Debut Authors Bash: Kate Karyus Quinn

Hey guys! I know GYDO (my own debut author thing) just ended, but when my friend at YA Reads said that she was hosting a debut author blog hop...well I had to join! And I hadn't managed to snag Kate Karyus Quinn on that, so...well. HERE SHE IS. With a rather epic post from a certain character's POV. 

My review of Another Little Piece goes up tomorrow (Spoiler: I LOVED IT.)
Oh, and there's a giveaway! 

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Thanks so much Nikki for having me on your blog and giving me such an awesome assignment for the YA Debut Author Bash! It was so much fun to dive back into Dex’s head after having spent so much time away from him. Anyone who’s read ANOTHER LITTLE PIECE can probably tell that I like the guy quite a lot. And for anyone who hasn’t read ALP, I have a quick warning that this is a teensy bit spoilery – so read with caution!

Nikki’s Question to Dex:

How did you feel when Annaliese came back?

And Dex’s answer:

Here’s the thing about watching someone die: it feels pretty final. Of course, when someone goes the way that Annaliese did: all screaming and covered in blood—you know you’ll be seeing them in your dreams, or nightmares to be more accurate, for years to come.

Since I have this little problem with seeing how people die, well I’d already been seeing that particular vision for years anyhow, so it wasn’t anything new to me… except that I no longer worried about trying to save her. I’d failed. And that’s a test you can’t retake.

Or so I thought.

So how did I feel when I saw Annaliese? I should have been overjoyed just like everyone else. Somehow she’d miraculously survived and was being returned home.

Except.

She was dead. I knew she was dead. And dead people come home in body bags or maybe even as ghostly spirits, but not the way Annaliese did.

She was alive, fully alive. Flesh. Blood. Breathing. Smiling in the same uncertain way she always did, peering out from behind her long hair. No, that’s not right. The long hair had been cut so that only a few spiky inches of hair were left. Still being dead should change more than your hairstyle. Generally it changes ones entire lifestyle.

So what was the deal? I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know.

The truth is: I was scared. I guess somewhere along the line I’d gotten used to seeing the different ways that people might die, but this was the first time I’d seen someone come back to life and I did not really care to know exactly how that sausage got made. I didn’t want any part of Annaliese’s miracle.

I decided to stay as far away from her as possible. But seeing as how I lived next door, that wasn’t nearly far enough away and soon my curiosity got the better of me. And then I got to know Annaliese and then I started thinking the most dangerous thing of all: Maybe I wanted her to keep being whatever weird and totally wrong thing she’d come back as.

And worse yet… Maybe I liked her better this way.

Another Little Piece Blurb
On a cool autumn night, Annaliese Rose Gordon stumbled out of the woods and into a high school party. She was screaming. Drenched in blood. Then she vanished.
A year later, Annaliese is found wandering down a road hundreds of miles away. She doesn't know who she is. She doesn't know how she got there. She only knows one thing: She is not the real Annaliese Rose Gordon.
Now Annaliese is haunted by strange visions and broken memories. Memories of a reckless, desperate wish . . . a bloody razor . . . and the faces of other girls who disappeared. Piece by piece, Annaliese's fractured memories come together to reveal a violent, endless cycle that she will never escape—unless she can unlock the twisted secrets of her past.

Author Bio

Kate Karyus Quinn is an avid reader and menthol ChapStick addict. She has lived in California and Tennessee, but recently made the move back to her hometown of Buffalo, New York, with her husband and two children in tow. She promised them wonderful people, amazing food, and weather that would . . . build character. Another Little Piece is her first novel.

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GYDO 2013 Wrap Up

AND GYDO IS OVER! 

I hope you met some fabulous YA authors and found a few more books to add to your TBR! And hopefully win a prize? This was definitely an awesome month and hope y'all had funnnnn! What was your favorite post and what do you hope to see next year?

