Number One Novels

Farewell, and Thank You for All the Interviews

2011-12-12T04:00:00.000-08:00

After three years, 127 contests, and 149 interviews, I am retiring Number One Novels.

The first author NON interviewed

I started the blog as a writer looking for inspiration and hope: The 2008 economy was spreading panic through the publishing industry, publishing houses were collapsing, imprints being absorbed or disappearing, and the layoffs were snowballing. Wild, fear-riddled claims surfaced that publishing houses weren’t buying new authors, that the market was harder than ever to break into. Panic was presented as often as facts.

I wanted to create a place where panic didn't exist and where there was a positive, hopeful voice for aspiring writers. I wanted to celebrate the successes I knew were being experienced. So I went in hunt of debut authors…and found them by the handfuls. Across all fiction genres, in all publishing houses, debut novels were cropping up. Even better, all these authors were nice enough to chat with me about their books!

The most popular post

Every author I met was kind, courteous, and often funny. Somewhere along the way I lost my perception of a platform raised beneath published writers and began to see authors for who they are: real people, and really nice ones, at that. I greatly appreciate every author who took the time respond thoughtfully and engagingly to my questions. Thank you so much for all your wisdom and candor!

Like the authors, all the fans of the blog I talked with were enthusiastic and charming. I would not have maintained my energy and passion for the blog without your support. Thank you to each person who followed the blog, friended NON on Shelfari, and followed or liked NON on Facebook!

NON gained 300 followers

The decision to end the blog was not easily made. I have enjoyed these three years of new interviews, meeting new authors, and spreading the word about debut novels. I've taken inspiration from each interview and came away with renewed energy to devote to my own writing.

However, I can no longer supply the time and energy to both the blog and my goal to become a published author. Number One Novels has inspired me, given me hope for my own success, and served as a cattle prod when laziness was far more attractive than a daily writing session. It’s now time for me to devote my full energy to writing. Hopefully one day soon, you’ll see my name on a book cover at your local bookstore.

If you’re a writer, I hope Number One Novels has inspired you with optimism and ideas for your own success—and I’m sorry I won’t be able to interview you in the future. If you’re a reader, I hope you’ve found a plethora of new authors. Thank you so much for returning to the blog each week to learn about authors fresh off the presses!

Thank you,

Rebecca Chastain

As a final note: I was not the first person to have the idea to interview debut authors. I took the idea from Scott William Carter, starting Number One Novels when he retired The First Book. I would be delighted if someone were to take up the gauntlet after me. If you’re interested in running Number One Novels, please contact me. I would be happy to hand over the blog, relinquish my claim on the domain name, make you admin on the Facebook and Shelfari accounts, and send you my extensive tracking sheets on authors I’ve interviewed or planned to.

Tricia Fields: The Territory

2011-12-05T04:00:00.000-08:00

Enter for a chance to win two copies of The Territory. Contest open in the United States only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Tricia Fields: Thank you! It’s been a long time coming, so I’m thrilled to finally see all the pieces falling into place. Here’s the publisher’s brief synopsis of the book:

At the end of State Road 170 and just past a ghost town lies Artemis, population 2,500. The townspeople sought out this remote corner of Western Texas in hopes of living lives of solitude and independence. None of them realized that their small town would become a hot spot for Mexican drug runners, whose turf battles have turned both sides of the Rio Grande into a war zone. After arresting one of the cartel's hit men and killing another, Chief of Police Josie Gray finds her life at risk for doing a job that some would rather see her quit. And when the town's self-appointed protector of the Second Amendment is murdered and his cache of weapons disappears, it's clear that she doesn't have to pick sides in this war. She's battling them both.

Set in a desert landscape as beautiful as it is dangerous, The Territory captures the current border issues from the eyes of a tough, compelling heroine and richly evokes the American Southwest.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

TF: I fell in love with the southwest in the '80s after reading Edward Abbey’s, Desert Solitaire. While having never lived in the desert, I’ve spent years there in my mind, drawn to authors such as Tony Hillerman, Elmore Leonard, and Larry McMurtry. Over the past ten years I’ve been drawn as well to the story in northern Mexico: the spread of the cartels, the chaos along the border, the inability of local and national authorities to gain control, and the destruction of lives on both sides of the border. Juarez, Mexico, just across the border from El Paso, Texas is considered by many to be the most dangerous city in the world. It is terrifying - and it is on our doorstep.

The following questions framed almost everything I read concerning the southwest over the past few years: How are people’s lives affected when their town is overtaken by criminals and their lives consumed with fear? How are the good people of Mexico, the good people along both sides of the border, holding it together in the middle of such chaos? How would a female chief of police protect a town facing the fear of anarchy when resources are scarce to nonexistent? The search for answers to these questions ultimately led to the development of a female cop who is tough enough, and flawed enough, to take the job, and was eventually the impetus behind The Territory.

NON: No two authors seem to take the same route to publication, but almost every author has an interesting story about their journey. How did you get published? Did you use an agent? How did you find out that your book had sold?

TF: I submitted my manuscript to the Tony Hillerman contest for Best First Mystery set in the southwest. My story is set in West Texas, so it was a good fit, but I really didn’t expect anything to come of it. Four months later, I received a phone call from an editor at St. Martin’s asking if I had placed my book. He explained that I had won the Hillerman prize. Within two weeks I had received a book contract and was working on my first edit. Two months later I attended the Wordharvest conference in Santa Fe to accept the award and to meet with Peter Joseph, editor from St. Martins.

Because I was signing a fairly basic publishing contract for the first book I didn’t sign with an agent. And, Peter was a great support, and walked me through the various expectations for an author during their first year of publication. I recently signed with agent Dominick Abel for my second book. There’s a blog on my website that details that story (too long for this post) but it’s a nice series of connections. I’ll just say this – I had received 26 agent rejections prior to winning the Hillerman. Since then, things have fallen into place like I had always imagined. I didn’t sign a publishing contract until book number six – so if you’re reading this and have only written a book or two, don’t give up. It takes lots of patience and perseverance!

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

TF: I’m a huge Clint Eastwood fan. I love his old westerns, especially The Outlaw Josey Wales. So, in my own mind, my protagonist, Josie Gray, is a modern-day female version. And, her last name seemed fitting in light of the desert setting and the bleak outlook on life that she has – one that she constantly battles. Josie, like her male counterpart, is complicated, deeply private, and introspective; the kind of character I think about long after the movie is over… or the last page is turned.

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

TF: Yes, draft one of book two is complete. I’m just entering the editing phase. And, the first scene of my third book has morphed into something I’m really excited about exploring. I sat down at the computer a few days ago and was able to spin out a basic plot outline based on my mental image of that scene. I have no doubt it will all completely change, but at least I have something to focus my energy on while I’m editing my second book.

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

TF: I am a curriculum coordinator for a public school corporation during the day, and I have two high school–aged girls who are active in sports and band. I’ve learned to write whenever I can. As I mentioned before, I typically write in the living room or at the kitchen table, on my laptop, in the evenings or on the weekends. I also have school holiday breaks that come in handy for writing marathons.

I’m a procrastinator my nature, so I’ve learned to set writing goals for myself, and to stick with them. Otherwise, with my day job and kids' schedules I wouldn’t get anything accomplished. It would be too easy to slack off. I set weekly and monthly writing goals, and I log them on an Excel spreadsheet. It’s a great motivator for me.

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

TF: I procrastinate with little things: meaningless house chores, a third cup of coffee, checking the online bank statement, checking email (a huge time-sucker but it’s awfully tempting), starting something for dinner, giving the dogs fresh water, starting a load of laundry. Really, you’d think I’d rather just sit at the computer and write!

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

TF: I don’t have a desk. I write all over the place with my laptop – the car, the porch swing, bed, the couch. I typically harass the kids into turning off the TV so that I can work on my laptop in the living room. I love to write surrounded by my kids and husband, but the TV can be distracting. My husband, fortunately, prefers sports when he has the TV on, so I’m happy with the football season right now. Sporting events are like white noise to me. I can get lost in my writing, and not miss a thing going on with the rest of the family.

NON: What are you currently reading?

TF: I just finished an excellent book by Tom Zoellner called Uranium: War, Energy, and the Rock that Shaped the World. I read it while researching for my last book. It’s a fascinating account of the bizarre history of uranium, from secret mines in the Congo all the way to the bombs that destroyed Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Most amazing to me were his accounts of the scientists who unlocked the secrets inside the heaviest natural element on earth. Once they understood the instability of the atom, there were an amazing number of discoveries that led directly to the atomic bomb – and what a ride it was. Zoellner illustrates the capacity for horror locked inside this rock without ever becoming melodramatic or using scare tactics. The facts do that just fine on their own! It’s a fascinating book.

Title: The Territory

Author: Tricia Fields

Publisher: Minotaur/Thomas Dunne Books

Hardcover: 278 pages

ISBN: 978-0-312-61378-5

eBook ISBN: 0312613784

Cate Morgan: Brighid's Cross

2011-11-28T04:00:00.000-08:00

This contest is closed. The winner is:

Pamk

Enter for a chance to win an ecopy of Brighid's Cross. Contest open worldwide.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Cate Morgan: In the year 2025, humanity is on the cusp of the next big evolutionary stage--and the apocalypse. Elements of different belief systems are beginning to show themselves--angels, demons, champions for humanity born of the fae--but hardly anyone is noticing. Parts of London have been destroyed in a second Blitz, and one of these champions struggles to protect the dregs of society that live in the wake of destruction from the all-seeing eyes of ruling mega-conglommerate, Dreamtech.

Then she’s found--by a hacker who needs her help in taking down Dreamtech and also by Dreamtech’s security chief, an old friend-turned-antagonist. Dreamtech either wants her as a weapon, or they want her dead for being a liability. And she has to make tough decisions regarding the sacrifice of what she wants for a greater cause--as long as she can take Dreamtech down with her. It’s all about the freedom to make choices, even if those choices aren’t particularly pleasant.

*laughs* If ever there was a kitchen-sink sort of a story, this is it. Apocalyptic, yes, but it also encompasses urban and paranormal fantasy, with cyberpunk elements spiced up with a bit of romance.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

CM: Every few months or so Samhain Publishing, Ltd sends out a special call for a themed anthology. I’d toyed with the idea of trying for one before, but I never seemed to get past the finishing line--nothing ever seemed quite right. But I loved the idea of letting the central theme spawn ideas--and pushing myself out of my comfort zone while still remaining true to my voice.

That was the first inkling. I think most writers will say that ideas are the easy part. It all starts by asking “what if” a lot, rather like a determined three-year-old. Insatiable curiosity carries with it a great deal of momentum. I had to research theories regarding the purported End of Days in 2012 (i.e. watching a lot of Discovery Channel). I talked with my husband, one of the smartest people I’ve ever met. Writers don’t usually have to go far in search of inspiration at this stage of the journey--ideas are everywhere.

It all boiled down to: what did I think was going to happen in the near future, not just in 2012 but after? That is, after all, what Samhain’s special call was asking me to do. Was it going to be Bladerunner or Matrix? Or something else altogether? When I realized 2025-ish wasn’t so far away as all that, I also realized I had to look at what was happening now as a springboard to what might happen then.

This also got me to thinking about the past and the strange similarities in the beliefs of ancient cultures.

For instance, the Flood story is found nearly everywhere, from what I can tell. What the ancient Greeks and Romans believed wasn’t so different from the Norse or Celts. The Greeks had the Titans and the gods duking it out. The Celts had Fomorians and Tuatha de Danann doing the same. Only the Celts didn’t believe either were gods, but a race of specially powered, human-like beings capable of great feats. They were heroes, and it was considered the height of good form to emulate them as much as possible.

And, of course, being rather keen on the drink and a good party, they often got out to cause havoc and inexplicable babies among their worshippers. When Christianity came along with the old “Repent ye” dog and pony show, many of the old beliefs were integrated into the new as a method of conversion. As a consequence, folks like Brighid were canonized into sainthood.

Now, Brighid has a church in Co. Kildare, Ireland. The original is long gone, but at the time it housed
a fire tended by nineteen priestesses so that it never went out. And it never did, for centuries. Brighid’s Flame is still lit today, with one or two interruptions in recent history, and newish digs still in Kildare.

That really got me to thinking. What if the priestesses were still around current day.? What if they weren’t necessarily priestesses in the traditional sense, but champions directly descended from Brighid? What if, in the near future, the Danann and all the rest of them start showing up again to claim a stake in humanity’s destiny and the apocalypse? Not only was my protagonist born, but so was the concept for a potential series.

You see what I mean about insatiable curiosity.

CM: I got very, very lucky. Seriously.

I mentioned Samhain’s Special Calls for themed anthologies, and how I really wanted to try my hand at it. Well, the Cyberpunk anthology was announced, so I got right to work. I have so many ideas, you see--I literally have a Little Black Book of them--but not all of them were necessarily appropriate, length-wise, for full novels. And I am complete rubbish when it comes to short stories--it’s a skill I’ve never honed. But e-pubs really opened up the novella market, and fantasy had finally hit mainstream. The stars, I figured, were just about aligned. Here was my platform. It was time to get to work.

Turns out I was a wee, teensy-bit wrong. I did my research, developed my characters and plot, but then I suffered a couple of false starts and new something wasn’t right. I was doing something wrong, but damned if I could figure it out. I broke a sweat, I think.

Here, I think, is where a lot of writers get frustrated and give up. But I couldn’t. There were too many stories to tell, and too many voices in my head to give me any amount of peace. I don’t think I was telling the wrong story, per se, but there were aspects that weren’t true to it, if you see what I mean. It was coming out much less cyberpunky than I intended. I’d imagined something a bit Bladerunner-y or Shadowrun, but it wasn’t fitting into that framework. It was, quite frankly, giving me an awful lot of trouble. I didn’t have a block--I was still writing--it just wasn’t right.

Everything happens for a reason. I was slogging along, trying to navigate my way past the proverbial pickle, when in my desperation I went back to the Special Call announcement to see if I’d missed anything, or if there were key words or phrases that might trigger my Creativity Response System.

What I found instead was a new call--for the End of Days anthology. Reading about the editor, Bethany Morgan, and her passion for all things apocalyptic, I knew in my gut this was the right venue for what I was trying to do. Here, I wouldn’t have to stuff tissue paper into the heel to make this shoe fit, as I’d been trying to.

I reworked character and story. Rewrote some stuff. Wrote other stuff. Typed until my fingers bled (kidding). In other words, I worked my rosy red Irish butt off, scribbling my heart out. I had to force myself to rebalance, to take a break to refill the well. I used all my breaks and lunch hours at work. People were baffled and concerned when I stopped showing up places I would normally be found. I told them any number of things--I was taking a class, my schedule had changed, I’d taken up lion-taming--anything but that I was writing. Not because I was embarrassed by it, but because I didn’t want to waste precious time talking about it--I just wanted to do it. I was like a freight train with rocket boosters in the back: I knew I was going to be a wreck once I reached my destination, but reach it I would, even if it killed me.

I also nearly ran out of time. Submissions were due March 30, 2011. I had something like three days to polish and submit, and I hadn’t even gotten to writing the synopsis yet. I did the only thing I possibly could: my very best. I was determined to see it through. I submitted everything one or two hours to spare, quite literally, a little wild-eyed and drooling to be sure. *laughs*

A decision was to be made by April 15. I played the Waiting Game, and I was losing badly. Rejection I can handle--it was the waiting that was killing me by inches. I waffled like a Denny’s special breakfast between being elated that I’d done it and pragmatism I would get a “good” reject--meaning a reject letter with some personal note. The editor enjoyed this or that, wasn’t so keen on this other thing or would have preferred kangaroos to elephants. Anything, really, to indicate I was on the right track and I could move forward instead being banished back to the drawing board.

The week the decision came was Epic in bad karma. I mean, nothing seemed to go right and I found myself ass over tea kettle more often than not. On April 15 I came home from work in an absolutely foul, talk-to-me-and-die-a brutal-horrible-death mood. When I opened my email and saw the response from Beth I couldn’t bring myself to open it. The very last thing I needed at that particular moment in time was a reject. Any other day, sure, it would suck but I could handle it. Re-evaluate, come up with a Plan. But not today, not after the week I’d had. I found myself more interested in penis enlargement advertisements than that email.

Needless to say, the email was actually an acceptance letter, and my first. Ever. I read it like I was tiptoeing through a mine field waiting for the “but” to hit me. I reread it something like eighteen times to be sure I hadn’t missed anything, and then the stress I’d been experiencing didn’t so much as melt as explode. I think I screamed, because the cats scattered and my husband came running to find me in tears.

Yep, right over the edge.

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

CM: I always try a couple of different names until one sticks. I tend to gravitate to “A” and hard “C” names for my main female characters, I don’t know why. Aika is shortened from the Greek Aikaterine and has a certain near-futuristic, almost anime taste to it I think worked well. I lifted Lareto, quite shamelessly, from the author of the book of Celtic names I use, because it paired nicely with Aika. Aikaterine is thought to mean “clean” or “pure.”

I think there’s certain amount of assumption anyone Irish must meet certain naming conventions to be identified as Irish, but it simply isn’t true--there’s actually a significant Muslim presence in Ireland I don’t think gets talked about much this side of the pond. The world is a much, much smaller place these days, and it’s only going to be smaller in 2025.

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

CM: Currently I’m working on the second book of the series that was spawned by Brighid’s Cross. The series I’m calling "Keepers of the Flame" after the priestesses of Brighid that tended her fire in Kildare for so many centuries. The working title of Book 2 is Marked and takes place in New Orleans, one of my favorite cities ever. It has soul, and passion--and I’m not just talking about the food. And I’m not just saying that because I got engaged there! It takes place in the same universe as Cross but with different characters. I’m working on the first draft now.

I’m also mid-first draftery of a more traditional, full-length fantasy novel I hope will help in getting me an agent. I’d love to sell this one to DAW, but that’s just high hopes on my part. Fantasy is my first love reading-wise, so naturally that’s where my writing gravitates.

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

CM: I have a full-time day job so writing tends to take place in the evenings and the majority of weekends. I tend to do a great deal of prep work, so I do a lot of that during my lunch hour and during the first few months of a new story before drafting a single word. However, a significant amount of that prep work ends up as text or world-building. Then I break the story up into scenes and scenes into components, and then I take a draft scene by scene. I really feel the key to writing a lot is to master writing in scenes. Other writers feel this is a bit rigid, but it helps me hone my craft, and is more conducive to discovery than one might think. I do a lot of brainstorming--the planning part just helps me get to the destination.

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

CM: Hoo-boy. I’m addicted to any kind of storytelling. Books. Movies. TV. Computer games are especially dangerous in my hands. I love creating a character and adventuring in a different world. Netflix is my crack--so many stories, so little time.

NON:What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

CM: Do the cats count? I also have a rather large stuffed Hedwig eyeing me balefully from a stack of books. Probably because I’m not writing. We have interesting and strange conversations, mostly in my head. Harry would be appalled.

NON:What are you currently reading?

CM: Gail Carriger’s “Parasol Protectorate” series, which I’m loving all the way down to my little fuzzy storyteller’s heart. Also, Kait Nolan’s Red, which is remarkable in so many ways.

Title: Brighid’s Cross

Author: Cate Morgan
Publisher: Samhain Publishing, Ltd
eBook only: 56 pages. (The entire End of Days anthology will be in print December 2012, just in time for the apocalypse!)
eBook ISBN: 9781609286316

Lia Habel: Dearly, Departed

2011-11-21T04:00:00.000-08:00

This contest is closed. The winner is:

JenM

Enter for a chance to win a copy of Dearly, Departed. Contest open in the United States only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Lia Habel: Thanks! I pitched the book mainly as a star-crossed-lovers story, set in a futuristic Victorian world – but I was also very open about the fact that it’s about zombies. To tell the truth, I’m amazed it got as much interest as it did! I wrote it for my own amusement, and I know I’m weird.

The story itself is set in a sprawling tribal territory known as New Victoria, in the year 2195. The New Victorians are quite open about the fact that they’re modeling themselves after the “First Victorians,” and use high technology to achieve that goal – holographic Victorian building facades, electric horseless carriages, etc. A splinter group, known as the Punks, was driven out of New Victoria a few decades back. The Punks were branded as terrorists, dangerous neo-Luddites, although their anti-digital, anti-aristocratic views are a bit more complicated than that. They formed their own civilization, and the two tribes are still duking it out over the Border.

So my hero, Bram, and my heroine, Nora, basically have nothing going for them. He’s Punk; she’s New Victorian. He’s from farm stock and started mining to help support his family; she’s an upper-middle-class girl who gets to go to the best school in the Territories. He’s a zombie, and she’s alive. I wanted to emphasize all of their differences, because they’re in synch in almost every other respect. They’re both incredibly strong characters, and they’ll fight to the ends of the earth to stay together as long as they can – but it can’t be forever. That’s a big part of it. This is not a “and then they were magically happy forever” type of story – it’s a story that emphasizes the ride, because the destination is perfectly clear. My zombies are not immortal.

Additionally, I set out to sell a book that included romance, but wasn’t just about the romance. There’s action and adventure and comedy – it’s a big book. It’s hopefully going to be a big series.

Looking at it all now, I have absolutely no idea how my agent convinced anyone to buy it! I feel so incredibly lucky.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

LH: I started writing the novel for fun! I never dreamed it would get this far. So it’s definitely me there on the page – all my likes, all my pet peeves, my sense of humor. I’ve always identified as an anachronist – even as a little girl, I felt like I’d been born in the wrong time period. And yet, I love modern technology. I like to blend the two together, at least in my personal life. So I don’t feel creative at all, there – I feel pretty lazy for going that route!

Additionally, I was raised on horror, and I have a deep, deep love of monsters. I’ve always been sympathetic to the plight of the “hideous beast” the hero was determined to slay – and I’ve almost never found myself attracted to the men that everyone else thinks are hot. I love the ability of monsters to tell us the truth about ourselves – our prejudices, our fears, our lack of understanding. To me they’re beautiful, and as a set of characters they have some of the most touching histories, amazing personalities, and incredible gifts. So I wanted to tell a story about characters like that – characters that have monstrous limitations as well as inhuman abilities and experiences.

That’s probably what I most wanted to do. I wanted to tell a story about a monster that I identified with. Zombies are incredible metaphoric devices, and are capable of doing so much more than wandering about and chomping limbs. They’re tragedy on wheels, and they can live lives of total honesty. I love zombies when they’re allowed to be human – because they are.

LH: I really feel like I stumbled into it. I knew I was good at academic writing, but I never imagined I was talented enough to create or sell a piece of fiction like this. I still wouldn’t call myself talented!

Everything went insanely fast. I wrote the entire first draft in about 45 days – again, it was for fun, so I wasn’t holding myself to publishable standards. After I finished it someone suggested I look into publishing, and I thought, “Sure! Let’s see how far this joke can go!”

So I went to AgentQuery and read all about querying, drafted a letter, and sent it off. I think altogether I queried about 17 agents, and got several bites. One of them was my agent, who signed me about two months later. He told me over and over again that he wasn’t an editor, but together we made some fantastic preliminary revisions. That took about seven or eight months. He then began work on his end.

