was honest with her about how rough and new they were.

Between the revision I did for the other novel and the potential she saw in OCD LOVE STORY’s first 100 pages, Victoria ended up offering representation. We had a really special bond right away, a great ability to communicate and work together, and that was the key for me. we built an author-agent relationship based on mutual enthusiasm and a willingness to work hard together.

OCD LOVE STORY found a home pretty quickly, I think because Victoria and I both had a strong sense that Anica Rissi at Simon Pulse was the right editor for the book. All three of us shared a similar vision and, again, a willingness and interest in elevating the manuscript I had into the book it finally became.

What compelled you to write a character who suffers from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder?

I have struggled with an anxiety disorder for years. It wasn’t until maybe four years ago, however, that I learned that Obsessive Compulsive Disorder was an anxiety disorder as well. I had always bought into the misconception that OCD was a more “psychotic” disorder, something impossible to understand. But when I delved into research, I quickly learned that OCD was just like any other anxiety disorder. OCD is simply a method of coping with anxiety. The people who struggle with it are completely aware of their disorder and the destructive effect it’s having on their lives. I related so strongly to the struggles of people with OCD because of my own anxiety that I felt compelled to write a character struggling with it. I knew it would be easy for me to access to emotional journey of someone with an anxiety disorder, and I was really excited to  write about something that has been so wildly misrepresented for so long.

What was the most challenging thing about writing Bea? Beck?

 Honestly, Bea came very easily for me. She and I exhibit very different behaviors, but our interior lives aren’t so different. I found it pretty easy to slip into her mindset. I naturally sunk into her frustrations with herself and with brain. Sometimes it was harder to write Bea’s interactions with other people, since often her interior life was so full and overwhelming. Living in her mind was easy, figuring out how she talked to her friends or boys was a little harder.

Beck was a little more difficult, simply because I wasn’t living inside his brain. We only see Beck through Bea’s eyes, and that makes it more complicated to give him a full personality. He is hiding a lot of secrets, and as the author I of course knew what they were, but Bea doesn’t, so that was a huge challenge.

You have a BFA in Theatre? What parallels do you find between dramatic arts and creative writing. Do you feel your work in theatre informs your writing?

I think working in theatre has had a huge impact on my writing. In general, what comes most naturally to me is emotional honesty in a scene, and my ability to do that comes directly from my theatre training. I studied an acting technique called Meisner, and the basis of that training is that the goal of acting is “living truthfully under imaginary circumstances”. This is the goal in writing, too, I think. Often when I’m writing I’ll take my hands off the keyboard and work myself into an emotional state, the same way I used to do to prepare for a performance. The only difference is that as a writer I have to find the words to record those emotions, whereas when I was acting I had to simply live them out on stage.

I feel so incredibly lucky to have come from that training, and from the Meisner technique in particular, because I think it taught me to much about imagination and honesty and attention to detail. My acting teacher pushed us to be specific and careful in the choices we made for a character’s emotional life, and I hear her voice in my head when I’m writing, too.

 

And for the final question: as this community is All for One and OneFour KidLit, we’d like to know what two or three books inspired you as a kid.

Let’s see, when I was in elementary school, my favorite books were THE GIVER by Lois Lowry– a book that I would still consider my favorite book probably– and Julie Edwards’ (Julie Andrews’ pen name!) books THE LAST OF THE REALLY GREAT WHANGDOODLES and MANDY. I read and re-read all three of those books incessantly. And I definitely had a certain thrill that one of my favorite musical theatre actresses, Julie Andrews, had also written two of my favorite books. It was like a special secret I felt we shared with each other. I was a child actress who loved writing, so I felt really inspired by the fact that Julie Andrews was a writer and actress as well.

As a teenager and I feel head over heels in love with THE BELL JAR. I had a lot going on when I was a teenager, and tended towards darker literature. Sylvia Plath in general really spoke to me. I loved her poetry as well. I read a lot of poetry at that age in general. It helped to have tough feelings explored with beautiful language. It still does!