And in case you missed any, here are all the posts.
Jordana Frankel, Author of THE WARD
Cristin Terrill, Author of ALL OUR YESTERDAYS
Jennifer Rush, Author of ALTERED
Kasie West, Author of PIVOT POINT
Sarah Skilton, Author of BRUISED
Liz Coley, Author of PRETTY GIRL-13
April Tucholke, Author of BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA
Rachel Alpine, Author of CANARY
Amy Christine Parker, Author of GATED
Kelly Fiore, Author of TASTE TEST
Ashley Elston, Author of RULES FOR DISAPPEARING
Lenore Appelhans, Author of MEMORIES OF AFTER
Erin Bowman, Author of TAKEN
Amy Greenfield, Author of CHANTRESS
Miriam Forster, Author of CITY OF A THOUSAND DOLLS
Amanda Sun, Author of INK
Mindy McGinnis, Author of NOT A DROP TO DRINK
Elizabeth May, Author of THE FALCONER
Christina Desir, Author of FAULT LINE
Sara B. Larson, Author of DEFY
Phoebe North, Author of STARGLASS
Romily Bernard, Author of FIND ME
Imogen Howson, Author of LINKED
Josin McQuein, Author of ARCLIGHT
Mary Gray, Author of THE DOLLHOUSE ASYLUM
Bethany Hagen, Author of LANDRY PARK
Lydia Kang, Author of CONTROL

Soooo...yeah! Tons of awesome authors and a lot of giveaways, both INT and US! Can't wait until next year! 

GYDO: Lydia Kang

Lydia Kang, Author of Control

When I starting writing, I didn’t realize that I’d have to become my protagonist’s worst nightmare. Fellow writers would advise, “Don’t go easy on your main character. Put them through hell! Make them suffer! Don’t hold back!” Because a tepid story about a character who’s happy with no problems is, well, boring. As in, watching-paint-dry boring.

So let’s look at some of the terrible things I’ve done to Zelia Benten, the main character of CONTROL:

I’ve made her runty and not too pretty.

I’ve made her a lab science geek. (Okay, that is debatable, since I actually think that’s cool but maybe for Zelia, it didn’t exactly make her social life blossom.)

I tore her family apart.

I gave her a life-threatening illness she has to live with, day in and day out.

I gave her enemies within the one sanctuary where she could be safe.

I made her hair frizzy. Really, really frizzy.

I had this really freaky-looking, monstrous guy chase her in a club. A guy with black teeth.

I revealed secrets about her life that made her question everything she knew and trusted.

I hurt the people she loves in some wretched ways.

Basically, I was Queen Mean to Zelia.

But hey, she’s got her work cut out for her, right? You’ll have to read the book to see if she overcomes these mighty obstacles. Oh, and whether or not she gets a good makeover!*

*which may or may not happen in the book. Okay, okay. She does gets a makeover. Because I love makeovers. But it’s only temporary. J

Control Blurb
When a crash kills their father and leaves them orphaned, Zel knows she needs to protect her sister, Dyl. But before Zel has a plan, Dyl is taken by strangers using bizarre sensory weapons, and Zel finds herself in a safe house for teens who aren’t like any she’s ever seen before—teens who shouldn't even exist. Using broken-down technology, her new friends’ peculiar gifts, and her own grit, Zel must find a way to get her sister back from the kidnappers who think a powerful secret is encoded in Dyl’s DNA.
A spiraling, intense, romantic story set in 2150—in a world of automatic cars, nightclubs with auditory ecstasy drugs, and guys with four arms—this is about the human genetic “mistakes” that society wants to forget, and the way that outcasts can turn out to be heroes.

Author Bio

Lydia Kang is a young adult fiction author, part-time doc, salt-lover, geek-girl, and hyphen addict. She is represented by Eric Myers of the Spieler Agency, and her YA sci-fi novel, CONTROL (Dial Books for Young Readers/Penguin) releases in December 2013 and its sequel CATALYST (Kathy Dawson Books/Penguin) arrives Fall 2014.

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GYDO: Bethany Hagen

Bethany Hagen, Author of Landry Park

I think it's true that most authors write the kind of books we love to read.  Or perhaps, more accurately, most authors write books that combine elements from all the things they love to read.  Some of my favorite books are books where the author blends together things that seem separate, like magic and the mafia in Holly Black's Curse Workers series, or Nazis and Peter Pan like in Code Name Verity.  

The world of Landry Park is a similar blending of elements.  Here's the formula for how the future-historical, science-fiction romance world of Landry Park came to be:

1. Take one lifelong obsession with Gothic novels, most of which feature a prominent or fundamentally important estate like Manderley or Thornfield.

