If you
havenโt had a chance to check out
Rosemary Clement-Mooreโs books, you should. Yes, they are young
adult novels, but they are fun for all ages.
Highway to Hell, the third
book in her Maggie Quinn: Girl versus Evil series. โMaggie and Lisa are away
from parental supervisions when they head for Spring Break on the Texas Coast,โ
says Clement Moore. โOh, the college freshman days, when you think you know
everything. They never make it to the beach. They wreck the Jeep when they hit a
cow in the middle of the road, and get stranded in a one-horse town, where folks
are convinced El Chupacabra is killing their livestock. After facing demons at
the prom and sorcerous sorority sisters (say that three times fast!), Maggie and
Lisa think they can take on this Mexican version of Bigfoot. But itโs bigger and
badder than they realize. โ
Clement Moore says this book is personal. โIt takes place where I was raised,โ
she says. โI get to incorporate South Texas culture and legends, and Iโve thrown
in a hot cowboy or two. Come on, and an El Chupacabra. Whatโs not to love?โ
Highway to Hell was
named one of the 2010 Best Books for Young Adults by the American Library
Association.โ
Theresa Meyers went a
long way to research her novel
A Vampireโs Mistress, โI
scoured the Capuchin catacombs underneath Palermo, Sicily, where four centuries
of mummies and skeletons still reside in their burial finest on display for the
public,โ she says. โWhile the practice of laying loved ones to rest in the
catacombs was outlawed in 1881, the catacombs are still a huge tourist
attraction today. One of the scenes in the story involves the characters racing
through the catacombs to escape vampire hunters.โ
Claudia Dain says sheโs a
pantser, which is a writer who sits down and writes by the seat of their pants.
โBut Iโm an organized panster,โ she says. I know the characters and I know how
they behave before I write one word. So imagine my shock โ make that horror when
the heroine for
The
Courtesanโs Wager started paying attention to the wrong guy. This guy was
not the hero! He was a disposable (sorry, Cranleigh) secondary character. Amelia
starts fizzing every time heโs in the room. He snarls. They spark. She totally
ignores the hero. I try to ignore it. I mean, Iโm an experienced author; I can
ignore misbehaving characters, knowing I can pull them into line in the
rewrites. And they kiss. And kiss. And start talking about their long back-story
that I knew nothing about. I stopped writing for three weeks, afraid to go
anywhere near my computer, now that I knew it was the portal to an alternate
universe and all. Three weeks and one day after the Revolution, I opened up the
file and continued writing, letting the characters have their way. Turns out he
really was the right guy for her. Who knew?โ
Barbara
Freethy has two books out this month
On Shadow Beach and
In Shelter Cove. โIโve set
my fictional town along the California central coast,โ says Freethy. โAlong with
a new story involving an old murder, readers will get to learn more about the
town, which was born from a Gold Rush shipwreck in the 1850s. For readers enjoy
quilting themes, thereโs also a story quilt with twenty-four blocks, each
telling the story of one of the survivors of the wreck and each square tied to
the current day characters as well.โ
Susan Fox says most of
the action on her new book
Love, Unexpectedly, takes place on a cross-Canadian train journey.
โOn that train ride I wanted to give Nav and Kat something special to do that
would increase intimacy and help them get to know each other, so I created a
bored game called Nice โn Naughty. One player rolls the die, lands on a square
thatโs labeled with a heart, diamond, club or space, then draws a card from the
corresponding deck and has to answer the question on it, or do what it says. I
had fun making up what the cards say. โฆAnd had even more fun thinking up Nav and
Katโs answers.โ
Vickie McDonough has her
first trade paperback,
The
Anonymous Bride, out this month. Itโs the tale of a Texas town marshal who
suddenly has three mail order brides arrive, each expecting to marry him. But he
didnโt order a bride. โPeople ask me how I got this idea,โ McDonough says. โIt
started with a โwhat ifโ question. What if a mail-order bride arrived in a town
to marry a man, but he never ordered a bride. Then I wondered what if the town
hosted a contest to see which bride would make him the best wife? And what if
instead of three entries, there were four and the last one was anonymous.โ
Sounds like fun to me.
Vivi
Andrews says her new book
The Sexorcist is filled with demons and a smokinโ hot exorcist,
but the heroine really made the story sing for her. โBrittany sees silver
linings everywhere, but it's more of an ingrained coping mechanism than blind
Pollyanna optimism,โ says Andrews. โBorn with a heart defect, her life was
always limited by the constant risks to her health -but now, post-transplant,
she is able to live, rather than just survive. In writing Brittany's happy,
healthy ever after, I was influenced a lot by my memories of the way my aunt's
life changed for the better following her heart surgery.โ
Until next month...
Candace
Candace Havens is a columnist for FYI Television, an online news and media
service, where she writes five weekly columns for an overall audience of 44
million readers. She is also an entertainment reporter for 96.3 KSCS in Fort
Worth. She lives in Fort Worth, Texas. She is the author of the
Charmed &
Dangerous series including
CHARMED & READY,
CHARMED & DANGEROUS,
CHARMED & DEADLY, and
LIKE A CHARM as well as the
Caruthers sisters:
DRAGONS PREFER BLONDES and
THE DEMON KING AND I.
Her latest book,
TAKE ME IF
YOU DARE is in stores in February 2010.
Her non-fiction prose
includes JOSS WHEDON: THE GENIUS BEHIND BUFFY, and essays in ALIAS
ASSUMED: SEX, LIES AND SD-6, and FIVE SEASONS OF ANGEL.
You
can visit Candy daily at her blog or her website
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