Corey Ann Haydu is a young adult novelist currently living in Brooklyn, NY. Her first novel, OCD LOVE STORY, is coming out July 2013 from Simon Pulse. Her second novel, LIFE BY COMMITTEE will be out in Summer 2014 from Katherine Tegen Books at Harper Collins.

Corey graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she got her BFA in Theatre. After college, Corey worked as an actress and playwright (and waitress and telemarketer and real estate broker and nanny and personal assistant) She also spent a lot of time in Starbucks writing short stories.

After working in children’s publishing for a few years, and falling in love with YA literature,Corey received her MFA from The New School in Writing for Children. During graduate school Corey rounded out her list of interests with mochas, evening writing workshops, post-it notes, bi-weekly cheeseburgers, blazers, and board games.

Gettin’ Lucky: an interview with Phoebe North, author of STARGLASS

Today, Phoebe North’s debut Starglass goes out into the world, and we’re celebrating the occasion! Take a look at the awesome cover and blurb:

Terra has never known anything but life aboard the Asherah, a city-within-a-spaceship that left Earth five hundred years ago in search of refuge. At sixteen, working a job that doesn’t interest her, and living with a grieving father who only notices her when he’s yelling, Terra is sure that there has to be more to life than what she’s got.

But when she inadvertently witnesses the captain’s guard murdering an innocent man, Terra is suddenly thrust into the dark world beneath her ship’s idyllic surface. As she’s drawn into a secret rebellion determined to restore power to the people, Terra discovers that her choices may determine life or death for the people she cares most about. With mere months to go before landing on the long-promised planet, Terra has to make the decision of a lifetime–one that will determine the fate of her people.

I had a chance to read the book for this interview, and it is wonderfully thoughtful, simultaneously embracing and defying SF tropes, and I highly, highly suggest you check it out. Need more convincing? Take a look at this interview!

I think it’s safe to say you’re a massive SF fan. With that in mind, were there any specific SF tropes you set out to play with in Starglass?

I have always absolutely loved generation ships–the whole concept of a city in a bottle fascinates me, and I loved having the opportunity to explore the underpinnings, from population control to renewable resources, that would make such a society work. I honestly didn’t set out to write a novel that played on modern YA dystopian tropes, but once I realized how constrained the citizens of the Asherah would have to be in order to keep the population controlled and compliant, I couldn’t help but play with that a bit. But always with the intention of subverting these tropes, from the notion of job assignment (Terra comes to love her job!) to that of sexuality.

While I’ve seen various fantasy worlds based on specific real-world cultures, I haven’t seen that as often in SF, which mean the secular Jewish society on the Asherah in Starglass was a delightful change of scenery! How did you approach the world-building on the ship?

In its earliest incarnation, the Asherah was not a Jewish ship. In fact, the story has its source in a grad school assignment based on James Joyce’s “Eveline”–the ship was originally quasi-Irish! When I began to retrofit that story into a novel, I initially used generic sci-fi worldbuilding, but I wasn’t happy with the outcome. The Jewish aspect came out of Terra’s last name, Fineberg, which was originally a placeholder (it’s my mother’s maiden name). On deeper inspection, I realized that a generation ship is nothing if not a society in diaspora, and I realized that I could give the novel deeper metaphorical resonance by exploring notions of the promised land, of exile, and of wandering. Not to mention the tensions between Judaism as a cultural heritage and a religious one.

Otherwise, I did a lot of research about things like constant acceleration drives, cold weather cultivation, artificial wombs, and population control. Of course, I consider Starglass *soft* science fiction. Certain aspects of the worldbuilding–say, artificial gravity–are just plain impossible. But I hope that readers will understand that it’s a lot easier to tell a story like this when your characters’ feet are kept to the ground!

The Asherah’s passengers become eligible for marriage at 16, and are expected to wed and raise two children–no exceptions. Those who refuse to choose a partner will eventually be forced into a marriage. This scenario may seem familiar to readers of YA dystopian lit; however, Starglass is the first novel I’ve read that features queer characters in this scenario (including someone introduced in your book trailer!). Was this a situation you set out to explore from the start?

