Interview with Natasha Sinel, Author of THE FIX

I'm thrilled to have snagged an interview with fellow YA Outside the Lines writer Natasha Sinel--this week--as her debut novel The Fix debuts. The official release date is Sept. 1, but the book is already making quite a splash.

Here's a snippet of the glowing Kirkus review:

"A friendship with a troubled classmate helps Macy confront the childhood sexual trauma she's kept secret for years. . . A powerful story of healing."

And from award-winning novelist Carrie Mesrobian: "A bewitching, beautiful, and brave debut. Readers will marvel at Macy's resilience. Natasha Sinel's writing devastates and uplifts, by turns. An important story of one girl's journey to rewrite the blueprint of her own life by facing the truth inside herself."

This book sounds like a must-read and I can't wait to dig into it.

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Jody: Quick, I've got to ask you before you tire of being asked this question five million times: Where do you get your ideas?

Natasha: Who knows? I start with a germ of an idea—e.g., a girl has a conversation with a guy at a party and it shakes up her world, but the next day he’s in a psych institute—what happens next? I usually start by knowing my characters’ voices pretty well and then sometimes I have to figure out why they are the way they are. Like, why is Macy so tough? What happened to her? Why does she hate her mother?

Jody: Hmm. Why does she hate her mother? But you're right, of course. It's often those questions that plague us, the ones we keep coming back to, that spur us on to writing a story. Once you've got one of those questions--or several--plaguing you, what's your next step? Are you a make-stuff-up-as-you-go type of writer or an outline ahead/planning person?

Natasha: I hyperventilate when I hear the word outline. But I think that’s because I picture those structured outlines we used in high school--

Jody: OMG I hated those too. Roman numerals. All of that indenting. *shudder*  Does anyone actually outline like that?

Natasha: I know, right? I tend to use a very loose road map, so I basically know where I’m going but not necessarily how I’ll get there. So I guess it’s both—some planning and lots of making stuff up along the way.

Jody: I like that method. It's pretty close to what I do myself these days. But then, I've had years and years to work out my process. How about you? Have you been at this a long time? Or, heck, I'm just going to come right out and be nosy: how many books did you write before you got your first book deal?

Natasha: My first manuscript got representation after only about eight queries, so I was feeling pretty confident when we finally went on submission after about a thousand revisions! But that book wasn’t acquired, and I wrote another, The Fix.

Jody: That's not a bad track record. One book. (FYI to readers who are trying to keep score at home-- the average is, apparently, 3.5) (Actually, I just made that up. I have no idea what the average is, but that sounds about right and it makes me feel better about my own 5-unpublished-book track record.) (Back to the interview)

What kind of work schedule do you have every day, Natasha?

Natasha: I’m not totally consistent with that, but my “ideal” schedule is to exercise after the kids get on the bus--

Jody: Can I stop you there to say that I love that you have an ideal. Also, I will kindly not ask you how many times you reach that ideal...

Natasha: Thanks! So, after, um, exercising, I draft or edit (whichever stage I’m in). If I’m drafting, I set a timer for 30-45 minutes and try to get as many words as I can. If I’m on a roll, I’ll set the timer again. If I’m editing, I usually work for a couple of hours. Then I’ll work on the more business-type stuff like blog posts, interviews, etc. And of course, sprinkled into all of that is life management stuff like paying bills, dealing with kids’ schedules, grocery shopping, etc. I usually skip TV and read before bed.

Jody: Ah, yes. All of the stuff that is so hard to balance with the writing life.

Natasha: That's the truth. I’m not sure I’m doing the best job at balancing right now. Some days, particularly when I’m on deadline for copy edits or something, dishes stay in the sink and beds unmade all day. Sometimes, I say hi to my kids when they come home from school and then disappear into my office for the rest of the night (thankfully, I have an amazing babysitter who helps with homework!).

Jody: And we haven't even touched on promotion and social media. How does that fit in?

Natasha: Well, I’m on Twitter and Facebook, and I write for a few group blogs. I know it sounds crazy, but I really have made friends that way.

Jody: That doesn't sound crazy. How else are we going to meet other writers and book lovers?

Natasha: I know. Twitter in particular, I love, because everyone I follow talks about books and publishing and diversity and all of the things I’m most interested in. For me, these places are actually social, and not places to promote my book. I do tweet and post news about The Fix—I want people to be aware of it—but I limit the amount of talk about my book. I don’t want to be obnoxious. One thing I’m excited about that I will promote, is partnering with RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) to fund-raise for survivors of sexual abuse. I have a page set up here: www.classy.org/TheFix

Jody: I've heard of RAINN. It's an amazing organization. (RAINN is the nation's largest anti-sexual violence organization. It operates the National Sexual Assault Hotline (800.656.HOPE and online.rainn.org) in partnership with more than 1,100 local sexual assault service providers across the country. www.rainn.org.)

What are you working on now?

Natasha: I’m really excited about the manuscript I’m working on. It’s a YA contemporary with a touch of the magical (is that how you’d describe Thin Space too?).

Jody: I always say reality-based fantasy--but I think I like your description better.

Natasha: My book is set during the off-season on Cape Cod, one of my favorite places in the world. There are quirky characters and complex relationships—the mother-daughter, the friend to more-than-friend, the soul mate who disappeared. Oh, and there’s also lightning.

Jody: You've totally got my attention!
Natasha, thank you so much for chatting with me today. And readers, if you'd like to know more about Natasha and how you can purchase a copy of The Fix, see below: 

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Natasha Sinel lives in Northern Westchester, NY with her husband, three young sons and some fresh-water fish. She would like to have a dog and a cat, but she knows her limits, and can’t take care of another living thing. For now.