2. Take the classic novels of manners, Jane Austen's in particular, where the conversations happen during country reels and games of whist, and where everyone is always looking their best.

3. Take Gone with the Wind where an entire way of life is interrupted by a rude moral awakening and war.

4. Take Cold War paranoia and obsession with all things nuclear:

et voila!  Landry Park!

So like the Gothic novels and the Austen novels and Gone with the Wind, Landry Park features a stratified social order, where the leisure class is defined by their ties to inherited land and dominance over cultural and political structures.  This is the class my main character is born into, and she spends her days studying philosophy and history, preparing to take over the family estate, and her evenings dressed in ball gowns, promenaded in front of potential husbands.  Which isn't to say that this is a novel about the suppression of women into traditional gender roles (which is certainly an important topic.)  Rather, Madeline, as heir to the most powerful estate in the nation, is being pressured to marry so that she can carry on the Landry family line and ensure the family's survival in the next generation.  The fate of the family and the gentry way of life rests on her shoulders, and that is what makes her discoveries about the world she lives in all the more crucial.  With Madeline lies the power to make the world of gorgeous dresses, sumptuous dinners and glowing blue lanterns grind to a sudden halt.

Landry Park Blurb
Madeline Landry is born into a world of influence and luxury, a world of estates and gardens fueled by nuclear power and maintained by a caste of people called the Rootless. When a Gentry girl is attacked, it is the Rootless who are blamed, even though Madeline knows better.
As she searches for the truth, she can't escape the rumors of revolution and retribution circulating through the ballrooms, and neither can she escape the city's new golden boy, Captain David Dana, who has secrets of his own. Soon, she finds herself forced to choose between her duty and her desires, her ancestral destiny and her conscience, and her choice will shake the very foundations of the world she was born to rule.

Author Bio

​Librarian by day, Bethany Hagen is the author of the forthcoming LANDRY PARK, set to be released from Dial February 4th, 2014. She lives in Kansas City with her husband and two children.

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GYDO: Mary Gray

Mary Gray, Author of Dollhouse Asylum

(In which a character from THE DOLLHOUSE ASYLUM pops in!)

So. Guys! I just got back from the gym, and my endorphins are surging and I just have to tell you about this amazing party coming up. It’s about this book—this book where I happen to do a few cool flips and cartwheels and stuff. I kick the trash out of this freaky little albino, too. Yeah. I heart myself in THE DOLLHOUSE ASYLUM so much. But see, here’s the deal. My friend, Cheyenne’s, the star and she can be so melancholy and somber and gah! I just had to tell you about the party myself, because it’s going to be AWESOME and you really have to come.

It’s October 25^th (read: the Friday before Halloween!) and you get to dress up. You know how THE DOLLHOUSE ASYLUM stars famous, tragic literary couples? Well, at this party you get to dress up as tragic literary characters (like me!) for awards and stuff! *pops gum* *fastens pony-tail* *does the splits* There will be other awards, too, like for the person who brought the most friends, and whoever travels the farthest to Dallas (technically Irving, but blahblahblah). I hear the author’s going to involve the crowd in her presentation, too. And in the devastating chance that you can’t make it, the author’s also inviting readers to take pictures of their tragic literary character costumes at home (you have to dress up for Halloween anyway, right?) and email them to her so she can print them out and bring them to the party! Brilliance, yes? If you don’t know who to be, check out the comments in this link: http://marygraybooks.com/cultdollhouseasylum-giveaway-2000-goodreads-adds-eep/ Some people seriously have some great ideas for costumes. If I had my way, I’d dress up as each of them in twenty minute increments—I’d have hair-dressers, bring my own music, and—*slouches* too bad I have to stay trapped in the book.

Here’s the deal, though. Cheyenne may have an issue with me telling everyone about this early on, but I’VE NEVER BEEN GOOD WITH SUBTLETY. YOU NEED TO COME. PLUS THERE WILL BE A CAKE WITH THE COVER OF THE BOOK. And did I mention it will be the author’s birthday party? I know!