Thank you for noticing that Frances Cohen, who narrates the interchapters in Starglass, is a queer woman! It was important to me to not only include gay characters in the novel’s present, but in its past, as well.

I’m bisexual, and from middle school onward, my most significant friendships were with other QUILTBAG teens. I cannot imagine writing a book without queer characters as part of the general landscape, because that’s the world I know. It’s what’s most authentic and honest to me.

And I have to say I was surprised when I began to encounter arranged marriages in YA dystopian novels but without acknowledgement of the people for whom such a society would be most oppressive–those whose affections are not heteronormative. So yes, in a way, I wanted to address what I saw as a surprising silence on the issue among YA authors. And while, as Paolo Bacigalupi said, the lives of queer teens are often dystopian enough (despite the repeal of DOMA–yay!–suicide rates of queer teenagers remain distressingly high, and bullying and harassment rates are equally appalling), I see this as more reason than ever to explore themes of inclusion and to honestly discuss sexuality in books for teenagers.

Of course, I’m not alone, and there are authors like Malinda Lo, Alaya Dawn Johnson, and Steven dos Santos who are also writing queer themes in their YA speculative fiction. Thank goodness!

Which aspect of the book would you say you’re proudest of?

I’m so proud of Terra’s voice. By the end of Starglass, she was a real, vital *person* to me–sometimes a bit difficult to spend so much time with, for sure, but I can say without a doubt that after writing Starbreak, the conclusion to the duology, I’ll miss her quite a bit.

And which did you struggle with most?

Some of the more difficult aspects of Terra’s personality proved troublesome for me. She’s not an easy character–she’s mired in self-loathing and doubt, and can be occasionally petty, hateful, and even a shade homophobic. Her reactions make sense given her upbringing and age, and she grows wonderfully over the course of the two novels. I’d be happy to call Terra at the end of Starbreak a friend, but I’d be a bit wary of her if we met at the outset of Starglass!

What’s been the most unexpected aspect of your publishing experience so far?

I have been floored by the wonderfully perceptive reaction of early readers and reviewers. Not everyone is going to like your book, but every once in awhile, someone absolutely makes me feel as if I wrote my book just for them. It’s a wonderful feeling, and one that reminds me of all the reasons why I wanted to be a writer.

Finally, as this community is All for One and OneFour KidLit, we’d like to know what two or three books inspired you as a child.

I absolutely adored The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Swiftly Tilting Planet by Madeleine L’Engle, and the Animorphs books by KA Applegate.

Thanks so much for these excellent answers–and happy Starglass day! I wish this book all the best.

Phoebe North received an MFA in poetry at the University of Florida. She lives with her husband and cat in New York State. Visit her at PhoebeNorth.com.

Add Starglass on Goodreads, or buy it via:
IndieBound
Amazon US & Amazon UK
Barnes & Noble
Powell’s
Books-A-Million
The Book Depository

Corinne Duyvis lives in Amsterdam, where she writes speculative YA novels and gets her geek on whenever possible. She also sleeps an inordinate amount. Her debut YA fantasy novel OTHERBOUND is forthcoming in 2014 from Amulet Books, an imprint of Abrams Books. (Corinne is very excited, and hopes this development won’t impede her sleeping schedule too much.)

Gettin’ Lucky: An Interview with Erin Richards, Author of VIGILANTE NIGHTS

About VIGILANTE NIGHTS (taken from Erin’s website):

A “good boy” will do anything for vengeance when a gang rite kills his twin sister. Will Lucas win, or follow his sister Silver into the darkness?

After a hideous car wreck, Lucas wakes from a coma to find that his world is gutted. Not only is his beloved twin sister, Silver, gone forever, but Lucas is broken in body and spirit. He will never be a college athlete, and is robbed of what he now realizes was the most important bond of his life. Although they weren’t identical twins, Lucas and Silver shared a bond so fierce it defied reason, and was nearly supernatural.

