Guest Post: C.C. Hunter & International Contest!

Hey guys! Today we'll be having a guest post from the fabulous C.C. Hunter who has surpassed all of my expectations with her debut YA novel, Born at Midnight!

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The one question I always get asked is how much of myself goes into creating characters. Do I draw aspects of my own personality when fleshing out the people who star in my books? Do I give my characters my own flaws, and weaknesses, and perhaps my strengths? Do I force my characters to take upon my own bad habits? Are my characters simply reflections of myself?

The answer is yes . . . and no.

Everything I write isn’t a reflection of my own life. I haven’t faced the same kind of things that my character Kylie Galen faces in Born At Midnight. However, I’ll admit my personal experiences not only show up in my work, they help me create real characters and write real emotion. For example, while I’ve never seen a vampire with blood dripping from his chin the way Kylie does in the book, when I worked at a restaurant years ago, I was confronted by an angry credit-card thief with a knife large enough to skin Bambi. And the I-could-die emotion and fear--the uncertainty of not knowing if my underwear was going to come through the situation clean--was the emotional force for a lot of the scary scenes in the book. So when writing about fear, lost love, disappointment, I recall a time in my own life that I felt drowned by that same emotion and it helps me write a scene that reads true.

Now for the five similarities between me and my characters:

1) My ability to laugh in the face of adversity.

I think it’s just in my genes, because most of my family is like this. We love to laugh during good times; but we laugh harder during stressful times. It’s as if we follow that old adage, “If you can laugh at it, you can live with it.” The hardest I’ve ever laughed was at a funeral. I give this humorous way of viewing life to all my characters. The funny moments in Born at Midnight mostly stems from my characters’ ability to laugh during tough times--to laugh at themselves and laugh at their mistakes.

2) My parents divorced at sixteen like Kylie’s parents.

One of the times that I both laughed and cried a lot was during my parents’ divorce. I remember feeling as if someone had walked into my life and yanked the foundation out from under me. I was angry, and hurt. How could they do this to me? I couldn’t understand how they could just stop loving each other. I felt they were acting childish and as if I was the grownup. And I saw for the first time their flaws, and imperfections. When I decided to have Kylie’s parents getting a divorce, I immediately remembered the emotional storm that I felt and it all went into the book.

3) Like Miranda, one of Kylie’s new roommates at Shadow Falls Camp, I’m dyslexic. My son is also dyslexic.

I didn’t learn to read until I was in the third grade. School was hard for me. I couldn’t seem to get the written words to stick in my brain. I often got things backwards, like I’d call the backyard, the yardback, and when people would snicker, I still couldn’t figure out what was so funny. Things like knowing my right from my left was nearly impossible. It didn’t help that I could write with both my hands. When I write, I still leave out words, and I’m still a terrible speller. I have critique partners who read and proof my work. But I don’t think I’ve accomplished what I have in spite of dyslexia, I think I’m accomplished it in part due to it. Dyslexics are very intuitive. We tend to pick up on emotion and I think this has helped me in my writing. Also being dyslexic, I make a lot of mistakes, but I learned to keep going and I think perseverance is what helped me keep writing and growing as a writer/story teller.

4) Like Kylie, I too felt a bit invisible in High School.

I wasn’t really bullied, but I just wasn’t noticed. Didn’t belong to any ‘In” group. I had a few friends, and like me, they were mostly quiet and went through school unnoticed. Now, I’m so not like this anymore. I think my shyness was in part due to my being dyslexic. But that feeling of never really fitting in played a big part in creating Kylie’s character.

5) Like Holiday and Kylie in Born at Midnight, I have experienced that feeling of being visited by a ghostly presence.

I know, it sounds crazy, but it’s happened to me several times. The first time I was only ten. My great grandmother had died and a few days later, I woke up to her hovering over my bed. She was wearing this beautiful gown and it flowed back and forth, so much so that I didn’t think she had legs. She said she just wanted me to know that she was fine, and that someday I too would have this beautiful gown. My parents told me it was just dream, but I could swear I was awake.