Website: natashasinel.com

Buy The Fix at Barnes & Noble 
at your local indie
on Amazon 

Never Begin a Novel with Weather -- Guest Post by Jennifer Salvato Doktorski (THE SUMMER AFTER YOU AND ME Blog Tour and Giveaway)

I am so excited to be a stop on Jennifer Salvato Doktorski's Blog Tour, celebrating the release of her latest novel THE SUMMER AFTER YOU AND ME. This is a great read. Beachy romance--with a twist: the action take place at the Jersey shore the summer after Hurricane Sandy upended the lives of the main characters, a girl who is a permanent resident of the area and a boy who visits only during the summer.

I loved the romance, of course, but was curious about the hurricane aspect. The storm and the devastation almost feel like a third character in the book, so when Jen asked me what I'd like her to blog about, I said, how about the weather?

Here's Jen:

Never begin a novel with weather. It’s one of those generally accepted taboos that most writers come across at some point or another. I’m not sure if Elmore Leonard was the first to say it, but it is number one on his ten rules for writing fiction. Irrespective of its origins, the point is “It was a dark and stormy night” = bad story opener.

But that doesn’t mean weather can’t provide you with the spark or impetus to write a story or novel, or serve as the perfect backdrop. That was the case with my latest YA novel THE SUMMER AFTER YOU AND ME, which debuts today. The story take place the summer after Superstorm Sandy unleashed her wrath on the Jersey shore. It was the largest and most destructive Atlantic hurricane in history, affecting several countries and 24 states with New Jersey and New York being among the hardest hit.

When the mega-sized storm made landfall in New Jersey on Oct. 29, 2012, it was the second time in two years that we here in the Garden State had been done wrong by a freak storm on that exact date. The year before, on Oct. 29, 2011, a nor’easter hit the East Coast covering everything, including the trees still heavy with fall foliage, with a thick snow and icy mix. The result was downed power lines and trees everywhere. Schools, businesses, and roads were closed. Nearly 1 million people were without power in New Jersey, and Halloween got cancelled—boo—and the nickname Snowtober was born.

Our property dodged any major damage, but a large branch from one of our giant oak trees fell onto our neighbors’ property, nicking their gutter and pulling down some cables. I took it as a warning sign and had the tree taken down. And a good thing too, because it wouldn’t have survived the 65 mph sustained winds that barreled through here the following year on that same date when Superstorm Sandy pummeled the East Coast on Oct. 29, 2012. Halloween was cancelled, again, but that was the least of anyone’s worries. The New York Stock Exchange also closed for a record two days, but again, small potatoes in the grand scheme of things.

One of the scariest parts about Superstorm Sandy, was that it lived up to the hype. That hype began on October 22 as meteorologists watched as it developed in the Caribbean and crept along the Eastern
seaboard like a slow-moving monster. By Saturday, Oct. 27^th, our governor had already ordered a mandatory evacuation of all coastal regions.

We have a place at the shore and were there that day to participate in the annual scarecrow building contest (it seems silly now that I think about it) and to batten down whatever hatches needed battening. It was eerily quiet. We saw some people filling sandbags and some fisherman on the beach, but it seemed like everyone should have been doing more.

The next day, back at our full-time home, which is further north and inland, people were running from store to store, picking the shelves clean of camping lanterns, flashlights, D batteries, phone charges, candles, water, bread and milk. I bought lots of lunchmeat and packed our coolers with ice because our stove is electric and Snowtober made me realize we are fully dependent on electricity to cook. This was Sunday, Oct. 28^th, and already schools had been closed for the next day.

And so we awoke on the morning of Oct. 29^th, turned on the TV and began flipping channels, from CNN to The Weather Channel to our local news networks. All of them were showing the same Doppler image of a behemoth storm with its red, angry eye and a massive green swirl that looked like a dragon wings and a tail. Outside the wind was picking up; becoming stronger by the hour.

I can’t remember when it started raining but the rain seemed secondary to the wind. I brought our garbage cans into the garage and watched our remaining oak trees swaying back and forth. We used our landline to make calls and kept our cell phones charged. Shortly after 5 p.m., the lights flickered once, the TV made a zapping sound, and then the electricity went out.

“This is it,” someone said. It was either me or my husband, I can’t remember which. What I do remember is the wind. Wind that sounded like a low flying jet or a high-speed freight train. It rattled the windows and bellowed all night long. When it got dark, we turned on the Coleman lantern, ate sandwiches, played board games, read books, and listened to AM radio on the only device in our entire house that go reception—and old, battery-powered walkie talkie with an AM signal that my husband has had since he was five.

We were up most of the night, listening to the soothing voices of the deejays, watching the sky light up a purplish color each time a transformer blew, and waiting for the deafening wind to abate. We grabbed pillows and blankets and stayed together in the living room. In retrospect, we should have holed up in the basement, but somehow I think my husband and I felt better watching those giant oaks sway all night long; willing them to stay up with our eyes. Somehow they did. But all around us, others weren’t so lucky.

The next morning, we stepped outside to find trees and branches down everywhere. A giant oak blocked our road, another lay on top of the neighbors’ minivan. We used our cell phones to call friends and loved ones to make sure everyone was okay. But the power was still out, and would remain out for days, so we had no idea what the rest of the state and New York looked like, or whether our condo at the beach had survived the storm.

The days that followed were surreal. Driving conditions were horrendous without traffic lights, schools in our town remained closed for nearly two weeks, we ran out of hot water, and sleeping without heat in the unseasonably cold weather was tough. I couldn’t make coffee, or any hot food or beverages for days, and we all grew tired of sandwiches (I haven’t eaten bologna since). But these were all minor inconveniences after this major storm.

