Author Interview: Kimberly Derting!

Recently, I had the amazing opportunity to ask Kimberly Derting, author of The Body Finder a few questions. If you haven't read The Body Finder, do it. Seriously, I loved it so much.


First a little background info:


Synopsis:
Violet Ambrose is grappling with two major issues: Jay Heaton and her morbid secret ability. While the sixteen-year-old is confused by her new feelings for her best friend since childhood, she is more disturbed by her “power” to sense dead bodies—or at least those that have been murdered. Since she was a little girl, she has felt the echoes the dead leave behind in the world . . . and the imprints that attach to their killers.

Violet has never considered her strange talent to be a gift; it mostly just led her to find dead birds her cat had tired of playing with. But now that a serial killer has begun terrorizing her small town, and the echoes of the local girls he’s claimed haunt her daily, she realizes she might be the only person who can stop him.

Despite his fierce protectiveness over her, Jay reluctantly agrees to help Violet on her quest to find the murderer—and Violet is unnerved to find herself hoping that Jay’s intentions are much more than friendly. But even as she’s falling intensely in love, Violet is getting closer and closer to discovering a killer . . . and becoming his prey herself.


Now, onward to the interview:


Can you describe The Body Finder in a sentence?


KD: A girl who can find dead bodies and the boy who loves her.


Violet's ability is very unique, what was the inspiration for it?


KD: The idea behind The Body Finder actually came from my husband, who said to me (one day while we were driving): 'What if there was a kid who could find dead bodies?' Of course, in his head it was a middle school boy, because that's how he thinks. But I loved the idea...as long as it was a girl, and she was in high school, and had a love interest. It took some time to hammer out the rules of her creepy ability (how she would find the dead bodies), but once I did, I was obsessed with getting her story on paper. To this day though, my husband will still refer to himself as my co-author!


How do you think you'd react if you were in Violet's position? Go after the killer, or find someplace to hide?


KD: Run. And. Hide! I am definitely not the heroic type, I'll push you out of the way to save myself from a bee. Seriously! So, a serial killer? Please...I'd be running for the hills!!!


Which character do you relate to most?


KD: Well, since I'm not chasing after killers any time soon, it's definitely not Violet. And as much as I hate to admit this (because she's so snarky), I think it has to be Chelsea...especially the high-school me. She's the say-it-like-it-is kind of girl even when people don't always want to hear-it-like-it-is! And because I enjoy writing her so much, Chelsea plays a much bigger role in the second book, Desires of the Dead.


Are there any books or authors that have inspired your writing?




KD: I think my first real inspiration was Stephen King, mostly because I wanted to do what he did, scare the pee out of people! Literally. When I was in junior high, we had a movie night at our house and watched The Shining. One of the girls was so scared that she wet her pants, and I realized right then and there...I wanted to do that too. Not pee my pants, but definitely scare someone that much.


How has the writing process been for you?


KD: I'm just gonna start by saying that I LOVE MY JOB!!! To the point that I become a little obsessive while I'm in the throes of writing a book. I'd say 'ask my family' but I'm afraid of the details they'd reveal: that I've forgotten to pick up my daughter from the school bus (thank god for helpful neighbors!), that I've resorted to eating Skittles as a meal more than once, that showering becomes 'optional.' Umm, yeah, I sometimes need to be reminded to 'take a break.'


The cover for Desires of the Dead was just released--it's gorgeous, by the way--can you tell us a little about what we should expect in the next installment?


KD: I can share the jacket copy from the ARCs:


When Violet Ambrose's morbid ability to sense the echoes of those who've been murdered leads her to the body of a young boy, she draws the attention of the FBI. She is reluctantly pulled into an investigation that will endanger more than just her secret...but her relationship and possibly her life as well.


Thanks so much for answering my questions! Any last words?


KD: Just thanks so much for having me here, I had a blast!!!




Thanks again to Kimberly for stopping by, and check out some of her websites below:

Blog | Official Website | Twitter | Facebook | Myspace | Goodreads

"Listen To Me Now"-Matt Hires,

Part Three of the Infinite Day: Interview with Rebecca Maizel!