I suppose you want to know my name. And I really wanna tell you. Hm. Eep! I’m not really supposed to say, but, well, I can’t keep it to myself, so I’ll just whisper it. It’s—

*Mary Gray slaps hand over her mouth, because no one can know the tragic literary couples who appear in the book*

*Wiggles loose* Fine, whatever. I won’t tell! But they know about the party now! *laughs* *flees from the author* Tell us who you'd like to dress up as in the comments below!

Dollhouse Asylum Blurb
A virus that had once been contained has returned, and soon no place will be left untouched by its destruction. But when Cheyenne wakes up in Elysian Fields--a subdivision cut off from the world and its monster-creating virus--she is thrilled to have a chance at survival.
At first, Elysian Fields,with its beautiful houses and manicured lawns, is perfect. Teo Richardson, the older man who stole Cheyenne's heart, built it so they could be together. But when Teo tells Cheyenne there are tests that she and seven other couples must pass to be worthy of salvation, Cheyenne begins to question the perfection of his world.
The people they were before are gone. Cheyenne is now "Persephone," and each couple has been re-named to reflect the most tragic romances ever told. Everyone is fighting to pass the test, to remain in Elysian Fields. Teo dresses them up, tells them when to move and how to act, and in order to pass the test, they must play along.
If they play it right, then they'll be safe.
But if they play it wrong, they'll die.

Author Bio

Mary Gray has a fascination with all things creepy. That’s why all her favorite stories usually involve panic attacks and hyperventilating. In real life, she prefers to type away on her computer, ogle over her favorite TV shows, and savor fiction. When she’s not immersed in other worlds, she and her husband get their exercise by chasing after their three children. The Dollhouse Asylum is her first novel.

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GYDO: Josin L. McQuein

Josin L. McQuein, Author of Arclight

WARNING: Copious metaphors and similes ahead. Proceed with caution.

It’s no secret that I’m a nerd. Actually, a nerd wrapped in a dork, who’s fluent in geek, and when I try to explain things, it’s often in nerd-speak, so bear with me as I attempt to sum up the debut moment for writers in two words: Schrödinger’s cat.

(I could be really mean and end my post there, but I’ve already made Nikki wait far too long for this post, and I think if I left her with a single paragraph, she might spontaneously combust. No one wants that, so I’ll explain.)

I’m running on the assumption that most people will have heard of the aforementioned feline at some point, but as a quick summary, it’s quantum-ish and physics-like, and deals with the idea of multiple possible realities coexisting simultaneously.  That is likely the worst phrasing of the principles involved ever typed, but it really does apply to being a new novelist, I promise. To be accurate, quantum physics is about the only way to actually describe the process, because if you ever go through it yourself, you’ll end up feeling like you’ve fallen into another dimension apart from reality.

Having a book published is an odd thing. (Not as odd as spending massive numbers of hours postulating on what would happen if you locked a cat in a box with a cyanide pellet, but odd, none the less.) It’s both a destination and a starting point, making it an endless journey taken in a single step, and in that single step, you travel so far that you can no longer see the place you were standing in the moment before your book went “live.”

The book is done. It’s edited and published, and you feel like you should be at the end of something, but you’ve actually only scaled a wall. As you stand there on top, you occupy this tiny little space that you thought was the goal you wanted to reach, but you’ve not actually started, yet. You’ve gone so far, and you’re still at the beginning because the book is in stasis. It hasn’t interacted with its environment. No one’s read it. It exists, but it doesn’t, because a book isn’t a book, and a story isn’t a story, unless the words have eyes and ears to enter. They can’t live until they’re processed through a human mind.

So, it’s the eve of your “debut” and… nothing. Literally nothing. It’s an equilibrium so perfect that it becomes sensory deprivation. All of your emotions cancel each other out – you’re excited, but terrified; you’re happy, but anxious; you hope people will love your story as much as you do, but you’re worried they’ll hate it. That’s when you look around and realize you’ve become the cat in that ridiculous box – a theory, waiting to be proven.

Then suddenly, the box is open and the book is out there where people can see it and touch it and make their own determinations of its worth. You’re flooded with data based on the observations others have made about this thing that - to them - is new, but to you is so, so old. And while all this is going on, while the focus of your world is being quantified by people you’ve never seen or met, it’s Tuesday to everyone else on the planet. Nothing special, at all. They’ve not been locked in a box, waiting for someone to pull off the lid.