After her death, that bond seems to endure when Lucas sees Silver everywhere he turns. Either he’s crazy, or Silver is trying to tell him something about the California gang initiation they stumbled into that cost Silver her life. Lucas is bent on revenge, turning on Raymond, Silver’s former boyfriend; the one Lucas never wanted her to date. He forms a posse of vigilantes to take out the gangsters responsible for Silver’s death, but he risks not only his own life, but the love of the new girl on his block, who knows more about Lucas and Silver than can be accounted for by mere chance.

This is your first young adult novel, but you have two published adult romances. Why did you decide to write a YA novel? Do you plan to write more YA?

My muse has multiple personalities! When I started writing adult romance novels that’s what I was reading. People say write what you read. But the first book I ever wrote when I was eighteen was for young adults, and I really wanted to go back to writing YA. I gave it a go and wrote my first YA novel from a girl’s POV. I had so much fun writing the novel, I was hooked. The next book I wrote was Vigilante Nights. I don’t plan on giving up on writing adult romance, but I really like writing for teens. There’s something fresh and innocent about teenagers coming of age in any setting, whether contemporary, supernatural or SF&F that appeals to me. It takes me back to my own childhood and the type of books lacking back then.

Can you tell us a bit about your path to publication? How did you get your agent, and then how long did it take before she placed your novel at Merit?

I decided to submit Vigilante Nights to publishers on my own. At that time, I had just heard about Merit Press, the new YA imprint of F+W Media, and I was able to get early submission guidelines from my editor of another F+W Media imprint. When I read the guidelines, I thought Vigilante Nights would be perfect for Merit. I submitted to them (nail biting commenced) and within two months, the acquiring editor, Jackie Mitchard—NY Times bestselling author—emailed to tell me she wanted to talk. A new round of nail biting commenced. I was heading out on vacation and she was traveling so we didn’t connect for a couple of weeks. After a few rounds of emails, I received the offer to publish on August 28. After I picked myself up off the floor, happy dancing ensued!

I still wanted an agent to represent me and negotiate the contract. Right off the bat, I contacted Natalie Lakosil of Bradford Literary. I had connected with her on a couple of other novels and we had informally met that summer standing in line together at an RWA convention book signing, no less! Within ten minutes, she responded to my email, and agreed to read Vigilante Nights. The next day, she offered representation.

Can you tell us about how you got the idea for VIGILANTE NIGHTS?

The novel I wrote at eighteen was originally inspired by S.E. Hinton’s classic novel, The Outsiders, one of my favorite all time novels. Memories of gang activity and street racing from my teen years also played a role in the plotting. My story had stayed with me for years, and I always wanted to update and write it with a fresh outlook and more experience. Vigilante Nights bears only slight resemblance to that long-ago story, but Lucas’s coming of age in a time of tragedy remained constant.

Although it’s listed as contemporary, you have a paranormal element throughout. Was it natural for you to mix those genres?

Yes, it was very natural for me to mix supernatural or magic realism with a contemporary setting. I love all things paranormal whether it’s a lightweight element based on science or psionics or a heavier mythical creature element. My first romance novel, Chasing Shadows, is similar in that it’s a contemporary romantic suspense and the main character has telepathy. I’m currently writing a YA romantic suspense novel and the main character has a deep intuition that’s almost clairvoyant.

The novel begins with a teen’s death during a Mexican gang initiation and continues with tense moments related to the gangs’ criminal activities. Did you have any concerns about handling the racial issues, including slurs used by the characters?

Even though you all know this, it bears repeating: Vigilante Nights is a work of fiction and the views expressed by my characters are not my views. I tried to remain sensitive to this issue while also keeping it real and maintaining the authenticity of the issues, the story, the setting. My main character’s best friend is half-Mexican (who himself uses a racial slur against another Mexican).

It was never my intent to offend anyone, and I tried to keep a filter on my teenage characters. But Vigilante Nights is intense and emotions run high. Most people say things they may regret in the heat of the moment, in anger, fear, grief, and I didn’t want to treat my characters any differently. I can only hope my readers keep an open mind. Vigilante Nights is about loss, friendship, and love, not just vengeance.

