My fantasy cover
November 16, 2010
What artist, living or dead, would you want to do your cover design?
By Rebecca Cantrell
Brainstorming
August 17, 2010
Brainstorming techniques?
I think I may be the only writer I know without a file of cool ideas
tucked away and I’m starting to feel worried about it. I could throw
one together, but I don’t think I’d ever look at it again. For me, each
novel exists only as I’m writing it. I never go back through old ideas.
My process isn’t that straightforward, sadly.
First place I look for ideas? History. When I read about a
historical event or find the perfect quote from a historical
character, I know that I have to put it into a book. I can
research for hours and claim it is all background and plot
ideas. And it is! See that great picture? Tamara de Lempicka
painted it. She's a Polish Art Deco painter and I managed to
sneak her work into "A Night of Long Knives." Research...
Second place? OK, this sounds odd, but I make myself make a
list of ten ways to solve whatever story problem I’m having.
Ten. No more, no fewer. Sometimes the best idea is number one
and sometimes it’s number ten, but usually it’s somewhere in the middle. But making myself
do ten lets me give myself permission to throw nine ideas away, which is very freeing.
Still not working? Then I write on paper instead of typing. After a couple of pages of
that kind of torture my subconscious usually throws something out in a desperate attempt
to save me from having to decipher my own handwriting.
If that doesn’t work, I draw diagrams on paper with big circles and arrows or stick
stuff on index cards and put it on a board in my room while muttering and trying not
to step on the pushpins that somehow always end up on the floor.
If all else fails: I go see a movie and eat popcorn and chocolate. Even
if that doesn’t solve the story problem, at least I got tasty snacks in
air conditioned splendor. Did I mention that I love this job?
If I Win the Lottery
May 25, 2010
“If you won the Lottery, would you quit writing? If not, would the guaranteed income change how and what you write?”
But I don’t write because of invisible dollar signs. I write because of invisible voices in my head. I write because I am a crazy obsessed person who can’t stop writing. I wrote for years before I even thought to send something out to be published. Being published was the lottery. And I won it and I love it. I think it’s easy to get caught up in worrying about the money and the numbers of books sold (things largely outside our control) and forget about the pure joy of writing.
Don’t get me wrong. If a big pile of money comes out of this whole writing thing, just like the next writer, I will install a pool in my basement full of gold coins and swim around in it like Scrooge McDuck. Although I might have the coins sanitized first because who know where they’ve been. 
Finding Humor in Darkness
May 4, 2010
What was the most fun scene you ever wrote?
by Rebecca Cantrell
Most scenes—with the exception of those that are frightening or that reflect some horrible historical event—are fun to write. I love putting my characters in a tight spot and watching them get out of it. I relish describing a place that hasn’t existed for seventy years until I can feel it and see it and smell it and hear it. I enjoy tearing through complex action scenes and the questions I need to answer (how far off the ground is a zeppelin’s gondola windows when it docks?). But mostly I love witty dialogue and the unexpected. Since the Hannah Vogel books are set just before and during the Nazis’ rise to power, they are not filled with laugh a minute gags, but some of the characters continue to be funny even in the darkest of moments.
In A Trace of Smoke my favorite bits were when Hannah was thinking about her brother. He was a funny guy. When I took him out of the book, I gave some of his best lines to other characters just so readers could get a feel for a man who was brave enough to walk the late night streets of Berlin with nothing but a red silk dress, wit, and bravado. Hannah has some of that famous Berlin sarcasm herself, and she seems intent on getting funnier in each book.
In A Night of Long Knives some of the funniest lines went to British spy Sefton Delmer, who was based on a pretty darn witty historical character. He had unflappable British cool down pat, but Hannah holds her own. I just finished A Game of Lies and Hannah’s funniest moments are when I got her stoned on opium (it was prescribed as a painkiller, just to keep her reputation clear). In her normal state she would never dance around a restaurant to imaginary music, flirt with the croupier, hike up her dress to show off her bruise, or…well, I can’t say, but man was I surprised.
And surprises are good. Surprises and fun enrich reading, writing, and life.
Favorite YA book? How about favorite library?
April 6, 2010
I hate these favorites questions. I don’t play favorites. But I know, as someone who now writes YA, I’m going to run across this question again. So, I’m giving it a try. But it’s not definitive.
From the time I could read, which is before I remember but my mother says I was about three, until the time I had to get a job, which I sadly do remember and I was thirteen, I read a book a day. Or more. So, that’s about a decade or 3,650 books. I still read a lot, but not that much. If I had but worlds enough and time…
I read anything I could get my hands on. As a child and now as an adult, I read way above my age level and way below. I read sci-fi and fantasy and detetectives and literature straight from the library’s reading list. I read romance and thrillers and suspense and comedy. The summer after fourth grade I read nothing but Shakespeare plays. Yes, I know that’s weird, and yes, I know I was awfully young to be doing that, but I decided it was something I needed to add to my education.
I went through lists of YA books to remind myself of what other kids read as teenagers so I could write this blog. It was a wonderful stroll down the pages of my reading history. But I don’t have a single favorite. I have too many favorites to list.
So I decided to wimp out and pick a category I seem to have read the most deeply in. That category? The outsider coming into or leaving a community and trying to make her way (not a big leap for a kid who went to 21 schools before graduating high school).
In this category I count: The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkein, The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank, Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein, and This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff.
But that still doesn’t leave me room to talk about all the wonderful nonfiction (Little House on the Prairie? Farley Mowat? Gerald Durrell? James Herriot?), horror (traditional Dracula, Frankenstein, Dorien Grey, Stephen King), sci-fi and fantasy (anyone grok my Heinlein phase? Jules Verne, H. G. Wells), romance (OK, I don’t remember titles, but I sure remember some scenes very vividly) and and and…
I have to stop now. I feel a strong urge to go read a book.