I had the amazing opportunity to interview the author of Infinite Days, Rebecca Maizel. She's such a nice person and she wrote an awesome book! I couldn't really think of questions-I never can when I need to-so kindly pardon the clichéness of it all.

1. Can you describe your book in one sentence?

500 year old vampire gets a second chance at life and love. 

2. Vampires are the 'hot' thing right now, what makes the vampires in Infinite Days, and more specifically Lenah, different?

Well, Lenah isn’t a vampire for the majority of the book. She wants to be human - that’s her innermost desire. In my vampire lore, the older a vampire is, the more crazy they become - they literally lose their minds. Everything is a curse and painful. Lenah is a victim of her own existence. Every person out there has done something they aren’t proud of. And whatever that thing is, they have to live with it - forever. That’s Lenah but times about a million! She’s a human girl dealing with the mind of someone very old and with a very evil past.  

3. If Infinite Days was optioned for a movie, who would you want to play the main characters? 

OMG. I love this question. But I don’t want to say because I want you to be able to read the book and decide for yourself what these characters look like. If you find me on twitter (RebeccaJoym) and ask I’ll tell you through a Direct Message or if you e-mail me at RebeccaMaizelAuthor@gmail.com 

I will tell you that for a very, very long time the character Tracy looked a lot like Ashley Tisdale. :)

4. Can you tell us a little about the writing process for Infinite Days? 

I started to free write one day. I literally sat down, started writing and Lenah’s voice came through, I let her tell the story and 8 months later, I had a draft of Infinite Days. My writing process is a bit snarky and I drive myself nuts. There’s a lot of whining. I tend to fill up notebooks with handwritten musings, and then I try to piece them together in a word document. I always try to sludge through one full draft on the computer. Then, I print out the word document and write allllll over it, edit the living hell out of it. Then I go back to the word document, implement my edits and start again…and again…and again… 

I also improv my characters. Seriously! I try to do this when no one is home but I improvise scenes as a character. That way, I am acting the scene through that character’s eyes and my behavior, my reaction, my word choice is inevitably indicative of that character. Anyone with an acting background might want to try this out.  

5. Have any specific authors or books influenced your style?

Amy Hempel’s Collection of Short Fiction. She is hands down the most brilliant writer in history. Please run SERIOUSLY RUN and find “The Most Girl Part of You” or “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried.” She’s a master.  

Alice Hoffman’s Turtle Moon was a big influence on me. Her writing in general is incredible.  

Thanks so much for answering my questions; any last words? 

I hope you all enjoy Infinite Days as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it – please feel free to e-mail me anytime!

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Thanks Rebecca! I loved reading your answers, then reading the book, then seeing the answers in a whole new way. Very interesting!

"Georgia"-Alex Day,

Author Interview: Cathleen Davitt Bell!

Staysi and I were lucky enough to meet Ms. Bell at the massive signing in New York, and she agreed to answer some questions for me. Enjoy!

-When did you realize that you wanted to write for a living?

I always knew I wanted to write. I was so little when I started thinking about it that I didn’t so much have a concept of making a living at it. I was more attracted to the idea of the furious scribbling, the hours of sequestering myself, the emergence with something that has been transformed. I really loved the image created by Louisa May Alcott in Little Women of Jo March hiding out in the attic with a bowl of apples and a sheaf of paper, coming downstairs ink stained, with her hair askew, a story in her hands.

-Does anyone really stand out for inspiring you to become an author?

My father was a professor, and I was very impressed that he had a book. And I LOVED seeing my own name in the dedication. But my real inspiration is the experience I had reading. When I finish a good book, I am so excited to get down to writing myself. When a writer is really good, they make it look easy...and that makes me want to give it a try myself. 

- Slipping is a ghost story, so is there any ghost story that truly terrified you?

Many ghost stories have scared me—and I scared myself a little as I was writing Slipping––but the real live ghost story that actually happened to me wasn’t scary at all. It was funny. It involved my father who died, his house, and Roto Rooter. When I’ve done school visits and kids have visited my website, this is the story they ask me to tell. If any of your readers want to check it out, you can get to it here: http://www.cathleendavittbell.com/myghoststory.html. 