The Sale Call was wild. If I remember correctly my agent was in Budapest, of all places, and he was already handling a bidding war. That first night was kind of fraught, because one of the deals had some wicked stipulations. So we decided to gamble on waiting. A few days later the war exploded, and a final deal was decided on.

When he called to tell me about it, I was literally shaking. Outright trembling. I’d never been very good at holding down a job, working outside the house – I sucked at being an adult, frankly. I had to take minimum-wage job after minimum-wage job just to try to pay my bills. The idea that I’d done something that big was really overwhelming. I didn’t believe it was real for the longest time – I think that’s what contributed to me losing my hair! (Which was awful, but now I love my wigs. Everything happens for a reason!)

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

LH: Nora Dearly’s name story is rather boring. I just love the name Nora. However, the name itself is related to the name “Honora,” which fits her perfectly – she’s tough and honorable. Dearly was necessary in order to fit the title, but I also like it as a play on the Darling family of Peter Pan.

Bram Griswold’s name has more meat behind it (ha, ha). I chose the name Bram as a nod to Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula – and his full name, Abraham, is a personal in-joke. I like to refer to the characters of Bub and Big Daddy from the Romero zombie-verse as the Adam and the Moses of the “heroic” zombie world, so I thought, “I’ll make an Abraham!” Griswold means “gray forest” in German, which fits him, and there’s a sizable German population in modern-day Brazil, where he was born.

There are a lot of other characters that have deliberate names, too. Baldwin Samedi is a nod to Baron Samedi of voodoo lore; Vespertine Mink gets her last name from the description of Hannibal Lecter that refers to him as a “cemetery mink”; Pamela Roe gets her name from the novel Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded…I could go on for pages!

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

LH: I’m working on the sequel now, which is entitled Dearly, Beloved. I’m hoping to have the chance to write more Dearly books after that! I’m also working on an unsolicited idea, just on my own – I need to write for my own amusement. It’s the only way anything gets done. It doesn’t involve zombies, but it does involve monsters.

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

LH: When I’m “on” (working on an idea, or on deadline), I usually write from the moment I wake up to about midday, but it takes however long it takes. I can’t just write when the mood strikes me – I’d never write! I really push myself to produce, even if what I produce is horrible – all that work could plant the seeds for future awesomeness. You never know what’s going to happen between you and the keyboard.

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

LH: Video games! I’m currently (September) playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution and loving every second of it – in fact, the aesthetics of the game feel very familiar to me. The blend of cyberpunk tech with Victorian and Elizabethan textiles and rococo furniture – fantastic. I love games that are like big, amazing interactive texts for me to explore. The level of metaphor in this game is astounding. Now I sound like a total fangirl – but I really want to live in this game!

I also like to read articles online (Reddit is great for that), and chat with people. But I’m not very social, even online. I’m very shy and introverted. Which is why I’m always grateful when people approach me first!

Oh, and shopping. With my style of dress, you can’t just walk into the mall and find what you want. So I actually spend a lot of time browsing clothing and accessories online and planning outfits – all of which have to be bought far in advance of events for the inevitable tailoring. But I wouldn’t call that my “favorite” way to procrastinate – I feel guilty every time I hand over my credit card number! Even if I do enjoy the end results.

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

LH: My skull-shaped USB hub. I love the idea of plugging my tech into a skull. I’m dark, I know.

NON: What are you currently reading?

LH: The Red Market by Scott Carney. I read a lot of nonfiction – this book is about the international trade in human flesh and bodies. I tend to read a lot of stuff like this – books on medicine, disease, science, the funeral business, grieving and dying, etc. It all goes into the zombies one way or the other. Strangely enough, I don’t find it depressing. There’s probably something deeply wrong with me – I pray I never find out what it is. It’d spoil the fun.

Title: Dearly, Departed

Author: Lia Habel

Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine/Random House

Hardcover: 480 pages

ISBN: 0345523318

eBook ISBN: B004J4XA2I

Linda Poitevin: Sins of the Angels

2011-11-14T04:00:00.000-08:00

This contest is closed. The winner is:

Pamk

Enter for a chance to win a copy of Sins of the Angels. Contest open in the United States only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Linda Poitevin: Thank you so much for asking me here today, Rebecca! Sins of the Angels is the first in a dark urban fantasy series that brings traditional angel mythology into a real-world suspense/thriller. The book is part paranormal, part mystery, part police procedural, and all action.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

LP: I started writing what I thought would be a paranormal romance about an angel, but when I began doing research, I got caught up in the mythology and Lucifer’s story, and the whole angel-hierarchy thing. The storyline kept growing and evolving and next thing I knew, I had a whole series mapped out. And, while a strong romantic element remained, the story is definitely no longer a romance!

LP: The road to publication was a long one for me, as it is for many writers. I did previously publish a contemporary romance through a small press, but my real dream was to see my stories on bookstore shelves. Sins of the Angels actually took me almost ten years to complete—mostly because life had a habit of getting in the way. LOL Once it was polished, I began submitting to agents. I ended up having two simultaneous offers of representation, which was both amazing and traumatizing…I was terrified of making the "wrong" choice. I realize now that both choices would have been good for different reasons, but I’m thrilled that I chose the path I’m currently on. The work was far from over at that point, however!

Once I’d signed with my agent, she requested a full rewrite of the book…which traumatized me all over again! It took me weeks to quit sulking about the idea of giving up certain elements of my story, but once I got started on the revisions, I had to admit that my agent’s observations had been right. The story was so much stronger after her input—and she challenged me in ways that have made me a much, much better writer.

When the rewrite was done, we began submitting, of course, and in May 2010, Penguin USA made an offer for the first two books in the series. My agent called with the news, and “the call” was every bit as exciting as I’d dreamed it would be.

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

LP: In the very early drafts of the book, Alex Jarvis (the heroine) was supposed to be Meghan Butler; if the book had remained a romance, she would probably have remained a Meghan. When I knew the story had become a dark urban fantasy, however, I wanted a stronger name for her—and I also wanted the name to have some kind of meaning within the story. I keep a baby name book on hand for researching character names, and when I found out that Alexandra means "defender of man," I knew it was perfect for her. The name really helped define her entire character.

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

LP: Book 2, Sins of the Son, is just going through its final editing processes now. It will be released March 27, 2012. While I’m only contracted for the two books at the moment, I’ve started working on book 3 in the series—with fingers crossed for its sale!

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

LP: I generally start at about 9:30 a.m. and go for as long as I can. In the first draft stage, that can be anywhere from one to several hours, depending on how well the story is unfolding for me at any given point. I have to stop at 1:30 no matter what so that I can pick up my youngest daughter from school—and yes, I have been known to be late on occasion (fortunately she’s not the panicky type!).

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

LP: OMG, I am so addicted to Twitter and Facebook and my email…it’s really sad, especially given that I hated them all when I first started using them.

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

LP: A wooden file organizer that belonged to my mother. It’s actually counterproductive for me as I use it as an excuse not to deal with paperwork as it comes in, but it was Mom’s, so it stays. And I’m pretty sure it would make her shake her head at me!

NON: What are you currently reading?

LP: The Lightness of Being: Mass, Ether, and the Unification of Forces by Frank Wilczek. It’s research for a potential new series.

Title: Sinsof the Angels

Author: LindaPoitevin

Publisher: Ace (Penguin USA)

Mass Market Paperback: 336 pages

ISBN: 978-0441020911

Sandy Williams: The Shadow Reader

2011-11-07T04:00:00.000-08:00

This contest is closed. The winner is:

JenM

Enter for a chance to win a copy of The Shadow Reader. Contest open in the United States only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Sandy Williams: Thanks for the congrats! It’s incredibly exciting to see my first book on the shelves. The Shadow Reader is about McKenzie Lewis, a normal human who has been pulled into a civil war because of her ability to see and track the fae when they fissure (teleport) from one location to the next. She’s been reading the shadows for the fae’s king for ten years, helping him track down the rebels who are determined to overthrow him, but when we first meet McKenzie, she’s finally had enough of the fae interrupting her life. She’s going to get her bachelor’s degree and retire. All she needs to do is pass one last test, a test which is interrupted when the rebels kidnap her from her college campus. McKenzie is determined to stay loyal to the king and to escape, but the rebel’s leader, Aren, a charismatic and extremely attractive fae, has other plans for her.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

SW: I had a scene written down in my notes file for a couple of years. It was an image of a girl hanging onto the edge of a metal platform, staring up into the grinning face of her enemy. That enemy was offering her his hand, and even though he was the only thing that might keep her from plummeting to her death, she told him to go to hell. That’s all I had to start with, but it was incredibly vivid in my mind. Once I made it through the first chapter of the book, I discovered the rest of the story a page at a time. It was extremely fun to write!

SW: I do have an agent, the fabulous Joanna Volpe over at Nancy Coffey Lit!

How did I find out my book had sold? I don’t think I’ve written about this before. I don’t even think my agent knows, but in August of 2010, I was having one of the most horrible days ever. I’d just gotten off the phone with a doctor and was an emotional wreck. (Nothing serious; just an extremely frustrating condition!) I was attempting to copy a CD of medical records to send to another doctor and the stupid CD burner on my laptop wasn’t working. I called my husband and asked if he knew any tricks; he just told me to use the other computer. In the middle of using that other computer, my phone rang.

It said New York was calling. I almost didn’t pick it up. I knew it was probably Jo, but I really wasn’t in any condition to talk. But then, some little part of my brain was like, “It’s your agent! Pick up the damn phone!” So I did.

And she said we had an offer.

An offer!

OMG, my book had an offer!

I think the only coherent word I managed during that conversation was, “Really? REALLY?”

As soon as we hung up, I called my husband at work. This is when I started bawling. Seriously, I was crying so hard I couldn’t talk. I was afraid he was going to think I was dying or something, so I finally managed to get out, “I’m okay.” *sniff* *sniff* *cough* “I’m okay.” *sniff* *sniff* *cough*

He gently asked, “Is it the CD burner?”

I laughed/cried. “No. Jo called.” He pretty much figured it out from there.

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

SW: I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I have this terrible habit of using placeholder names when I write a book. McKenzie was one of those names. I don’t have a clue why I chose it for a placeholder, but after writing the whole book using it, I couldn’t find a name I liked better. It just fit.

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

SW: I am currently working on the as-yet-untitled sequel to The Shadow Reader. After that, I hope to write another book from McKenzie’s POV, then I’d love to finish up one of the sci-fi romances I have in the works.

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

SW: Right now, my writing routine is to write every spare second of every day. I’m a bit behind on book two due to the pregnancy-from-hell and then the birth of my twin boys in July. Funny how newborn babies take up so much of your time!

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

SW: I have a new favorite way to procrastinate! Couponing!

Nope. I’ve never watched Extreme Couponing, but after going to the store after my twins were born and spending over $100 on diapers and formula that would barely last a week, I just about died. If I want to stay home with my boys and write, I knew I had to get our finances under control. I started reading sites like Southern Savers and Money Saving Mom and learned how to shop sales and stack coupons. I’m by no means an expert yet, but I have saved a ton of money. I cringe now every time I think about how much money I wasted buying things when I needed them at full price instead of stocking up on the things I use when they’re on sale. Plus, couponing is fun and therapeutic!

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

SW: Non-essential? Hmm. Diet Coke? But I don’t function so well without it.

NON: What are you currently reading?

SW: Nothing and I hate that! As I mentioned before, every spare second I have is devoted to finishing up book two. When I’m not writing, I’m hanging out with my boys or trying to catch up on some sleep (they’re still not sleeping through the night). The last two books I read (and absolutely loved!) were Jenn Bennett’s Kindling the Moon and Wicked Becomes You by Meredith Duran (I adore her books!). I have a huge TBR list and am dying to get back to it.

Title: The Shadow Reader

Author: Sandy Williams

Publisher: Ace

Mass Market: 307 pages

ISBN: 978-1937007010

eBook ISBN: B0052REUJI

Lena Coakley: Witchlanders

2011-10-31T04:00:00.000-07:00

This contest is closed. The winner is:

Margaret

Enter for a chance to win a copy of Witchlanders. Contest open in the United States and Canada only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Lena Coakley: In Witchlanders, seventeen-year-old Ryder is struggling with his father’s recent death and with his mother’s addiction to maiden’s woe, a river flower that she believes can help her predict the future. When hideous creatures made of earth and debris swell up out of the ground and attack Ryder’s village, it appears that his mother’s terrible visions of the future have come true. Spurred by guilt that he didn’t heed her warnings, Ryder sets out to discover who created such a powerful magic, but to do so he must delve into secrets many people would like him to leave alone: secrets about a war that was fought before he was born, secrets about the witches’ coven where his mother grew up, and secrets about his own linked history with a mysterious enemy called the Baen.

That is actually the pitch I used to get my agent, Steven Malk, with one small change. The book was originally called The Boneshakers, but when Boneshaker by Cherie Priest and The Boneshaker by Kate Milford came out in 2009 and 2010, Steve and I decided we definitely had to come up with another title. It was difficult at first because I loved the original name, but now I like Witchlanders even better.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

LC: Ever since I can remember I’ve told myself stories before going to sleep at night. When I was young I’d cannibalize the plots and characters of the books I was reading like A Wizard of Earthsea or The Hobbit, expanding on scenes that I liked or putting myself into the story. Then in my teens I started making up stories of my own. I still do this. Almost everything I write starts out in the story factory I’ve got going on before bed. Most of it never gets turned into a book, but occasionally a story will be persistent; it will haunt me until I write it down.

Witchlanders started out with the idea of two characters trapped by a snowstorm in a remote cottage. I knew that they both needed each other and that they both hated each other, but I didn’t know why. These two people eventually turned out to be Ryder and Falpian, the main characters of the book. They interested me so much that I just knew it would take a novel to tell their stories.

LC: My big break was finding my agent, Steven Malk—and what a break that was! I knew he represented Kenneth Oppel, an author I really liked, so I sent him an email query. He requested a part of the manuscript, then he asked for the full manuscript, and finally he told me he’d like to work with me exclusively on some revisions—but without giving me a contract. I jumped at the chance. I think this happens quite frequently in the publishing business: Agents want to see if you can revise before they agree to represent you.

Little did either of us know it would be two years before we were done. I honestly don’t know why he didn’t give up on me, because I was extremely slow with my revisions. This was my first novel, so I was feeling my way along; it was my training ground for how to write a book. Steven eventually sent me three very detailed critique letters, which were by far the best critiques I had ever received. He’d be a great editor. In fact, he IS a great editor.

Once we were done, the book sold very quickly; my editor, Caitlyn Dlouhy at Atheneum, bought it in a pre-empt. After that there were MORE revisions, of course. Caitlyn really helped me with my writing style—she knows how to craft a beautiful sentence—but most of the plot revisions had already been completed. I’m really looking forward to working with Caitlyn again so that I can experience doing a book with her from the beginning. I hope I get that chance!

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

LC: My writing group often teases me for being a slow writer, and one piece of evidence they site is that I once spent an entire writing day naming one character. But names are important! I love poetry, so I love playing with sounds, and with fantasy names you have this wonderful opportunity to suggest character through sound. I worked very hard to try to find the right names for characters like Mabis, Skyla, Pima, Visser, and Dassen and I think the music (or dissonance) of their names tells you something about who they are.

Ryder, however, was just Ryder. I don’t know where that name came from, but it was his name from the very beginning. I agonized about this a little, because it’s a real name from our world and I thought he probably should have an invented name, but there was nothing to be done about it. He’s a stubborn character, and he stubbornly refused to be called anything else.

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

LC: Absolutely! I can’t tell you too much about it because I haven’t sold it yet, but it’s a historical fantasy that takes place in England in 1834.

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

LC: I am definitely a morning girl. I go for a swim and then am usually at my desk by nine. I hate stopping for lunch, so I often end up feeling starving by about two or three o’clock—I really have to figure out what to do about that! After a late lunch, I answer email, write blog posts, update my website or do some other form of writerly business.

Of course, this is only my schedule when I don’t have a day job. I’m very lucky that I’ve been able to take this past year off to write and to promote Witchlanders, but I don’t know if I’ll be able to be a full-time writer forever. I’m enjoying it while I have the chance!

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

LC: I can get really caught up in Twitter sometimes, and I will go out to lunch at the drop of a hat, but, honestly, I don’t find myself procrastinating much anymore.

This is absolutely crazy, but my problem is figuring out how to stop working, not figuring out how to work. If I’m not careful I will work long into the night and burn myself out. I actually have to schedule days off and unplug my computer so that I don’t drift over to it. Believe me, I wasn’t always this way!

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

LC: I have a frog Christmas ornament hanging from my printer that was given to me by my nephew. She’s wearing a pink tutu.

NON: What are you currently reading?

LC: I just finished The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern and I’ve just started The Tiffin by Mahtab Narsimham.

Title: Witchlanders

Author: Lena Coakley

Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Reader

Hardcover: 416 pages

ISBN: 978-1442420045

eBook ISBN: 1442420049

Cynthia Ellingsen: The Whole Package

2011-10-24T04:00:00.000-07:00

This contest is closed. The winner is:

Kristie

Enter for a chance to win a copy of The Whole Package. Contest open in the United States and Canada only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Cynthia Ellingsen: Thank you, Rebecca! I’m so excited to talk with you and your readers today.

To quote a dear friend, “If you have friends, you must read this book.” The Whole Package is about three best friends who lose everything - one loses a job, one loses a husband, and one loses her fortune. So, they decide to fight back by embarking on a saucy business venture... They open a male version of Hooters.

I’ve had so many women say, “Oh, I have a group of friends from college that I’m going to send this to. It’s the perfect gift!” Then, they ask me to sign it which thrills me to no end. :)

I think women are responding to it because everyone has either had or longed for the type of always-there-for-you-no-matter-what friendship that is the crux of The Whole Package.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

CE: Hopping off the plane at LAX... When I was living in Los Angeles, I lived across the country from my family, as did so many of the people there. It’s a very transient city. So, my friends became my family very quickly. Writing a book about friendship probably stemmed from having to leave those friends when my husband and I moved to Lexington, KY.

CE: The journey to publication started way back when I was living in Los Angeles, pursuing a career as an actress. Secretly, I really wanted to be a writer but had no idea how to eat that elephant. My fabulous roommate knew this and suggested we write a screenplay together. We wrote this hilarious little piece that ended up getting optioned, which led to us pitching studios all over town. (That’s a crazy story in itself!)

Unfortunately, we never quite broke through. We pitched and pitched and developed and developed but nothing ever happened. Right at my breaking point, my to-be husband decided to leave LA and move back to Lexington, KY for a job opportunity. I missed him, so I decided to make the move, too. Suddenly, I was in the low-stress, beautiful environment of Lexington and I figured the only way to stay tied into the entertainment industry was to write a novel.

Once The Whole Package was written, I researched agencies and stumbled across Dan Lazar at Writer’s House. I could tell, reading his guidelines, that we had the same sense of humor, so I submitted it to him and he snapped it up. We developed it for a while - he is incredible! He put in so much time, energy and input! - then sent it out into the world. The very week B.o.B. was singing, “You’re the whole package,” ("Nothin' On You") Wendy McCurdy granted my wish by making an offer.

When Dan called to tell me, I was standing in my kitchen. Yes, there were tears. This was a dream I’d had my entire life and it had finally come true. I was so excited that women would get to read this fun, hilarious story about friendship.

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

CE: Cheryl - My mother’s name.

Doris - Well... read The Whole Package. You’ll see. She simply had to be a Doris.

Jackie - My best friend in middle school.

For these characters, I did not have any other names in the running. But I can’t tell you how many times I changed the others. My former script writing partner sincerely believed that using names of people we knew brought good luck, so I changed them all to people I knew in honor of her. As for the last names, I just picked whatever sounded like it would match with the character.

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

CE: Yes! I am so incredibly delighted to be working on another novel for Berkley, coming out fall of next year. It’s called Marriage Matters and it will be just as fun and heartfelt as The Whole Package, with a whole new cast of strong, female characters. It’s about love and family.

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

CE: When I’m writing something, it is an all-encompassing thing. I spend all day writing and then, the time that I’m not writing, I’m hyper-aware of what’s going on around me and thinking, “Oooh, okay. This main character loves that song. Maybe I should play it when I’m writing her next scene.” or, “Ewww, okay. That main character has to make fun of those shorts with all the applique flamingos. Maybe make someone heinous wear it?”

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

CE: Bejeweled Blitz. Did anyone out there ever play during that time when it made fun of you if you played longer than 20 minutes? That made me so mad I stopped playing for a while, which was probably good for my writing. But don’t worry, Facebook. I’m back.

I also have a Facebook fan page, so I’ll update that sometimes when I should be writing.

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

CE: Chapstick. Clearly, coffee is essential.

NON: What are you currently reading?

CE: I just finished Julie James’ new book, A Lot Like Love. She’s a Berkley author and her books are a great escape with strong female protagonists and hot guys. They’re also set in Chicago, where The Whole Package is set.

Thanks for chatting with me! I hope you’ll stay in touch. Be my FB friend at the address above or visit my website at www.cynthiaellingsen.com. Happy reading!

Title: The Whole Package

Author: Cynthia Ellingsen

Publisher: Penguin-Berkley

Trade Paperback: 416 pages

ISBN: 9780425241349

eBook ISBN: 9781101517543

Christopher Buehlman: Those Across the River

2011-10-17T04:00:00.000-07:00

This contest is closed: The winner is:

Dolly

Enter for a chance to win a copy of Those Across the River. Contest open in the United States only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Christopher Buehlman: In the summer of 1935, Frank Nichols, failed History professor and veteran of the first world war, goes south with his lover, Eudora, to inherit a house he was warned to sell rather than move into. Out of other options, he does move in, becoming the newest resident of Whitbrow, Georgia. He is also the descendent of an exceptionally cruel plantation owner who lived nearby, a minor confederate general known for torturing and even hunting his slaves. Frank decides to revive his academic career by writing the history of this plantation and the horrors that occurred there-but first he has to find it. The woods have overgrown that side of the river, and nobody from town crosses it. Soon Frank and Eudora will find out why, and old blood-debts will be settled.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

CB: I wanted to write a horror novel with a certain type of antagonist. Images came to me (garlanded pigs being led to a place of sacrifice, a hanged man pulling himself up the rope, and others I won’t spoil for you), and then a love story developed. Whether you choose to see Those Across the River as a love story with horrific elements, or as a horror novel with a tragic romance is up to you; but the first germ was horror.

CB: I worked on the novel for some years, on and off (more off than on), until I had a manuscript I thought was ready to present to agents. I was very lucky in that the late Elanie Koster, who discovered Stephen King during her time as a publisher, loved the manuscript and signed me to her literary agency in New York. I got the call from her assistant, Stephanie, that Penguin had made an offer while I was on Honeymoon in Canada. I listened to the message beneath a Husky gas station sign with a full moon rising in a lavender sky. Sounds like fiction, but that’s how it happened.