As this community is All for One and OneFour KidLit, we’d like to know what two or three books inspired you as a kid.

As an avid reader since the time I learned to read, this is an easy one! Each of these books represented a step in shaping my fictional taste buds.

1. The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett

2. The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton

3. The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien

Erin Richards
Author Photo by Dawn Schubert Photography

Thanks for stopping by, Erin!

About the author:

Erin Richards lives in Northern California. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, photography, and American muscle cars.

Her YA debut novel, VIGILANTE NIGHTS, releases from Merit Press (F+W Media) on July 18, 2013. In addition to her website and blog, she can be found online on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads.

Cindy L. Rodriguez is a former journalist turned public school teacher and fiction writer. She lives in Connecticut with her young daughter and very old dog. She loves coffee, chocolate, the ocean, and power naps between obligations. Her debut contemporary YA novel, RESURRECTING EMILY, will be published by Bloomsbury Children’s Books USA (Fall 2014).

Linda Vigen Phillips: CRAZY

We have a lot of fantastic authors at OneFour KidLit and are excited to introduce them all to you. Today we’re talking to Linda Vigen Phillips, author of CRAZY, coming in Fall 2014 from Eerdmans Books for Young Readers.  One author, four questions. Here we go!

Hey, you’re getting published!  How’d that happen?

I can tell you it wasn’t overnight!  Specifically, how about 18 years?  Well, it wasn’t exactly all hand-wringing, wrist-slashing, torturous waiting by the mailbox.  Let me explain.

I started out writing poetry when I was very young.  Thanks to my poetry-loving father it’s been the way I have thought and expressed myself for most of my life.  I used to joke that I literally think in rhymed couplets although I have since moved on from the rhyming part.  In early adulthood it was also the way I escaped from the trauma at home.  My mother was bipolar, with a typical 1960’s misdiagnosis of schizophrenia, and the years when she was most severely ill happened between my fifth and nineteenth birthdays.

I didn’t feel like I had a mother or at the very least I didn’t want to claim her, and I didn’t understand how my father could be so in love with her (thank God he was).  I hated everything about her because I understood nothing about her.  It was the era of keeping things secret and that fed into my father’s taciturn nature.  No one explained anything to me so I was forced to develop all sorts of little quirks, obsessions, fears, and anxieties.  Thank God for poetry or I would have followed my mother over the edge long ago.

So that’s how the book started.  I cranked out poem after poem, got a fair number of them published in adult literary magazines, and grew psychologically healthier and more empowered as a writer.  When I had accumulated twenty poems, my best writing buddy and critique partner said “this needs to be a book,” meaning a novel as opposed to a collection, and the rest is history.

Well, slow history.  At that point in my life I was a full time teacher, minister’s wife, and mother of twin teenage boys.  The book was written from 4:00 to 6:00 a.m. weekdays, and minutes stolen from Saturday chores and summer vacations with the family.  During my last year of teaching I found my agent, Julia Kenny, with Dunow, Carlson, and Lerner, and five months after retirement, I had a book contract with Eerdmans Books for Young Readers.

What’s your debut book about?

You have an idea from what I’ve already said, as it is semi-autobiographical, but here is a synopsis:

Fifteen-year-old Laura Walberg can’t imagine life without a sketchpad or paint canvas.  When her artist mother has a nervous breakdown the same week Laura’s teacher pressures her to enter a prestigious art contest, Laura must face her worst fear:  that she will end up like her mother if she pursues her own dream.

Driven by fear, shame, and rage, Laura hides her home life from everyone, including her best friend.  Both a distant older sister and taciturn father fail to recognize Laura’s fear of losing her own sanity. Desperately alone, she considers suicide, faith healing, an unlikely relationship with a super-jock, and a new artistic endeavor.  When Laura’s mother goes on a violent rampage targeting her, Laura vows to find the demon that is driving her mother crazy.  Learning that someone raped her mother at fourteen and discovering her own inner strength, Laura opens her heart to the mother she never knew.

