Moriah McStay On The What - If's

Inspiration is a funny thing. It can come to us like a lightning bolt, through the lyrics of a song, or in the fog of a dream. Ask any writer where their stories come from and you’ll get a myriad of answers, and in that vein I created the WHAT (What the Hell Are you Thinking?) interview. Always including in the WHAT is one random question to really dig down into the interviewees mind, and probably supply some illumination into my own as well.

Today's guest is Moriah McStay, fellow Katherine Tegen author of EVERYTHING THAT MAKES YOU, releasing March 17th. Moriah grew up in Memphis, TN, where she acquired a come-and-go drawl and a lifelong love of cowboy boots and fried pickles. She attended Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. Two graduate degrees and seven jobs later, she finally figured out what she wants to be when she grows up.

Ideas for our books can come from just about anywhere, and sometimes even we can’t pinpoint exactly how or why. Did you have a specific origin point for your book?

I was in an accident at age one that left me blind in one eye. You can’t tell now, but you could when I was younger. My eyes were different colors, and I had to wear big protective glasses. I couldn’t play contact sports, went to tons of doctors, had school pics taken in profile rather than face on. Looking back, it doesn’t feel that big a deal, but at the time, it was. 

Often, I wondered how much of me was determined by that single, freak accident. And what about my brother and sister? My parents? How did the accident shape their lives? What about everyone else’s individual experiences? What about my friend whose father died when she was young? Or the classmate with cancer? How did those events shape them?

There are so many “what ifs”--we all have them. It’s an interesting question to explore, I think.

Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it?

For the longest time, I did NOTHING. I started thinking about writing a book around this idea--exploring how we each come to be the person we are--when I was in college. In fact, I had this idea for SO LONG that when I saw the Sliding Doors trailer, I said to my then-boyfriend (now-husband), “That’s my book.” I didn’t see the movie for years, scared it would affect how I’d tell the story. (I finally watched it while I was revising my first draft, looking for tips on how to deal with certain elements.) 

I’d say there was a good fifteen years between the original idea and the final draft.

Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper?

Uh, yes! My original plan was to follow lots of events, because seemingly insignificant things can create enormous impacts. It was impossible to follow, though. 

Later, I focused on Fiona (the girl with the burn) thinking it was her story--Fi’s purpose was as a counterpoint. But Fi ended up flat and uninteresting, and I had to create more of an independent story line for her. 

Lessons learned from ETMY (and my next novel) are why I don’t outline anymore—it takes forever, and I abandon it in days. Now I keep a general direction in mind, but otherwise try to get out of the way of the story. My first drafts are a mess because of it, but the end result is better, I think.  

Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by?

I have a list of ideas that I’ll never get through, even if I live a hundred more years and write 18 hours straight a day. 

How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?

I ask this question: On the off-chance I’m run over by a bus the moment I finish the next WIP, what do I want to have written the most?

If dinosaurs were real and had you to marry one, which would make the best spouse?

I’m going to say Pterodactyl, because I could ride on his back, which would almost be like flying. 

Warning: CONTAINS IMMATURE CONTENT

As a school librarian I have many, many days when a patron will walk in and announce that they hate books, or that reading is stupid. And that's fine. They're probably into something that I think is incredibly stupid, and I usually tell them that and we agree to disagree. Then I go about attempting to change their mind, because that's kind of my job. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail. And to be fair, sometimes they change my mind too. *cough* Dark Souls *cough*

I find myself in the position of defending books very often, and occasionally it's hard to know whether I'm doing it as a writer, reader, or librarian. Lately a lot of people have been talking about the amount of adults reading YA. I've seen figures as high as 77% of the teen titles sold are being bought by adults. And I think that's awesome. 

I don't care if 77% of the world is only reading the back of cereal boxes - they're still reading.

What does bother me is when readers - of any age - get upset about teen characters being immature. Because I'm a reference geek I went to the dictionary for this one, and the truth is that in most cases the word immature is being used correctly.

Yes, most teen characters lack the characteristics of adults. They're supposed to. 

But teens also retain a sense of wonder that most adults have lost, and I include myself in that some days. The daily grind of going to work, paying bills, worrying about the bottom line, graying hairs, flagging energy... all the elements of real life that in some ways dull us to our own emotions and the awesomeness of just being alive. 

Being alive means having experiences that we learn from - good ones and bad ones. We make a lot of wrong decisions when we're young, which is how we develop into adults who make rational choices. I work with teens forty hours a week. I see decisions being made every day, the conclusions they thought were perfectly logical falling down around their ears. 

So when characters behave that way in books I'm not surprised or frustrated. It's because they're not finished or perfected, not completely grown or developed.

And that's why they're interesting.

Cover Talk with Angelina R. Jackson

I love talking to debut authors. Our experiences are so similar, yet so very different, that every one of us has a new story to share. Everyone says that the moment you get your cover it really hits you - you're an author. The cover is your story - and you - packaged for the world. So the process of the cover reveal can be slightly panic inducing. Does it fit your story? Is it what you hoped? Will it sell? With this in mind I put together the CRAP (Cover Reveal Anxiety Phase) Interview.