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

CB: When I was in my early twenties, I had a buddy named Frank who was an army ranger, and we used to beat each other up in my yard. The name Frank is evocative of honesty (because of its synonym), but also of a certain toughness. I always liked the name Nichols because it sounds like "nickels." I hope you’ll agree that there’s something undervalued yet shiny about the protagonist of this book.

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

CB: I certainly do. Between Two Fires is the story of a former knight shepherding a visionary young girl through the wasteland of France during the Black Death. I had never read a medieval horror novel, so I thought I would write one.

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

CB: I write in the late morning and early afternoon. Staring at a computer screen at night gives me insomnia, especially when I’ve been imaging dark things.

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

CB: I wish I had something more interesting to say here, but I’m afraid that I, like many of us, am a social media victim. My career touring renaissance festivals has left me with a widely scattered network of friends, and Facebook has been a great way to keep in touch with them.

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

CB: A statue of Pan carved into the hollow of a branch. This was the totem I kept in front of me when I wrote my comedy play, Hot Nights for the War Wives of Ithaka. It makes me smile.

NON: What are you currently reading?

CB: Re-reading The Stand, and rediscovering why I loved it so much as a teenager.

Title: Those Across the River

Author: Christopher Buehlman

Publisher: Ace

Hardcover: 368 pages

ISBN: 0441020674

eBook ISBN: 9781101543863

M. J. Scott: Shadow Kin

2011-10-10T04:00:00.000-07:00

This contest is closed. The winner is:

donnas

Enter for a chance to win a copy of Shadow Kin. Contest open in the United States only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

M. J. Scott: Shadow Kin is the story of a half-Fae assassin who botches her latest assignment and, as a result, sees her whole world start to change. And she’s really not all that happy about it. It’s a dark fantasy set in a largely nameless city in a world that’s a few steps removed from ours.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

MJS: Shadow Kin is one of those books that just kind of dropped into my head. At least the heroine did and then by the time I’d written down the first forty pages or so that she insisted I write RIGHT NOW, I had the basis for a whole book.

MJS: I do have an agent who I obtained in a fairly usual fashion…met her at a conference, thought she was someone that I clicked with, queried her (along with a bunch of other agents), and luckily, she offered me representation. After that, it still took three years to sell my first book. The first two books we went out with all got encouraging feedback but probably just weren’t quite different enough for a debut author in the middle of the GFC. In 2010, I had some near misses, which made it a bit of an emotional roller coaster, and in the middle of all that this very odd book idea came along.

When I finished Shadow Kin, luckily my agent loved it. She sent it out in January 2011 and we got our first offer after a couple of weeks, much to my shock. I got that particular email while at work and had to stop myself from squealing in the middle of the office, then dashed off to a meeting room so I could email back. After that, the process went on for another two weeks or so (there was a bit of an auction). When we got down to the final two offers, I spoke to my agent, spoke to one of the editors who wanted to talk to me (still can’t really remember what I said in that conversation, which was very early in the morning for me in Australia after two weeks of not sleeping much), and then after my agent made the final deal, she rang me and that was the official “call.” At which point there was much jumping up and down and calling/emailing family and friends to share the news. And a long nap that afternoon.

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

MJS: Actually Lily doesn’t have a second name. For the first few chapters she didn’t have a name, then when I got to the point where she was going to tell someone what it was, I had to sit down and figure it out. The Fae in my world often use plant or flower names for girls, and I wanted a flower that worked for her. Lily came to mind fairly quickly…white lilies are beautiful, somewhat cool but also can be deadly. Which suited her. Simon was always Simon DuCaine, not sure where the DuCaine popped up from!

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

MJS: Book two in the Half-Light City series comes out June 2012 and I’m working on book three. After that, we’ll see!

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

MJS: I still have a part-time day job so I write at night those days and prefer to write in the afternoon on the other days. I probably write six days a week most weeks. I try to set daily/weekly page goals for myself and don’t wait for the mood to strike as deadlines don’t care about my mood. Though there are some days where the words just won’t come and you have to do something else to give the story some time to figure itself out. Once I get to the last part of a book (somewhere around the last eighty pages or so), I tend to just want to write and write and write at all hours, so I do that and get cranky when I have to tear myself away from the computer.

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

MJS: Watching one of my favorite TV shows (Torchwood, Firefly, Doctor Who, The West Wing, Gilmore Girls, etc.) while knitting. Or taking a nap. Or like many people, looking up weird things on the Internet while chatting to my Twitter/Facebook friends.

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

MJS: There is a lot of junk of my desk, it’s messy. Too messy, really. I do like my amigurumi vampire, he makes me smile.

NON: What are you currently reading?

MJS: I’m rereading Sourcery by Terry Pratchett (for some reason I am on a big Terry Pratchett rereading kick right now), I just finished The Tempering of Men by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette, and I’m also reading Spider’s Bite by Jennifer Estep and Chime by Franny Billingsley.

Title: Shadow Kin

Author: M. J. Scott

Publisher: Roc

Mass Market Paperback: 336 pages

ISBN: 978-0451464040

eBook ISBN: B0052RGDMA

Kiki Hamilton: The Faerie Ring

2011-10-03T04:00:00.000-07:00

This contest is closed. The winner is:

fredamans

Enter for a chance to win The Faerie Ring book package, including bookmarks, buttons, and postcards.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Kiki Hamilton: Orphaned and picking pockets in London’s Charing Cross station to support not only herself, but her family of orphans, sixteen-year-old Tiki steals the Queen’s ring and thinks she’s solved their problems. That is, until Rieker, a pickpocket from the North End, suspects her in the theft and tells her that the ring is really a reservoir that holds a truce between the British and Faerie courts.

When he warns her that the fey will do anything, including murder, to recover the ring, Tiki is unsure whether to believe him or not. To complicate matters, Rieker seems to know something about the unusual birthmark on Tiki’s wrist. But when Tiki and her family are threatened the game changes and it becomes a deadly race to see who can locate the ring first.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

KH: I’ve always loved the idea of things not being what they seem. That other dimensions or worlds exist side by side with our own, just beyond our ken; that the scope of our world is more than just the three dimensions that we are able to easily comprehend.

At the same time, I’m intrigued by the past, by our history, by what may have occurred that might not have been formally documented for future generations. The untold story, if you will. And I am particularly fascinated with those untold stories that have a thread of documented fact woven through them, which makes the reader question whether they are reading fiction or nonfiction. A story that makes the reader say: "what if?"

The idea for The Faerie Ring started with Tiki, an orphan, who survives on the streets of Victorian London as a pickpocket. Victorian London is a mysterious and magical time in history. It is an era of great change, great technological advances, yet at the same time, beliefs in the occult remained strong. Additionally, the era offers a startling dichotomy between the classes and the way people lived, providing a great gap of motivations.

So, I had a clever pickpocket and a mysterious time in history. After Tiki stole the Queen’s ring, the next question I asked myself was: What if someone else wanted the ring? What if there was something unseen happening in London at the same time? So Tiki told me what happened next.

KH: I think my path to publication was pretty typical. I completely rewrote my first book, like, three times, then revised it several more times after that and it still needs work. So, that one is tucked in a drawer still waiting to be "fixed." The Faerie Ring was my second book. I wrote it while I waited for my agent to read my first book. After I signed with my lovely agent, Kate Schafer Testerman of kt literary, llc, she sent The Faerie Ring out on submission. There were several close calls before my agent sold it to Susan Chang of Tor Teen. That took about nine months.

I was on vacation at the Oregon coast and only had my phone for Internet so I was emailing on that. Kate and I had a few conversations but I can’t remember if she called or emailed me when it was all official. Then I went to the beach. :)

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

KH: Tiki’s name was probably the first part of the story that came to me. I knew her name and that she was a pickpocket and an orphan. Later, I found out that Tiki was short for Tara Kathleen. Did I have any other names that were in the running? Nope.

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

KH: I have written the next book in the series – I’m waiting to see if my editor likes it or not. I’ve also just completed a YA contemporary called The Last Dance that I just sent to my agent to read. I’m halfway through another fantasy but I can’t decide if I want to finish that or start this other shiny idea I have. :)

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

KH: My routine has changed as I’ve gotten closer to publication. During the day I spend more time on writing-related things – like blogging, interviews, Class of 2k11 stuff, etc. I find I work on my novels more in the evenings and weekends, which is good, because I’m back to work in the real world again. But I do try to write a bit every day.

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

KH: The Internet. Oy, can I waste time online. O_o

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

KH: Probably the candy. Which really is essential as brain food, right? ;-)

NON: What are you currently reading?

KH: I just finished Jennifer Donnelly’s Revolution today and have now started the ARC of Michelle Hodkin’s The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer.

Title: The Faerie Ring

Author: Kiki Hamilton

Publisher: Tor Teen / Macmillan

Hardcover: 352

ISBN: 978-0765327222

ASIN: B004WJP11I

Lev AC Rosen: All Men of Genius

2011-09-26T04:00:00.000-07:00

This contest is closed. Congratulations to the winners:

KC
Kristie

Enter for two chances to win a copy of All Men of Genius. Contest open in the United States only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Lev AC Rosen: Well, my editor says my book has the perfect elevator pitch: A steampunk retelling of Twelfth Night and The Importance of Being Earnest. That said, it’s not a mash-up, the text is almost entirely my own, the characters and situations, though inspired by the plays, don’t line up with their inspirations. The plot is that Violet Adams, a brilliant young inventor in a steampunk, mad-science 1880s London, disguises herself as her twin brother to gain entry into Illyria College, the most exclusive (and exclusively male) scientific academy of the time. Once a student, of course, things get complex, both romantically – as Violet finds the headmaster’s ward has feelings for her, and Violet may have feelings for the headmaster – and dangerously, as Violet and her friends stumble across the remnants of a conspiracy left by the headmaster’s late father.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

LACR: I love the aesthetic of steampunk – I’ve always been into this. And when I started writing this, not much of the new wave of steampunk had happened – Boneshaker wasn’t out yet, nor Leviathan. I wanted to do something fun with steampunk, not too dreary, and a bit sexy. I used the plays as backup because I was having trouble coming up with a plot, so I stole from some of the greats.

Photo courtesy of Barry Rosenthal

LACR: I’ve had an agent for a while, now actually. All Men of Genius is actually my third, fourth, or fifth novel, depending on how you look at it – but it’s my first sold. My agent is amazing. Couldn’t do a thing without her. The reason I wanted to make this book ‘not too dreary’ was because my previous, not-yet-sold novels, probably would not warrant that description. This book was me kicking back and relaxing, and being funny – my other books are more experimental and dark. So my agent saw the book, and though she’d never heard of steampunk, really went for it, and we sent it out. I like working with her to find editors, and one of the editors I latched on to immediately was Liz Gorinsky at Tor. I saw her list, I knew her books, and I wanted her as an editor. It took almost a year before Liz finished reading my book, but she’d been telling my agent every few months before that that she was really enjoying it, so I had my hopes pretty high by the time she’d said yes. I passed on another offer to wait for Liz’s response, actually. So though it took a long time, it was completely worth it. She’s an amazing editor. It was undoubtedly the right choice.

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

LACR: I just stole from Shakespeare and Wilde. Viola became Violet, Sebastian became Ashton. I used Adams as a surname because their father is a historical figure named JC Adams – sort of. I don’t know much about the real JC Adams, except that he was at the conference in 1884 that determined the placement of GMT – a conference I’ve always found weird and interesting in concept, but sort of dry in reality. But I decided to use it to get their father out of the way so Violet could enact her scheme. So I used JC Adams, because I liked the name. All the other characters names are taken from the Shakespeare or Wilde, sometimes modified (Mary became Miriam), but the names don’t represent that the characters are based off their namesakes. For Professor Bunburry, I had some fun, but otherwise I just used names I liked, like Curio and Valentine. Some characters, like Ada Byron and Mathias Forney, are historical figures, so I didn’t make up those names at all.

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

LACR: I’ve finished a sequel to All Men of Genius, and have a couple hundred pages of the one after that. I’m also nearly done with a sci-fi noir, and I still have those dark books I haven’t sold – dark magical realism in modern day NYC.

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

LACR: Lately my life has been a little insane – my schedule goes off the rails a bit in the summer, and this summer, with the book coming out, it’s been crazier than usual, but my routine is often to wake up and write. Write a lot. Then I shower. Then I edit. When my boyfriend gets home, I usually stop for the day to spend time with him. But I also reserve the right to go write at any time inspiration strikes. I keep a pad and pen next to my bed. I’m not someone who sits down and starts thinking about the book – I’m always thinking about the book. I usually only sit down when I have it worked out in my head what I’m going to write. I try not to outline the whole book, because then it’s finished in my mind, and I’m done with it. I outline in note form a few chapters ahead, to keep everything tidy. And notes for ideas or scenes down the line go on my bulletin board until the time comes to write those scenes or use those ideas. Sometimes, but rarely, I write scenes before I get to them in the book itself. It’s a complex mishmash of routine that makes sense to me, but probably looks like chaos to anyone watching.

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

LACR: Video games. I would love to write a video game. Right now my boyfriend and I are playing the new Deus Ex, which has been pretty awesome, though I wish it were bigger. After that we’re pretty much going to start the countdown 'til Skyrim comes out.

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

LACR: Can I have two? My butterfly, who is amazing to play with when a thought is bubbling but won’t write yet, and my lion, who makes talking on the phone much more pleasant.

NON: What are you currently reading?

LACR: I just finished Ganymede, by Cherie Priest, which was amazing, and now I’m going to read Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart

Title: All Men ofGenius

Author: Lev AC Rosen

Publisher: Tor

Hardcover: 462 pages

ISBN: 978-0-7653-2794-9

eBook ISBN: 978-7-4299-9501-6

Edward Lazellari: Awakenings

2011-09-19T04:00:00.000-07:00

This contest is closed. The winner is:

Nancy

Enter for a chance to win a copy of Awakenings. Contest open in the United States only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Edward Lazellari: Awakenings is an urban fantasy with elements of traditional fantasy, adventure, and mystery mixed in. There's even a little bit of romance, but that develops later in the series.

Cal MacDonnell is a happily married New York cop with a loving family. Seth Raincrest is a photographer whose self-involved nature has alienated even his closest friends. They have nothing in common—except that they suffer from retrograde amnesia. It's as if they just appeared out of thin air thirteen years ago, and nothing has been able to restore their memories. Now that forgotten past has caught up to them with a vengeance.

Cal and Seth's lives are turned upside down as they are stalked by otherworldly beings who know their past identities, intent on killing them and anyone who gets in their way. In the balance hangs the life of a child who might someday restore a broken empire to peace and prosperity. With no clue why they're being hunted, they must accept the aid of a strange, beautiful woman who's promised to unlock their secrets. Cal and Seth must stay alive long enough to protect their loved ones, recover their true selves—and save two worlds from tyranny and destruction.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

EL: It started as an idea for a graphic novel in the mid 1980s. My friends and I were role playing (probably D&D), and I thought, wouldn't it be weird if none of us were actually who we thought we were, but actually agents from an alternate reality—one where it's still a medieval feudal world—only we couldn't remember? As I veered away from illustrative art (I used to draw for Marvel), I realized it was a great idea for a novel because it dealt with themes of identity and societal roles. As I studied creative writing in college, I fleshed out the characters and made the plot more complex.

EL: After years of going the traditional route, with no success, it was a stroke of good luck in the end. I went to a friend's summer cookout, someone I had worked with at Marvel Comics and hadn't seen for many years. There, my friend John introduced me to his friend Seth who's an art director at Tor Books. We hit it off, and on a lark Seth said he was curious to see my fantasy novel. Long story short, he really liked it, enough to pass it along to Tom Doherty, the publisher. Tom liked it too and assigned it to my editor Paul Stevens. I met with Paul and we spoke about where I was taking the story, and the next thing I know he offered me a three-book deal.

Once I had the deal, another friend connected me with my agent at Abrams Agency. It's not that I thought an agent would be able to improve the deal considerably, since I'm just a first-time novelist with no established fan base, but I think it's always better to let a professional negotiate for you. Artists should concentrate on creating and leave the business side to business people. Plus, I am planning for the long term because I'd like to write more novels and scripts, so starting a relationship with an agent is a smart business decision. My agent works really hard for his clients and I like him as a person. I'm very lucky in many ways. I have a positive relationship with all the people I am doing business with. I can't stress how important that is.

It's hard to make it in this industry without an element of luck. Timing is also very important. I had an agent several years ago that loved my book, but she didn't have success finding the right editor. When she'd exhausted her efforts, she told me that I should try again in a few years. Many publishers turned down Harry Potter before Ms. Rowling finally got her contract. Stories like this are the norm.

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

EL: I have to chuckle at this question because we ended up changing one of the main character's names at the last minute. Callum MacDonnell was originally Sean MacDonnell. The other main character's name is Seth. Now, when you pronounce Seth and Sean, it sounds completely different, but when you're reading it, they both start with "Se." A few readers, including my editor, said they were confused in chapters where both characters interacted. So I agreed to change Sean to Callum. A writer can't be objective regarding his or her own work, so you rely on people you trust to point out things you don't see. My editor has made many good suggestions that have improved my story. With my detective, Colby Dretch, I wanted the name to sound like someone was down on his luck and dragged through the mud (apologies to anyone who might actually have that name). But Dretch rhymes with wretch, and Colby really is wretched in this story. There are a bunch of other characters since this is an ensemble piece (kind of like Game of Thrones, but with 32,000 less characters).

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

EL: Yes, I am working on book two in this series, The Lost Prince, right now. I want to get it done as soon as possible, but I have a day job (believe it or not) and am also promoting Awakenings, which takes time away from my writing—you know... all these blog interviews, tweeting, writing for my own blog, etc. I hope to turn in the final draft early next year.

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

EL: I prefer to write in the morning. That includes weekends and holidays. I use many of my vacation days to write as well. I'm an editor for a financial website publication and write on a computer seven hours a day at work, so, it's sometimes hard for me to come home after work and be creative. If I have insomnia, I'll hit the keyboard at 5:00 a.m. before going to work. I had no deadline with the first book, so my process is different now. I used to only write when the mood struck me. Now I bang on the keys regardless of whether I feel like it or not. Usually, the first 25 minutes of drivel will work itself out your system and you'll thread that needle and find the rest usable.

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

EL: Television, that great America glass "teat." I had to cancel my premium channels, including sci-fi and ESPN, and forbid anyone from buying me an X-box or Wii. I watch my HBO series a year later through Netflix. Believe it or not, I have yet to see Game of Thrones, and I love those books. I did Sopranos and am doing True Blood the same way. I look forward to those snowed-in winter weekends when I watch all 13 episodes three days in a row. I also try to read more because I find that reading good writing improves my own writing. It knocks the rust off my brain. My vocabulary at work is very dry. It's a lot of credit measures, liquidity, capital, earnings, etc. A good novel waters my brain and grows better words. Right now I'm reading Diana Gabaldon's Outlander. Wonderful book. I highly recommend it.

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

EL: Hmmm.... I write on a kitchen table in an unrenovated zero-bedroom apartment. (Everyone, please buy my novel so I can upgrade.)

I guess my letter opener. It's not fancy, but it's sharp. So if any ninja assassins are planning to attack me while I'm writing, I will skewer them.

NON: What are you currently reading?

EL: Diana Gabaldon's Outlander. Next up is A Dance With Dragons.My "to read" pile is about 30 books.

Title: Awakenings

Author: Edward Lazellari

Publisher: TOR Books

Hardcover: 348 pages

ISBN: 978-0-7653-2787-1

eBook ISBN: 978-1-4299-8292-4

Amy Ackley: Sign Language

2011-09-12T04:00:00.000-07:00

This contest is closed. The winner is:

karenk

Enter for a chance to win a copy of Sign Language. Contest open in the United States only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Amy Ackley: Thank you! It’s an amazing feeling to walk into a bookstore and see Sign Language on the shelf!

Sign Language, drawn from the loss of my father to cancer when I was a teen, was the winner of the first Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award for Young Adult Fiction. Up to 10,000 entries were accepted for the contest, and during the first round of the contest, up to 2,000 entries were chosen to move on to the second round by evaluating the pitch alone. Here’s an exclusive look at the pitch I submitted to the ABNA contest:

Thirteen-year-old Abby North has no complaints, really, except that her chest size hasn’t changed since birth and that her crush on the most popular boy in the eighth grade isn’t reciprocal. Her father’s diagnosis of terminal cancer throws her for a loop, but solidifies her determination to be a normal teenager as she tries to hide the nightmare at home from her friends and continue with life as usual.

She can’t. As her father deteriorates, Abby vows to be a better person so that the pain will go away. When he dies, Abby withdraws from her mother and pushes away her best friend Spence, whose feelings for her have grown beyond friendship, so afraid is she of loving anyone anymore. Abby wants everything to go back to normal, though she learns that the Earth never stops spinning, no matter how fast she runs in the opposite direction. Sign Language follows Abby through the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and, finally, acceptance.

Sign Language is an honest portrayal of moving on, a blend of raw hurt and love and humor, and the accompanying guilt moving on brings about. Sign Language will appeal to young adult readers who enjoyed The Truth About Forever by Sarah Dessen, as well as adult readers of Good Grief by Lolly Winston and P.S. I Love You by Cecelia Ahern. Sign Language differs from these works in that it is as much about the changing dynamics that occur in the wake of a family member’s terminal illness as it is the aftermath of loss.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

AA: I was just shy of fourteen when my father died after a year-long illness. Prior to Dad getting sick, my brother and I had been typical self-important teens, but we soon became part of the family team helping care for him at home. After he passed, we struggled with our own grief as well as our mother’s. While Sign Language is fiction, it is set in my hometown, the emotions are authentic, and many of the details about the main character’s father’s illness are drawn from what my family went through when my dad was sick.

I’d read other books about the loss of a parent, but had yet to come across a book about what it’s like for a teen to help care for a terminally ill family member. I had two objectives: 1) to let the reader get to know the dying person, instead of keeping him in the background, so that the void when he was gone would be better felt and understood, and 2) to follow the main character through the stages of grief, including the starts and stops, the progress and the regressions, leaving the reader with a hopeful ending but not necessarily closure. I think that closure is a myth. We can learn to go on with life after losing a loved one, but I don’t believe anyone ever “gets over it.” I think it’s important for young people to understand that it is completely normal to carry that sense of loss, so that they never feel that there is something wrong with them if they can’t just put the past in the past like they may think they should. Experiencing such a primary loss at a young age can be devastating, but we can grow through loss. To quote Friedrich Nietzsche, “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

AA: Several years ago I’d gotten a few nibbles from agents and publishers, but nothing ever came to fruition. I’d almost given up hope of ever getting Sign Language published, but when I learned that the 2010 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest (sponsored by Amazon, Penguin USA, CreateSpace, and Publishers Weekly) had opened up a young adult category for the first time, I decided to send in the manuscript.

The Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award accepts up to 10,000 entries and narrows submissions down in several rounds. During the first round, entries are evaluated by pitch alone by Amazon editors. Up to 2,000 entries are chosen to move on to the second round, wherein Amazon editors and Amazon Vine Reviewers read 3,000 to 5,000 word excerpts of each entry and narrow the field to up to 500 quarterfinalists. Publishers Weekly then reads full manuscripts and chooses 100 semi-finalists according to a specific set of judging criteria. Three finalists in both the general fiction and young adult fiction categories are chosen by Penguin editors, and the general public then reads excerpts and votes online to choose the winners – one in each of the two categories – who receive a publishing contract with Penguin USA.