What’s it like to be inspired as a writer?

My writing has been all-over-the-board eclectic, because I can get fired up about the quirkiest or tiniest spark in people, places or causes and the idea usually won’t loosen its grip on me until I write it out.  So I’ve had articles in secular, religious, children’s and literary magazines, and newspapers, and I’ve written a good bit of curriculum for such things as Clear Channel Entertainment’s traveling exhibit on the Human Genome.  But the ultimate inspiration is like some kind of zappy, non-lethal bug bite that puts out an all points bulletin to every nerve in my body.  It’s the itch that won’t be satisfied until it transforms itself to the written page, and gets scratched and scratched until the swelling goes down and the message is left resting on the cool, calmed surface of my editorial skin.

What do you do in your daily life outside of writing?

I take Nina, our visiting “Grand-dogger” on walks, ride my ancient Raleigh 3-speed on Charlotte’s wonderful greenways, and enjoy trying new recipes.  I love spending time with grandkids Luke (2) and Anna (almost 5) who are just 2 hours away.  I volunteer at Friendship Trays (Charlotte’s version of Meals-on-Wheels) and am studying to be a Stephen Minister through our church.  My husband and I enjoy taking historical house tours and traveling to points of interest in our area.  Both recently retired, we are making plans for some travel in Europe where my husband has relatives and where my WIP is set.

Linda Vigen Phillips lives in Charlotte but never got over being a native Oregonian. She still goes gaga over mountains with Ponderosa pines and oceans that roar. She is a mother of twins, grandmother of two, wife of a retired minister, retired teacher of learning disabled students, and writer of YA, Middle Grade and poetry. Her debut YA novel written in verse, CRAZY, will be released by Eerdmans Books for Young Readers in Fall 2014.

~~Happy 14th Day for July~~

Happy Fourteenth Day! (Yes, I know it’s the 15th, but most of you were enjoying your Sunday yesterday, no? So I waited until Prime Time to post this.)

Guess what we have lots of this month? COVER REVEALS!!! So get your eyes ready for some candy, because here they come:

Robin Constantine’s The Promise of Amazing:

Elle Cosimano’s Nearly Gone:

(More info here for Nearly Gone.)

Katherine Ewell’s Dear Killer:

(More info here for Dear Killer.)

Kate Kelly’s Red Rock:

(More info here for Red Rock.)

Julie Murphy’s Side Effects May Vary:

(More info here for SEMV.)

Don’t you feel like cover designers deserve a big pat on the back this month? Because WOW. They’re all amazing, all unique, and all intriguing. I have a feeling they’re all perfect for the words within, too, and what more can we ask for than that?

~~OTHER AWESOMENESS FROM OUR GROUP~~

Dahlia Adler has a new release date for Behind the Scenes. It will be out June 24, 2014.

Helene Dunbar has an official title for her debut–These Gentle Wounds.

Corinne Duyvis (with friend Kody Keplinger) has been working hard this month on a blog phenomenon many of us have heard of via twitter: Disability in Kidlit. It’s here on WordPress, Tumblr, and Twitter. It’s worth checking out if you haven’t already. She is also in an anthology at Clockwork Phoenix. Her story “Lilo Is” isn’t YA, but it is 100% Corinne Duyvis, and that’s all we care about anyway.

Emily Lloyd-Jones has sold the French language rights to Illusive~~~ooh la la!

And that, Dear Reader, is all we’ve got for July! Thanks for reading.

Amber Lough lives in Syracuse, NY with an astrophysicist and their two kids. She spent half her childhood in Japan and the Middle East, but majored in Russian because she likes a challenge. She quit her job in the Air Force to write her Middle Eastern fantasy, THE FIRE WISH, which is due from Random House Children’s in Fall 2014.

GETTIN’ LUCKY: An Interview with K.A. Barson, Author of 45 POUNDS (MORE OR LESS)

Today we’re interviewing Lucky13 author K.A. Barson, whose young adult debut novel 45 POUNDS (MORE OR LESS) hits the shelves today! Here’s a bit about the book:

Here are the numbers of Ann Galardi’s life:
She is 16.
And a size 17.
Her perfect mother is a size 6.
Her aunt Jackie is getting married in 10 weeks
and wants Ann to be the bridesmaid.
So Ann makes up her mind:
Time to lose 45 pounds (more or less)
in two and a half months.

