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. 
The Joys of Social Networking?
May 18, 2010
“Do you like doing all the marketing, social networking and other obligations of modern book publishing? Or would you prefer to just sit in your room writing, with no business-side duties?”
by Rebecca Cantrell
Not counting being a mother, what I love most of all writing in a room all by myself without anyone bothering me. Since I am a mother, I only write during school hours and after bedtime. And now that my son is getting older bedtime is getting later. The social networking and promotional stuff drives me nuts. Every morning I read my email on my old personal account, my Rebecca Cantrell account, and my Bekka Black account. Then I check my messages on Facebook and Twitter. I’ve abandoned MySpace, so if you’re trying to contact me there go to another portal.
After I deal with all of those messages that are so urgent they can’t wait until just before bedtime, then I’m allowed to write. Except not really. There are a ton of other promotional details: book giveaways, blogging, mailing copies to bloggers and reviewers (I can go through that automatic mailer machine at the post office so quickly people have been known to line up to watch me), getting those book trailers in shape, booking a blog tour. And every one of those things that I don’t get to make me feel horribly guilty because I’m clearly not doing all I can to sell my books. And if they don’t sell, I don’t get to write more.
I have met some wonderful people online and at conferences and made friendships that I treasure so it’s not like I hate every minute of it. I am completely humbled every time I meet someone who chose to spend $25 hard-earned dollars and at least eight nonrefundable hours of their lives reading my book. As sappy as it sounds, every time someone says “I read your book and I loved it!” I actually get tears in my eyes. It is so amazing.
But I’ve discovered one thing since I sold A TRACE OF SMOKE a few years ago: it’s really all about what I do in that room all by myself with no interruptions. It’s all about words on the page, words that will turn into a book if I just give them the time and the care that they need. So, I’ve cut back everywhere that I dare so that I can do the part of the job that I love best, and the part that readers treasure most: listen to the characters tell me a story.
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.
Technology: Or why I love my iphone too much
March 22, 2010
Technology:
is it making your writing easier or standing in the way of your creative side?
By Rebecca Cantrell
A few years ago I got an iphone. My friends without smart phones mock me for my addiction. I use the calendar, check my email, find out where I am when I’m on tour, find restaurants that deliver in strange cities, and take pictures. Heck, I even use it to make and receive phone calls!
I love my iphone so much, I wrote a novel on it. Well, I didn’t actually thumb it in but…OK, here’s where I fess up. I’m writing another series as Bekka Black. The first one is called iDrakula and it’s a cell phone novel. It’s a retelling of Bram Stoker’s Dracula using only text messages, emails, web searches, and a 3-5 cell phone movie. It’ll be delivered on multiple platforms, but I’m not allowed to say which ones yet. Without technology, it would be unthinkable.
For the Hannah Vogel books I use the Internet to find pictures. There are so many amazing black and white photos of Germany in the 1930s. And with my computer (and sometimes just my trusty iphone) I can tap into all of it. My next novel, A Night of Long Knives, opens with a zeppelin jacking. Someone posted pictures of them as a baby on the Graf Zeppelin. They had pictures of their cabin, the control room, the gondola, everything. It was a fantastic resource.
Of course it all takes up waaaay to much time. Or, maybe it doesn’t. Maybe that down time I spend screwing around on the internet is really a way for me to recharge my creative batteries…does anybody buy that?