Each time Sign Language made it to the next round, I was shocked. I thought that each round would be the end, but it was enough for me to gain a new confidence that I’d written something worthwhile. When I became a semi-finalist I was ecstatic, as many authors who have submitted manuscripts and made it to that point went on to have their novels published, but upon reading some of the other excerpts, I still didn’t think Sign Language stood a chance against such incredible talent.

I received a call from an Amazon representative in late May 2010, and he informed me that Sign Language had advanced to the finals and that all of the finalists would travel to the Amazon headquarters in Seattle for a meet-and-greet with representatives from Amazon and Penguin. The winner would be announced at an awards ceremony on the last day of the three-day trip. After I hung up the phone I sank to the floor and cried. I actually expected to get a call back from Amazon, saying that they’d made a mistake! The trip to Seattle was amazing. I was in awe of the talented and wonderful authors in the running, and I was so sure that one of them would win I didn’t write an acceptance speech for the awards ceremony. At the ceremony, all six finalists read excerpts from our manuscripts, and then the winners were announced. When a publicist from Penguin announced my name, I accepted the award and surely looked and sounded like a bumbling idiot. It still feels like it was all a dream.

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

AA: The main character is in denial about what is happening to her father, and tries to stay optimistic that everything will return to normal. As she deteriorates and after his death, she doesn’t want any of her friends at school to know what is happening at home, so she can pretend to be a normal teenage girl. This desire to be “normal” led me to think about the movie Young Frankenstein, in which the Marty Feldman character (Igor) gives Gene Wilder (Dr. Frankenstein) an abnormal brain to put into the monster, played by Peter Boyle. When the monster wakes and isn’t quite right, Dr. Frankenstein asks Igor which brain he gave him to finish his creation, and Igor reports that he’d gotten it from the jar labeled “Abby Normal.” The name Abby stuck. Abby’s last name, North, comes from my father’s name, Norman, which means, “man of the north.” Hence Abby North.

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

AA: I am finishing up the manuscript for another young adult novel, a work of contemporary fiction based on J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. Fingers crossed that my vision comes across on the page!

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

AA: I write whenever and wherever I can find a quiet place to focus, and I try to write every day. I’ve got kids that keep me running constantly, so this isn’t always easy. When they were small, and now during the summers, I start writing shortly before midnight and finally crash at two or three a.m. Now that the kids are all in school, I will be able to see them off in the mornings and (hopefully) have several hours of uninterrupted writing bliss.

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

AA: I’d go stir crazy if I didn’t start the day with a workout, and at times I allow myself just ten more minutes on the treadmill, which leads to twenty, to half an hour - and then there’s laundry to be done and toilets to be scrubbed and weeds to be pulled… I love to write, but I don’t like to sit, which can be a problem, yet I do think that doing something physical and letting my mind wander enhances my creativity. I also read blogs and articles on the internet when I’m supposed to be researching, and have developed a love/hate relationship with Facebook. I’ve got a Sign Language page that has become a great tool for letting others know about new developments, but perusing through status updates has become too much of a draw when my focus is slipping. And now that I am trying to write full time, it is difficult to reject phone calls and lunch invitations from friends and family members when I’m at home beating my head against a wall in the throes of writer’s block, but I do, and hope that they will understand that this is my job and continue to love me anyway.

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

AA: Zoe the cat, who likes to curl up next to my computer when I’m working, or sprawl herself out across the keyboard. She was a stray who we found out is expecting, so soon I’ll have to get a bigger desk!

NON: What are you currently reading?

AA: Out Stealing Horses by Per Patterson. The captivating, minimalist prose hooked me in the very first paragraph. It’s a breathtakingly beautiful read.

Title: Sign Language

Author: Amy Ackley

Publisher: Viking Juvenile

Hardcover: 392 pages

ISBN: 978-0670013180

eBook ISBN (ASIN): B004RKXHUY

Daniel Polansky: Low Town

2011-09-05T04:00:00.000-07:00

This contest is closed. The winner is:

Cody

Enter for a chance to win an autographed copy of Low Town. Contest open in the United States only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Daniel Polansky: Low Town (or The Straight Razor Cure over in the UK) primarily concerns the misadventures of The Warden, a small-time drug lord whose iniquities are interrupted upon discovering the body of a murdered child. In a bout of ill-considered self-righteousness, he decides to hunt down the killer. Trouble ensues.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

DP: I was thinking about ways to combine the setting of a low fantasy novel with the speed, pacing, and themes of classic crime. Low Town was the misbegotten child of said union.

DP: My route to publication was fairly standard, I think, albeit laborious and tiring. I wrote a draft, revised it until I could stand no more revisions, then sent out query letters to a couple of dozen agents. One was kind enough to agree to represent me (hat tip: Chris Kepner), we made some more revisions, and he kicked it out to the publishers. It was Chris that called me and let me know we had made a deal with Knopf Doubleday, and it was me that jumped up and down gleefully.

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

DP: Actually, I had originally written it so that the character was nameless, but as we moved closer to publication my editor was concerned that would be confusing for the reader. So (after an obscene amount of consideration) I finally settled on the nom de guerre of Warden.

UK Cover

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

DP: I do indeed – it is the sequel to Low Town, as yet unnamed. I've got a strong draft of it and I’m about to start making revisions.

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

DP: I don't have a real solid writing routine at this point. Whenever I feel like I have some words to set down, I make a point of doing so.

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

Spanish Cover

DP: Don't make me choose. Just one? Oh man. Gun to my head, I would say computer chess has been really effective.

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

DP: I don't really have a desk. Sorry.

NON: What are you currently reading?

DP: At the moment I'm about halfway through A House for Mr. Biswas by V.S. Naipaul.

Title: Low Town

Author: Daniel Polansky

Publisher: Doubleday

Hardcover: 352 pages

ISBN: 978-0385534468

Katharine Britton: Her Sister's Shadow

2011-08-29T04:00:00.000-07:00

This contest is closed. The winners are

Carol N Wong
Margaret

Enter for two chances to win a copy of Her Sister's Shadow. Contest open in the United States and Canada only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Katharine Britton: Thanks, Rebecca! Her Sister's Shadow is about two sisters, estranged for forty years, who reunite in their childhood home on the South Shore of Boston. (The story is set in the fictional town of White Head, which I loosely modeled after Cohasset, Massachusetts.) The younger sister, Lilli, has very good reasons why she left White Head and why she’s stayed away from her oldest sister, Bea, for all these years. Now, with the unexpected death of Bea’s husband, Lilli decides it might be time to return. The novel is set in shifting time frames: present day and the 1960s when the sisters were young.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

KB: My mother grew up in Cohasset, and I loved hearing stories about her family (she had three sisters and two brothers) and life in their big, rambling house overlooking Sandy Cove. In addition to stories about yacht club races, parties on the rocks below the house, and dances at the Copley Plaza in Boston, she also told me about a tragedy that her family suffered. As a child, listening to her, I wondered if she blamed her youngest sister for the outcome of this tragedy. I wrote Her Sister's Shadow, in part, to answer that question. All the incidents in the novel are fictional, and, unlike my characters, my mother and her sister remained close throughout their lives, but it was their relationship that got me thinking about what it might take to drive sisters apart, and what it would take to bring them back together.

KB: I did use an agent. Her Sister's Shadow is my second fiction manuscript; twenty-five editors rejected the first one. With each rejection, my agent, Jennifer Unter, would send me an email with the title of my book as the subject line and the editor’s reason for the rejection in the body. After about the tenth rejection, I started working on Her Sister's Shadow (originally titled Lilli's Garden). It took me two years to write. My agent sent it out, and her third email came to me with the subject line “Set up a call with an editor.” I was thrilled! An editor at Berkley Books (an imprint of Penguin USA) had really liked my manuscript but hadn’t been approved to make an offer. The editor suggested some revisions and said she’d be happy to take another look. I made the changes, Jennifer sent it back, and I received the four best words a writer can hear: we have an offer!

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

KB: I’ve always loved the name of Edith Wharton’s character, Lily Bart. The sound of those three syllables is very satisfying: two soft and one blunt. My Lilli’s last name is Niles, which is softer than Bart, but her full name is Lillianne (I’ve no idea where that came from; I’ve never even met a Lillianne) and I liked the way the Ls and Ns work together.

Bea (the older sister) is short for Elizabeth. I think the nickname reflects her character well. She’s a hard worker and has a painful sting when provoked.

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

KB: Two, both in very early stages. One explores a secondary character in Her Sister's Shadow. Sort of a prequel. The other is unrelated. I’m waiting so see which one starts to assert itself most strongly.

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

KB: I like to write in the mornings for at least four hours. I make coffee and start writing by 7:30 or so, taking occasional breaks (see response below!). By afternoon my brain feels dull, and I find that any work I do has to be redone.

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

KB: Puttering: doing laundry, cleaning the kitchen, deadheading flowers, watering plants, updating social media sites (Facebook, Goodreads, Twitter), opening mail, looking for new recipes, playing with my dog. I dislike writing first drafts, so I have to be really regimented or I’ll find all sorts of tasks that desperately need doing. Once I’m revising, which I love, very little can pull me to procrastinate. Hence, all those things I just mentioned tend not to get done. (Except playing with the dog. I always have time for that.) Finding the right balance is tricky or my life can unravel pretty quickly!

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

KB: Great question. You should see my desk! My favorite non-essential item would have to be my shell collection. We spend time on Sanibel Island every winter. The beaches hold some incredible shells, yellow, orange, pink... Colors you don’t see in Vermont from November to May. I also have an angel wing in the collection, which is pure white and feels like Wedgewood. The shells surround a piece of driftwood with bits of sand caught in its crevices. Every time I look at it I think about Sanibel with its magnificent sunrises and sunsets (we get both because of the orientation of the island) the shore birds… I love it there. That’s another way I procrastinate: daydreaming.

Runner-up for favorite non-essential would be the elephant candle holder. I have its rear turned toward the door because I’ve heard that brings abundance…

NON: What are you currently reading?

KB: A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. She’s a creative genius who really understands and challenges the novel form. I just finished The Art of Racing in the Rain, which was thoroughly charming and a great book to read while traveling.

Title: Her Sister’s Shadow

Author: Katharine Britton

Publisher: Berkley Books/Penguin USA

Trade Paperback: 352 pages

ISBN: 978-0-425-24174-5

eBook/ePub ISBN: 9781101528891

eBook/Adobe reader ISBN: 9781101526958

Brenda L. Baker: Sisters of the Sari

2011-08-22T04:00:00.000-07:00

This contest is closed. The winners are:

Gwendolyn B.
Nancye

Enter for two chances to win a copy of Sisters of the Sari. Contest open in the United States and Canada only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Brenda L. Baker: Sisters of the Sari is the story of two strong-willed women who overcome barriers of language, culture, and social standing to form a bond that changes their lives and the lives of everyone around them.

Kiria Langdon, the CEO of an American technology company, is robbed while on vacation in India. She is rescued by Santoshi, a former slave who lives in a shelter for homeless women in Chennai. Running away from her own problems back home, Kiria stays in India, determined to improve Santoshi’s life. Santoshi, however, does not see Kiria’s interference as an improvement and the resulting struggle forces both women to face the past and reevaluate the future.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

BLB: The idea for the book came while I was volunteering with the women’s empowerment program at the Madras Christian Counsel of Social Service in Chennai, India.

I was blogging to describe some of the more humorous aspects of learning to live in an alien culture for my friends. Toward the end of my volunteering assignment, funding for one of the two women’s shelters run by the organization was withdrawn. Shelters are one of the few forms of safe, decent housing for impoverished women without families in India. Closing the shelter would have put the twenty women living there out onto the street. I worked with the woman who ran the organization on finding funding to convert the unused shelter space into a hostel for low-income women. The blog and the funding proposals smushed together in my head and became a novel.

NON: No two authors seem to take the same route to publication, but almost every author has an interesting story about their journey. How did you get published? Did you use an agent? How did you find out that your book had sold?

BLB: My publication story is probably the least interesting one you’ve ever printed here.

When I returned to Canada, my age and the economy made it difficult to find a job. In an effort to avoid the cat food diet, I decided to try getting the book published. I spent a few weeks trawling the blogosphere and discovered the many wonderful agents who take time to produce helpful blogs for us publishing newbies. I followed their advice on how to write query letters and sent out ten of them early in 2009, targeting agents who seemed to have a preference for humorous women’s fiction.

Fortunately, one of my top picks from the agent pool was April Eberhardt. She gave me solid feedback on how to improve the book, which I of course followed. April liked the revised manuscript and offered representation, then did all the heavy lifting of presenting the book to editors while I sat back and chewed my nails.

About six months after she took the project on, April called me one morning to tell me Danielle Perez at NAL was interested in the book. I had a phone conversation with Danielle, then turned negotiations over to April and went back to nail munching until she called and to say we had a deal.

When I write it out, this story seems incredibly dull. In reality, it was the second most exciting year of my life.

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

BLB: I agree with you that names are a primary means of character definition. My mental picture of a Polly is different from my mental picture of a Brunhilde. I’m told my English grandmother suggested I be named Gwendolyn, but because she had terrible handwriting, I was christened Brenda Lynn instead. Imagine how classy I’d have been with a name like Gwendolyn.

Having said that, I have an embarrassing confession to make. You know how some writers say a book is really written by its characters? Well my characters tell me their names as well. I have no clue why I pick a name. It just gets typed out as I’m writing.

Because there are so many Indian names in the novel, I did have to change one of them when I finished the first draft to make it easier for western readers to distinguish between two characters. Little Sushmita became Meeta to avoid confusion with Santoshi, one of the book’s protagonists.

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

BLB: I just finished the second draft of my second novel and sent it to the editor a couple of weeks ago. It’s about two women who meet over the hospital bed of their comatose husband and join forces to find out who they really married.

While I’m waiting for revisions on that book, I’ve started a third. Books change a great deal during the writing process. Currently, this one is about an agoraphobic psychic who believes she can be cured of her phobia by taking a miracle rejuvenation drug. I have no idea what it will be about by the time the first draft is completed though. That’s the fun of writing for me - letting the book and characters take me where they want to go.

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

BLB: Writing, for me, isn’t primarily about getting words on paper. A lot more effort goes into thinking and research. I think best while walking or doing mindless tasks like knitting and housecleaning. Research is done spastically, when I realize there’s something I need to learn. The actual words-on-the-page part of writing gets done in one of two ways. On a deadline, I treat writing like any other type of employment: start at eight AM and keep working till I’ve met my word quota for the day, usually late in the afternoon. Without a deadline, I write when I’m in the mood (fortunately for me I’m almost always in the mood) or when I’m trying to avoid doing something else.

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

BLB: It depends on what I’m trying to avoid. Sometimes I use writing as a form of procrastination while the ironing piles up and the garden gets weedy. As far as procrastinating while writing, “research” is my favorite time-waster. I once spent an entire morning watching parrot videos on youtube to create six words of dialogue for a macaw.

I’m a person who gets bored quickly, so while I’ve got lots of procrastination strategies, the one I go back to most often is reading. Fortunately, I volunteer at the local library, so there’s no shortage of interesting things to read.

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

BLB: I work at my kitchen table facing a blank wall. The only things on the table are the laptop, keyboard, and monitor. Clutter bothers me (if I can see it, I’m perfectly happy to shove everything in a closet and shut the door) and I’m too easily distracted to even have a window in my line of sight.

Also, I changed countries four times in my life. Somewhere along the way, I lost interest in physical keepsakes and developed a passion for experiences. The last two times I left a country, I got on the plane with not much more than my laptop bag, the clothes I stood up in, and my memories. My favorite things aren’t things at all, they are ideas and adventures.

NON: What are you currently reading?

BLB: Wake by Robert J. Sawyer, a science fiction novel that explores the connection between bi-cameral thinking (left brain/right brain) and consciousness. It postulates that the Internet could, under the right circumstances, achieve consciousness, an idea I find fascinating.

When I’m writing, I have to be careful about what I read. If I read too much in my genre, women’s fiction, the ideas and characters bleed over into my writing. As a result, most of the books I pick up nowadays are science fiction or nonfiction. Lately, I’ve been interested in the neurosciences and the social history of pre-communist China.

Title: Sisters of the Sari
Author: Brenda L. Baker
Publisher: NAL
Trade Paperback: 352 pages
ISBN: 9780451233219
eBook ISBN: B004VCTPCC

Ernest Cline: Ready Player One

2011-08-15T04:00:00.000-07:00

This contest is closed. The winners are:

Kristie
Amanda

Enter for two chances to win a copy of Ready Player One. Contest open in the United States only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Ernest Cline: Ready Player One is a thriller-slash-coming-of-age story that takes place partly in a virtual world, with a plot that involves '80s pop culture nostalgia, giant robot battles, and an enormous amount of geeking out. Sort of a cross between Snow Crash and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, with a little bit of Kurt Vonnegut and Douglas Adams thrown in.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

EC: I was reminiscing about old video game contests, that the Swordquest competition that Atari ran when I was a kid, where you could win a gold crown and scepter by solving these video games puzzles. Then I started thinking about video game easter eggs, and that leg to the idea of a Wonka-esque video game designer who turns his Last Will and Testament into the greatest video game contest of all time. Everything grew out of that idea.

NON: No two authors seem to take the same route to publication, but almost every author has an interesting story about their journey. How did you get published? Did you use an agent? How did you find out that your book had sold?

EC: I was already established a screenwriter, and had a film agent. That helped me get a really great literary agent, who handled the sale of my book. I found out my book had sold (in a big bidding war) when my agent called me during a screening of the Karate Kid remake, so I missed the ending. (But I’m pretty sure the kid won.)

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

EC: My protagonist’s name is Wade Watts. I wanted him to have an alliterative name that sounded like the secret identity of a super hero, like Peter Parker or Clark Kent. I also gave him the middle name “Owen” so that his initials would spell something cool (W-O-W) when he entered them on old video game high score lists. I never had any other names in mind.

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

EC: Yes, I have both a book and a screenwriting project currently in the works. But both are still top secret.

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

EC: What works for me is to think of writing as my day job. After I get my daughter off to school, I shut myself in my office and write all day, until it’s time to get pick her up from school again.

Of course, that’s easier said than done. Being my own boss is a bad thing sometimes. I tend to give myself a lot of breaks. And vacation days.

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

EC: Playing classic video games, which I refer to as “research.”

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

EC: My Ultraman piggy bank.

NON: What are you currently reading?

EC: Last Words by George Carlin

Title: Ready Player One
Author: Ernest Cline
Publisher: Crown / Random House
Hardcover: 384 pages
ISBN: 978-0307887436

Wendy Perriman: Fire on Dark Water

2011-08-08T04:00:00.000-07:00

This contest is closed. The winner is:

Annoymous (servocody)

Enter for a chance to win an autographed copy of Fire on Dark Water. Contest open in the United States only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Wendy Perriman: Fire on Dark Water is recounted by an English gypsy called Lola Blaise, who knows that Captain Edward Teach is a buccaneer when she marries him but has no idea she is about to become the thirteenth wife of the infamous Blackbeard. Nor does Lola realize the unconscionable deeds she will have to perform to avoid the fate of her tragic predecessors.

The novel is set against the Eighteenth Century’s Golden Age of Piracy. Lola takes us on an epic journey from her early Romany childhood to loss of innocence in the slums of London, a horrific voyage on a white slave ship, indentured servitude on a Charleston rice plantation, life in a brothel on the ‘Pirate Republic’ of New Providence, and ultimately aboard the Queen Anne’s Revenge (Blackbeard’s flagship), as she interacts with real characters in factual situations.

Tales of daring pirates continue to capture the popular imagination, and feminists have looked to Anne Bonny and Mary Reed as historic examples of tough, proactive heroines. But carried away by such romanticism we often lose sight of the fact that most buccaneers were greedy, bloodthirsty killers with addictive or pathological natures. Whereas previous books tend to sanitize their lifestyles, this account is a gritty, violent, realistic portrayal of the manic events acted out by dangerous individuals with little left to lose. This is not a tale for the faint of heart.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

WP: In 2008 I visited the Pirates of Nassau Museum (Bahamas) where I first encountered the legends of Anne Bonny and Mary Reed. Having attended school in Blackbeard’s hometown of Bristol (England), I knew something of Edward Teach, yet I had never heard tell of any female pirates. I was so intrigued I immediately purchased every book in the gift shop that related to women buccaneers. As I researched the topic further, I realized there had not been a literary pirate novel since Daniel Defoe’s The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, and that most of the tales about Bonny and Reed were light romances. So I decided to write Fire on Dark Water to fill this gap.

NON: No two authors seem to take the same route to publication, but almost every author has an interesting story about their journey. How did you get published? Did you use an agent? How did you find out that your book had sold?

WP: I was extremely fortunate to query Ann Collette at the Helen Rees Literary Agency. She immediately requested the manuscript, and rang me ten days later to tell me the Penguin Group had made an offer. Sounds like a fairy tale, right? I need to add, however, that I am no stranger to the trials and tribulations of the publication process having previously published three volumes of poetry and two scholarly books!

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

WP: Lola Blaise was the only name I considered because it fit the character perfectly. It derives from the Romany word lolo meaning ‘red’ and mura meaning ‘berry.’ As the narrator explains:

“I was born, inconveniently, at the height of the picking season in a ditch at the edge of a strawberry field. And so was named Lolomura (for the red berries) but everyone knew me as Lola.”

Blaise refers to the chestnut tint in Lola’s hair, suggesting she might be the fire of the book’s title.

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

WP: I am currently completing a novel based on the Lancashire Witch Trials of 1612.

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

WP: I work most creatively in the very early hours of the morning, free from the distractions of everyday life. Around midmorning I often take a break to read e-mails, work on publicity, and answer interview questions – then spend the afternoons editing and redrafting the previous day’s writing. I generally put in six or more hours every day, but if I am at an exciting point where I need to do extensive research I will happily read until my eyes give out on me.

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

WP: Playing with my two cats, who think nothing of flopping themselves across my keyboard if they feel they are not getting sufficient attention!

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

WP: A wooden replica of Blackbeard’s flag ship Queen Anne’s Revenge purchased from the museum in Raleigh, North Carolina.

NON: What are you currently reading?

WP: I have just finished Curtis Sittenfled’s American Wife and am about to reread Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha for next month’s book club.

Title: Fire on Dark Water
Author: Wendy Perriman
Publisher: Berkley
Trade Paperback: 326 pages
ISBN: 978-0-425-24104-2
eBook ISBN: B004LRPDT6

T.C. McCarthy: Germline

2011-08-01T04:00:00.000-07:00

This contest is closed. The winners are:

Michelle Greathouse
karenk

Enter for two chances to win a copy of Germline. Contest open in the United States only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

T.C. McCarthy: "Pavlodar, Kazakhstan, has fallen; when U.S. forces capture its metallic resources using bioengineered troops, reporter-turned-drug-addict Oscar Wendell, is in their midst. During the ensuing war with Russia, Oscar only has to grow up, clean up, and save his girlfriend - a genetically engineered soldier - if he wants to survive."