People had died, property had been damaged, and homes had been destroyed; swept away by ocean and bay waters along with cars, boats, swing sets and whatever else was in Sandy’s path. The hardest hit areas looked like they’d been ravaged by war not a storm.

Suffice it to say, experiencing Superstorm Sandy changed me. It reinforced what I already knew—life is delicate and precious and nothing should ever be taken for granted—and made me appreciate just how good people could be to one another when faced with the aftermath of a tragedy.

Somewhere around our third night with no electricity, I even began to understand why people in the old days went to bed so early and woke up with the sun. There’s only so much you can do in the cold and dark! I also realized how ill-prepared I was for a hurricane of that magnitude or any other natural disaster. That Christmas, I gave everyone in my family emergency kits complete with crank radios and flashlights (I’m too much fun, I know!)

The following summer, I began writing THE SUMMER AFTER YOU AND ME. I didn’t open with the weather, but I wrote this book because of it.

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a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Summer After You and Me

Jennifer Salvato Doktorski

Sourcebooks Fire

May 2015 ● ISBN: 9781492619031

Trade paper/$9.99 ● Ages 14+

Will it be a summer of fresh starts or second chances?

For Lucy, the Jersey Shore isn’t just the perfect summer escape, it’s home. As a local girl, she knows not to get attached to the tourists. They breeze in during Memorial Day weekend, crowding her costal town and stealing moonlit kisses, only to pack up their beach umbrellas and empty promises on Labor Day. Still, she can’t help but crush on charming Connor Malloy. His family spends every summer next door, and she longs for their friendship to turn into something deeper.

Then Superstorm Sandy sweeps up the coast, bringing Lucy and Connor together for a few intense hours. Except nothing is the same in the wake of the storm, and Lucy is left to pick up the pieces of her broken heart and her broken home. Time may heal all wounds, but with Memorial Day approaching and Connor returning, Lucy’s summer is sure to be filled with fireworks.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jennifer Salvato Doktorski is the author of two YA  novels and is a freelance nonfiction writer. Her first paid writing gig was at The North Jersey Herald & News, where she wrote obituaries and began her lifelong love of news and coffee. She lives in New Jersey with her family.

An Excerpt

Connor opened the gorgeous double doors, each with half-moon stained-glass windows on the top, and motioned me inside. “After you.”

The house had that distinct yet hard-to-describe smell of a beach home that had been closed up for a while. I walked to the center of the high-ceilinged foyer and immediately pic­tured pine garland and twinkling white lights wrapped around the sweeping banister.

“Wow. I’d love to spend Christmas here,” I said and immedi­ately regretted being so sappy.

Connor smiled. “You could fit a twelve-foot tree in this hallway.”

I admit, over the years I’ve had my share of Connor-centric fantasies. However the image of him watching his children pad down the stairs on Christmas morning had never been one of them…until that very second. I liked thinking about Connor that way.

“Come on. You’ve got to see the master bedroom.”

The wholesome image of a Malloy family Christmas van­ished. Aha, I thought. That was the Connor I knew.

“Uh-uh,” I said. “The widow’s walk. I want to go there first.”

“Race you,” he said and took off running.

He beat me up the two flights and was waiting for me in the third-floor hallway toward the back of the house. Off the hallway was an art studio, with a drafting table and a bookcase. There was also a telescope standing near the window.

“Follow me.” He crossed the studio and unlocked the dead­bolt to the narrow door leading outside.

“You’ve already been up there?”

“First thing I did when I got here,” Connor said.

“Not the master bedroom?”

“Nah, that’s the first thing I wanted to do when you got here.”

I thought it was just more flirty banter, but Connor’s flushed cheeks looked as warm as my body felt. He stared at me for a beat too long and my throat constricted. I was suddenly aware that I’d left the house with slept-on hair and no mascara. The look on Connor’s face told me he hadn’t noticed. His eyes never left mine.

Finally he said, “Come on, Luce. I’ll follow you.” The space was tight when I passed in front of him, and the closeness of his body gave me the shivers. I opened the door and stepped outside onto a small patio. I walked toward the wrought-iron spiral staircase that lead to the widow’s walk on the roof and placed my hand on the railing. My knees felt shaky as I began the climb, but I never looked back.

Buy Links:

Amazon: http://amzn.to/1bdZCrJ

Apple: http://apple.co/1GZ6qq1

BAM: http://bit.ly/1wWFUdw

B&N: http://bit.ly/1ABV3x6

Chapters: http://bit.ly/1EnXK6R

Indiebound: http://bit.ly/1EtSUr9

"Promo Advice from an Author Who's Been There" (Guest post by Holly Schindler)

I am so excited to be a stop on Holly Schindler's Feral blog tour. 

Over the years Holly (who is the administrator of my group blog YA Outside the Lines) has become a good friend. Still, I was surprised when she asked me to take an early peek at her newest novel and possibly blurb it. 

I did not hesitate to say YES! Or to provide a blurb: 

"In the town of Peculiar, the cats aren't the only ones keeping secrets... A dark and creepy psychological who-done-it that will keep you guessing until the very end."  

Oh, yes, dear readers, you will be guessing. Also, you may never look at cats the same way ever again.

Holly's written several other books, and I marvel at how easy she makes it all look, particularly marketing and promotion. It's something a lot of new writers wonder and worry about (and something I really struggled with) so I asked Holly if she'd mind sharing a few tips... 