The thing that you made, your creation, which was shaped by your experiences and references is now being subjected the perception of others who have experiences and references of their own.  There’s nothing you can do about it – it’s alive, now, and a living thing won’t always behave in the way you think it should. Assumptions will imbue lines with meaning you never intended, and the familiarity of a character you think you made up will hit chords with people you’ll never have a name or face for. A throw-away detail you added for texture becomes the obsession of someone who insists it must have purpose.

Your story starts to change; it’s not only yours anymore. It belongs to every reader who absorbs the words. It’s gone airborne, mutating as it’s passed along, but it’s alive – definitely alive – and that’s what matters. That’s what having a novel debut is like – it begins as a cat sealed in a box with something that could kill it, and turns into a contagion infecting the imaginations and emotions of those who set it free by reading it.

Maybe that’s daunting. Maybe that’s terrifying. But what is writing if not creation? And creation is a daunting and terrifying prospect.

I’ve already said it, but being published is just plain odd. You’re putting something into the world that’s never been there before. It feels like going insane and welcoming the madness. And it never stops.

I’ve got two books out this year – both YA, but in vastly different genres. One’s got monsters, the other has something truly scary: humans who act monstrously. So, in effect, I’ve got two debuts. I never really planned it that way. The fact that they’re coming out so close together is a quirk of publishing schedules, but it’s proven to me that the strangeness of waiting for the book’s release isn’t just novice jitters.

I’ve been asked what’s behind the trend of authors putting out more than one book their debut year, and honestly, I didn’t realize it was a trend, but if I had to guess, I’d say it’s a matter of momentum. Back to the geek-speak: With each new book, you climb back in the box and watch it fill with infinite possibilities until it bursts into reality. All of the expectation and anxiety have been building up like potential energy stored for the moment and then BOOM, you’re in motion, and you don’t want to stop.

It’s easier to keep going because then you don’t have time to think about all those things that make the process feel so weird. Eventually you’ll get your legs under you. All that motion, all that speed, has created the inertia of a new world populated with your ideas. The uneasy tilt will equalize again, and the process starts over. New idea, new book, new journey, and you’re still standing there, at the beginning and the end on the cusp of every possibility.

So what’s it like to be a new author with two books coming out in one year? It’s slaying the dragon and flying off into the unknown. It’s being the hero and the villain at the same time. It’s a fantasy come true and a fiction that’s edging its way into reality. It’s the best and scariest and most confusing and awesome thing in the world.

Basically, it’s really, really cool.

Arclight Blurb
(Check out her other book, Premeditated which releases in Oct.)
No one crosses the wall of light . . . except for one girl who doesn’t remember who she is, where she came from, or how she survived. A harrowing, powerful debut thriller about finding yourself and protecting your future—no matter how short and uncertain it may be. 
The Arclight is the last defense. The Fade can’t get in. Outside the Arclight’s border of high-powered beams is the Dark. And between the Light and the Dark is the Grey, a narrow, barren no-man’s-land. That’s where the rescue team finds Marina, a lone teenage girl with no memory of the horrors she faced or the family she lost. Marina is the only person who has ever survived an encounter with the Fade. She’s the first hope humanity has had in generations, but she could also be the catalyst for their final destruction. Because the Fade will stop at nothing to get her back. Marina knows it. Tobin, who’s determined to take his revenge on the Fade, knows it. Anne-Marie, who just wishes it were all over, knows it.
When one of the Fade infiltrates the Arclight and Marina recognizes it, she will begin to unlock secrets she didn’t even know she had. Who will Marina become? Who can she never be again?

Author Bio

Josin L. McQuein was born and raised in Texas. Now she and her three crazy dogs live in a town so small the buffalo outnumber the people, and things like subways or consistent Internet access are fictional creations of a faraway fantasyland known as civilization. Arclight is her first book.

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GYDO: Imogen Howson

Imogen Howson, Author of Linked

The magical thing about writing fiction is that you’re creating it from scratch.  It feels as if it comes from nothing—from imagination and pen on blank paper (or pixels in an empty Word document).  From scraps of dreams you had months ago, and weird pictures in your head, and times when the sun got in your eyes and you looked at something ordinary and saw it, just for a moment, as something else.