Regarding that paragraph: SFX asked me to pitch my book in less than 50 words so I totally just cut and pasted from that interview, but it wasn't because I was lazy; I still can't believe that it can be done! I mean describe a whole book in less than 50 words? But that's Germline: it's a novel about the psychological effects on a man who is forced to grow up in a future war, and how he comes to terms with the new technology of artificial humans.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

TCM: A few years ago I tried getting back into reading science fiction, and was having a hard time. At some point one reaches the point where he or she says "I could write a better book than this" and when I reached it decided it was time to put-up-or-shut-up; Germline was born. I knew I had a war novel/science fiction novel that I wanted to write and when I reread Michael Herr's Dispatches the light bulb went off: I hadn't seen a single military science fiction book that had been written like that, so why not try? From there I decided to not write about a conflict against rebels or insurgents or aliens, but to depict total war involving evenly matched foes, both of which were human. Why? Because it would be too easy for my protagonist to shrug off the death of something like a huge, alien, spider-like thing. Or a giant man-eating crab. Germline digs into the psyche of its main character and the effects that war's horrors have on him, so I wanted the setting to be as difficult as possible with men pitched against each other.

TCM: I learned a lesson from this process, so let me lead with that: rejection is not necessarily an accurate reflection of one's ability to write a sellable story or book. I wrote genre (horror and science fiction) short stories for years and tried to sell them to some of the better-known magazines, who rejected them over and over, bringing me to the point where I almost gave up. Instead, in 2008-2009, I tried something different by writing a couple of literary short stories and starting my first book: Germline. The literary stories sold to respected venues almost immediately and I scratched my head. While genre magazines wouldn’t buy my work, literary journals would, and what did that mean? I still don't have an answer for that one, but think about it constantly!

At the same time, Germline reached completion. It originally took the form of three separate novellas in one book and when I shopped it to agents got a bite from Colleen Lindsay (who was at FinePrint at the time) but she eventually declined. The reason was totally understandable: Germline wasn't ready for prime time. So I trashed the whole book, rewrote it as a single novelette, paid Nick Mamatas (author, former editor at Clarkesworld, etc.) to critique it, then rewrote it again using some of Nick's suggestions until I had a much better Germline (version two). Or so I thought. Long story short: every agent I approached either rejected me or didn't respond at all - except Alex Field. Alex saw something he liked and started shopping Germline to different publishers, which is when the really amazing thing happened: Dongwon Song at Orbit Books bit. He and I chatted on the phone for a while, and then talked about turning my three novellas into three novels, and a month or two later we had a signed contract for the Subterrene trilogy. To this day I'm a little stunned, and absolutely grateful to Alex, Dongwon and Orbit.

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

TCM: I got tired of reading books where characters had names like John Sledge, Duke Fantastico, and I could go on but I'm starting to feel dizzy. Seriously: I wanted a plain name, one that didn't stand out so that it wouldn't even cause a reaction with the reader and Oscar Wendell was the first one I came to; there were no other contenders! I view names as something that can rip a reader out of the story and so wanted one that was as bland and low-key as possible.

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

TCM: I'm still drafting the third book of the Subterrene trilogy, and once that's done I'm going on vacation with my family! There are a couple of other books I've started, but writing a trilogy was more demanding than I anticipated so I need to recover before I start a fourth book (or a new trilogy!).

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

TCM: Because I have three kids and a full-time job, I have to write whenever I can and despite any distractions that might get in the way. Usually this means I'm up until midnight and waking up at 3-4 AM. All my kids are under the age of 9, so if you have kids you know what I mean. And I try to write every day regardless of mood. I used to wait for the mood, but when you're under a deadline that luxury is no longer available, and I found that even when I wasn't in the mood, as soon as the words started to appear on the screen I felt much more like writing.

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

TCM: Clicking refresh on my inbox, waiting for the genre magazines to finally buy a short story from me.

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

TCM: The Pinewood Derby car that I carved for my sons and a picture of my daughter when she was two. She's in a snowsuit and my wife took the picture when we lived outside DC, and there had been a massive blizzard so the snow was deeper than she was tall. Kids are amazing.

NON: What are you currently reading?

TCM: Still working on Masked (edited by Lou Anders); so far it's brilliant but I have so little time to read that I haven't made it all the way through.

Title: Germline

Author: T.C. McCarthy

Publisher: Orbit Books

Mass Market Paperback: 384 pages

ISBN: 031612818X

eBook ISBN: B0047Y16NU

Stephanie Stiles: Take It Like a Mom

2011-07-25T04:00:00.000-07:00

This contest is closed. The winner is:

Megan @ Book Brats

Enter for a chance to win a copy of Take It Like a Mom. Contest open in the United States only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Stephanie Stiles: Um. Was I supposed to have a pitch? Because, truth be told, I didn’t have a pitch. At all. I was, like, standing on the mound without so much as a ball or a glove, just hoping not to get nailed by the batter. I have no idea whether or not that analogy even means anything, since I don’t really follow sports too much – except for noticing who looks good in the too-tight uniforms they always wear (I’m looking at you, Jeter). But, as far as a pitch goes, that’s probably a little more forward-looking than I was when I began Take It Like a Mom. I just knew I liked to read books about people I could relate to, and Annie, the main character of Take It Like a Mom, kind of emerged as a result.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

SS: Well, let me tell you… I was strolling along the Champs Elysees (I had to Google that just now to find out how to spell it, because I’ve never strolled along any Champs, let alone the Elysees one)…. That sounds good though, doesn’t it? You know, inspiration hitting while visiting the City of Love and all? But, uh, no. In my case, I happened to have some time during my summer break, and since my students had been asking me all year to write something, I figure, what the hell? Give it a go. I was teaching Creative Writing, so it’s not like anyone could totally ridicule me for taking a crack at it, right? And, let’s be honest, there’s so much else to ridicule me for, writing would have to fall pretty low on the list, after all. So, I started writing about things I thought were fun and/or funny – and about things that I would like to read about. And a story about motherhood (which is always hilarious, right?) was the consequence. Which is actually weird because this was before I had kids of my own, but still – you take one trip to the local SuperSaver, and you see the comedy potential for motherhood right there, don’t you?

NON: No two authors seem to take the same route to publication, but almost every author has an interesting story about their journey. How did you get published? Did you use an agent? How did you find out that your book had sold?

SS: Do you remember when it was still okay to think of Mel Gibson as The Sexiest Man Alive? Because that’s around the time that this whole book thing got started. In other words, it took me longer to get this thing published than for the godly family man with all the Oscar buzz to become, well, not those things anymore. And writing the book wasn’t the hard or long part either, just in case that’s what you’re thinking. I’m hardly Gustave Flaubert here, pondering every nuance and shade of meaning in order to create a masterpiece. It was the fact that my family has this annoying habit of having to be fed stuff like, breakfast or, say, dinner that proved the real time-killer. Plus, I had a kid – and then another one, six years later – so for a period of at least eight years, I did nothing with the manuscript except keep it stored on my computer. Only when I was on Sabbatical did I resurrect it and begin contacting agents. I signed with Greyhaus, and less than a month later, the book was sold. And a lavish celebration of macaroni and cheese and cut-up hotdogs followed. When the Stiles par-tay, we really bring down the roof.

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

SS: I probably had several names under consideration, but it was so long ago, I don’t remember any of them now. But I’ve never been much of a “Percival Lloyd Pheasanthoffer Wentenbuckle the Third” kind of person (oh, jeez, if there’s a Percival Lloyd Pheasanthoffer Wentenbuckle the Third reading this, I’m really sorry; you’re probably very nice and don’t ride horses or wear white shoes even a little), so I wanted a good, solid, “normal” person-sounding name. And “Annie” did it for me. Remember when John Cusak identified that “Nick” was the name of the kind of guy who’d let you throw up in his car? Well, Annie Fingardt Forster just seemed like the name of the kind of mom who’d let your kid throw up in her car. Or you. And everyone can use a friend who lets you puke in their car. Or is that just me?

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

SS: I do, indeed; and this one is sure to win the Pulitzer, Nobel, and, um, what’s that other one? Is there another one? I’m sure there is, and when this new book wins it, I’ll pretend I knew about it all along (and, probably, as an English professor, really should have known about it all along). The title is, at this point, Quitting Time, and the story revolves around Kate Wilton, a hedge-fund exec who quits her high-powered job in order to raise her brand-new twins. Hilarity ensues, along with the myriad literary awards I am going to search for on Wikipedia right now.

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

SS: Yes, I do write when the mood strikes… my kids. And let me tell you: their moods are as unpredictable as a sorority at a frat party. While PMSing. And on a roller coaster. Drunk. Oh, well, I guess the drunk part is probably redundant if it’s a sorority at a frat party. But, you probably get the point. These kids are two tough taskmasters. And when they see me so much as sideways-glance in the general direction of the region of the house where my computer is located, well, suffice it to say, the mood ain’t particularly conducive to honing the fine craft of the written word. Once, when I was merely thinking about trying to finish up a chapter, my two-year-old daughter erupted in tears, explaining that the floor (which she had been happily walking on all day) (in shoes, mind you) was – suddenly and inexplicably – “was too pointy, with those sharp things all over it.” We, by the way, have carpet.

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

SS: Favorite way to procrastinate? Television. Anything with the name “Jersey” in the title will do nicely here. Most common way? Well, then it’s a toss up: screaming at my kids or washing their dirty laundry. Or screaming at them while washing their dirty laundry. I like to multitask.

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

SS: Well, if I’d known you were going to ask that, I’d have cleared off the half-empty (all the way empty) bag of Cheetos and the miniature (full-sized) Milky Ways bars. But, upon reflection, I believe these items may be considered essential, after all. All the four food groups are represented: the Frito-Lay group, the M&M Mars group, the orange-dye No. 7 group, and the nougat group. So, if we decide to count those items as essential, then, I guess my favorite non-essential item would be the other bag of Cheetos.

NON: What are you currently reading?

SS: Hm. Should I lie and say something like, Oh, I’m just re-reading my Shakespeare histories, or, Well, I’m using the summer to brush up on my French realists; or should I tell the truth and admit that there are two Star magazines sitting proudly atop my nightstand as we speak. Star is, after all, one of my favorite books. Along with women’s fiction and anything by David Sedaris.

Please feel free to visit me at stephaniestiles.com; and email me with your comments at stephanie@stephaniestiles.com. I would love to hear from you!

Title: Take It Like a Mom
Author: Stephanie Stiles
Publisher: New American Library (NAL)
Trade Paperback: 320 pages
ISBN: 978-0451232540
eBook ISBN: B004P1JDJ4

Kate Racculia: This Must Be the Place

2011-07-18T04:00:00.000-07:00

This contest is closed. The winners are:

faithspage
Kristie

Enter for two chances to win a copy of This Must Be the Place. Contest open in the United States only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Kate Racculia: Thank you! This Must Be the Place is a coming-of-age/mystery/quirky small-town drama that kicks off with a tragic death in Hollywood. Arthur Rook, a young photographer living in LA, is distraught when his special-effects technician wife, Amy, is killed on set in a freak accident. When he finds an old postcard in her belongings, addressed but never sent to someone in the small town where she grew up, a despondent and grieving Arthur chases the address to the Darby-Jones boardinghouse in remote Ruby Falls, New York.
There, he falls headfirst into the life of Mona Jones, Amy’s best friend from high school, who is now the proprietor of said boardinghouse, a baker of wedding cakes, and mother to a self-proclaimed teenage freak, her daughter Oneida, who’s being romanced by a punk kid at school. The story of how their pasts and presents collide, what it says about friendship, love, and the great mystery that is Other People, is the story of This Must Be the Place.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

KR: I began writing This Must Be the Place the first summer I was a full-fledged Grown Up. I was done with school, working full time in marketing, and hungry to use my imagination to relive the joys of my childhood, chief among them, reading. I’ve always loved books, and always wanted to be a writer. That summer, I had completed my MFA in creative writing and knew there was no time like the present to simply…start. I wanted my writing project to be novel length but didn’t want to freak myself out trying to produce THE MOST EPIC STORY OF EPICNESS EVER TOLD (even though I adore those stories), so I told myself: start small. What do you remember? What can you use from the shoebox that is your brain—full of memories and mementos—to tell a story about growing up? The book grew from a few key loves, inspirations and experiences, like the shadowboxes of Joseph Cornell and my hobby of collecting ephemera, especially postcards. I visited the Jersey Shore as a teenager, worshipped the Beatles in high school, and watched Ray Harryhausen’s monster movies when I was even younger. Essentially, I made a stew of favorite things and memories, created characters from different parts of myself, and just let my mind play.

NON: No two authors seem to take the same route to publication, but almost every author has an interesting story about their journey. How did you get published? Did you use an agent? How did you find out that your book had sold?

KR: I was lucky enough to find an agent, just as you said, through a rather interesting story—through my best friend from college’s friend from grad school’s friend from college, who was working as her assistant at the time. I knew we were a great fit the first time we talked; she gave fantastic advice, both editorial and business-of-publishing, which helped guide my first round of full-draft revisions. I was at work when she called to tell me she’d sold my book, that This Must Be the Place had a home. I ducked into an empty office to take the call. There might have been some NSFW but wholly joyful swearing at top volume.

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

KR: I love naming characters. I’ve been writing since I was a little kid, and picking out names for the people I’m imagining has long been one of my favorite parts of the whole process. (I still use the same baby name dictionary, which I’ve been dog-earing since the early nineties.) Finding the perfect name is the flashpoint of possibility—it’s like being introduced to the kernel of that character for the very first time, weighing your own personal feelings toward the name against cultural associations, and then realizing that’s all well and good—but who is this character really going to be? How are they going to surprise you? Naming a character is like meeting a person you’re going to travel around the world with for the first time at the departure gate.

Specific to This Must Be the Place, Arthur Rook got his name from the fact that he’s a photographer. Almost all of my characters are artists of some kind—model and special effects maker, cook and baker—but (Art)hur is the only one with formal training. "Rook" is a nod to the fact that he’s in flight and in mourning (because…crows are sort of sad). Desdemona Jones, who runs the Darby-Jones boardinghouse where Arthur comes to roost, is a tribute to my favorite on-screen incarnation of Harrison Ford. Oneida, Mona’s daughter, is named after Oneida Lake in upstate New York, where I’ve spent family vacations since I was three. While the book isn’t autobiographical, it draws heavily on my memories of growing up near Syracuse, so it felt right to name Oneida after a place I’ve loved all my life.

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

KR: Sure do! I’m chugging merrily along on a murder mystery I like to describe as a cross between The Shining and Heathers, set at band camp. I played bassoon in high school (add "band-" to my list of geek hyphenates, including "lit-," "art-," and "drama-") and want to use the book to explore how the arts are treated in America—in education, in the “real world,” in all of our private and public lives—on top of a really funny, twisty, scary, strange and engrossing murder mystery. I love a whodunit.

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

KR: I’m a weekend writing warrior. I work full time in non-profit fundraising, so Saturdays and Sundays are my sacred writing time, typically spent camped out at a café for a three to four-hour block with a big glass of iced chai by my side. Going out to a café where I don’t have free wifi access is absolutely critical; the number-one distraction from getting work done, without question, is the web. Basically, I need a little ambient sound and energy, freedom from the myriad “ooh, shiny!” charms of the Internet, a steady supply of caffeine, and I’m good to go.

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

KR: I’m addicted to trailers. Whether they’re on the Apple trailer page (www.apple.com/trailers), Movie List (http://www.movie-list.com/), or embedded in blogs and YouTube, I will always click play. It’s a teeny bite-sized story, a movie in miniature, and I can occasionally satisfy whatever curiosity I may have about the film being advertised—for free—simply by watching the trailer. Some trailers are classics in their own right, e.g., the Pulp Fiction trailer is bad. ass. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFhadqrMPiU]: they’re such perfect distillations of their movies, I’ll rewatch the trailer for a quick movie-high hit. Great trailers are like an appetizer and an after-dinner mint in one—an invitation to experience awesome, and a reminder of the awesome experienced.

Also, the Fug Girls [http://gofugyourself.com/] rock my world. (Did I mention the Internet is a seething mass of distraction??)

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

KR: I have a snow globe–style paperweight, but instead of snow falling on the New York skyline, when you shake it, gold confetti rains on a rather grumpy looking frog wearing a crown. My best friend brought it back for me as a souvenir from Italy. It has a little note taped underneath that reads, simply, SEXY. There’s a story there, but it’s probably better if I don’t tell it.

NON: What are you currently reading?

KR: I recently finished Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad, which blew my mind. Almost impossible to encapsulate in a single sentence, but—wow. It’s a book bursting with music, with regret and promise and triumph and confusion and decay and loss and people. Seriously, drop what you’re doing this instant and get your paws on a copy.

I just picked up Aimee Bender’s The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (enjoying so far), and after that, who knows! Summer is all about reading as often and as much as I possibly can, and my ears are always open for recommendations.

Title: This Must Be the Place
Author: Kate Racculia
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press
Trade paperback: 350 pages
ISBN: 978-0-312-57166-5
eBook ISBN: 0805092307

Beth McMullen: Original Sin

2011-07-11T04:00:00.000-07:00

This contest is closed. The winners are:

karenk
Casey H

Enter for a chance to win two copies of Original Sin. Contest open in the United States only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Beth McMullen: Lucy Hamilton is the stay-at-home mom of a three-year-old boy, and on the surface, everything looks nice and normal. Except it’s not. What nobody knows is that Lucy Hamilton used to be Sally Sin, a spy for the United States Agency for Weapons of Mass Destruction. And while she is done with the Agency, the Agency is not quite done with her.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

BM: I was in Tulum, Mexico on vacation, about a year after my son was born, and I had an image of these two people who are tangled up in a complicated relationship standing on the beach. They are so close to each other and yet find themselves living in totally different worlds. I couldn’t get the image out of my head so I wrote it up as a scene. With a scene like that, I probably should have stuck to straight romance but I ended up going in another direction entirely. The funny thing is that I ultimately cut that scene from the final draft of Original Sin but did get a chance to use it in To Sin Again, the sequel out in the summer in 2012, so it wasn’t a total wash.

NON: No two authors seem to take the same route to publication, but almost every author has an interesting story about their journey. How did you get published? Did you use an agent? How did you find out that your book had sold?

BM: The journey to publication can be rough and not a little disheartening. I wrote a book called Waking Up Dead first and I really liked it but no one else did. I think I sent that thing to about 50 literary agents and ended up with a perfect track record of rejection. Some of the agents wouldn’t even waste a full piece of paper on the rejection letters – they would just send these photocopied scraps letting me know that I was basically a no-talent nobody who better not quit her day job. Fortunately, my first child was around six months old at the time and I was so tired I didn’t have the energy to be insulted. But I made a deal with myself that I would write three novels and if none of them sold, I would try and figure out another direction for my life. The second of those three is Original Sin.

Finding an agent is hard business and I recommend working your personal network to the point where your friends will find you annoying. Somewhere among the people you know is the six degrees of separation that will help you get your stuff at least read. I found my agent, Leigh Feldman of Writer’s House, in just that way. A dear friend of mine whom I met at my son’s preschool went to medical school with a woman who went to summer camp with Leigh. Complicated, but it worked. The connection helped get Leigh to read the manuscript. So you really never know what is going to happen.

When the book was in good enough shape to send out to publishers, Leigh rightly advised me that the process can be slow and I should try not to bite all my fingernails off in the meantime. But the book was picked up by Hyperion in a pre-emptive bid and the wait ended up being less than two days - which is not to say that I hadn’t already bitten all my fingernails off.

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

BM: I honestly have no memory of how I came up with Lucy Hamilton. I tend to pick names in a split second and then that is it – I’m stuck with them! Sally Sin I choose because it seemed so funny and just the sort of ridiculous name a college student might give to a fictional version of themselves on one of those volunteer psychology screenings, where the undergrad is basically the guinea pig for the grad student, which is how it unfolds in Original Sin.

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

BM: I just wrapped up the manuscript for To Sin Again and am now working on the third in the series, tentatively titled Guilty As Sin. In the background, I’m working on a romance with a heavy dose of magical realism as well as something involving Somali pirates, sailboats, and people who are in the wrong place at the wrong time.

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

BM: What I wouldn’t give to write when the mood hit me!! Right now, I live my life around the schedules of my two kids, 4 and 6. So I write when they are in school in the mornings. It’s not enough time so I’m pretty hardcore about protecting it. I won’t run an errand or chitchat over coffee even if I really want to. I will also supplement with nights if necessary, but that’s not my favorite time to work.

Truth be told, the writer in me loves the inspiration that sometimes comes from hanging out with the kids. For example, I came up with a great scene for the third Sin book while in Target pushing one of those enormous carts with two attached seats for children. I thought about how you might run away from someone while trying to maneuver one of those things. It’s like trying to turn an ocean liner in a narrow river. Ridiculous!

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

BM: Internet shoe shopping!!

In second place is virtually visiting all the places in the world that I have yet to see. I took a year off in my early thirties, just quit my job and traveled around the world with a ratty backpack and about 200 lbs of Lonely Planet guidebooks. Yes, it was scary but it was probably one of the smartest things I’ve ever done. First and foremost, all of those adventures inform my writing. I honestly believe the creative part of my brain works better when it is forced out of its comfort zone. Second, I realized that even if I was checking out, the world would just go on like it was and it would be the same when I came back. In other words, no one would care if I disappeared for a while. And that turned out to be true. Everything was exactly as I had left it when I came back except I had all these amazing experiences tucked away in my memory.

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

BM: I don’t have a desk. I do all of my writing at one of the fabulous coffee shops here in Davis, CA. There is something about the background noise of a coffee shop that helps me concentrate even if that seems counter intuitive. Plus the healthy doses of caffeine help!

NON: What are you currently reading?

BM: I’m just finishing up Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson. Her voice is so sure and unwavering and her characters are so true; I adore her books. I also just finished The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. The man is a genius. I don’t know how else to put it.

Title: Original Sin: A Sally Sin Adventure
Author: Beth McMullen
Publisher: Hyperion
Hardover: 304 pages
ISBN: 978-1401324216
eBook ISBN: 1401324215

Susan Schneider: The Wedding Writer

2011-07-04T04:00:00.000-07:00

This contest is closed. The winner is:

Cari

Enter for a chance to win a copy of The Wedding Writer. Contest open in the United States only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Susan Schneider: Thank you. In a way, I am the wedding writer! In my time on staff at a number of bridal publications in New York, I wrote dozens and dozens of wedding “stories”—known in editor-speak as “real weddings.” Recent brides would submit their wedding photography to us, and we’d choose the ones we liked best. Then we’d run the couple’s photos with the story. These were little fairy-tales, always with happily-ever-after endings. I felt there was an inherent poignance in the idea of single, underpaid working girls sitting at their desks creating these portraits of bliss.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

SS: There have been lots of novels with magazine settings, but no one’s ever done the weird and wonderful world of wedding magazines—the white dresses, the flowers, the fantasy! I came to know it all so well, everything from the fashion to the flowers and the food and so on and so forth. I also wanted to show the grit behind the glamour. The women who toil amidst the tulle and the tiaras are talented and ambitious. They can be ruthless and they can be vulnerable. They can bond with each other and betray each other in a New York minute. It’s a topsy-turvy and sometimes cruel world with a beautiful veneer.