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1. Your first book will be a bit of a stumble-fest. It will. I guarantee. But then, it is for everyone. So just embrace it! You have no idea what your own strengths are, as far as promotion goes. Try as much as you can. Take on the opportunities that come your way, knowing that some efforts will be successful and others won’t. Use the promotional opportunities associated with your first book to learn what your strengths are. Take those strengths into promotions for book number two.

2. Conversely, don’t be afraid to say no—if it puts you 100% completely out of your comfort zone, there’s a good chance you just plain won’t be good at it, either. And life is too short to be living in constant fear of, say, public speaking. You need a clear head to write the next book. You won’t have one if you’re counting down the days to the convention where you’re scheduled to talk and wondering how you might possibly be able to sever a nonessential body part just in time to miss your flight. Trust me—it’s not worth it. Say no.

3. Reach out. Don’t think of it as shameless plugging. You wrote your book to be shared. So shout it from the rooftops. Your enthusiasm will be infectious. You’ll hear it a lot, but it’s true: you really are your book’s best advocate.

4. Don’t underestimate the power of direct emails—to booksellers, librarians, bloggers. An extra bonus: emails are FREE promotion.

5. Fancy swag isn’t as powerful as a free copy of the book. You’re probably better off investing in a few extra review copies of your book than you are in jewelry, T-shirts, etc. intended for giveaways.

6. Teachers are on Twitter—this is especially helpful for middle grade. They hold book-a-day reading challenges in the summer, tweet about the best books they’ve found for their kids, and discuss read-alouds they’ve used. Check out #nerdybookclub, #mglitchat, #4thchat, #5thchat.

7. I’ll go out on a limb and say it: Read your reviews. I know not every author does, but I highly recommend it. Be objective. Look at the patterns. Don’t be so intent on justifying what you’ve done that you don’t learn from your reviews. I would hate, hate, HATE to think A BLUE SO DARK, my first novel, was the best thing I’ll ever write. Of course I want to be better. Bloggers and reviewers are influential in making me a better author.

8. The job is never done. Don’t expect to start promos a month before your book releases and finish two months after it hits shelves, never to be mentioned again. I’m still talking about A BLUE SO DARK (2010) with readers.

9. Finding your promo rhythm is like finding your writing rhythm. Some writers are better off working on their WIPS every day with specific word count goals; others are better working a couple of days a week without the pressure of maintaining a specific word-count pace. Similarly, I work best doing a little bit of promo work each day (usually in the morning), then moving straight into my current WIP. But you might prefer to work on your WIP during the week and devote your weekends to a few promo activities. Some of us are night owls; some of us early birds. Listen to your own internal clock. Don’t worry about how much time other authors are spending online, or how many cities other authors travel to. Do what fits for YOU.

10. Befriend other authors—online, through regional chapters of writing groups, etc. Writing is a unique lifestyle, and no one will understand the ups and downs like another author. Writers also often like to get together for promotion opportunities: debut groups, blogging, school visits, etc. Sometimes, the best promo tool you can have is interacting with other authors!

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FERAL jacket copy:

The Lovely Bones meets Black Swan in this haunting psychological thriller with twists and turns that will make you question everything you think you know.

It’s too late for you. You’re dead. Those words continue to haunt Claire Cain months after she barely survived a brutal beating in Chicago. So when her father is offered a job in another state, Claire is hopeful that getting out will offer her a way to start anew.

But when she arrives in Peculiar, Missouri, Claire feels an overwhelming sense of danger, and her fears are confirmed when she discovers the body of a popular high school student in the icy woods behind the school, surrounded by the town’s feral cats. While everyone is quick to say it was an accident, Claire knows there’s more to it, and vows to learn the truth about what happened.

But the closer she gets to uncovering the mystery, the closer she also gets to realizing a frightening reality about herself and the damage she truly sustained in that Chicago alley….

Holly Schindler’s gripping story is filled with heart-stopping twists and turns that will keep readers guessing until the very last page.

FERAL AND THE PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER:

FERAL falls squarely into the realm of the classic psychological thriller. While the book features mystery, horror, and paranormal elements, the emphasis is on the “psychological” rather than thriller / action. The novel features a Hitchcockian pace and focus on character development (here, we’re exploring the inner workings of the main character, Claire Cain). Essentially, every aspect of FERAL is used to explore Claire’s inner workings—that even includes the wintry Ozarks setting. The water metaphor is employed frequently in psychological thrillers to represent the subconscious, and here is incorporated in the form of a brutal ice storm (that represents Claire’s “frozen” inner state). The attempt to untangle what is real from what is unreal (another frequently-used aspect of the psychological thriller) also begins to highlight the extent to which Claire was hurt in that Chicago alley. Even the explanation of the odd occurrences in the town of Peculiar offers an exploration into and portrait of Claire’s psyche. Ultimately, FERAL is a book about recovering from violence—that’s not just a lengthy or hard process; it’s a terrifying process, too. The classic psychological thriller allowed me to explore that frightening process in detail.

Holly Schindler is the author of the critically acclaimed A BLUE SO DARK (Booklist starred review, ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year silver medal recipient, IPPY Awards gold medal recipient) as well as PLAYING HURT (both YAs).

Her debut MG, THE JUNCTION OF SUNSHINE AND LUCKY, also released in ’14, and became a favorite of teachers and librarians, who used the book as a read-aloud. Kirkus Reviews called THE JUNCTION “...a heartwarming and uplifting story...[that] shines...with vibrant themes of community, self-empowerment and artistic vision delivered with a satisfying verve.”