Except that, although it feels like that, actually it’s not true.  Fiction doesn’t come from nothing.  Those dreams and weird little scraps of interesting thoughts and all the stuff that rises up through the swamp of your subconscious—they all come from stuff in your real life, filtered through, not created by, your imagination.

It’s easy to forget that, as a writer.  You get one awesome idea, and it becomes a book.  And you kind of think all you need to do to write the next book is hook onto the next awesome idea.  And it’ll come along, right?  Because they always have before.

But writing a book doesn’t use up just that one awesome idea: it uses up a whole store of different ideas you’ve been accumulating, sometimes for years. 

The main idea of LINKED was its original title, Telepathic Twins in Space.  But that wasn’t the only idea I used for it.  I used a version of an idea I’d written about in an as-yet-unpublished short story years ago, and I used a collection of images that had been swimming in my head for ages, and that I hadn’t yet been able to turn into a story, and I used an area near my house that, if you look at it the right way, looks like the landscape of an alien planet.  And I used bits of how I felt as a teenager at school, and bits of stuff that I’d read about abuse victims, and cognitive dissonance, and human rights issues, and politics.

So, once I’d written LINKED, plus its sequel, UNRAVEL, I’d used up not just one or two ideas, but most of the whole stock of ideas I’d been accumulating for ages.  And when I came to start a new book I felt kind of…sucked dry.  Like I’d used up my whole store of imagination, and (the writer’s worst fear) maybe I couldn’t do it any more.

So I took a break.  I read a lot.  I picked up running again, which I hadn’t done for years.  I baked, and read recipe books, and had a spa break with friends, and went to two writers’ conferences, and bought a language course in basic (very basic) Arabic, and had a day’s sightseeing in Berlin.  I’m planning on booking myself onto a falconry course in the next couple of months, and possibly doing some rock climbing (despite my fear of heights).

Partly because it’s good to do stuff that’s not just staring at my laptop screen.  And partly because all this stuff—whether it’s directly to do with writing or not—is restocking my ideas bank, refilling my creative well.

I am writing again now (25,000 words into my next book), and I have plenty of ideas all over again.  And if my next heroine ends up going to a planet that’s like a huge sauna, or takes up baking, or has to run a marathon, or fight Nazism, or speak Arabic, or fly birds of prey…well, you know where it came from!

Linked Blurb
Elissa used to have it all: looks, popularity, and a bright future. But for the last three years, she’s been struggling with terrifying visions, phantom pains, and mysterious bruises that appear out of nowhere. 
Finally, she’s promised a cure: minor surgery to burn out the overactive area of her brain. But on the eve of the procedure, she discovers the shocking truth behind her hallucinations: she’s been seeing the world through another girl’s eyes. 
Elissa follows her visions, and finds a battered, broken girl on the run. A girl—Lin—who looks exactly like Elissa, down to the matching bruises. The twin sister she never knew existed. 
Now, Elissa and Lin are on the run from a government who will stop at nothing to reclaim Lin and protect the dangerous secrets she could expose—secrets that would shake the very foundation of their world. 

Author Bio

When Imogen Howson was a child, she loved reading so much she not only read in bed, at the table and in the bath, but in the shower and - not so successfully - on her bicycle. She enjoyed books in a slightly unorthodox way, too - many of her childhood books still have ragged edges where she tore paper from the margins in order to eat it.

When Imogen and her younger sister became bored on family outings, Imogen entertained them both with stories about fairies or, in defiance of biology, "the people inside your body" who made everything work.

Imogen's favorite stories are still those that ignore biology, reality and the known laws of nature. She writes romantic fantasy and science fiction, and makes liberal use of the substance known as handwavium. She is the winner of the 2008 Elizabeth Goudge Award.
Imogen lives near Sherwood Forest in England, with her partner and their two daughters. She still reads in most places, but nowadays she prefers Cheddar cheese and endless cups of coffee to paper.

