Mindy, what was your inspiration for writing THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES?
SPECIES is actually the first novel I wrote, over 15 years ago. I was a freshman in college and cable was a new experience for me. I was watching some sort of true crime show about a murder that had occurred in a small town. It was a situation where it was fairly obvious who the killer was, but there wasn't enough proof for the courts. The documentary named the small town, and I thought, "Man, if someone watched this and was convinced of that guy's guilt, they could just go kill him." And then I thought.... huh. Interesting story.
I had always known I wanted to write a novel, but I hadn't done it yet. The idea of vigilante justice stuck with me, and with all the freshman warning talks about parties and date rape and self-defense classes, the story came together for me. As I said, it was my very first novel, and I didn't execute it well at all. It was honestly, quite terrible. I worked on that book for years. Revised. Scrapped. Revisited. Scrapped. After hundreds of rejections I decided it was unpublishable and moved on.
When I was throwing possible ideas for future projects at my agent Adriann Ranta, I happened to mention the concept behind SPECIES. It was originally an adult novel, but I knew it could very easily be adapted to YA. Adriann was excited about it, so I re-read my original novel. It was terrible. Actually unreadable, to be honest.
I started from scratch, using only the concept and character's first names. It's a complex story with a killer for main character so I needed to be able to build empathy for someone who is morally questionable... not easy to do. I don't think I was a good enough writer to execute that the first time I tried. Fifteen years later, I had more experience.
Is there a scene you particularly love?
My favorite scene happens at a party where Alex's violent tendencies come out for everyone to see. She saves a girl from being gang raped, but all anyone can talk about is the fact that... well I won't say what Alex does to the guy in question but, it's memorable.
How long or hard was your road to publication? How many books did you write before this one, and how many never got published?
Very. Hard. As I said, SPECIES was my first completed novel, but my debut NOT A DROP TO DRINK was my fifth finished novel. I had four failed manuscripts, ten years, and hundreds of rejections under my belt before I acquired an agent.
What are you working on now?
Lots of things, actually! I have a fantasy, GIVEN TO THE SEA being released in April of 2017 from Putnam, and PHANTOM HEART is my Fall 2017 release from Katherine Tegen. Beyond that I have the sequel to GIVEN TO THE SEA (drafting that one right now) and another contemporary that will be releasing in Fall of 2018 from Katherine Tegen. So... yeah. Busy!