FERAL is Schindler’s third YA and first psychological thriller. Publishers Weekly gave FERAL a starred review, stating, “Opening with back-to-back scenes of exquisitely imagined yet very real horror, Schindler’s third YA novel hearkens to the uncompromising demands of her debut, A BLUE SO DARK…This time, the focus is on women’s voices and the consequences they suffer for speaking…This is a story about reclaiming and healing, a process that is scary, imperfect, and carries no guarantees.”

Schindler encourages readers to get in touch. Booksellers, librarians, and teachers can also contact her directly regarding Skype visits. She can be reached at hollyschindlerbooks (at) gmail (dot) com, and can also be found at hollyschindler.com, hollyschindler.blogspot.com, @holly_schindler,Facebook.com/HollySchindlerAuthor, and hollyschindler.tumblr.com

FERAL Trailer:

The Stepsister's Tale Blog Tour (and GIVEAWAY!): Interview with Author Tracy Barrett

I'm thrilled to be a stop on Tracy Barrett's The Stepsister's Tale Blog Tour (See below to enter the giveaway).

Full disclosure: Tracy and I met at an SCBWI regional conference a few years ago (okay, it was like, 10 years ago) and ever since, she's been supportive and generous with her advice and time and friendship.

This month Tracy's hit a very cool milestone: her 20th published book. I read it over the weekend and loved it. Not a surprise. I've enjoyed every book of Tracy's that I've read, and this one's already racked up a couple of starred reviews--from Kirkus and Publisher's Weekly. Page one and I knew I was in the hands of a master storyteller.

I'm always curious about how books come together--and I do want to hear the story behind Stepsister, but since I have Tracy on the line, I'm going to keep her for a while and pick her brain about her other books too, and what it's like to have the kind of career that most of us can only dream about...

Jody: Tracy, let's start with a summary of The Stepsister's Tale.

Tracy: My usual shorthand description of The Stepsister’s Tale is “Cinderella from the point of view of one of her stepsisters” but that’s not really accurate. Instead, it’s the story of a girl who’s struggling desperately to keep her family going despite a dead father and a mother who has checked out of reality. Her life is further complicated when her mother unexpectedly marries a man with a beautiful and spoiled daughter who whines that she’s made to do all the work when in reality she’s just being asked to pull her own weight.

Jody: It IS so much more than a retelling of Cinderella. The world-building, particularly, was what drew me in. And poor Jane (the MC)! The reader feels acutely what she does. I suspect that this wasn't an easy book to write.

Tracy: It took me a long, long time to write. I think that from the time I started it to the time when I signed the publishing contract was seven years! I don’t mean that I wrote all day, every day for seven years, of course—I’d write for a while and hit a snag and put it away for a few months, and then take it out and delete a lot of it and write some more and hit another snag. Finally, with help from my agent, Lara Perkins, I managed to whip it into shape and get it submitted to Annie Stone, my editor at Harlequin Teen, who gave me excellent editorial notes to bring it to a publishable state.

Jody: Why do you think it took so long?

Tracy: Several reasons. First, it was hard to keep Jane in the center—Cinderella, as I could have predicted, kept trying to steal the show and I kept having to wrench the tale away from her. But the toughest challenge came near the end of the story. If Cinderella isn’t the main character and if she doesn’t behave in a way that makes her deserve to live happily ever after, why does she get to marry the handsome prince? This was a problem that took me a long time to break through. The answer (don’t worry—no spoilers!) came to me, as many answers to this kind of problem tend to do, as I was falling asleep. When I woke up, I wrote the ending.

Jody: I love that--that it took sleep to come up with the answer. This is the magical part of writing. Of course, there was also the seven years of thinking and rewriting that you alluded to. When I first started writing, I'd give up when I hit snags like that. If I couldn't figure it out, I'd quit on the project. But you seem to take the struggle as part of the process. Maybe that comes from seeing so many books through from beginning to end--from idea to revision to publication.

And about all of those books...(see the end of this post for the complete list) You've written for elementary, middle grade and young adults. You've got non-fiction and fiction. You've got different genres represented. Mystery. History. Fantasy. Do you see a common denominator--besides the obvious one--that YOU wrote them?!

Tracy: It’s hard to trace a thread through both my fiction and my nonfiction, although I think you could say that history is a big player in all of them. For my novels, I’ve realized recently that most of them tell us more about a character—usually a secondary character—either from history or from a well-known literary work.

Anna of Byzantium is an imagined re-creation of the life of a Byzantine princess who’s well known to historians but not to the general public; King of Ithaka tells part of Homer’s Odyssey from the point of view of Telemachos (Odysseus’ teenage son), and Dark of the Moon is the tale of the minotaur as told by the minotaur’s sister, Ariadne, and his killer, Theseus.

Of course I hope that my readers enjoy these books for their own sake, but I also hope that by reading my novels, they’ll see another layer to the familiar works that inspired me.

Jody: Do you have a favorite?

Tracy: My favorite is always the book I’m working on, so Fairest (to be released in 2015) would have to be the answer to this one.

Jody: I've heard writers say that each book wants to be written in a different way. Is this true in your experience?

Tracy: I pretty much write all my novels in the same way. I almost always have the first chapter—or at least the first page—written in my head before I put anything on “paper” (I write on my computer). All my novels, whether historical or not, involve some research, so I start with general research and gather every interesting or potentially useful fact that I can. I do that until I feel so stuffed with information that I’m going to burst and then I start writing.

Once the story is underway my research gets much more focused—or at least it starts off that way. I might realize I need to know what kind of door locks they had in the Middle Ages, for example, and before I know it an hour has gone by and I know not only about locks but about keys and hinges, and whether doors opened inward or outward, and what the doors were made of, and how they forged the iron for the keys, and all sorts of fascinating details that I’ll never use!