Another time I was grown and I was visiting a war museum. I was writing articles for magazines about the museum and I had to take pictures for the articles. For some reason, I was hit by this overwhelming sense of sadness when I first walked in, and I couldn’t help but cry. And then when I was taking pictures of a bloody kimono that had been stripped off a dead Japanese woman, the batteries in my large flash camera burst. I blamed it on faulty batteries, and it didn’t occur to me that it could be anything else. Well, not until I went back a month later to get the photos that I hadn’t been able to take the first time. The moment I walked into that room, I was hit by the same sad feeling. But it got really strange when I went to photograph the kimono, and my flash wouldn’t work again. My hubby removed the batteries, thinking they were bad, and put them in his pocket. Before he walked away from the display case, the batteries burst in his pocket. It was pretty darn scary. We left, and I didn’t try to photograph the kimono again.

So what about you guys? Anyone out there believe in ghosts? Have you ever felt the spooky feeling as if you aren’t alone?

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And now, for the contest! It's going to be international and all you have to do is comment on this guest post and comment on my review of Born Midnight. Then fill in the form below. Up for grabs is a bag full of BAM-related swag!

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Check Me Out!!! Guest Post at Holly Cupala's Blog!

Hey guys!

I'm participating in a 'What YA Bloggers Want' guest post feature at Holly Cupala's blog! She's the author of the totally awesome TELL ME A SECRET!!! Here's my guest post:
http://www.hollycupala.com/2010/11/ya-bloggers-wantreal-issues-fun-factor.html

Go check it out! And say hi to Holly as well =))) She's AWESOME.

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Guest Post: Anastasia Hopcus

Hey guys! Here's Anastasia Hopcus, author of Shadow Hills for a guest post! She's writing about nightmares...oohhhh creepy right?

Nightmares

I think the reason dreams play such a large role in Phe’s life, and therefore in
Shadow Hills, is because I’ve always had such strange, vivid, and often frightening
dreams myself. I don’t have any of the usual ‘anxiety’ dreams---I don’t dream about
falling or showing up late for a test I haven’t studied for. Instead, I tend to have creepy
nightmares where I'm being chased by people who are trying to kill me.

Just recently I had a dream where I was in a mall looking for a killer (I blame
Kimberly Derting for that part). His modus operandi was to bury his new girlfriends,
once he tired of them, in his dead wife’s grave. So I’m walking through the mall, and I
come to a cemetery next to Macy’s---no joke---and I wander through it. There is still a
roof and walls surrounding it, but the graveyard itself is all green grass, trees, and rolling
hills dotted with tombstones. Then, at a distance I see this guy pushing legs into an
overstuffed coffin. I’m about to run away to call the police when he spots me across the
graveyard. I try to seem like I was looking at something nearby and not him. This
doesn’t appear to be fooling him, and he starts stalking toward me, shovel in hand.

I try to remain calm and casual acting. I turn away from him and head toward the
more populated food court area of the mall. He comes after me, still dragging his shovel.
The metal scrapes along the tile floor, eliciting this awful screeching sound. I can feel
him getting closer, and I run to the condiments area looking for some kind of weapon.
There is nothing remotely scary, so I go for a straw. I turn just as he is swinging the
shovel at me and I duck. I can feel the movement of the air swooshing by right over my
head. Before he can come at me again, I put the straw through his eye. Which apparently
kills him, as he falls down and I wake up.

This is something I do a lot in dreams---kill bad guys in new and bizarre ways.
I'm always fighting to the death with something very "unweapony" like a straw. Or a
spork. Or a toothpick. And while these dreams are not classic anxiety dreams, they are
what I get before a signing or some other event that makes me nervous. I guess my flight
or fight response feels I should be prepared to defend my life under ANY circumstances.
But hey, if that visualization thing that athletes do really works, I will be totally prepared
for a battle in Taco Bell.

Thanks so much for Anastasia for stopping by! Stop by tomorrow at I Just Wanna Sit Here & Read for more of Anastasia and Shadow Hills!

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Guest Post with Angela Morrison - Again!

Hey guys! Here's Angela Morrison! Read her guest post! They're always SUPER interesting!

Regie wants to know how my mood and surroundings affect my writing. Nice topic, huh. No one else has asked me this.

My surroundings--places I've lived or visited--play a huge role when I develop ideas and flesh them out with setting

When I'm actually creating, I go back to those places in my memory, through pictures I've taken or found on-line. I fill a big bulletin board in my office with maps, notes and pictures. I like to be able to stare at that when I need to figure out what happens next or go to it for authentic details. Photos and video help with that, too.

I work best in silence, either propped on feather pillows in my bedroom or barricaded in my office. But I can write just about anywhere. We flew so much when I lived in Switzerland and Singapore that I've become an expert at writing on airplanes.