-What are you currently reading?

I’m reading a lovely book about a boy who escapes feeling like a loser in eighth grade by stepping out of himself and helping others. It’s by my friend (get ready, she has a big name...) Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovitch (she goes by Gbemi). She and I have kids who are the same age and have been in the same class two years in a row at school. Since I’ve known her, this book, her first, has been in production, and it’s so fun and fantastic to read it now. It’s called 8th Grade Super Zero and you can read more about it at www.olugbemisola.com.

Before that I’d read Lorrie Moore’s Gate at the Top of the Stairs, about a girl in college who babysits for a family that adopts a baby girl and then has to let her go. It was heartbreaking.

And before that I read Justine Lardbalestier’s LIAR, which was chilling. At one point, I literally threw the book across the room. At another point, I felt like it was inspiring me to write in an entirely new way. By the end I had that fantastic What the Heck? feeling I used to get watching the Twilight Zone, when the nee-nee-nee-nee music came on at the end: totally freaked out.

-Now a tough one, what is your all-time favorite book and who is your favorite author?

I mentioned above that my dad was a professor. Well, we had the entire canon of British Literature in our living room in cheap paperback editions that publishers mail professors for free, hoping they’ll make all their students buy them for class. (My dad had the American canon in his office.) Every time I was looking for a good book, he’d go to the shelf behind the piano and pull down a dusty paperback that would inevitably have yellowing pages and some sort of oil painting on the front, and tell me to get reading. I really can’t say that I’ve found any books in my life that can beat that first reading of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. I reread it a few years ago and found the writing alarming and clear and fresh. Jane was such a complicated child — angry, rebellious, full of hope and faith that there can be more. And then when she grows up, she’s tamed, but she never loses her fire.

I don’t know that that’s my favorite book of all time though. When I was sixteen I read my mom’s old edition of the complete works of Jane Austen straight through. I’ve read some of those novels over and over. Persuasion remains my favorite. I go back to them again and again and find something new every time. The love stories are what you remember and then they fade and you’re left with the perfection of pacing, of dialog, of holding back of information, of getting every single motive and emotion just right and in a not-a-big-deal kind of way. 

 -Random: Who is your favorite character(book/tv/movie/comic/cartoon)?

Maybe Sidney Bristow in Alias. How cool was she? I find that when I watch movies or TV shows with really cool characters in them I feel like I am just a little bit cooler myself. Does this happen to everyone?

-What's one thing that the readers don't know about you?

I played Ultimate Frisbee in college and I was horrible. I was team captain and had a great time even though I could barely throw the frisbee in a straight line (everyone else who qualified was away on study abroad). 

-Can you tell us a little about your inspiration for Little Blog on the Prairie, and about the story itself?

When I was nine, I amused myself in a car trip designing a vacation camp I thought would be awesome: you’d go to a farm, get dressed up in old fashioned clothes, and live like you were on the frontier. One day two summers ago, I was walking down the street remembering that idea and I started to laugh thinking about what a modern teenager might think of that experience. Thus, Little Blog on the Prairie was born.

In the book, a 14-year-old girl named Gen is forced by her mom to go to family frontier camp. She has to leave everything she loves behind––the computer, the phone, shorts, her phone. The cabin they’re staying in doesn’t have screens, the bugs are bad, the chickens are on the war path and don’t even get her started on the outhouse.

She maintains her sanity only by texting her friends, and one of them starts a blog...which goes viral. To find out the rest, you’ll have to read the book! And do — it’s fun and funny! (I hope!)

-Any message for your fans?

Read Gen’s blog!! It’s a total experiment and I want to see if it’s fun or builds any kind of momentum. I’m thinking that if it works—if people are reading and commenting––I’ll try more things like it. Maybe a whole book as a blog, or a series of stories.  Gen’s at www.GensLittleBlogonthePrairie.blogspot.com. Happy reading!


A huge thank you to Cathleen for taking the time to answer my questions amidst preparing to release her new book. Little Blog on the Prairie will be released on May 11, 2010; make sure you grab a copy from your local B&N (or bookstore of choice) and follow Gen's journey on her blog linked above! Also, check out her official website here!