Jody: Do you outline ahead of time?

Tracy: The only time I do is when I write nonfiction and also when I wrote a mystery series (The Sherlock Files). I have a general idea of where things are going but if I know too much, the thrill of discovery is gone and the actual writing feels like homework.

Jody: I noticed that you've worked with several publishing houses. What's your experience been like with different editors?

Tracy: I’ve been fortunate. With one exception (who is no longer in publishing) my editors have been smart, interesting, hardworking people who make my prose sound more like me. I’ve also had terrific copy editors. One was so good that I thanked her in the acknowledgments, which I don’t think is the usual thing! She copy edited King of Ithaka and I know she re-read the Odyssey in preparation, plus she had to have had a dictionary of ancient Greek in front of her as she worked. She caught some awfully subtle things. Better her than a reader!

Jody: That's actually my motto. Copy editors are brilliant people. I thanked mine too. Among other things, she helpfully pointed out that I'd used the word "clench" over 30 times in my book Thin Space.

Okay, now to a subject near and dear to my heart: marketing and promotion. Your first book was published in 1993 and I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the business has changed since then for authors.

Tracy: Yes. Promotion has changed a lot and the internet is responsible for much of that change. You know how they say that with the increased ease of doing household chores, we actually spend more time at them than when everything was done by hand—you have a washing machine, so you wash your clothes more often, etc.? I think it’s the same with the internet and promotion. It used to be so difficult and expensive that authors weren’t expected to do much of it.

Now that everyone can hop on-line and make a bookmark or send a mass email or put out an e-newsletter, it’s expected that we’ll do it. This isn’t in my skill set, nor is it in the skill set of most authors, but we have to suck it up and blow our own horn as much as we can.

Jody: Do you have any advice as far as what works/what doesn't? Did any of your books have an unexpected breakout success?

Tracy: I think the success of Anna of Byzantium, my first novel, was unexpected. Its sales (almost 200,000 to date) are largely due to its being required reading in a lot of schools.

Jody: No help from social media back in 1999--

Tracy: No! But now... I’m trying an experiment and have hired an outside publicist for The Stepsister’s Tale, even though Harlequin is doing a more thorough job of publicity than any other publisher I’ve had. I don’t know how I’ll quantify if it made a difference, but I’ll report back after a year if you like!

Jody: I'm going to hold you to that. Thanks so much, Tracy, and congratulations on the publication of your 20th book!

Here's a complete list of Tracy's books to dig into after you read her latest The Stepsister's Tale:  

Nat Turner and the Slave Revolt, The Millbrook Press, 1993
Harpers Ferry: The Story of John Brown’s Raid, The Millbrook Press, 1993
Growing Up in Colonial America, The Millbrook Press, 1995
Virginia, in series Celebrate the States, Benchmark Books, Marshall Cavendish, 1997
Tennessee, in series Celebrate the States, Benchmark Books, Marshall Cavendish, 1998
Kidding Around Nashville, John Muir Publications, 1998
Kentucky, in series Celebrate the States, Benchmark Books, Marshall Cavendish, 1999
Anna of Byzantium, Delacorte Press, 1999; paperback Laurel Leaf Books, 2000 (YA)
The Trail of Tears: An American Tragedy, Perfection Learning Corporation, 2000
Cold in Summer, Henry Holt Books, 2003 (MG/YA)
The Ancient Greek World, in series The World in Ancient Times, Oxford University Press, 2004 (with Jennifer Roberts)
The Ancient Chinese World, in series The World in Ancient Times, Oxford University Press,  2005 (with Terry Kleeman)
On Etruscan Time, Henry Holt Books, 2005 (MG/YA)
The 100-Year-Old Secret, Book 1 in The Sherlock Files, Henry Holt Books, 2008; paperback Square Fish, 2010 (MG)
The Beast of Blackslope, Book 2 in The Sherlock Files, Henry Holt Books, 2009; paperback Square Fish, 2011 (MG)
The Case that Time Forgot, Book 3 in The Sherlock Files, Henry Holt Books, 2010 (MG)
The Missing Heir, Book 4 in The Sherlock Files, Henry Holt Books, 2011, paperback Square Fish, 2012 (MG)
King of Ithaka, Henry Holt Books, 2010, paperback Square Fish, 2014 (YA)
Dark of the Moon, Harcourt Children’s Books, 2011, paperback Graphia, 2012 (YA)
The Stepsister’s Tale, Harlequin Teen, 2014 (YA)
Fairest, Harlequin Teen, 2015 (contracted) (YA)


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About The Stepsister’s Tale:
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What really happened after the clock struck midnight?

Jane Montjoy is tired of being a lady. She's tired of pretending to live up to the standards of her mother's noble family-especially now that the family's wealth is gone and their stately mansion has fallen to ruin. It's hard enough that she must tend to the animals and find a way to feed her mother and her little sister each day. Jane's burden only gets worse after her mother returns from a trip to town with a new stepfather and stepsister in tow. Despite the family's struggle to prepare for the long winter ahead, Jane's stepfather remains determined to give his beautiful but spoiled child her every desire.

When her stepfather suddenly dies, leaving nothing but debts and a bereaved daughter behind, it seems to Jane that her family is destined for eternal unhappiness. But a mysterious boy from the woods and an invitation to a royal ball are certain to change her fate...

From the handsome prince to the evil stepsister, nothing is quite as it seems in Tracy Barrett's stunning retelling of the classic Cinderella tale.

About Tracy Barrett
Website | Twitter | Facebook

Tracy Barrett is the author of numerous books and magazine articles for young readers.

She holds a Bachelor's Degree with honors in Classics-Archaeology from Brown University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Medieval Italian Literature from the University of California, Berkeley. Her scholarly interests in the ancient and medieval worlds overlap in her fiction and nonfiction works.

A grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to study medieval women writers led to the writing of her award-winning young-adult novel, Anna of Byzantium (Delacorte). Her most recent publications are King of Ithaka, a young-adult novel based on Homer's Odyssey; and the fourth book in The Sherlock Files, The Missing Heir (both Henry Holt) and Harcourt's young-adult retelling of the myth of the Minotaur, Dark of the Moon.

From 1999 to 2009 Tracy Barrett was the Regional Advisor for the Midsouth (Tennessee and Kentucky) with the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators. She is now SCBWI's Regional Advisor Coordinator.

Tracy has taught courses on writing for children and on children's literature at various institutions and frequently makes presentations to groups of students, librarians, teachers, and others.

For an example of Tracy's presentations at writers' conferences, please see this article from Clarksville Online.

She recently resigned from Vanderbilt University, where she taught Italian, Women's Studies, English, and Humanities. 

Tour Schedule:

Monday, June 9th - Fiktshun (Character Interview)
Tuesday, June 10th - Harlequin Blog
Wednesday, June 11th - Xpresso Reads (Guest Post)
Friday June 13th - About To Read (Guest Post)

Monday, June 16th - The Irish Banana (Author Interview)
Tuesday, June 17th - On the Verge
Wednesday, June 18th - Refracted Light Reviews (Guest Post)
Friday June 20th - The Book Cellar (Guest Post)


Contest Info:

Each tour stop is offering up a copy of THE STEPSISTER’S TALE as well as some very fun Cinderella-themed swag, and one winner will receive a fantastic Grand Prize Package including the following HarlequinTEEN titles: 2 copies of THE STEPSISTER’S TALE as well as copies of THE QUEEN’S CHOICE, DROWNED, WITCHSTRUCK and OCEANBORN. Giveaway is open to US/Canada.

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Guest Post by Mike Mullin: Things to Eat in the Wild

One of my pet peeves with post-apocalyptic books is when they get survival details wrong. I won’t name names, but I’ve thrown three books across the room in disgust just in the last year. For my debut novel, ASHFALL, and its sequel, ASHEN WINTER, I worked hard to get the details right. Fortunately, I had a couple of advantages over most authors.

First, as a teenager I loved learning about and practicing outdoor survival. I started fires with a bow and drill set I made myself. I harvested puffballs from our front yard and fried them. I ate fresh pods from our redbud trees, flowers from our black locusts, and made tea from white pine needles and sassafras roots (sassafras contains a carcinogenic chemical, by the way—I love the tea, but drink it only rarely). I even went into the woods once with nothing but a knife and clothing for three days and emerged only a little thinner and a lot dirtier. So when I write about survival topics, I’m usually drawing on personal experience.

Second, in ASHFALL the volcanic ash from the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano changes the environment dramatically. Wild animals inhale the ash, get silicosis, and die. Plants are buried in the ash and suffocated. Or they die in the long volcanic winter that I depict in the sequel, ASHEN WINTER. So a lot of traditional survival strategies and foods just aren’t available to my protagonists, Alex and Darla. Which means there are fewer details I could potentially mess up.

Today I prefer restaurants to wild food and hotels to improvised shelter, but I still enjoy the occasional wild meal. In early spring, I can make a lovely salad from my backyard, because I don’t put any chemicals on it and I don’t mind the weeds—many of which are yummy! I got in big trouble with my wife one year when I stripped all the buds from our daylilies to make a delicious green-bean-like dish. Turns out she would have preferred looking at the flowers to eating the buds. Who knew?

Here’s my advice if you want to try eating wild food: get good guidebooks for your area. My three favorites (I live in Indiana) are The Forager’s Harvest, Peterson’s Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants of Eastern/Central North America, and Primitive Living and Survival Skills.

Some more advice: don’t eat mushrooms unless you have a stone-cold expert with you. Morels and puffballs are okay and some kinds of shelf-fungus. With mushrooms, if you make a mistake, you could wind up like this guy. There’s a reason two commonly misidentified mushrooms are called Death Cap and Destroying Angel. Just saying.


Also, it used to be that you could eat almost any rodent or small animal safely, and some guide books still have that advice. No more. BSE, or mad cow disease, has shown up in rats, squirrels, elk and deer. It’s deadly, and there’s no cure. If I were starving and had no other options, I’d eat rats or squirrels, but I’d do my very best not to eat any brain or nerve tissue that might carry the BSE prion.

So, that’s a little advice on edible wild foods. How do Alex and Darla manage to survive when almost all the wild food has been destroyed by the ashfall and volcanic winter? Read ASHFALL and ASHEN WINTER to find out!

Bio
Mike Mullin’s first job was scraping the gum off the undersides of desks at his high school. From there, things went steadily downhill. He almost got fired by the owner of a bookstore due to his poor taste in earrings. He worked at a place that showed slides of poopy diapers during lunch (it did cut down on the cafeteria budget). The hazing process at the next company included eating live termites raised by the resident entomologist, so that didn’t last long either. For a while Mike juggled bottles at a wine shop, sometimes to disastrous effect. Oh, and then there was the job where swarms of wasps occasionally tried to chase him off ladders. So he’s really glad this writing thing seems to be working out.

Mike holds a black belt in Songahm Taekwondo. He lives in Indianapolis with his wife and her three cats. Ashen Winter is his second novel.  His debut, Ashfall, was named one of the top five young adult novels of 2011 by National Public Radio, a Best Teen Book of 2011 by Kirkus Reviews, and a New Voices selection by the American Booksellers Association.