NON: No two authors seem to take the same route to publication, but almost every author has an interesting story about their journey. How did you get published? Did you use an agent? How did you find out that your book had sold?

SS: Many years ago, in a whole different universe (or so it seems), I was a fiction editor at Redbook magazine—that was when writers could seriously aim toward publishing short fiction in commercial publications. Back then, I knew lots of agents, and I also know agents through friends who’ve published. The first thing an agent told me was that “mid-list women’s fiction” was not marketable anymore. Talk about a downer! But I ended up going with a wonderful agent, who read the novel overnight and called me the next day to say she loved it. We had several offers—and I was stressed out to the max—but we finally went with St. Martin's because it was a two-book deal. It’s so important to have an agent who “gets” you. The two of us bonded over lunches of grilled cheese sandwiches at a Greek diner that conveniently lay between our two offices on Seventh Avenue. Our taste in food and in fiction is exactly alike!

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

SS: I really agree with you. I can spend a lot of time choosing names. When my daughter was little, I wrote an essay for Victoria Magazine about how I chose my daughter’s name (India), and it’s usually a similar process for my fictional characters, although not in the case of my character, Lucky Quinn. Lucky comes from a working-class New Jersey family, and she’s had to be both tough and lucky to succeed in New York. “Luck” is the magic that enters your life and gives you a boost along your path or maybe helps you change your path. But is Lucky really lucky? To me it has a somewhat ironic meaning, because the character gets a lot of hard knocks, and she’s certainly been unlucky in love. Time (or maybe a sequel) will tell!

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

SS: Speaking of which, yes. My second novel will stay in the New York City wedding world, but will come at it from another angle. A few of the minor characters will be brought into it—to my delight! You hate to say good-bye to them. And of course we’ll get a glimpse of Lucky’s fate.

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

SS: I wrote this novel while I was working full-time at a bridal magazine. So I had to be disciplined: mornings are my best time, and sometimes in the evening I’d get a second wind (a glass of wine helps). I find that writing daily is very important. I’m a creature of habit, so sitting down at approximately the same time most days works for me. P.S. If I waited for when the mood struck me, I’d never do it.

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

SS: I can always make room for another cup of coffee!

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

SS: My cat. She’s spread out on top of the papers and folders and what-have-you even as I’m writing this. I totally love having her big, furry self there.

NON: What are you currently reading?

SS: I’ve just started The Paris Wife. I’m also reading Reading My Father, by Alexandra Styron. William Styron is a huge favorite of mine, and I’m curious to see him through his daughter’s eyes.

Title: The Wedding Writer
Author: Susan Schneider
Publisher: St Martin’s Press
Trade Paperback: 356 pages
ISBN: 978-0-312-67660-5

Nan Rossiter: The Gin and Chowder Club

2011-06-27T04:00:00.000-07:00

This contest is closed. The winners are:

Linda Kish
Dolly

Enter for a chance to win two copies of The Gin and Chowder Club. Contest open in the United States only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Nan Rossiter: The Gin & Chowder Club is set on Cape Cod in the summer of 1960. My main character, Asa Coleman, is an eighteen year old boy who is drawn into an intimate and tragic relationship with the young wife of his father’s best friend. The story is ultimately about faith and forgiveness.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

NR: I’ve always loved stories filled with heartache. Some of my favorites include The Bridges of Madison County, Dr. Zhivago, The Summer of ’42, The Notebook, and A River Runs Through It. I wrote the kind of story I would like to read.

NON: No two authors seem to take the same route to publication, but almost every author has an interesting story about their journey. How did you get published? Did you use an agent? How did you find out that your book had sold?

NR: Although I was previously published (three children’s books), I didn’t have an agent and I think it must be almost impossible to find a publisher in the adult market without one. It took two years to write my novel and another two years to find an agent and publisher. Jeff Herman’s Guide to Publishers, Editors, and Literary Agents is a great resource with a wealth of information for anyone trying to get published. I wrote a polished query letter, had a concise summary ready to go…in case I had any nibbles, and I began submitting to agents by email or regular mail (the guide specifies their preferences). I received many, many rejections and sometimes I had no response at all…but I refused to give up. Finally, after two years, an agent took me under her wing and helped me find the right publisher. When the deal was in the works I found out that it would be two more years before it was published…but this ended up being a blessing because it gave me time to start the next book…which was part of the deal!

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

NR: I have always loved the name Asa and that’s honestly the only reason I picked the name! There were never any other names in the running.

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

NR: Yes! I will have a short story in a Christmas anthology titled Making Spirits Bright which will be out in October. My contribution to the anthology is called "Christmas on Cape Cod" and it’s a short sequel to my novel. I’m also working on a second novel, which is tentatively called Spilling into the Sun. It has a little boy with autism in it. And, finally, I have a new children’s book coming out in the fall too. It’s called The Fo’c’sle, Henry Beston’s "Outermost House." I’m also the illustrator for this book.

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

NR: I walk three miles every morning with our big yellow Lab, make lunches, throw in the laundry, vacuum, and, when everything’s in order, I try to get to work. I’m not very disciplined and I’m easily distracted…but I write when I can…and slowly it somehow comes together. I’m not a very good working model!

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

NR: My favorite way would be reading a good book! But, sadly, I’m often found mowing the lawn, weeding, and cleaning the bathrooms. Someday, I’m going to hire people to do these things!!! :)

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

NR: Photos of my handsome sons when they were little!

NON: What are you currently reading?

NR: Unbroken

Title: The Gin & Chowder Club
Author: Nan Rossiter
Publisher: Kensington
Trade Paperback: 352 pages
ISBN: 978-0758246677
eBook ISBN: B004NEW502

Lexi George: Demon Hunting in Dixie

2011-06-20T04:00:00.000-07:00

This contest is closed. The winner is:

The Loopy Librarian

Enter for a chance to win a copy of Demon Hunting in Dixie. Contest open in the United States only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Lexi George: Demon Hunting in Dixie is a paranormal romance about a feisty small-town florist who meets an ancient, inter-dimensional demon hunter in pursuit of a rogue demon. Think Christine Feehan’s emotionless Carpathians meets a Southern Stephanie Plum. Chaos to follow.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

LG: Rejection! After three years of trying in vain to get a fantasy romance published, I finally realized the universe was telling me loud and clear that it was not the time for that book. Since I love romance, I decided to try my hand at it. A member of my writing group sent me a link to an online romance group that was offering feedback on the first chapter of a paranormal romance. I decided to give it a shot and the book grew from there. I’d always heard to write what you know. Well, I’m Southern and I’m from a small town, so I came up with the idea of hunky demon hunters landing in a small Southern town. It grew from there.

LG: I’ve been writing for more than sixteen years. My first two books were part of a romantic fantasy series. I knew nothing about fiction writing. Never took a class or read a book on writing, just started writing and loved it. So, I’m self-taught. I joined a writer’s group about five years ago and that was a tremendous help. Getting feed-back and constructive criticism is essential, in my opinion. You can’t write in a vacuum, not if you want to get published. There are rules and you have to learn about them before you can break them.

Around the same time that I joined the writer’s group, I started the querying rounds on the first book of the romantic fantasy that I’d been working on for more than ten years. I got rejected. Big time. Something like a hundred ‘no thanks.’ Discouraged, I decided to try my hand at a paranormal romance. The book took a year to write and the result was Demon Hunting in Dixie, my debut book with Kensington. The book was a total surprise. When I started writing it, I thought it was going to be dark. But it quickly morphed into something else. This snarky voice came out of me that I never knew existed. It was amazing and liberating.

I had done well on the contest circuit while writing the book and I was jazzed. This is it, I thought. This is the one that will make it! In January 2010, I started querying and received a flurry of requests for partials and fulls from agents. I was excited and hopeful . . . and then the rejections started pouring in. Light paranormal doesn’t sell, was the consensus. I was devastated. Another series dead in the water.

I went on my romance writer’s loop and whined and a woman I barely knew at the time sent me an email. There was an interview of Megan Records on line that I needed to check out, she said, and then I needed to query her. I had never thought about querying an editor—too focused on getting an agent. I read the interview and Megan said she saw a lot of dark paranormal. No surprise there, that’s what the agents had said was selling. But then Megan said something that made me sit up and take notice. I don’t see much funny anymore, but I’d like to.

I sent Megan a query letter, referencing her interview and said I write funny! She sent me back an email and asked for the full. This was in February of 2010.

On March 11, 2010, I got The Call.

I was on my way to the doctor for a recheck because I had broken by foot in two places in February. I fell off my shoe. It’s a talent, I know. Anyway, a friend was driving me and my sad, casted foot to the doctor when my cell phone rang. I almost didn’t answer it, because it was an out-of-state call. I figured it was a wrong number or one of those Nigerian bank schemes. I answered the phone and, boy, am I ever glad I did! It was Megan Records calling to offer me a three-book deal! Good thing I wasn’t driving. I would have wrecked the car!

Back in February I’d pitched to Jill Marr of the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency at a mystery reader’s workshop in Birmingham, and she still had my partial. The day after I got the call from Megan Records, I called Jill in California and she agreed to be my agent!

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

LG: Names are tough because they’re so important. I flipped through a baby name book to come up with the name Adara for my heroine. Her middle name, Jean, is after my mother. I followed the same process with Brand, although I think I found his name on-line. I wanted something for him that sounded strong, because he’s a warrior, but not anything modern, because he’s not from earth. I look at the name meanings, too. Name meanings are important. Then I tried them out together. Addy and Brand sounded good together, so that was it!

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

LG: Oh, yes! I have a novella coming out in August as part of a Halloween anthology from Kensington called So I Married A Demon Slayer. My novella tells the story of Bunny Raines, the Hannah librarian, and the sexy demon hunter she falls in love with.

And I am hard at work on book two of the demon hunter series, Demon Hunting in the Deep South, which is Evie and Ansgar’s story. After that comes Demon Hunting in a Dive Bar.

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

LG: I work full-time and I’m a busy mom, so I write whenever I get a spare moment! Weekends and holidays are a good time. To finish the second book, I’ve had to take a week of vacation. I’m a s-l-o-w writer.

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

LG: The Internet! Facebook and twitter and blogs can really suck your writing time, so you have to be careful.

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

LG: I keep a thesaurus, a dictionary and a calendar on my desk, but all of those are essential!

NON: What are you currently reading? I am catching up on Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse novels and I am reading Julia Quinn’s latest book.

Title: Demon Hunting in Dixie
Author: Lexi George
Publisher: Kensington, Brava
Trade Paperback: 384 pages
ISBN: 978-0-7582-6309-4
eBook ISBN: 9780758271815

Dani Harper: Changeling Moon

2011-06-13T04:00:00.000-07:00

This contest is closed. The winner is:

donnas

Enter for a chance to win an autographed copy of Changeling Moon and a Changeling Moon tote bag. Contest open in the United States only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Dani Harper: I think the back cover blurb tells it best:

He roams the moonlit wilderness, his every sense and instinct on high alert. Changeling wolf Connor Macleod and his Pack have never feared anything—until the night human Zoey Tyler barely escapes a rogue werewolf's vicious attack.

As the full moon approaches, Zoey has no idea of the changes that are coming, and only Connor can show her what she is, and help her master the wildness inside. With her initiation into the Pack just days away and a terrifying predator on the loose, the tentative bonds of trust and tenderness are their only weapons against a force red in tooth, claw... and ultimate evil.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

DH: When I had a small farm in northern Canada, a group of seven or eight dark-colored wolves raced across my yard one morning. I had a great view and felt so privileged to have seen them (after I got through being stunned of course!). I used to go out into the yard at night and listen to coyotes howling from across the fields on my left and wolves answering from across the river ravine on my right. Coyote howls are short, high pitched and dog-like. A wolf howl is unmistakable – it’s long and low, and there’s a timbre to it that resonates in you, both physically and emotionally.

When I started writing fiction, I didn’t plan to write about wolves and wolf-like creatures–it just happened, and I often wonder if it’s because of the wolves who visited my farm.

NON: No two authors seem to take the same route to publication, but almost every author has an interesting story about their journey. How did you get published? Did you use an agent? How did you find out that your book had sold?

DH: Most of my career was spent in the newspaper business, but I began writing fiction on the side. In 2007 I broke into the e-pub world with a book and couple of novellas, but things really didn’t start moving for me until I found an agent–and that took a loooooong time and a monstrous pile of rejection slips (all of which I’ve kept for some perverse reason). I was so thrilled and excited when I discovered an agent who believed in me and my story–but there are no words to describe what it was like when she phoned me to tell me that Kensington wanted my book!

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

DH: Many of my characters show up in my mind fully formed, names and all, especially the heroes. Connor was one of those. Someone mentioned recently that he has the same name as the original Highlander (from the 1986 movie starring Chris Lambert). I think it’s probably coincidence because all of Connor’s family–brothers and sisters and parents–showed up at the same time, names and all! Macleod is an actual name from the Peace River area where I set the book.

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

DH: Changeling Dream is the second book, and it comes out at the end of this month. Changeling Dawn is slated for release in January 2012. And yes, I’m working on Books 4, 5, and 6 at present, plus a couple other projects.

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

DH: Mornings are often the best, right around 5:30 or 6. I can write for a long stretch then. I think it’s because my brain is awake (yes, I’m one of those annoying “morning people”). The rest of the day, I’ll write in fits and starts. When I’m not writing, however, I’m always, always, ALWAYS thinking about the story. I used to have to get up in the middle of the night to write down an idea, but my hubby put a handheld tape recorder in my stocking this past Christmas. I love it! I just reach for the recorder on the nightstand and mumble into it, then go back to sleep till the next idea strikes.

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

DH: Gardening or hiking or walking my pugs, anything that involves being outside. Oh darn, look–the porch needs sweeping! And I have GOT to head those pansies before I sit down to write….

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

DH: I love things that make me laugh. There’s always been something goofy on or around my computer–Star Wars ships, space aliens, rubber brains, trolls, the Energizer Bunny. Right now I have a big statue of the Roaming Gnome that my mom gave me–can’t seem to bear to put it outside in the garden, LOL.

Note: There’s been a close-up photo of a wolf on my laptop screen, staring at me for years now. I don’t know if it’s for luck or inspiration (or I’m just OCD), but when I get a new computer, I add the desktop wolf picture to it. Just in case…

NON: What are you currently reading?

DH: I ADORE books and I never have just one book on the go. I’ve been reading Molly Harper’s books–just finished How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf. I’m also a big fan of J.R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood, so I’m reading Lover Mine right now. And I just downloaded River Marked, from Patricia Brigg’s Mercy Thompson series, to my Kindle.

Title: Changeling Moon
Author: Dani Harper
Publisher: Kensington Brava
Trade Paperback: 368 pages
ISBN: 978-0758265142

Gordon W. Dale: Fool's Republic

2011-06-06T04:00:00.000-07:00

This contest is closed. The winners are:

Margie
Dolly

Enter for a chance to win one of two copies of Fool's Republic. Contest open in the United States and Canada only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Gordon W. Dale: Fool's Republic is about freedom—freedom of action, freedom of thought and, ultimately, the freedom to be human. It is the story of a man's struggle to come to terms with himself and the culture in which he lives.

The novel runs along two tracks. It opens with Simon Wyley floating in a cell of bright white light. The questions who is he and what is he doing there propel the book forward and give it its thriller-esque feel. The other track reveals Simon Wyley’s character and background, which gives the book its depth and texture. The two tracks converge at the very end of the book to provide what I hope is a satisfying conclusion.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

GWD: It was a departure for me, actually. For several years I’d tried to write plot-based detective novels. I'd start with a story idea, then create an outline before I began writing. Fool’s Republic was very different. I started with the first line: “I float in an eight-by-eight cell of the purest clinical white: white walls, white sheets, white toilet, white sink, white light," and then wrote the character into existence, figuring out who he was and what was happening to him as I went along. I think this sense of discovery is transferred directly to the reader. Many readers have told me they sped through the book in a couple of days; some have read it in a single sitting, staying up all night to do so. And reviews of the book commonly talk about how gripping it is.

NON: No two authors seem to take the same route to publication, but almost every author has an interesting story about their journey. How did you get published? Did you use an agent? How did you find out that your book had sold?

GWD: On the strength of being a debut dagger award nominee, I was approached by a prominent literary agency in London. Applicants for the debut dagger submit an extract from a yet-to-be-published novel, in my case the first chapter of Fool’s Republic. Unfortunately, as the novel developed, it became increasingly apparent that the agency and I had very different, and incompatible, visions of how it should turn out. Eventually, we decided to part company.

After that, I spent a couple of years of worry and self-doubt looking for an agent or publisher. Eventually I approached Richard Grossinger, publisher of North Atlantic Books, and fortunately he immediately got what I was trying to do with the book. I’ve made the inevitable adjustments based on the editorial process, but Fool’s Republic remains true to my original vision and I’m thankful for that.

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

GWD: Simon Wyley was actually the name of a character from a previous unpublished work. A friend of mine who’d read the manuscript said to me years later, "I was going to ask you whether you remember reading a book with an artist who had some kind of breakdown, and then I remembered it was a piece of yours."

There are some similarities between the Simon Wyley of that work and the Simon Wyley of Fool’s Republic, so I simply carried the name forward. If there’s a deeper significance to the name itself, I'm not aware of it.

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

GWD: I’m working on a novel about memory. There’s a line of Joseph Brodsky’s I like: People are what we remember of them. In the book I’m writing now, the main character is trying to discover the truth about his mother, who abandoned him and his family during their return trip from Africa to Canada when he was 12. It’s an exploration of how we create our own history and the histories of those around us through a delusive synthesis of myth and memory, and of how, when we die, those histories pass into the hands of others, to be written and rewritten anew.

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

GWD: Novelists have developed a number of strategies to keep themselves moving forward. Ernest Hemingway kept a log of his daily word count so as "not to kid himself." PG Wodehouse claimed to write as many as 2,000 words a day. And Graham Greene set a target of 500 words a day while finishing The End of the Affair. As strategies go, keeping a daily tally is simple enough. Most people, even novelists, can count. And 500 words a day adds up.

But 500 words of what? That's the question. Five hundred words, after all, is 500 words. You get what you measure. I know I could easily write 2,000 words a day, if that were my sole measure, but they'd be pure drivel. By the end of the week I'd have 14,000 words of drivel.

A simple word-count strategy doesn't work for me. I find it more effective to set a target that includes a sense of quality as well as quantity: not simply 500 words, but 500 usable words, words strung together in sentences that could conceivably find their way into the finished work.

Like most authors, I have a day job, so I get up two hours before I leave for work and try to write at least 500 usable words before I head into the office. And it's true, they do add up.

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

GWD: Sitting in the window with my wife drinking tea and looking out over the San Francisco Bay. I can spend hours doing that.

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

GWD: The timing of this question is unfortunate because I recently cleared my desk, which was covered in assorted papers, notebooks, flash drives, etc. Currently it’s completely bare, except for my laptop, monitor and telephone. The nearest thing to a non-essential item (and this is actually on my printer table, not on my desk) is an Agatha Christie's The Body in the Library mug that I bought at a bookstore on Gloucester road in London when I was there for the 2007 British Crime Writers Association award dinner. I carried it home in my suitcase and the handle broke, so I now use it to hold pens and markers.

NON: What are you currently reading?

GWD: I’m currently working my way through the diaries of the British playwright Simon Gray, of which there are several volumes. I first bought his The Smoking Diaries in Heathrow on a recent trip to Africa and now, of course, I have to read everything he wrote, including his plays. That's the obsessive side of my nature. I get interested in an author or a subject and then I read all I can find. When I become sated, I go on to something else.

To read an excerpt of Fool's Republic, visit NAB Communities.

Title: Fool’s Republic
Author: Gordon W. Dale
Publisher: North Atlantic (distributed by Random House)
Trade Paperback: 239 pages
ISBN: 978-1-55643-972-8
eBook ISBN: (Kindle) B004C43FBG

Ruta Sepetys: Between Shades of Gray

2011-05-30T04:00:00.000-07:00

This contest is closed. The winner is:

a real librarian

Enter for a chance to win an autographed copy of Between Shades of Gray. Contest open in the United States only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Ruta Sepetys: Between Shades of Gray is the story of Lina, a fifteen-year-old artist who is arrested and deported from Lithuania to Siberia with her mother and younger brother. The novel chronicles not only Lina’s fight to survive but also her struggle to retain faith in mankind amidst Stalin’s terror.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

RS: I was visiting relatives in Lithuania and asked if they had any photos of my father or grandparents. They told me that they had burned all of the photos of my family because they couldn’t let anyone know they were related to my grandfather. They told me that members of my grandfather’s extended family were deported to Siberia. I knew nothing of the story and was shocked when they told me. Stories of Stalin and the Soviet occupation are rarely discussed so I wanted to write a book that covered that topic.

NON: No two authors seem to take the same route to publication, but almost every author has an interesting story about their journey. How did you get published? Did you use an agent? How did you find out that your book had sold?

RS: I had finished a middle-grade mystery and queried an agent for that book. The agent requested the manuscript. At the last minute I included ten pages of Between Shades of Gray along with the middle-grade book, just to show a range of my writing. The agent responded that they liked Between Shades of Gray. I only had the ten pages I sent so then I had to write the book! Once it was finished, the agent shopped it and a dozen publishers passed before Philomel (Penguin) responded that they loved the book. When my agent called to tell me we had an offer I screamed and cried. I was hoarse for two days.

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

RS: In my case, the characters’ names presented difficulties because Lithuanian names are long and complicated. I had to search for Lithuanian names that were easy to pronounce. The main character’s original name was Indre Vilkas, but then I learned that the name Indre was not used in the 1940s so it wasn’t historically accurate. So I changed her name to Lina Vilkas.

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

RS: I do! I’m currently working on another book for my publisher, Philomel. The story is set in New Orleans in the 1950s. I’ve taken a few trips to New Orleans for research and it’s been such fun.

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

RS: Oh, I wish I had a routine or a set schedule to write. I work fifty hours per week at a full-time job so my only time to write is on weekends. I don’t have the luxury of waiting for a mood to strike. If I have ten minutes I need to get a page out!

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

RS: Research! I could spend days, weeks, years researching elements for my books. I’ll dig much deeper than I need to and go down every rabbit hole when I should be writing.

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

RS: A little bonsai mudman figurine. It’s been on my desk for nearly fifteen years.

NON: What are you currently reading?

RS: Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast.

Title: Between Shades of Gray
Author: Ruta Sepetys
Publisher: Philomel (Penguin)
Hardcover: 344 pages
ISBN: 978-0399254123
eBook ISBN: B004H4XCTQ

Aimee Carter: The Goddess Test

2011-05-23T04:00:00.000-07:00

There is no contest this week, but any comments, blogs, tweets, or Facebook likes mentioned in the comments will apply toward next week's contest for a copy of Ruta E. Sepetys's debut novel, Between Shades of Gray.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Aimee Carter: Thank you so much! My pitch is pretty simple: The Goddess Test is about what happens after Persephone leaves Hades, and he needs to find a new Queen of the Underworld before his rule is forfeit. Unfortunately for him, someone keeps killing off the candidates. I'd describe it as a cross between the myth of Hades and Persephone and the story of Beauty and the Beast.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

AC: I've always been fascinated with Greek mythology, even from a young age. The myth of Persephone especially caught my attention, and I became intrigued with what happened to them after the curtain fell, so to say - after all, gods were supposed to be immortal, which must mean they're still around today. But I couldn't see Persephone, strong and fearsome as she was, sticking around with a husband she didn't love.

It took me a long time to really develop the main plot of The Goddess Test. I went through a lot of versions, some better than others, but when I stumbled across the idea that Kate's mother was dying and this was the only way to save her, to take these tests and risk her life, I knew I had something worth exploring.

NON: No two authors seem to take the same route to publication, but almost every author has an interesting story about their journey. How did you get published? Did you use an agent? How did you find out that your book had sold?

AC: I took a very traditional route, with an agent and a traditional publisher. I did, however, have a bit of a rough journey agent-wise. I have around two dozen unsold manuscripts that will never see the light of day, so when I say I wrote my fingers to the bone, I'm not kidding. When I was seventeen, I worked with an agent for nearly two years, polishing up different material for him, writing new stories, etc., without him ever signing me. That was a nightmare, but during my first month of college, I queried others and was signed to an agency with a wonderful woman who really seemed to get my material. However, as soon as I'd signed the contract, she unfortunately had to renege it due to circumstances out of her control.

That ordeal completely crushed me, and while it didn't stop me from writing, it did stop me from querying for the next four years. After I'd written The Goddess Test, I knew I had to at least give it a chance, and while it was difficult for me to get back on the horse, so to say, the response was enormous.

Funny story! I sent out two batches of queries - the first time, I had a very generic and awful title (I think it was Persephone). After I sent them out, I brainstormed new titles with my father, and together we came up with The Goddess Test. I proceeded to send out the exact same query letter and sample pages - the only thing that had changed was the title. The first batch I had a zero percent request rate for. The second? Over seventy percent of the agents I submitted to requested further material.

But I signed with my agent, the lovely Rosemary Stimola, whom I'd heard absolutely wonderful things about (and was not disappointed in the least). This was right before The Hunger Games was released, so imagine my surprise when I realized several months later that this wonderful book I'd just read was represented by my agent. Had a bit of a fan girl moment there.

As for finding a publisher, that process was much more difficult. The Goddess Test wasn't nearly in the shape it's in now - I wound up rewriting a HUGE portion of it after I signed with Harlequin Teen, and I'm much happier with it now. But we were on submission for nearly a year, and it was soul-crushing. I'd given up on selling it and was actually in the middle of final edits for the novel I thought would be my debut when I heard that The Goddess Test had sold (which was in the middle of a shopping mall, so I couldn't go crazy like I wanted to).

But as it happened, that second novel that was supposed to be my debut will be the first book of my second series with Harlequin Teen, entitled Masked. And it'll be out shortly after the third book of The Goddess Test series.

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

AC: Originally Kate's name was Becca Winters. I chose Becca (Rebecca :) ) because it's one of my favorites, but after I'd finished the first draft, I read Twilight. And heard of Bella Swan. So, in an effort to make my protagonist more distinct, I changed her name to Kate (Katherine, which she despises). It means 'pure', and that specific spelling is apparently Greek in origin, so it suited her character perfectly. As for Winters, I used it specifically as a sort of nudge-nudge-wink-wink toward the myth of Persephone and how it affected the seasons.

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

AC: The sequel to The Goddess Test, entitled Goddess Interrupted, will be released in January 2012, followed by the third book in the series in November 2012. I also have a dystopian trilogy - Masked, as mentioned above - from Harlequin Teen that will be released sometime after the third Goddess Test book, I believe. Right now I'm writing the third book, and I'm extremely excited about it as I grow closer and closer to the end.

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

AC: I write in the afternoon and evenings, and sometimes at night. I usually go to a bookstore or a café, since my home laptop offers a wide variety of distractions. I sit down, get something to drink, put in my earbuds, and write until the store closes. Sometimes when I come home, I continue to write as well, depending on what else I have going on at that point.

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

AC: Twitter, Facebook, and the Internet in general. I'm terrible about it and have to shut off my Internet connection completely when I write if I want to get any kind of respectable word count that day.

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

AC: My neon-green fly swatter for killing spiders. And my Rubik's Cube.

NON: What are you currently reading?

AC: I'm currently reading Lisa & Laura Roecker's The Liar Society, which I'm absolutely loving, along with Victoria Schwab's The Near Witch.

Title: The Goddess Test (The Goddess Test series, #1)
Author: Aimee Carter
Publisher: Harlequin TEEN
Trade Paperback: 304 pages
ISBN: 0373210264

Janice Hamrick: Death on Tour

2011-05-16T04:00:00.000-07:00

This contest is closed. The winner is:

Karenk

Enter for a chance to win an autographed copy of Death on Tour. Contest open in the United States only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Janice Hamrick: In Death on Tour, Texas high school teacher Jocelyn Shore and her cousin Kyla are on a once-in-a-lifetime guided tour of Egypt when the most annoying of their fellow travelers, nosy Millie Owens, takes a fatal fall off one of the great pyramids. From the jovial doctor haggling for trinkets he doesn’t want to the mysterious imposter wearing someone else’s clothing to the attractive stranger traveling alone, this group of tourists is carrying more than one kind of baggage. Add a mistaken identity, a priceless necklace, and another unexpected death, and Jocelyn finds herself reluctantly trying to unravel an intrigue that threatens to end not only her vacation but her life.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

JH: I was fortunate enough to take a tour of Egypt very much like the one in the book. An unexpected bonus from a writer’s point of view was that I traveled with a group of strangers whom I would otherwise never have met. Over the course of the ten days, one of the men was constantly exaggerating (or outright lying) about some of his accomplishments and it struck me that on a tour, you can claim to be anything you want. I was also struck by the way tour groups are protected from the ordinary problems of traveling in a strange country, and I though a tour would make an ideal hiding place for someone with criminal intentions.

NON: No two authors seem to take the same route to publication, but almost every author has an interesting story about their journey. How did you get published? Did you use an agent? How did you find out that your book had sold?

JH: I had the most fabulous entry into the world of publication. I was in the process of trying to find an agent when I received a call from Minotaur Books saying Death on Tour had won the Mystery Writers of America/Minotaur Books First Crime Novel award and would be published. They flew me to New York and presented my award at the Edgars Banquet. I was fortunate enough to meet a number of authors, agents, and editors at the events there and felt as though my fairy godmother had waved the wand.

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

JH: Jocelyn Shore arrived in my head complete with fully developed personality and name. I think I’ve always liked the name Jocelyn – it was in the running at one point for one of my daughters’ names.

Alan Stratton, on the other hand, began life as Alan Stanford. Then, near the time when the story was complete, I thought to check my characters names on the Internet to make sure they weren’t real people and found out that Alan Stanford was somebody who had been accused of a major fraud. I changed my character’s last name for that reason, but I have to say, in my head, he will probably always be Alan Stanford.

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

JH: I’ve completed the second Jocelyn Shore mystery and turned it in to my editor. In that story, Jocelyn returns to Austin, Texas, only to find murder and mayhem on her own doorstep. I’m now busy at work on the third story in the series.

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

JH: I wake up every day at 5:00 a.m., make coffee, and write for a couple of hours before I even get dressed. It feels great to know that I’ve done the most important thing first and anything else that takes my attention during the day won’t affect my writing. Weekends are the same, although I usually spend a few extra hours writing. I’m no good at all in the evenings when I’m tired.

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

JH: Reading of course – although I never think of that as procrastination. I do waste time watching television and playing video games. I’ve just discovered the Tudors and I’ve been watching episodes back to back. I also just got Portal 2, and I’m a bit obsessed. Very sad.

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

JH: I do all of my writing on my laptop slouched on the couch or bed and exhibiting the posture and grace of a boiled shrimp. I have a desk for other work though, and my favorite item is a clock that looks like a beach chair on a beach beside a palm tree. It’s non-essential because the clock stopped working several years ago. I just like the palm tree.

NON: What are you currently reading?

JH: I just finished re-reading A Curtain Falls by Stefanie Pintoff – it’s a fabulous book and I wanted to read it again because her next book is coming in May. I also just purchased Murder 101 by Maggie Barbieri, and I can’t wait to get started.

Title: Death on Tour
Author: Janice Hamrick
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Hardcover: 310 pages
ISBN: 978-0-312-67946-0

Kevin Hearne: Hounded

2011-05-09T04:00:00.000-07:00

This contest is closed. The winner is:

LadyVampire2U

Enter for a chance to win a copy of Hounded. Contest open in the United States only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Kevin Hearne: Thanks very much! Hounded tells the story of Atticus O’Sullivan, a 2,100-year-old Druid who’s been hiding out from some Irish gods for most of his long life. Once they find him in Arizona, he decides to fight instead of run, and the ensuing imbroglio draws in much of the paranormal community, including a coven of Polish witches, an Icelandic vampire with a grudge against Thor, and a pack of werewolves who spend their days as attorneys.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

KH: I’ve always wanted to talk to my dogs. It honestly started there and kind of snowballed. Though there are several classes of magical beings with an affinity for animals, I chose a Druid because of my Irish background. Then I had to figure out how a Druid would still be alive in the modern world and that took plenty of world building and essentially fleshed out the entire series, much less the first novel. But at its core, this all started with a man and his dog.

NON: No two authors seem to take the same route to publication, but almost every author has an interesting story about their journey. How did you get published? Did you use an agent? How did you find out that your book had sold?

KH: Getting published took me twenty years of trial and a whole lot of error. I’m a self-taught novelist in the sense that I’ve never taken a class or attended a writing conference. I’ve read plenty of books, though, and I think that’s the best education you can get.

The bulk of that time was spent just trying to finish a novel. For ten years I kept trying to write commercial stuff and failed, never writing “The End” on anything. Once I decided to chuck success and just write to please myself, I finished one—but it took six years! It was (and is) an utter piece of trash that will never, ever be published, but I learned so much in the process of writing it, the most important lesson being that I could finish a novel and still hold down a day job.

I wrote an epic fantasy next in “only” three years. I sent it to a publisher and got some great news only two weeks later—I’d passed first edits! Unfortunately, I wasn’t to hear anything else for quite some time. Still, totally jazzed and full of creative energy after that good news, I came up with an idea for a comic book. After about two weeks I realized it was better suited as an urban fantasy novel, and once I started I had so much fun with it I finished it in eleven months. I heard nothing from the publisher who had my epic in all that time. It was then I realized it might be a good idea to get an agent, theorizing that an agent wouldn’t have to wait around so long for an answer on a submission.

I got an agent after sending out two rounds of queries. He sold Hounded and two sequels at auction in two weeks—so yeah, not much waiting when it’s an agent doing the submitting!

The day of the auction was one of the coolest days of my life. After twenty years of toil and rejection, four different publishers were bidding on my story!

For anyone still trying to get published, please don’t give up. It can still happen for you. And when rejection happens (as it does, often!—my epic was eventually rejected), learn from it and write the next story.

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

KH: My main character’s surname, O’Sullivan, was inspired by my own family—Sullivan was my paternal grandmother’s maiden name, and I have plenty of Sullivan cousins. Atticus admittedly came from To Kill a Mockingbird. I’ve always admired Mr. Finch, and I think perhaps I was hoping a bit of his dignity would rub off on my character. I never thought of calling him anything else.

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

KH: Yes, I am working on the fourth book in The Iron Druid Chronicles, called Tricked, as well as an epic fantasy that’s currently untitled.

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

KH: I don’t have a routine, except that I’m forced to write nights during weekdays due to the day job. During the weekends or vacations I’ll write any old time.

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

KH: Watching Doctor Who or reading. Mostly it’s reading and going to the bookstore for more books.

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

KH: I have this “action” figure of Morpheus sitting in his burgundy leather chair from The Matrix. He’s there to free my mind.

NON: What are you currently reading?

KH: I’m reading an ARC of Ari Marmell’s Goblin Corps, coming in July, I think. It’s entertaining so far.

Title: Hounded
Author: Kevin Hearne
Publisher: Del Rey
Mass Market Paperback: 304 pages
ISBN: 978-0345522474
eBook ISBN: B004J4WN0I

Neve Maslakovic: Regarding Ducks and Universes

2011-05-02T04:00:00.000-07:00

This contest is closed. The winner is:

LibrarianJessica

Enter for a chance to win a copy of Regarding Ducks and Universes. The contest is open in the United States only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Neve Maslakovic: Regarding Ducks and Universes is the tale of two connected worlds, Universe A and Universe B, and an aspiring mystery writer who crosses from one to the other in search of his alter ego. This is what Booklist had to say about the book: "Weaving together physics, philosophy, and wry humor, Maslakovic's inventive debut is a delight." Publisher's Weekly called it “A witty and light ‘what if’ novel stuffed with an amusing and eclectic cast of characters.” Regarding Ducks and Universes is out both in print and on Kindle.

NON: Where did you get the idea for your novel?

NM: It's a very interesting time to be in the publishing business and that experience made its way into the book. Universe A, where Felix Sayers (the main character in Regarding Ducks and Universes) is from, is a technologically advanced world, with e-readers and people movers. Universe B, where he's headed as the novel opens, is a more laid back place. They drive cars and read paper books—or tree books, as A-dwellers like to call them with a touch of disdain. Felix ends up quite enjoying the experience of reading a paper book, while still being aware of the advantages of e-readers. And I'm kind of like that too, firmly in the can't-we-all-get-along category.

A second idea that shaped the book is the concept of competition as the great motivator. Felix A has been leading this comfortable, if slightly bored, existence in San Francisco A writing user guides for kitchen appliances. When he finds out that he has an alter ego in San Francisco B, he panics at the thought that Felix B might have beaten him to his dream of writing a mystery novel. Then once he gets to Universe B, he realizes than an event in his own childhood may have played a key role on the day the universes split apart thirty-five years ago. That's where the duck in the title comes in!

NON: No two authors seem to take the same route to publication, but almost every author has an interesting story about their journey. How did you get published? Did you use an agent? How did you find out that your book had sold?

NM: An avid reader all my life, I'd always wanted to try my hand at writing fiction. The story of how I finally sat down to do it goes something like this: as I was finishing my PhD dissertation (which had to do with ways of reducing man-made interference at Stanford University's Big Dish, a 150-ft radio telescope in the foothills near the university) I came down with repetitive stress syndrome. It was so bad that I could barely open doors and drive myself, so I had to take time off after graduating. I spent that time reading—a lot!—and one day decided that this was the perfect opportunity to finally try my hand at writing fiction in a serious fashion (beyond taking a few short story writing classes, which I had done during my graduate years.)

Once I had wrestled the manuscript into a place I was happy with, I entered it in the 2009 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. The novel made the Top 100. It didn't win. I spent the next year polishing the manuscript and also querying agents, with limited success. In the meantime Amazon was setting up its new (semi-traditional) publishing arm. I got up one morning and found an email from their acquisition editor, saying they were interested in publishing my novel. From then on, things moved really fast. I did bring in an agent, Jill Marsal from the Marsal Lyon Literary Agency, to help me navigate contract waters.

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

NM: Felix means "lucky, fortunate" in Latin, where the name originates. He is the type that wants to be left alone, but, perversely, finds himself at the center of this cosmic whodunit—who or what split universes A and B?

His last name is an homage to Dorothy L. Sayers, the British detective novelist and the creator of the Lord Peter Wimsey series.

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

NM: I'm working on a second novel. I don't want to say too much at this point, but let's just say that this time there are no ducks, but there is an Australian didgeridoo. And Fibonacci numbers. And cheese, lots of cheese. And time travel. Check for updates at http://www.nevemaslakovic.com/.

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

NM: Writing is my career now, my job. It's what I do during the day. I work at my computer, in my study, but my repetitive stress syndrome (see above) limits how long I can type in one sitting. So I take frequent breaks to edit on paper (the coffeehouse near my son's old school is one of my favorite places to do so), to read, or simply to take a walk around the neighborhood lake to think about how the book is going and where it should go next.

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

NM: I like to edit, which of course you have to do, but often I'll go back and edit the early parts of my work in progress when probably the right course is to push through and write fresh material. Editing appeals to me because with each pass you have that nice feeling that your story is getting closer and closer to where it should be. On the other hand, when you're first filling up a blank page, you don't have to worry about whether the words are just right yet and you can be as creative as you want, which is nice too. And then you get to go back later and edit your words.

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

NM: My son's illustrated one-page story about the Easter Bunny, which he wrote when he was five. It hangs on the corkboard above my desk.

NON: What are you currently reading?

NM: I like to read non-fiction when actively writing. I've just finished Breaking the Maya Code by Michael D. Coe, a very interesting read about the varied characters who had a hand in aiding—or hindering!—the decipherment of the Mayan writing system.

Title: Regarding Ducks and Universes
Author: Neve Maslakovic
Publisher: AmazonEncore
Trade Paperback: 331 pages
ISBN: 1935597346
eBook ISBN: 1935597345

Elizabeth Loupas: The Second Duchess

2011-04-25T04:00:00.000-07:00

This contest is closed. The winners are:

Amy
Shannon

Enter for a chance to win one of two copies of The Second Duchess. Contest open in the United States and Canada only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Elizabeth Loupas: In sixteenth-century Ferrara, where love affairs and conspiracies play out amidst brilliant painters, poets and musicians, the powerful and ambitious Alfonso d'Este, duke of Ferrara, takes a new bride. Half of Europe is certain he murdered his first wife, Lucrezia, the luminous child of the Medici. But no one dares accuse him, and no one has proof—least of all his second duchess, the far less beautiful but considerably more practical Barbara of Austria.

At first determined to ignore the rumors about her new husband, Barbara embraces the pleasures of the Ferrarese court. Yet wherever she turns she hears whispers of the first duchess’s wayward life and mysterious death. To save her own life, Barbara sets out to do what seems to be impossible: untangle the four-year-old truth about the death of the first Duchess.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

EL: I was tutoring a high school senior through an essay on “My Last Duchess.” It had to have been the thousandth time I’d read the poem, but for some reason, on that particular day, it clicked—I asked myself, “I wonder what the second wife thought about all this?”

When I discovered that Browning had based his poem on some old gossip about real historical personages, I was delighted. The correspondence among the ambassadors of the day was like a sixteenth-century version of the National Enquirer. I dove headfirst into research and I’ve never really come up. I love research.

NON: No two authors seem to take the same route to publication, but almost every author has an interesting story about their journey. How did you get published? Did you use an agent? How did you find out that your book had sold?

EL: I do indeed have an agent, the delightful Diana Fox of Fox Literary. I queried her absolutely cold—I chose her because a former crit partner I liked and admired had signed with her and almost immediately sold her book at auction. Diana asked me to do some revising and polishing, but once I signed with her, the process went pretty quickly. I chatted with my editor on the phone before she offered the deal, and we hit it off really well. And you know, there wasn’t really one big “I sold it!” moment. It just moved from one step to another, a little at a time. It slipped up on me.

I think the big moment, really, was when I got the first box of Advance Reader Copies. Books! Real books! With my story inside them, printed on real pages! I cried.

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

EL: My protagonist, Barbara of Austria, is a historical personage, so her name was chosen for me. I like “Barbara,” though—it is an unusual name among all the Lucrezias and Eleanoras of the day in Ferrara, and it fits the character perfectly—it means “stranger.” And Barbara is a stranger, an outsider, in the Ferrarese court. So although history chose it, not I, it’s still the perfect name.

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

EL: I do! It’s called The Flower Reader. We’ve just been working on back-cover copy—“In the sweeping new novel from the author of The Second Duchess, a dangerous secret leads a passionate young woman into a maze of murder and conspiracy, as Mary Queen of Scots comes home to reign in a treacherously divided Scotland...”

Again, it was a small thing that set me off—I saw a picture of the silver casket that was supposedly the casket used to hold the infamous Casket Letters, and I wondered where it came from and what its history was.

The title The Flower Reader refers to the heroine’s skill in floromancy, reading the future in flowers.

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

EL: I write in the mornings. I’ve found I focus best when I write before I do anything else—no email, no journal, no conversation, just my coffee and my story. Later in the day I can do the other things—editing, research, reading, housework, chatting with my friends online.

It’s also important to me to walk every day. Fortunately I have two beagles who make sure of that! Not only is the fresh air and exercise good for me, but I get some of my best ideas while I’m walking. I keep a pad of Post-Its and a pencil in my pocket.

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

EL: Playing with the dogs. Oh, and I love hidden-object games—a remnant of my childhood. I’d say reading, but reading isn’t really procrastinating—it’s part of the job.

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

EL: An emery board with pictures of beagles on it.

NON: What are you currently reading?

EL: The Sixth Surrender by Hana Samek Norton. Hana and I are going to be on the debut novelists’ panel together at the Historical Novel Society Conference in June. I also have a stack of research books on my desk, about various aspects of Scotland in the sixteenth century.

Title: The Second Duchess
Author: Elizabeth Loupas
Publisher: Penguin/New American Library
Trade Paperback: 400 pages
ISBN: 978-0451232151
eBook ISBN:
(Kindle) B004GXC8E8
(Nook) 9781101478455

Taylor Stevens: The Informationist

2011-04-18T04:00:00.000-07:00

This contest is closed. The winner is:

Amy

Enter to win a contest for a copy of The Informationist. The contest is open in the United States only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Taylor Stevens: When pitching the book, I’d written that if Robert Ludlum had created Lara Croft, the result would have been The Informationist. Others have since recommended imagining the love child of Jason Bourne and Lisbeth Salander.

Vanessa Michael Munroe is the Informationist—a resourceful loner who grew up overseas and has combat training, a wry sense of humor, and plenty of sex appeal. Munroe deals in information—expensive information—working for corporations, heads of state, private clients, and anyone else who can pay for her unique brand of expertise. A Texas oil billionaire hires her to find his daughter who vanished in Africa four years ago. Pulled into the mystery of the missing girl, Munroe finds herself back in the land of her childhood, betrayed, cut off from civilization, and left for dead. If she has any hope of escaping the jungle and the demons that drive her, she must come face-to-face with the past that she's tried for so long to forget

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

TS: The entire concept slowly evolved. I had lived in Equatorial Guinea for a little over two years and also spent several months in Cameroon, so I had been quite immersed in the location. When writing The Informationist, my initial motive, even before I had characters or a plot, or any idea really of what I would write, was to bring this tiny country to life for readers who might never have the chance to visit. Having only the location, I needed a way to show the experience of being there in a way that would make sense to the story without turning it into a travelogue. Michael Munroe, chameleon and predator, a woman with her own brand of morality and a take-no-prisoners form of justice, gradually came alive as a result of the demanding environments she was thrown into.

NON: No two authors seem to take the same route to publication, but almost every author has an interesting story about their journey. How did you get published? Did you use an agent? How did you find out that your book had sold?

TS: When the manuscript was finished and as good as I could possibly get it, I set out on the next step: finding a literary agent. I scoured blogs from agents, editors and professional writers in order to understand the publishing industry, and quickly realized that, like everything else, I would be forced to go the hard road. I wasn’t in a position to attend writers’ conferences to meet agents in person to pitch a book. Neither was I well read enough to track down the agents or editors of authors whose books I liked. I didn’t know anyone even remotely connected to publishing: I had no referrals, and no foot in the door. My only option, really, was to cold query agents by email, which, if you believe the naysayers, is impossible.

I got the news it had sold by way of a phone call from my agent. Had I not already been sitting, I very well might have slid down the wall. The disbelief was so strong I feared that the publisher would have a change of heart and the offer would vanish before we'd had the opportunity to accept it.

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

TS: I struggled most with Munroe’s middle—the name for which she would be known for most of the story. I needed a name that was distinctly masculine, yet rarely and occasionally used by women. Michal in the Bible was King David’s first wife, and I have over the last several years met in passing two women whose names were Michael.

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

TS: I’m currently into the third of the Michael Munroe series, but since it is still in the drafting stages, I can tell you that The Innocent, the second installment, draws heavily on my childhood of having been raised within The Children of God, an apocalyptic religious cult. Although the story is fiction, it’s based on truth and probably the closest I’ll ever get to writing an autobiography.

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

TS: I am my most productive at night and into the wee morning hours, but since I’m up early in the morning in order to get my children off to school, and since I don’t function well without sleep, this also means I’m rarely able to access my most productive hours. Instead, I work around their schedule, and by work I mean mostly procrastinate until I realize that they’ll be home from school any minute and I’d better actually write something.

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

TS: Reading blogs, surfing the Internet and following links from Facebook and Twitter.

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

TS: I actually spend more time working on a bed, couch or overstuffed chair than an actual desk, so, um… pillows?

NON: What are you currently reading?

TS: Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut.
Title: The Informationist
Author: Taylor Stevens
Publisher: Crown
Hardcover: 320 pages
ISBN-10: 0307717097
ISBN-13: 978-0307717092

Sara J. Henry: Learning to Swim

2011-04-11T04:00:00.000-07:00

This contest is closed. The winner is:

Steve

Enter to win a contest for a copy of Learning to Swim. The contest is open in the United States only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Sara J. Henry: I’ve never really had a pitch–thank goodness for query letters. If I’d had to pitch my book in person, it would still be living in a drawer. Here’s how I described it in my query letter: “A childless woman living in a small Adirondack town dives into icy Lake Champlain to rescue a young French-speaking boy, and discovers he was kidnapped.”

I’ve discovered that other people describe my book better than I do, like this: “a highly gripping kidnapping mystery interwoven with the fascinating character study of a woman forced by extreme circumstances to reevaluate everything she thought she knew to be true about herself.”*

Or the reviewer who said: “It's written in effortless first person, and only moments into the first chapter I found myself thinking of myself as the book's main character, even though her life and adventures are very different than mine. Tucked within this thriller are meditations on the nature of family, how bonding happens, the dangers of allowing ourselves to be vulnerable.”**

And I swear, I know none of these people!

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

SJH: I was driving along Lake Champlain, the huge lake that separates New York state from Vermont, and imagined a woman on one of the ferries seeing a child fall or thrown in from the opposite ferry, and making the split-second decision to dive in after him.

Then I had to come up with an entire book built around that opening scene. Which probably wasn’t the easiest way to learn to write a novel.

NON: No two authors seem to take the same route to publication, but almost every author has an interesting story about their journey. How did you get published? Did you use an agent? How did you find out that your book had sold?

SJH: I did it the old-fashioned way: wrote a book, sent out query letters, got an agent who sold the book. He kept me apprised of every publishing house approached and every response, then I spoke with publishers who were interested, they made offers, and (after much gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair on my part) I decided.

What this summary leaves out is a very long period between “wrote a book” and “sent out query letters”–during which I had to learn to rewrite so that the manuscript would be salable. It wasn’t until I went off to Australia in a five-week houseswap shortly after fracturing my fifth right metatarsal and having surgery that I dug in and made myself tear the wobbly sections. Once back in the U.S., I spent about three intense months rewriting and polishing, but once I sent out queries, it all went very quickly. Surprisingly so. As I’ve said elsewhere, I was prepared for rejection, so the opposite took me more than a bit by surprise.

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

SJH: At the time I imagined my protagonist, Chris Chance was a popular mountain bike frame builder, and I liked the last name “Chance.” And when I wrote my novel, it seemed inevitable that the character’s first name would be “Troy,” after the wife of Inspector Roderick Alleyn in the Ngaio Marsh series, which I loved. No, I never considered any other names.

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

SJH: I’m finishing up the sequel to Learning to Swim now, which will be out in 2012, and have mentally roughed out Books 3 and 4 as well.

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

SJH: I don’t have a hard and fast routine, but I like to do my creative writing in the mornings, my errands and other things (like taking the dogs to the river) in the afternoon, and editing and polishing in the evenings. When need be, I just put my head down and work, and have to remember to stop to eat.

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

SJH: I would say clean house–which serves two purposes. One, I end up with a clean house and two, because I don’t like cleaning, I end up back at work sooner rather than later.

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

SJH: I don’t really have anything non-useful on my best, but one of my favorite things is a little plastic container filled with small items: a pencil sharpener, glue stick, eraser, tiny screwdriver, small tape measure, flash drive, jeweler’s loupe, and small container of crayons. Because, apparently, you never know when you might need crayons.

NON: What are you currently reading?

SJH: I just finished the newest Reed Farrel Coleman, a Jill McGown, and a Reginald Hill, and am eagerly looking forward to the new A.S. King. But when I’m actively writing, I can’t read much. There’s always the risk, as my friend Quinn Cummings says, that you’ll absorb the other writer’s style. Plus when I’m writing intensely, I don’t have the energy to immerse myself in another writer’s work.

Title: Learning to Swim
Author: Sara J. Henry
Publisher: Crown
Hardcover: 304 pages
ISBN: 978-0307718389
eBook ISBN: 0307718387

*Book Reviews by Elizabeth A. White
**Valentine03 via Amazon.com

Laurie London: Bonded by Blood

2011-04-04T04:00:00.000-07:00

This contest is closed. The winner is:

JenM

Enter to win a contest for a copy of Bonded by Blood. The contest is open in the United States only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Laurie London: Thanks so much, Rebecca! It really is quite a thrill. And thank you for having me on today.

Here’s the short, elevator version:

A vampire haunted by loss falls in love with a human who supplies the strength he needs for revenge. But in doing so, he could destroy her.

Here’s the longer, query letter version:

Bonded By Blood is the first book in the Sweetblood series. It centers around a group of Guardian enforcers, vampires who safeguard humanity from Darkbloods, rogue vampires who believe it’s their right to feed from and kill humans. The Darkblood Alliance is an organized faction that sells blood on the vampire black market. The rarest, called Sweet, is highly addictive and commands the highest price.

In the Sweetblood world, since vampires exist secretly, yet peacefully (for the most part) among humans, they don’t burst into flames in the sun, sparkle, or go into a trace-like sleep during the day. Ultraviolet light weakens them—they’re unable to convert it into energy like we do—so they avoid the sun and come out mainly at night. Which is why they need human blood and energy to survive.

Movie location scout Mackenzie Foster-Shaw believes that she’s cursed to die young. For generations, her family has been stalked by an evil they don’t know or understand—vampires who crave their rare blood type. However, one afternoon, while on a scouting assignment in a wooded cemetery, she encounters an impossibly sexy stranger, a man she must trust with her life.

Dominic Serrano, the team leader of a group of Seattle Guardian enforcers, is haunted by loss. Mackenzie satisfies a primal hunger that torments him—and the bond they share goes beyond heat, beyond love. She alone can supply the strength he needs to claim his revenge. But in doing so, he could destroy her.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

LL: The inspiration for the Sweetblood series came to me as I drove past a tiny old cemetery near where I live. Although I’d driven by many times, there was something about this one particular time that stuck with me. Tucked beneath a stand of fir trees at the side of a busy highway, it seemed glaringly out of place.

Because I’ve always been intrigued by cemeteries, I doubled back and got out of my car. Not seeing any fresh flowers, just crooked and broken gravestones littering the forest floor, my mind started imagining all sorts of things.

So I created characters that had a reason to be there, and the Sweetblood series was born.

I kept envisioning a man hidden under a pile of dead leaves. Although I knew he wasn’t the villain, he was going to do something bad. I needed to find out why.

If you want to see pictures of this cemetery, click the For Readers tab on my website at http://www.laurielondonbooks.com/.

NON: No two authors seem to take the same route to publication, but almost every author has an interesting story about their journey. How did you get published? Did you use an agent? How did you find out that your book had sold?

LL: Yes, I do have an agent. I found her via a referral from another agent because of a writing contest I won. She gave me some excellent editorial advice on ways to make the story stronger, none of which changed my vision of the story. It didn’t take long for me to polish it up. She called back, said she loved it, and knew she could sell the series. It soon went out on submission to publishers.

A few weeks later, she called to say we had an offer. However, because it wasn’t a done deal, I couldn’t say anything. Trouble was, I was on my way to a writers conference. Imagine being around a bunch of writer friends but not tell them you almost sold your first book! Needless to say, I was a total zombie that weekend. Since I was sharing a hotel room with several other writers, I was even paranoid I’d talk in my sleep. When I got home, I was exhausted.

The following week, I got a text from my agent who was at a party with my editor. They finalized the deal over drinks, so it was official. I happened to be out to dinner with a friend when I got the text, so we toasted my first sale, too.

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

LL: I totally agree! When you don’t have the right name for a character, they refuse to talk to you.

Dom’s name came to me as if he introduced himself. It went through no changes. The same almost happened with Mackenzie. Originally, she was Mackenzie Shaw, but I knew there was something more. That’s when I learned she had a hyphenated last name. It later turned out to feed into a major plot point that I had not anticipated at the time.

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

LL: Yes, I’ve got several other projects on the horizon. Hidden By Blood is an e-novella set in the Sweetblood world and will be available for download June 1. Embraced By Blood, book 2 in the series, is Lily and Alfonso’s story and comes out June 21. I’m currently writing a Sweetblood story going into the Christmas anthology, A Vampire for Christmas. And I’ve just been contracted to write books 3 and 4 in the series, which will both come out next year.

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

LL: I write every day. Sometimes mornings. Sometimes evenings. Because I’m not a marathon writer, it works best if I write in several manageable 400-700 word sessions throughout the day. It only takes two or three of those per day to reach my goal.

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

LL: I love interacting with friends and readers on Twitter (@LaurieBLondon) and Facebook (/LaurieLondonAuthor), so if I’m looking for a distraction, that’s usually where I am.

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

LL: Considering that my desk is a bit cluttered right now (it always is when I’m writing a first draft), that’s a difficult question to answer. Non-essential? I’d have to say either the hard candy sitting just to the left of me or some of the items I used to make party favors for my launch party. I really need to find a place to put those cello bags and red paper shreds.

NON: What are you currently reading?

LL: I’m reading three books right now.

The 90 Day Novel by Alan Watts – a craft book recommended by a friend
On The Edge by Ilona Andrews
First Grave on the Right by Darynda Jones

Title: Bonded by Blood

Author: Laurie London

Publisher: HQN Books

Mass Market Paperback: 378 pages

ISBN: 978-0373775446

eBook ISBN: 037377544X

Carol K. Carr: India Black

2011-03-28T04:00:00.000-07:00

This contest is closed. The winner is:

Lillie

Enter to win a contest for a copy of India Black. The contest is open in the United States only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Carol K. Carr: When Sir Archibald Latham dies of a heart attack while visiting her London brothel, the beautiful young madam India Black is unexpectedly thrust into a deadly contest between Russian and British agents who are seeking the military secrets Latham carried. French, the handsome (if slightly accident prone) British spy, discovers India disposing of Latham’s body, and blackmails her into recovering the missing documents. Assisted by Vincent, an odiferous street urchin, French and India pursue the documents from the Russian embassy to Claridge’s Hotel, and from London to the English coast, where, as the Russians’ prisoners, they embark for France during a gale. Along the way, the two resist a growing attraction, which neither will acknowledge, for very different reasons. India Black is a rollicking adventure loosely based upon true events, with episodes of derring-do interspersed with comic misadventures.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

CKC: I had the character of India in mind first, and I then had to find a story for her. I was reading a dual biography of two British prime ministers, Disraeli and Gladstone, and learned about the contest between Britain and Russia over the Ottoman Empire. Disraeli tried to stop the Russians from invading the empire by threatening the use of military force. Unfortunately, the British military was in no shape to take on Russia, which Disraeli learned when he received a memo from his War Office. That got me thinking: what if a government employee happened to die in India’s brothel. And what if he were carrying this very important memo at the time? It seemed like a good premise for a novel.

NON: No two authors seem to take the same route to publication, but almost every author has an interesting story about their journey. How did you get published? Did you use an agent? How did you find out that your book had sold?

CKC: I almost lost India along the way to publication. I was halfway through the novel when my house burned, and we lost 90% of everything in it, including my laptop. To my astonishment, the salvage company was able to download the contents of my hard drive, and India survived. It took a year to get settled in a new home, and I just didn’t have the energy to work on the book. But in the summer of 2009, I set everything else aside and pounded out the rest of the manuscript. I sent off query letters in September of that year, and settled in to wait for a succession of rejection letters. I was shocked to get an email from an agent just a week after I sent out the queries, asking to see the rest of the book on an exclusive basis. She read it the day she received it, and we signed a representation agreement shortly afterwards. My agent sent the manuscript off to four editors, and one of the best days of my life was getting a phone call from my agent telling me she had sold the book to Berkley Prime Crime. I signed the publishing contract in December, 2009. Then it was just a matter of waiting the year (!) until publication date, which I spent writing the second book to fulfill my two-book contract.

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

CKC: Just as I had India’s character before the plot, I had her name before her character appeared to me. “India” was not a common name, but it did appear in Victorian England (I suppose as a tribute to Britain’s greatest colony). It has an exotic flair to it which appealed to me. You still see the name today; there is a British journalist named India Knight. As for “Black,” it just seemed to fit nicely with India, was short and easy to type, and had a suggestion of darkness or criminality that I liked for a character who was a brothel owner.

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

CKC: I’ve completed the second book in the series, India Black and the Widow of Windsor, which I anticipate will be published in 2012. As to whether there will be a third, the publisher is waiting to see how India Black sells. No matter how much fun I have writing this character, there is no way to escape the fact that publishing is a business and that books have to sell to justify their existence.

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

CKC: Ideally, I’d write in the mornings, but I have dogs to walk (they are very particular about going out in the morning), and two mornings of each week I spend with my mother running errands and having lunch. I usually don’t sit down in front of the typewriter until 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon. However, cocktail hour arrives as I’m finishing the day’s work, and I can complete my word count with a glass of wine in hand.

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

CKC: I can waste an enormous amount of time on the Internet. Sometimes I justify it by claiming that I’m researching something essential for the novel. Yeah, right. Mostly, I’m reading my favorite blogs and catching up on rugby scores (I’m a huge rugby fan), or getting lost in Ancestry.com. The other thing I do is make periodic visits to the fridge, just to be sure the food fairies haven’t surreptitiously arrived and filled it with new and exciting stuff to eat. They never do.

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

CKC: My binoculars and the Birds of Missouri Field Guide. I have become a bit of a bird nerd lately.

NON: What are you currently reading?

CKC: I just finished The Distant Hours by Kate Morton, and I’m still absorbing the story, which was magnificently rendered by the author. Next on the list is the new Ian Rutledge novel by Charles Todd, and Peter Bergen’s The Longest War.

Title: India Black
Author: Carol K. Carr
Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime
Trade Paperback: 304 pages
ISBN: 042538660
eBook ISBN: B004DI7150

Gwen Hayes: Falling Under

2011-03-21T04:00:00.000-07:00

This contest is closed. The winner is:

wanda f

Enter to win a copy of Falling Under. Contest open in Canada and the United States only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

Gwen Hayes: Thank you so much. I’ve been feeling very princessy lately. And thanks for inviting me to your blog.

My pitch: Teen girl dreams about mysterious handsome boy before he begins attending her school and drawing her into the underworld.

So, obviously, I suck at pitches. Luckily, when I pitched it to an agent, it came with manuscript pages.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

GH: The first line haunted me for days while I was working on a different project. I had no idea what it meant. I just wished, at the time, it would leave me alone.

NON: No two authors seem to take the same route to publication, but almost every author has an interesting story about their journey. How did you get published? Did you use an agent? How did you find out that your book had sold?

GH: I did use an agent. I queried several awesome agents with Falling Under, but I knew as soon as I read an interview with Jessica Sinsheimer that she was the one. I’m very lucky. She’s so passionate about YA and has a great energy.

My “sold” story went by in a blur. I think it was only out on submission for a few weeks before it sold. I spoke to my editor, Anne Sowards, on the telephone before the offer was made. I hung up on her FOUR TIMES. I had just gotten my Droid phone and my cheeks do something to the screen. I figured she would write me off as someone who can’t even manage a phone, but she stuck with me. Most of our communication takes place via email now though. I can’t imagine why.

That was so embarrassing.

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

GH: She started as Talia…but I knew that wasn’t quite right. I just kept playing around until I hit on the correct sound. Everyone else came to mind already named. Though I didn’t know Madame Varnie was a guy until he answered the door.

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

GH: I just finished the sequel! We hope to have it out in January 2012.

NON: What’s your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

GH: I work and go to school, so I try to write 500 words in the morning and 500 in the evening. It’s still a struggle, but 500 doesn’t seem ominous and it’s a steady pace.

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

GH: Twitter. And Twitter.

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

GH: I don’t write on a desk…I write on the couch. So the only non-essential thing right now is the cat.

NON: What are you currently reading?

GH: I just finished Charm School by Susan Wiggs. I haven’t decided which one to open next. My TBR pile is extravagant.

Title: Falling Under
Author: Gwen Hayes
Publisher: NAL (Penguin Group, USA)
Trade Paperback: 324 pages
ISBN: 978-0-451-23268-7

J. J. Murphy: Murder Your Darlings

2011-03-14T04:00:00.000-07:00

This contest is closed. The winners are:

kym amaral
Margie

Enter for a chance to win two copies of Murder Your Darlings. Contest open in the United States only.

Number One Novels: Congratulations on the publication of your first book! Tell me a little about it—what's your pitch?

J. J. Murphy: Murder Your Darlings is a humorous historical mystery set in New York City in the Roaring 20s. Witty writer Dorothy Parker finds a dead body under the famed Algonquin Round Table. Along with her best friend Robert Benchley and other members of the Round Table, they have to find the murderer--preferably before cocktail hour--and before the killer turns the tables on them.

NON: How did you get the idea for your novel?

JJM: It started with the title, Murder Your Darlings. All writers and editors know the advice to “murder your darlings.” It means to delete those words or phrases that you, as a writer, deem exceptional—delete them because they probably stand out like a sore thumb. I knew about Dorothy Parker and the Algonquin Round Table, and somehow I had the notion that Dorothy had come up with that advice. Together, the title, the real-life characters and the idea of a murder mystery suddenly sprang to life.

NON: No two authors seem to take the same route to publication, but almost every author has an interesting story about their journey. How did you get published? Did you use an agent? How did you find out that your book had sold?

JJM: I’m afraid my route to publishing was rather routine. After writing the manuscript, I mailed out dozens of query letters. After fifty or so rejections, one good agent took me on as a client. Within a month, he had snared me a three-book contract.

However, the moment the call came was not so routine. I was home alone with my twin daughters, who were just five years old at the time. I was getting lunch ready for them, and I was also waiting for a worker from the water department to come check the water meter. Everything seemed to happen at once: The phone rang. It was my agent calling, saying he had good news. The doorbell rang. It was the water guy to check on the meter. The oven timer went “ding.” The chicken nuggets were ready for the twins’ lunch. My dog went crazy over the water meter guy, as though they were long-lost friends. My agent tried to tell me the good news, but I had to put the phone down to peel the dog off the water meter guy and show him to the basement. Then I had to get the chicken nuggets out of the oven before they burned. Meanwhile, my agent is telling me he had meetings with several publishers, and two of them showed interest. I heard laughing up in my daughters’ room, and they came hopping down the stairs. They had decided this would be a perfect day to try out toenail polish for the very first time. I had to put the phone down again to make sure there wasn’t bright red nail polish spilled all over their bedroom floor. Fortunately, there wasn’t. Quickly I got back on the phone with my agent. He said one publishing house decided to say no, but the other publishing house said yes. But the water meter guy had come back up from the basement, and the dog was going crazy again. The girls were laughing. I got the water meter guy safely out the front door, and the dog and the kids settled down---and I finally got the good news from my agent that he had signed me to a three-book deal. Thrilled, I told my daughters the good news. “Where’s our lunch?” they replied. And that’s how I learned that my first book had sold.

Dorothy Parker

NON: I think that names say a lot about a person, especially a fictional person. How did you decide on your protagonist’s full name? Did you have any other names that were in the running?

JJM: Because most of my characters were real-life people, I simply use their names and their nicknames. Robert Benchley often referred to Dorothy Parker as “Mrs. Parker,” and she usually referred to him as “Mr. Benchley” or, in more desperate moments, “Fred.”

For the fictional characters though, I rely on what Dorothy Parker herself did: I go to the phone book and the obituaries.

NON: Do you have another book in the works?

JJM: Yes. Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley will return in You Might As Well Die, the second book in the Algonquin Round Table Mysteries, which should be out in early 2012.

NON: What's your writing routine? Do you write in the mornings, nights, daily, or when the mood strikes you?

JJM: As I mentioned, I have young twins and a crazy dog. I also have a full-time job and a house in need of constant upkeep. So I don’t really have a writing routine, and I can’t wait around for the muse to whisper in my ear. I write at night, after the kids go to bed. I like to say that any idiot can write a novel (and many of them do!)--all it takes is persistence.

NON: What’s your favorite way to procrastinate?

JJM: I’m too busy to procrastinate. If I had more time, I’d get more sleep. Does that count as a form of procrastination?

NON: What’s your favorite non-essential item on your desk?

JJM: I don’t have a favorite. Often I have to clear toys off the desk to work. If you’d have asked which non-essential item is NOT my favorite, I have a list of Barbies and Disney Princess dolls that I could recite…

NON: What are you currently reading?

JJM: Not to beat a dead horse, but I don’t have much spare time for pleasure reading. Most of my reading is research for my stories. Right now I’m reading a very interesting and useful one: The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York.

Title: Murder Your Darlings
Author: J. J. Murphy
Publisher: Obsidian/Penguin
Mass Market Paperback: 336 pages
ISBN: 0451231996
eBook ISBN: B0046ECFCM