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GYDO: Romily Bernard

Romily Bernard, Author of Find Me

An Uncomfortable Realization

I’m not sure if it’s a sign of arrival or imminent collision when a VP at your company swings through the cubicle ghetto to tell you how “great” it is that you’re getting published. I’m really not sure what to make of my reaction either. What should’ve been a pleasant, but forgettable exchange turned into a sweaty, stammery mess.

In other words, it was completely me and another example about why I should never be allowed out in public. How is it possible that I am smart enough to drive a car, read through a contract, and hold down a job…yet I never considered people were going to read my stuff? Even for me, that’s pretty asinine and, when I call something asinine, you can take it to the bank. I know about this stuff.

Now where was I?

Oh, yeah. I was melting down in my cubicle because not only did said VP want to congratulate me, but he also pulled the dreaded follow-up: “So what’s the book about?”

This is never a good topic for thriller writers, but I pulled out my elevator pitch and flung it at him anyway: “Teenage hacker trying to get out of the game gets blackmailed into finding a dead classmate’s rapist.”

VP’s mouth twisted like he’d just swallowed a thumbtack. “Wow. Um, and the next one?”

Crap. Crap. Crap. Accompanying my terror sweats, there was now a rushing in my ears—a sound I could only assume was my corporate career circling the toilet.

“It’s about a serial killer.”

VP blinked, stared at me, blinked again. “Wow, I would never have guessed you were…into that stuff.”

Into that stuff? At first, I was irritated and then I realized ‘oh, wait, I kinda am.’ I have a (perhaps unnatural) attachment to any form of forensic file television show and I have been known to argue the merits of various body disposal sites and methods with my critique partners.

For the record, the lovely Jennifer McQuiston recommends dumping bodies in the Virginia woods while the equally lovely Sally Kilpatrick recommends a shovel and the back forty. Personally, I’d use a metric ton of diesel fuel and a dumpster.

Barbecue anyone?

Heh. Not after that you won’t.

Aaannnyyywwwaaayyy, so, you know, my VP might’ve had a point about me being “into that stuff,” but, by now, we’re just staring at each other.

“So where do you come up with your ideas?” he asks.

I grin really wide. “Mostly in staff meetings.”

‘Cause as long as you’re going to be the weird girl no one wants to talk to, you might as well be the weird girl who gets out of that weekly torture.

As always, a big HUGE thank-you to Nikki for having me and (so I don’t feel so alone) anyone else ever confessed an uncomfortable secret?

Find Me Blurb
"Find Me." These are the words written on Tessa Waye's diary. The diary that ends up with Wick Tate. But Tessa's just been found...dead.
Wick has the right computer-hacking skills for the job, but little interest in this perverse game of hide-and-seek. Until her sister Lily is the next target. Then Griff, trailer-park boy next door and fellow hacker, shows up, intent on helping Wick.
Is a happy ending possible with the threat of Wick's deadbeat dad returning, the detective hunting him sniffing around Wick instead, and a killer taunting her at every step?
Foster child. Daughter of a felon. Loner hacker girl. Wick has a bad attitude and sarcasm to spare.
But she's going to find this killer no matter what.
Because it just got personal.

Author Bio

I graduated from Georgia State University with a Literature degree. Since then, I’ve worked as a riding instructor, cell phone salesgirl, personal assistant, groom, exercise rider, accounting assistant, and, during a very dark time, customer service rep.So don’t let anyone tell you a BA degree will keep you unemployed.

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GYDO: Phoebe North

Phoebe North, Author of Starglass

The first draft of Starglass was called Daughter of Earth and was substantially different from the version that was eventually published three years later! In Starglass, the novel-proper begins with Terra Fineberg's mother's funeral at age twelve, until we shift to her present day at age 15, on the eve of her vocational ceremony, when she'll receive her job on the Asherah and begin the process of becoming an adult. Though Terra's difficult home situation was present right from the start, the worldbuilding, character relationships, and backstory would all need significant development. I thought it might be interesting to share the first scene of the very first draft of Starglass here on Fiction Freak, along with my comments! Please keep in mind that this was a draft. Awkward dialogue abounds. :)

(CLICK TO EMBIGGEN) 

Starglass 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.

Author Bio

Phoebe North has an MFA in poetry from the University of Florida. She lives in New York State with her husband and her cat. Her first novel, Starglass, is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers in July of 2013.

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