Today's guest is Angelica R. Jackson, a writer, photographer, and avid naturalist living in the Sierra foothills of California. Her debut novel, CROW'S REST, a darkly funny young adult urban fantasy, is coming from Spencer Hill Press in May 2015.

Did you have any pre-conceived notions about what you wanted your cover to look like?

It was more like I had notions about what I didn’t want Crow’s Rest’s cover to look like—in the author form that Spencer Hill Press sends, I made sure to mention I didn’t want “Girls in ball gowns or drowning (because neither has anything to do with my story). Would actually prefer not to show main character’s faces, but I know it’s pretty common for YA books so it’s not a dealbreaker.”

Also, I said the most important thing to me is “to have some tension in the image, and for it to have relevance to the story (whether symbolic or literal)” and I feel like we definitely accomplished that!

How far in advance from your pub date did you start talking covers with your house?

I signed in April 2014, and my projected release date of Fall 2015 was almost immediately moved up to May 2015—so I got my author form pretty quickly after signing. I turned it in within a week, since I already had stuff like back copy ready to go, but then didn’t hear anything for a while. (And you know how good we authors are at waiting, lol) Then we got word that we’d need to do a cover reveal in a very short timeframe, and that got the gears moving again.

Did you have any input on your cover?

Absolutely—and the fact that SHP gives authors say in the cover was one reason I signed with them. If that hadn’t been the case, I would likely have moved ahead with self-publishing.

After I got one preliminary cover image (which I liked, but I felt like it didn’t stand out enough from other YA UF covers) we talked some more, and I actually got permission to take a test shoot with some models for a custom cover (I’m also a photographer). So I turned those in and put the Final Jeopardy song on loop.

While I was waiting, just for fun I started assembling a lightbox on Shutterstock with images for teasers down the line—and in the process, I stumbled across some artwork by Natalia Maroz. It was absolutely perfect for the feel of the story! So I inserted a model and made a mockup cover, and turned that in too. That’s the one that the Editor-in-Chief ended up liking, and I have to admit that I love it so much that the sting of having my test shots rejected was considerably lessened, haha.

I wanted to do the actual cover design, too, but Photoshop played a nasty trick on me and took away a lot of the tools I had learned for masking and other tasks in the latest version—and at that point we only had ten days before the scheduled release date. So I nominated Kelley York of X-Potions Design to do the design, because she has a fast turnaround and I knew she would do a fantastic job.

How was your cover revealed to you?

Since I worked pretty closely with Kelley, there wasn’t really a reveal moment for me—although seeing how Kelley realized my vision was pretty exciting. There was one funny thing, though—when we got the hi-res version of the artwork with the flying bird, it turned out to be a vulture rather than a crow or raven! But Kelley fixed that seamlessly.

Was there an official "cover reveal" date for your art?

It was August 18, and my publicist sent out an email blast so bloggers could sign up. The full-cover reveal was a little more casual, and I just posted it in my slot on Operation Awesome and Facebook, and people shared from there.

How far in advance of the reveal date were you aware of what your cover would look like?

I realize my situation is a bit unusual since I was so heavily involved in the design, but I have to say that even knowing what the artwork looks like, it was still love at first sight to see the cover on a real-life, printed book! I wanted to walk around with it in my bra so it would be closer to my heart.

Was it hard to keep it to yourself before the official release?

It really was! And I loved the front cover by itself, but once I saw the full cover, I really wanted to, um, crow it to the world. Kelley did such a good job blending the front and back artwork (the back image is also Natalia Maroz), and with the lovely font.

What surprised you most about the process?

What surprised me was my reaction to the first, preliminary image from the publisher. I went into it with a genuine curiosity and excitement about how another artist would interpret my story and characters. But when I saw that image, it was pretty much 80% what I’d said I didn’t want (but I did end up with a girl in a dress, lol) and I got very territorial. That may have ended up making me look like a diva at times, but it also made me define what I did want.

Any advice to other debut authors about how to handle cover art anxiety?

Try to hold onto that “genuine curiosity and excitement about how another artist would interpret (your) story and characters” as long as you can, lol. But failing that, if you truly don’t like your cover, you’re better off offering some alternatives. I sent stock images of models that I thought would fit better than the one they used, stock images of landscapes that fit the story, etc, in that first email response. Offering to arrange a custom model shoot at a reasonable price also went over well (and those photos weren’t wasted, since I later used them in my book trailer). But backing up your reasons for why you think that cover doesn’t fit with hard data or alternatives will get you further than sobbing into the phone.

That said, you may still not have any say at all, and if you’re unhappy—keep it off the internet! Cry on your agent’s shoulder, make your dog’s fur soggy with tears, but don’t bash an artist or publisher online! Keep things professional, and it will pay off in the long run.