Mood plays a big role, too. The most creative time of the day for me is when I first wake up, and I'm still dreamy. Is dreamy a mood? I'm making it one. When I'm in the middle of a novel, my characters will often have a big fight or intimate conversation as a I drift awake. I scribble that down quick before I forget it, and then add setting details, action and emotional response when I type the scene up.

When my awakening time gets interrupted (I do have a family), I do my best to recreate that feeling later in the day when I can work again. I play romantic music. (Check out my playlist for TAKEN BY STORM.) Take a long, hot bath, and even get back in bed!

If that doesn't work, I rely on my story to manipulate my mood. As I read back over the chapters I've already written--revising and polishing--I sink deep into my story, reopen my heart, and rediscover the voices of my characters. Then all I have to do is listen.
Thanks for stopping by Angela! Hope you guys enjoyed that!

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Guest Post: Angela Morrison - Author Week (5)

So again, I have Angela Morrison who was really nice to do a guest post for her author week! This is my first ever guest post so I hope you guys like it! Thanks Angela for doing this!

TUBL: For the guest post, can you write about why you wrote SING and STORM? And how you develop such amazing characters?

Hi, Everybody! I first have to thank Reggie for hosting me all week. Great job. I had a lot of fun. She asked me to post about what inspired my novels and how I develop characters. Excellent combination. The two go hand in hand.

I wrote TAKEN BY STORM because Michael wouldn’t leave me alone. My husband and I were diving in Cozumel when I heard about a real hurricane that hit a real dive boat down in Belize. In fact, the edge of that storm was raining on us. The story haunted me. All those divers lost. I followed it on the internet and read the memorial on the club’s website.

And then the questions started. What if the only survivor of a similar fictional accident was a high school guy? What if his parents drowned? Where would he go? What if I sent him to live with his Grandmother who could live in my own grandmother’s tiny house in the tiny town I grew up in. What if he went to my high school? What if he met the only Mormon girl in town?

I introduced this devastated boy to Leesie and then they both haunted me. I’d wake up in the middle of the night with their chats unrolling across a page in my mind. I’d roll out of bed and tiptoe into my study and scribble it down as fast as I could.

Michael’s voice emerged from my pen during a freewrite. He changed as I revised, but he always sounded the same to me.

I almost wrecked Leesie. At first, I loaded her up with way too much me. I stuffed all my worst high school experiences into the first five chapters. It was awful. I was working with Ron Koertge, and he told me an editor would want to fling it across the room. Leesie was always crying. In high school, it was my rule to never let a tear slip if somebody could see me. I think I was letting all that pent up emotion out. But poor Leesie. I started changing her—gave her long hair, my sister’s mad driving skills, and a retro fringe leather jacket like one of my sons friends wore. Cut lots. Rewrote. I never got her voice right, though, until I let her speak through her poetry.

SING ME TO SLEEP was born of desperation. When Razorbill decided they wanted a stand-alone novel for my second book instead of the sequel I'd planned for TAKEN BY STORM, I went through my idea files and brainstormed.

My daughter sang with the Junior Amabile Singers when we lived in London, Ontario, and I always wanted to write a book in that world, but I didn't have a story. A recent tragedy that happened in their boys choir and showed the depth of love and strength in that lovely family of singers inspired me to put together a plot outline and pitch it to Lexa.

We kicked the outline back and forth. She insisted Beth needed a boy back home (genius!), wanted lyrics woven through the story, and convinced her boss that the novel would work. And I started writing.

Of course, as Beth, Derek, and Scott emerged as characters the storyline changed a lot. It always does. That's the part I love the most about writing--the discovery as you put your characters into scenes and listen.

That’s my secret for stories and characters. You have to listen. And scribble fast when you’re half asleep. Then work you guts out revising it until it shines.

This fall I finished writing TAKEN BY STORM’s sequel—UNBROKEN CONNECTION. Penguin is considering it now. I don’t know if they’ll publish it, but I do know I had to write it. Michael and Leesie were talking again. They’ve been waiting a long time for me to finish their story. They are actually a bit ticked at me because I’m working on PR for SING instead of their third novel, CAYMAN SUMMER. As soon as we finish SING’s trailer, I’ll be scribbling again.

OMG! I can't believe she's already onto the third novel of the Taken By Storm series!!! And I know how it feels to write when I'm half asleep *ahem, my geography essay, ahem* =)

Peace, Love, and Books,

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