Welcome to the world of infomercial diet plans, endless wedding dance lessons, embarrassing run-ins with the cutest guy Ann’s ever seen–and some surprises about her not-so-perfect mother. 

And don’t forget the last part of the equation: It’s all about feeling comfortable in your own skin–no matter how you add it up!  

What inspired you to write 45 Pounds (More of Less)?

I wanted to write a story about a real girl—one who is overweight and has family issues, but who suffers more internally than externally. Some of it is based on how I felt as a teen, and some of it comes from teens I’ve been around since then.

Which comes first for you:  character or plot?

Character. Always character. Once I know what my character wants and what she’s going to do to get it, then I start to figure out plot.

You earned your MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. How has VCFA shaped your writing?

VCFA transformed my writing! First, the program taught me how to make writing a priority because I had to for the two years I was in the program. It also taught me about craft. That’s huge, obviously. Students learn craft by reading craft books, studying published work in the field, and by dissecting each other’s work. That’s not even counting the fabulous lectures, from faculty, visiting writers, and students. Most of all, I’m discovering that they taught me how to take criticism and not get defensive about it.

Do you have any quirky writing habits?  Something you absolutely need or a special place where you have to write?

I have to write alone, and it has to be quiet. With a husband, four kids + significant others, four dogs, and two grandkids, that’s sometimes easier said than done.  I also need snacks. Sometimes crunchy, sometimes smooth, for when I’m pondering.

 What is the most challenging part of the debut process?  The best or most unexpected?

The most challenging part is the waiting. The best and most unexpected part is all the little celebrations that creep up in the waiting—receiving editorial letters, meeting editorial deadlines, seeing the cover for the first time, revealing the cover, getting ARCs, reading blurbs and trade reviews. There’s always something happening.

There’s a scene in 45 Pounds (More or Less) where everyone dances Michael Jackson’s Thriller dance.   I really have to know…can you do the Thriller dance? 

I haven’t danced to Thriller since high school, which was a loooong time ago. I watched videos a lot while writing those scenes though.

And finally, as this community is All for One and OneFour KidLit, we’d like to know two or three books that inspired you when you were a kid?

Judy Blume’s Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret and Forever. I also loved V.C. Andrew’s Flowers in the Attic series and anything by Stephen King.

Kelly, thanks so much for stopping by!  Congrats on your debut!  I can’t wait to get my hands on this book!!

To celebrate the release of 45 POUNDS (More or Less) Kelly is hosting a DANCE PARTY ON TUMBLR!! EVERYONE is invited to participate!!  Just post pics and videos of hideous prom or bridesmaids dresses OR of dancing to Thriller!  Better yet, dancing while wearing that dress!!  There will be a book giveaway too!!  How cool is that?

About the author:

K.A. Barson earned an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She and her husband live in Jackson, Michigan, surrounded by kids, grandkids, unruly dogs, and too many pairs of shoes.

Here’s where you can buy 45 POUNDS (More or Less):

Amazon /  Powell’s / Barnes & Noble / IndieBound

Robin Constantine is a born and bred Jersey girl who moved down South so she could wear flip-flops year round. She spends her days dreaming up stories where love conquers all, well, eventually but not without a lot of peril, angst and the occasional kissing scene. Her YA debut, THE PROMISE OF AMAZING, will be released in 2014 by Balzer + Bray, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Gettin’ Lucky: An Interview with Kelsey Sutton, Author of SOME QUIET PLACE

About SOME QUIET PLACE (description taken from Kelsey’s website):

I can’t weep. I can’t fear. I’ve grown talented at pretending.

