Second Skin Blog Tour. Author Interview Exchange: Joy Preble
I'm thrilled to welcome back Joy Preble, an author I've featured several times on my blog….cause she's just that cool. Joy pulled double duty serving as both mine and Kitty Keswick's Class of 2k10 mentor from the Class of 2k9. It's been wonderful to have her as a resource, sounding board, keen listener during this crazy publishing adventure. Joy was kind enough to read Second Skin and provide a book blurb quote, she's also a huge Buffy fan – how could you NOT love this woman? Devour my interview with Joy – then comment to enter the draw! Deets at the end of this post.
In your debut year, your book launched as part of the Class of 2K9, an author collective. How did this help you in terms of marketing, as well as networking in the young adult fiction community?
The Class of 2k9 was invaluable to me. Not only did we promote together but I also gained a group of writer friends who were experiencing the industry for the first time together. In publishing, you mostly learn as you do and so particularly for me, with a September release that year, I was able to learn so much. Often, I didn't even know what I supposed to be asking for from my publisher until others talked about it. (i.e. – promotion at conferences like TLA and ALA or trade shows like BEA) And each author in 2k9 came with his/her own set of contacts. So my network grew. When I proposed a panel for NCTE 2010 the next year, I had many authors to ask to participate. Especially for those of us with smaller publishers, these connections are crucial. When you're new, there really is strength in numbers. Even when you're not so new. A handful of us still promote together. At least four of us blog on YA Outside the Lines. Janet Fox (who ended up the Class of 2010) and I have done many conferences and panels together. My 'agent sisters' Lauren Strasnick and Kathryn Fitzmaurice remain crucial touchstones in my writing life. (and my personal life!) And I'm super -amped to finally meet your fellow Canadian, 2k9er Megan Crewe, who is coming here to Houston in April for Houston Teen Book Con to promote her new dystopian, The Way We Fall. So yeah, I'd be a pile of nothing without my 2k9 buds.
Your Dreaming Anastasia series blends Russian historical characters, such as the Grand Duchess Anastasia with characters from folklore – Baba Yaga the witch in the first book and a Rusalka, or mermaid, in sequel. What drew you to write such a compelling blend of history, fantasy, and lore?
I'd been fascinated with the Romanovs for many years. My maternal grandmother was from Russia, so that sparked the initial attraction to the culture. In fact, I just wrote about that in YA Outside the Lines. ( http://yaoutsidethelines.blogspot.com... ) But interestingly, the first full draft of Dreaming Anastasia included very little Russian folklore/fairy tales! My agent at that time suggested that what was missing was a way to ground the magic in organically in all things Russian. And from there came the newer draft of the story: that Anastasia had been spirited away by Baba Yaga. That her secrets were kept by her magic matryoshka doll. That Anne and Anastasia both were a retelling of the Baba Yaga-centric tale, Vasilisa the Brave. And on from there.
Honestly? I've often said that if I'd known what I was doing, I might not have attempted such a complex genre blend. But I was new. So that's what happened. And the more I wrote the story that way, the more fitting it all became. I'm very excited to let everyone see how all of these elements tie together in Anastasia Forever, which is book 3.
The theme of my recent release, Second Skin, is that of facing your fears. Come on, fess up….what are you scared of? Does Anne share any of your own personal fears?
Hmmm…. I am definitely afraid of failure although I embrace it because that's how success gets here! And I'm a scaredy cat when it comes to change, even though once again, I do embrace what it brings. Beyond that, I'm not big on heights, but it's not a crazy phobia. And spiders creep me out. Anne definitely shares my fear of failure! And she's not so happy about embracing the many changes in her world, either. Of course, her changes are pretty large scale… like her current transformation into magic girl/witch!
Haunted introduces a love triangle between Anne, her Russian hottie, Ethan, and "a sweet lifeguard" Ben. What do you think readers love about the ever popular love triangle in young adult fiction (my series has one as well!)?
You know, I've had many reader comments about the Anne/Ethan/Ben triangle. Some readers are like "How could Anne possibly go to Ben after Ethan?" But as I was writing Haunted I really believed that she would. She was trying to erase the craziness that Ethan had brought into her world. Ben is just so normal! Beyond that, I think there's something very romantically attractive to having two guys vying for a girl's affections! Who wouldn't want two handsome hotties fighting for her? Although it is not the main conflict of the series like it is in say, Twilight. Anne's main conflicts have to do with her magic and her super hero mission. The romance is secondary.
Haunted is told from both Anne's and Ethan's points of view. Was this challenging to write/plot?
Yes and yes. Especially in a first person, present tense novel, it takes a bit to keep the voices consistent. But Ethan is still old school in many regards so his speech patterns are different than Anne's, as is his view of the world. His sentences are often wordier, his internal dialogue more angsty and more connected to events of the past. As for plotting, the trick has always been to keep the story moving forward and not just repeat a scene through the other character's POV. As with anything with story telling, some readers love seeing the different POV's. Others prefer only one person narrating. With this series, I always felt that the way Anne sees what's happening and the way Ethan sees it are so different that I wanted the reader to be privy to both. And especially in the final book, Anastasia Forever, it's crucial to have both points of view. Particularly when Anne and Ethan are tossed back into the past… more specifically, Ethan's romantic past! I can't wait for everyone to read those scenes!
You have a new series in the works and I'm so keen to read it! Can you share a few details?
I'm excited, too! As I finish up the Dreaming Anastasia series once Anastasia Forever is out in August from Sourcebooks, I will be turning my attentions to The Sweet Dead Life, which will be out from Soho Press (the new Soho Teen imprint) in May, 2013. The Sweet Dead Life is set here in Texas where I live. The basic premise is as follows: Sixteen year old stoner Casey returns from a fatal car accident as his dying sister's guardian angel and solves a vast family mystery.
I love, love, love this book! First of all, it's funny. Casey has, um, not lost all of his human faults and foibles, like his taste for marijuana. And now that he's an angel, he's a lot more attractive to the opposite sex! The book itself is actually narrated by his sister Jenna, which was an interesting challenge since the story is about her brother but also lots of fun because Jenna is quite the feisty thirteen year old girl. And there is a third main character, EMT/bartender Amber Velasco, who has a few big secrets of her own.
I'm working with my former editor from Sourcebooks, Daniel Ehrenhaft, who's now the senior acquisitions editor at Soho Teen. I am seriously thrilled for everyone to read the first six books in the imprint. If you'd like a taste, just go to www.sohoteen.com and click on Sampler. You can read about 30 pages of each novel!
Oh, 30 pages? Heading there now!
CONTEST: Comments on this post will be entered in a draw for a signed copy of HAUNTED and a HAUNTED t shirt! Contest closes March 22nd.
I'll leave you with Joy's blog link where she's interviewing me today and the booktrailer for Haunted:
