I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to welcome Eden Maguire author of Beautiful Dead to Galleysmith today.  Book One of this wonderful series (and y’all know I’m a girl who likes a good series!) is touring the blogosphere right now. Focusing on one of four recently departed teenagers we get to learn all about Jonas and his experience in the before and after life.  If you haven’t already, check out my review of Beautiful Dead.  Please join me in welcoming Eden.

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‘This is an exciting moment – the publication in the U.S. of the first in my four books series, The Beautiful Dead. It comes after an eighteen month gestation period when I presented an outline to my publisher, had the project accepted (a four book deal is a big decision for a publisher!), then began to write. Meanwhile, my agent negotiated details of the contract, designers worked on the cover and marketing people began to promote the books. Finally, after I’ve submitted the manuscript and my editor and I have worked together on small changes, it’s ready for you to read!

If I had to describe Beautiful Dead – Jonas in a few words, I would say ‘highly charged, intense and mysterious’.  I’ve always been fascinated by a love that is strong enough to defy and overcome even death, which is why, when I first read Emily Bronte’s classic novel Wuthering Heights as a teen, the story of Catherine and Heathcliff grabbed me and has held me ever since.

And it’s the intensity of paranormal romance that makes it such a good read for Young Adults. Teens know all about raw, intense passion. You’re not jaded or cynical – you want to believe!

So, back to the early stages of writing Jonas – my first idea was to create a group of paranormal characters who were not vampires or angels, but zombies – the living dead. I wanted Jonas etc to come back from beyond the grave with supernatural powers. They can time travel, they have superhuman strength and the ability to wipe a victim’s mind clear of all memory. The reason they’re back is not for revenge or for any nasty flesh-eating, grave-robbing purpose, but to clear up a mystery surrounding their deaths. But they’ll need human help in the form of Darina.

Darina talks as a first-person narrator and is the character you identify with – and she’s pretty close to myself as a sixteen year old – sensitive, a little angry and rebellious, insecure, but determined and brave. Oh, and she loves, loves, loves Phoenix – who dies in a fight and then comes back to haunt her.

And here’s the thing – Darina has to help Jonas discover the truth about his death in Book 1, then she has to help Arizona and Summer in Books 2 and 3, then her beloved Phoenix in Book 4. So there’s a slow, relentless build to the final, agonised moment when she finds out what really happened to the guy she loves.

You can see that all four books had to be plotted right from the start. But that doesn’t mean I don’t change and develop things as I go along – especially when a character comes alive on the page and begins taking the plot in unexpected directions.

One thing I had in my head early on was the angel-wing tattoo. All the Beautiful Dead carry this death mark on the exact place on their bodies where they received a fatal gunshot or knife wound. It kind of encapsulates what the books are about – a tragic early death, grief and longing, a magical ability to come back and set things right.

So I’ve sat alone at my desk for a year and a half (isolation is probably the down-side of being a writer, but the power to invent a whole fantasy world with its own mythology and to people it with characters from out of your own brain and imagination is the biggest thrill) and now I’m handing The Beautiful Dead over to you.

I hope from the bottom of my heart that you like reading it as much as I loved writing it.

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Eden, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your thoughts on these wonderful books.  I’m looking forward to reading all about Arizona next.

It’s my distinct pleasure to welcome author Kitty Keswick to Galleysmith to talk about her new novel Freaksville.

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Writing Freaksville Without Freaking Out…

I don’t write in a linear fashion, and I don’t always have an outline or plot everything out. I start with the characters first. They come alive to me. I see them as if I were watching a TV show. I wrote Freaksville’s key scenes out of order and then went through and, like taking a needle and thread, stitched them together. I had note cards, sticky notes, napkins—you name it—riddled with ideas. I’d be in the shower and dialogue would pop into my head. I had to rush out and scribble it down so I wouldn’t lose it. I once wrote out a scene with soap on my tub surround, so it would stay with me long enough to write it down for real. Once Kasey voice was solid, the story flowed.

The story was told in first person, and it seemed like a confession of Kasey’s inner world. The blog idea came a smidge later, but it worked so well, and the comments at the end of each chapter gave hints and clues into the story, making it more three dimensional. Kasey and Gillie were so real to me, I could see them, hear them, feel them. They had such a strong bond of friendship, and that friendship was the backbone for the story. I’m lucky to have some long-lasting friendships, and a few of them inspired Kasey and Gillie’s relationship. They are more than friends; they are sisters and support each other through good times and some pretty hairy situations. Every girl needs a BFF.

Characters: Creating Friendships That Leap Off the Pages…

Kasey, my heroine, and her BFF Gillie have a language of their own. It comes from being friends so long. They’ve lived next door to each other since birth (their moms were best friends too), so they share a lot of inside lingo. And the girl’s friendship was a huge part of who they were.

To keep track of Kasey and Gillie’s language, I kept a glossary for myself, which ended up in the back of Freaksville. Their energy was so hyper and exuberant. I really had fun getting to know them more. (Like I said, my characters are very real to me, I see them. Not in the okay-hurry-up-with-the-little-white-jackets-and-cushy-padded-cell see them, but you get the point.)

Besides listening to my characters speak, I always write a smidge of backstory to flesh out my characters. This history of what happened before the story helps me know them inside and out—how they will react to conflict, what their motivations are, what makes them tick. I also did character cards to work out their likes and dislikes and give them quirks—like Kasey’s list-making and Gillie carrying around a mongo-sized bag so she was always prepared for anything. They balanced each other well. They’re also strong females, which I believe all girls can and should be. I believe in Girl Power!

That meant I needed to have strong, honorable male heroes to balance them. Josh and Gunter fit the bill. The guys didn’t know each other before going to school, but they both sensed they were Lycans and that created a powerful bond. They became pack. And to werewolves, just like to their wolf counterparts, pack is important. So the best pal relationship was important for them too. Because Freaksville is a character-driven novel, these bonds of friendship between the guys, as well as Kasey and Gillie, and the interactions between all four of the characters added dimension to the plot and, at the same time, provided ideas for conflict.

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As outlined by Ms. Keswick and publisher Leap Books, Freaksville is the story of a group of teenagers, trapped in a haunted theater on the night of a full moon, who find out that ghosts are the least of their worries.

Every woman in the Maxwell family has the gift of sight. A talent sixteen-year-old Kasey would gladly give up. All she wants is a normal life. Shopping and talking about boys with her best friend and long-time sidekick, Gillie Godshall, consume her days. Until Kasey has a vision about Josh Johnstone, the foreign exchange student from England. The vision leads her into new realms, a lead in a play, a haunted theater … and into the arms of Josh. Yet both Kasey and Josh have secrets lurking in dark corners. Can Kasey’s new romance survive FREAKSVILLE?

About the Author:

Kitty Keswick has been an Anglophile since age four when she saw Robin Hood and fell head over heels in love. As she grew up on her grandfather’s California vineyard, Kitty’s imagination was her best friend. At a very tender age, she started writing her stories and reading them to the grapes.  Kitty spends her days with werewolves, Valkyries, vamps, and other creatures that go bump in the night.

Check out Freaksville’s book trailer and to learn more about Kitty Keswick visit her website at http://www.kittykeswick.com.

Today I have two lovely ladies guest posting about their love for a certain gentleman in a certain series of novels.  Now if you’re on Twitter at all or if you read either lady’s blog you’ll not have to guess who the guy is because their love for him knows NO bounds, but if you haven’t had the opportunity might I strongly encourage you to visit them both because really, so.worth.it.  Anywhoo, please join me in welcoming Raych from Books I Done Read and TY from The Lit Connection as they profess their unending adoration, in a way only they can, for Outlander.

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Raych: Alright, seriespaloozers, are you ready to have every male literary lead ruined for you forever?’

TY: Are you reading to meet the fictional yardstick to which no male literary lead will ever measure up?

Raych: And we mean ‘yardstick’ both literally and metaphorically, where literally it measures but in a metaphorical sense it means ‘dong.’  Ok, serious question, though: How much do you want to do Jamie?

TY: No yardstick in the world can measure the lust I have for this noble Scotsman.

Raych: HA! Innuendos!

TY: How much do YOU want to do Jamie?

Raych: I would sell all my limbs. Which would be awesome, because then he would have to throw my limbless self on the bed and that would be hot.  Ok, tell me about the first time you read the O series.

TY: I’ve said this about Outlander before. It changed my LIFE. It turned my hair white like Moses when he had that conversation with GOD. The 1st time I read it, it’s like I came down off some imaginary Highland mountain after seeing God (Jamie Fraser) and now I want to preach the gospel and open readers’ eyes to this RED FOX’S Holy Hotness.   Did Outlander teach you about the birds and the bees?

Raych: No, I learned that from Where Do Babies Come From. But O taught me how HOT the birds and the bees can be. Also, kilts.

TY: I learned about the birds and the bees from DAWN. VCA!!!!! Outlander helped me heal.

Raych: If you could tell the uninitiate ONE THING before they read O, what would it be? Because DO NOT ACCIDENTALLY READ the back flap of book 3 before you read book 2, is my advice. It will ruin. everything.

TY: This is the hottest, sweetest romance EVER. Jamie is the most complex, drool-worthy man ever created by a woman.

Raych: Alright, sum up the plot of all 7 books thus far in 140 chars.

TY:

• Outlander: Fiesty WWII Nurse stumbles into standing stone time portal. Deflowers sexy Scotsman. Many adventures later, she saves his soul.
• Dragonfly: Love birds in Paris to stop war. Epic fail. Saddest-rip-my-heart-out-of-my-chest parting EVER!!!
• Voyager: They diddle other people. Jamie has son. Soul mates reunite. Nautical voyage. Hurricane. The Americas!
• Drums: Time travel extravaganza. Pirates. Rape. Indians. Melodrama involving paternity and mistaken identity.
• Fiery cross: Hangings and colonial life. There’s the American Revolution and Jamie doesn’t want to fight, but he has to because he’s a MAN OF HONOR.
• Breath: Abductions, gang rapes, threesomes, and the dread of WAR.
• Echo: War. Hot Young Ian. Pirates. Hot Young Ian. Quakeress spit fire. WAR. Amputations. And that THING with Lord John that is still blowing my mind!

Raych: You have just blown MY mind.  I didn’t think you could do it.

TY: How about the villains? Diana is a master at creating the nastiest literary villains. Not tepid bad guys, these guys make me CRINGE

Raych: How ABOUT the villains? Remember that time Black Jack captured Jamie and reduced him to a shell of his former self?

TY: I love how Diana ‘went there’. I was not expecting THAT to happen to Jamie. A lesser author would have saved him in the nick of time.

Raych: A lesser author wouldn’t be throwing her characters under the bus every time they turned around without looking ridiculous. Gabaldon is mercilessly skilled.

TY: Also, the fact that Black Jack “made love to him” disturbed me more than if he just raped him prison style. Kudos Diana on sustaining UNEASE

Raych: That part definitely made me uneasy. Also, I threw up in my mouth a bit. But she isn’t gibbets-and-brains style, which I appreciate. I also appreciate how she has managed to SUSTAIN THE LOVE between Jamie and Claire well into their 50s (60s?).

TY: Diana took your cliché Highland romance novel and twisted it like a pretzel.

Raych: A deliciously salted pretzel, wherein the salt represents J&C doooing eeet.

TY: J&C doooing eeettt is like the cheese you dip your pretzel in. Sometimes you forget about the pretzel and lick the dip till it’s done.  I use to believe that marriage was the end of the road when it comes to passion. Diana opened my eyes. Your THING is not dead once you slip on the ring.

Raych: And I love how Claire is feisty and competent and makes me want to BE her, not SMACK her.  For all that this is a love story, and for all the Mmmmm, Jamie, I would totally still read it if it was just about Claire.

TY: Rare is the heroine that I actually want to BE. I would never dream of smacking Claire; she’ll snap my neck like she snapped that wolf’s neck outside Wentworth Prision. The woman has brains and balls, the whole package.  Also, the whole young VIRGINAL man + older woman match up was unheard of before Diana came along and broke barriers. She’s like Rosa Parks.

Raych: She basically cured cancer with this story.

TY: Diana invented the atom bomb for which the world can never recover.  My loins are now radioactively charged every time I think about Jamie Fraser. There’s a picture for ya. Thanks Diana!

Raych: Ok, I need to go pop a bag of popcorn while I pretend to make lunch.  Any last words on the subject?

TY: I want to give Jamie my flower and he will make it BLOSSOM!!!!

Raych:Well, kids. You may not have heard it here first but you will definitely hear it here most often.  Outlander: get on it.

TY: I’ll get on it alright… If by ‘IT’ you mean “Jamie Fraser.”

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Seriously girls, you’re the bomb diggity!  Thank you so much for stopping by to spread the Jamie Fraser love.  Here’s to hoping a whole new batch of Outlanders are born!

In observance of SeriesPalooza this week I’m extremely honored to have Lauren Baratz-Logsted here to share how her Sisters 8 series came to be.  Please join me in welcoming Lauren!

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I NEVER SET OUT TO WRITE A SERIES

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

The idea that I’d wind up having my name associated with a series is a bit of a shock – not that there’s anything wrong with writers who series! It’s just that my entire career has been devoted, for the most part, to not repeating myself, to trying new things. Of the 15 books I’ve had published since 2003, I’ve done comedic adult fiction, literary adult fiction, a short story anthology which I edited as well as contributed to, YA and middle grade. Even within YA, my books published and forthcoming have been so diverse – Angel’s Choice, an earnest contemporary novel about a surprise pregnancy; Secrets of My Suburban Life, a seriocomic sort-of mystery about a cyberstalker; Crazy Beautiful, a contemporary re-visioning of the classic fairy tale Beauty & the Beast; The Education of Bet, a Victorian novel set in London about a girl who impersonates a boy in order to get a proper education – probably no one would believe it’s all the same author were it not for that same improbably long name on each and every spine.

And yet the author of a series I have turned out to be.

Or at least one of three authors of a series.

In December 2006 my YA novelist husband Greg Logsted, our then six-year-old daughter Jackie and I were visiting friends in Crested Butte, Colorado. Our friends had no TV nor any kids in the area. This would have been fine for the intended length of our visit, but a monster blizzard closed down Denver Airport, extending our stay to 10 days. Jackie was a wonderful kid then, and she’s still a wonderful kid now, but 10 days without TV or other little people is a very long stretch for almost any modern child. So by the end there we were looking for fresh ways to entertain ourselves.

That’s when we began brainstorming the idea for a book, just for the fun of it. Jackie thought there should be eight sisters. I thought they should be octuplets. We all thought their parents should disappear on New Year’s Eve, leaving the Eights as they’d be known to solve the mystery behind their parents’ disappearance while struggling to keep the rest of the world from realizing that eight little girls are living home alone. Greg of course thought that they needed a talking refrigerator. And he was right.

Thus was born The Sisters 8.

We kept brainstorming all the way home on the plane and when we finally arrived back in Danbury, like Curious George, I sat down and started to write. This was still supposed to be just for our own amusement, but when I completed the first volume, Annie’s Adventures, it occurred to me that others might enjoy it as well. This, that and the other thing then happened, and before I knew it, we’d sold Annie’s Adventures plus three other titles as the first four in a projected nine-book series for readers aged six to ten to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. (There will eventually be nine books because we need to do one for each Eight and then one to resolve all the mysteries.)

What I never thought I’d do in my life – write a series – has turned out to be pretty much the greatest joy I’ve ever had as a writer. How lucky am I that I get to create a series with my husband and my kid? How lucky am I that I get to do book signings with Jackie, and open fan mail with her?

And oh that fan mail. In a year it’s generated more letters than all my other books combined. We hear from grandparents and parents, saying their grandkids and kids never liked to read before they discovered the Eights. We hear from little girls all over the country, more than one of whom has declared herself to be “Your #1 fan!!!” There was the girl who wrote, “I would love to meet you, but I know I would FAINT!” A lot of these girls write in enthusiastically screaming caps, like the letter recently from a girl who’d just seen the cover for Book 5, not due out until May: “WOW! O MY GOODNESS THANKYOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!sorry I haven’t been able to check my e-mail for awhile. WHEN I READ THE MESSAGE I ALMOST SCREAMED! thank you so much for sending that to me! almost every night I thought about the book,what it would be about, what Marcia’s gift and power would be,but most of all what the cover would look like! and now that I’ve seen it, I’m even more excited about it!!!! THE COVER IS AMAZING!!!!!!!(my little sister likes it too!!) so,once again THANK YOU!!!!!!! i’ll be SURE to get the next book!!!!!!!!!!!!!” And then she signed it, “your biggest, number 1 fan,” clearly having realized on her own that she wasn’t the only #1 fan so at least she could still lay claim to being the biggest.

Really, it’s not the quantity of the fan mail we receive about The Sisters 8 so much as the quality. Don’t get me wrong, I love writing books for adults and books for teens – I love all the writing I’m privileged to get to do as part of my career – but it’s daily astonishing to think that something my family did just to amuse ourselves has turned into something that has given so much joy to so many little girls, even turning nonreaders into readers.

Thank you so much, Galleysmith, for inviting me to discuss The Sisters 8 here.

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Thank you Lauren for joining me for SeriesPalooza this week.  I can’t wait to get my hands on The Sisters 8 series it sounds like great fun!

It is my absolute and distinct pleasure to take the opportunity to give the reigns of Galleysmith over to Mr. Martin Chatterton today.  As a former Floridian the story of how his book  The Brain Finds a Leg (which shows the same humor and tone below) came to be holds a special place in my heart because I can totally picture the scenario he’s describing below.  Please join me in giving Mr. Chatterton a very warm welcome.

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Martin Chatterton ‘The Brain Finds A Leg’

A few years ago in England – which is where I’m from originally- there was a TV ad for wood varnish which had the copyline ‘Does exactly what it says on the tin’. To some extent, ‘The Brain Finds A Leg’ is pretty much the same in that a character called ‘The Brain’ does, in fact, find a leg. That’s probably the only point of similarity I’d guess.

‘The Brain Finds A Leg’ is a well-travelled book. It began life when I was living in south west Florida at a place called Bonita Springs. To someone like me, raised in the grey drizzle of northern England (Liverpool, to be precise), moving to Florida was a revelation. They had sun! White sand beaches! Rum punch and blue ocean! Snowbirds and rednecks! After a while though I began to notice other things about the place.
I was playing golf one day –please don’t judge me, I only play about once a year, if that, and I’m very bad at wearing correct golfing attire (and while we’re on this subject, how come it’s only golf that has the word ‘attire’ naturally attached? You don’t ask your wife or husband what attire they’re going to be wearing for the PTA meeting, do you?). Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, golf. I was about to play a tricky chip shot from the sand trap on the par five 13th when I stepped on an alligator sunning itself just under the lip of the bunker. I say ‘stepped’, but what I mean is that I placed my foot on the creature’s tail and levitated spontaneously about eighteen feet in the air, squealing like an eight-year old girl who’d been sucking helium down for the past hour. Me and the alligator departed in separate directions, both feeling like they’d avoided contact with something repulsive.

The experience left me somewhat chastened. I had to have several stiff gin and tonics before I regained the natural sang froid that is as much a part of the average Englishman’s make-up as his tweed underpants or nylon soccer shirt. There were alligators on the course! Why wasn’t someone doing something about this? And then the penny dropped. It was us, not them, who were at fault. The gators had been rubbing along quite nicely for squillions of years until we came along and began playing golf in their backyard. If they want to grab some zees in the sand trap then it is they who are in the right, not me.

All of this gave me the start for ‘The Brain Finds A Leg’ which I conceived as both a ‘fish out of water’ story, the fish being The Brain, an expat 13 year-old detective, and as a comic detective thriller giving a nod and a wink to the immortal Carl Hiassen – who if he isn’t already Governor of Florida, should be before too long.

Time passed as it does and the Chatterton family moved back to the UK and then very quickly over to sunny Australia where we still remain.

A very lovely New York editor and writer friend of mine called David Levithan (who is busy right now zooming up the fame and success ladder in an extremely annoying fashion) was kind enough to put me in touch with some kind-hearted Australian book people. I was looking for another project to show one of them when ‘The Brain Finds A Leg’ popped into my mind. I promptly re-wrote it set in Australia – in Byron Bay to be precise – and the rest is history. For gators I substituted crocodiles, for retirees I substituted hippies (of which Byron has a ludicrously large stock). I kept the leg bit.

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Thank you Martin for taking the time to share your inspiration for The Brain Finds a Leg it’s been a pleasure hosting you.  I’m very much looking forward to The Brain’s continuing adventures in The Brain Full of Holes forth coming in Spring 2010.

Be sure to watch for my review of The Brain Finds a Leg tomorrow here on Galleysmith.com.