Elizabeth Caldwell doesn’t feel emotions . . . she sees them. Longing, Shame, and Courage materialize around her classmates. Fury and Resentment appear in her dysfunctional home. They’ve all given up on Elizabeth because she doesn’t succumb to their touch. All, that is, save one—Fear. He’s intrigued by her, as desperate to understand the accident that changed Elizabeth’s life as she is herself. Elizabeth and Fear both sense that the key to her past is hidden in the dream paintings she hides in the family barn. But a shadowy menace has begun to stalk her, and try as she might, Elizabeth can barely avoid the brutality of her life long enough to uncover the truth about herself. When it matters most, will she be able to rely on Fear to save her?

You’re a gifted writer who found her voice at a young age. Many of readers of YA are also aspiring young writers. Do you have some advice for them? Were there any particular challenges that you faced as a young writer?

The advice I would give changes daily, honestly, based on the particular challenges I’m facing. Today I would say “write for yourself”. Don’t worry about the trends or worry about what someone else will think. Doing so will only cripple you or affect your work in a negative way. It’s been said before, but it’s so true. I’m learning to follow this, myself.

And the challenges I faced, being a querying writer at sixteen, was being blind to the fact that I wasn’t ready. My manuscripts weren’t right and I was still improving. Actually, that never stops… I hope. I wish I could talk to that girl and say, “Kelsey, honey, slow down. You’ll get there.” It seems like I always learn things the hard way. It did make the reality of being an author that much better, though, after the years of work put into it.

What is your daily writing schedule like? During the writing of SOME QUIET PLACE, did you have a playlist or a coffee IV or some other way of getting into the writing groove?

I try to write at least 1,000 words a day, even when I’m in school or working every day. Usually it happens in the late afternoon or into the wee hours of the night. During SOME QUIET PLACE I had this strange need to be outside every time I worked on it. Yes, there was coffee. Yes, there was music. I like to listen to movie soundtracks. And sometimes I like to light a candle. Weird but true.

In SOME QUIET PLACE, emotions take on physical forms, which is such a cool concept. Which of these personifications in the book is your favorite? Which emotion do you think YOU personify?

I know this is probably what you’re expecting to hear, but Fear was my favorite. He just came so naturally and he’s so vibrant on the page. Not to mention he’s downright sexy. Come on, I had to mention it. And what a great question! If I had to choose an emotion I personify best I would have to say… Longing. I’m always working towards some goal. Losing weight, getting a book published, getting a degree. It’s never ending.

Because of the personified emotions in SOME QUIET PLACE, your main character Elizabeth tries not to feel. What was it like to write a character who tries not to feel?

It was actually pretty easy. It felt like Elizabeth’s voice was there, just waiting for me to tell her story. There were some things that needed to be fixed, of course, but that’s what revisions are for!

Can you tell us a little bit of what’s next for you?

Absolutely. I have a companion novel coming out next year. It’s set in the same world of personified emotions, and it’s about a girl wanting revenge on the man responsible for the death of her family. She’s influenced by both Forgiveness and Revenge and must ultimately choose which path to take. I’m so excited for the world to read it!

And finally, as this community is All for One and OneFour KidLit, we’d like to know what two or three books inspired you as a kid.

Great question! Not sure which age to look at, but I know I was a huge fan of the Magic Tree House series, the Saddle Club series. I adored HOLES, that was one of my favorites.

Thank you so much for having me! This was a fun interview.

Kelsey Sutton has done everything from training dogs, making cheeseburgers, selling yellow page ads, and cleaning hotel rooms. Now she divides her time between her college classes and her writing. Kelsey lives in northern Minnesota with her dog and cat, Lewis and Clark.

Her novel SOME QUIET PLACE (July 8, 2013) and a second, untitled novel (July 2014) are forthcoming from Flux. She’s repped by Beth Miller of Writers House.

Sarah Bromley likes the quiet time at dawn when she can drink coffee while staring into the woods behind her house and wondering what monsters live there. She lives near St. Louis with husband, children, and dogs, and volunteers at a horse stable for disabled riders when she isn’t writing. Her debut novel, A MURDER OF MAGPIES (Month9Books, LLC) will be released in Fall 2014.