About ASHEN WINTER

It's been over six months since the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano. Alex and Darla have been staying with Alex's relatives, trying to cope with the new reality of the primitive world so vividly portrayed in Ashfall, the first book in this trilogy. It's also been six months of waiting for Alex's parents to return from Iowa. Alex and Darla decide they can wait no longer and must retrace their journey into Iowa to find and bring back Alex's parents to the tenuous safety of Illinois. But the landscape they cross is even more perilous than before, with life-and-death battles for food and power between the remaining communities. When the unthinkable happens, Alex must find new reserves of strength and determination to survive.

Excerpt

The first two chapters are available on my website: www.ashenwinter.com. You may reprint the first two chapters in whole or in part on your website so long as you do not charge anyone anything to access them.

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How Blogging Saved My (Writing) Life and Other Thoughts on Social Media

Two years ago I knew nothing about social media unless you count my Facebook page. But that was mostly to keep tabs on my kids. I annoyed them by peppering them with questions like: whose wall am I writing on? What IS a wall, anyway? And how do I turn some "friend" off when I'm tired of looking at cutesy pictures of her cats? The day my son showed me how to "hide" a person who annoyed me ranks right up there with the most satisfying experiences of my virtual life. Wow. Wouldn't it be awesome if we could hide people who ticked us off in real life too? But I digress.

(cat picture. Cute. But sometimes I get tired of looking at them.)


My point is that I was a brand newbie to the online scene, and then I attended an SCBWI regional conference and social media was all everyone was talking about. Writers have to create an "online presence." You've GOT to have a website, a Twitter account, a blog. Needless to say, as someone who still had to ask my daughter to upload pictures for me on Facebook, I was a little nervous about tackling any of this stuff.

But I did, first by starting this blog. I called it On the Verge because of something one of the presenters at the same conference said. She knew so many really good writers--writers on the verge--who quit trying just as they were about to cross over. Well, no way would that be me! I knew in my bones that all my years writing were about to pay off, and this blog was my chance to give back, maybe throw out some helpful pointers to beginning writers. At the same time, maybe the blog would accomplish that other goal--of creating a buzz about my book(s) that would soon see the light of the publishing day.

I had an ulterior motive, is what I'm trying to say. What I figured out, though, was that I really like blogging. Probably because I like writing. Duh. But also because it gives me something I hadn't thought I needed: an immediate response to what I'm writing. Turns out that two years ago, I WASN'T just about to cross over. Deals came close and fell through. Rejections dribbled in. Or worse, I got no response at all. My agent quit the business. Last summer I came perilously close to quitting. I made my peace with the fact that my dream would likely never come true on this blog. And then I made my peace with it again. I got some nice responses to my posts. Some from wonderful writers I love, (like Sara Zarr!!!) gave me such a charge that I decided I would keep writing regardless.

Blogging ended up helping me, but not in the way I had assumed it would.

Social media, for me, is not just about creating buzz. This is such a nebulous term and is out of a writer's control and anyone who tells you otherwise is probably the person sending out a constant tweet-stream of BUY MY BOOK, the virtual equivalent of going door to door selling vacuum cleaners (or anything, for that matter). I don't know about you but when I see them coming up my walk, I want to turn the lights off and pretend I'm not home.

What I'm figuring out is that my virtual actions need to be as genuine as my real ones. I tweet when I want to not because I must get in my 5 tweet a day quota. I share articles on my Facebook author page that I think might interest other writers and readers. I'll comment on blogposts that move me or provoke an honest response. I've made connections this way that feel real to me and remind me that I am part of a larger community of writers and readers and the only way to "meet" most of these people is online.

A few fun things I've signed on for lately (because I want to):

1. I was asked to contribute posts for an awesome group blog called YA Outside the Lines, a blog created by my new role model Holly Schindler.

2. I've resurrected my Goodreads account and I am so glad I did. I love seeing what others are reading and I'm having fun scrolling through my friends' reviews.

3. My daughter and I made a pact to "live tweet" our responses to our favorite guilty pleasure, the over-the-top soap opera-y drama Revenge. It starts next Sunday, fellow Revengers, so follow us and tweet back.

4. I signed on to be a stop on Mike Mullin's Ashen Winter blog tour.

(I must confess that when I agreed to do this, I didn't know exactly what a blog tour was. My motives were sorta self-serving. I loved Mike's first book and was eager to read the sequel, so that was genuine, but truthfully, I figured that if I signed on, I'd learn more about blog tours and I could get pointers on how to set up my own. Apparently, a blog tour is when an author virtually visits a bunch of blogs. They happen right around the time a book is released to, you guessed it, create buzz. What's cool is each "stop" is a little different. There are book reviews, of course, but also author interviews, character interviews, and other posts on topics related to the book. Sometimes there are prizes.

Confession number 2: I thought I was supposed to write a post called "What to Eat in the Wild" (Mike's book is a bleak, nail biting dystopian nightmare and let's just say the food pickings are slim.) I was such an eager beaver that I wrote my post months ago, but found out last week that MIKE is the one who's writing the post and I'm supposed to have him guest blog. So, yeah. Forgot to read the fine print there. Lesson learned.)

Yes, I have trekked a loooong way over the past two years through this new virtual landscape, but I am the first person to admit I still have miles to go.

PS. Tune in for Mike's post on Oct. 2, my official stop on his Ashen Winter tour.

PSS. Tune in for my post on the same subject soon, because I don't think Mike will mind a double burst of buzz.