Lil' Booklovers Summer of Authors Launch: Mindy McGinnis

1. Why do you love writing? When did you first have a love for writing, and how was it formed? 

Honestly I think most authors will tell you we don’t necessarily love writing. It’s work, sometimes almost impossible work. We put it off, and find other things to do instead as often as possible. I wouldn’t say I love it – I’d say that I can’t not do it. I’ve always had stories in my head, but I didn’t write my first novel until I was in my 20s.

2. What are your favorite books, genres, and authors? Which ones have impacted you and you writing style the most? 

I don’t really have favorites. I read widely and write widely. If its good, I’ll read it. I don’t really know who has influenced me either, as I do read SO much, it would be hard to pin any one thing down.

3. What do you do when you’re not writing? Is writing a part-time or full-time job? 

Writing is the full time job! I was working full time AND writing full time up until about a year ago.

4. Your latest novel GIVEN TO THE SEA just released in April, and it takes place in the fantastic Kingdom of Stille. What was your process of world-building for this book? How was trying to create the Kingdom different from creating the fictional worlds in your other books? 

The unique challenge in fantasy is that your reader can assume nothing. If I’m writing a contemporary and I tell you that my main character goes to a private school, drives a Mercedes, and only wears Prada, you can draw about 20 assumptions about her, her environment, and probably her past pretty easily. I don’t have to fill in the blanks.

In fantasy, if I tell you that one of my characters is the last surviving female of the Indiri… you know pretty much nothing. You can’t infer from that that she’s the only person in this world with magic, as only the females of the tribe carry that gift. You don’t know what her life is like – are in the Indiri a reigning class living in a castle with servants, or are they a wild, feral people? Are these royals? Are they cannibals? What is expected of this character in her class and situation?

You don’t know. And so I have to tell you. And I have to do it in a way that is not a bullet point list, boring to read and onerous to write. I have to give you seventeen years of backstory while also illustrating the present, seamlessly giving you the entire picture of her life while making it, you know, interesting.

Not easy. And that’s just one character. GIVEN TO THE SEA has four POV’s and as many highly unique and different cultures. Delivering all four – along with the land, the layout, the animals, the legend and history of this fictitious place – er… yeah.

Writing fantasy was the hardest genre I’ve tackled yet.

5. Let’s say you were a character inside GIVEN TO THE SEA. Who would be your best friend/closest ally, and who would be your archnemesis? 

Oh I don’t know. I’m terrible at any of those kind of questions. The only thing I’m good at making crap up about is my novels.

6. I have read THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES a few months ago, and it was amazing! Since the book explores the theme of rape culture, what do you want the reader, regardless of gender, to take from it?

How it feels to be the opposite gender!

8. You set many of your novels, such as A MADNESS SO DISCREET and your upcoming THIS DARKNESS MINE, in your home state of Ohio. What are some of your favorite things about Ohio? Why did you choose to use your home state as the setting? 

It’s best to write what you know, and I know Ohio – thoroughly. I live in the middle of absolute nowhere, and my favorite thing is the isolation. Adore.

9. How is it like using your blog Writer, Writer Pants on Fire to help aspiring writers with the drafting, editing, publishing, and marketing processes? How did you come up with those hilarious acronyms for your interviews? 

Honestly, I’m just full of shit is the best answer I have for that. I had a lot of authors who were agented, and even published, help me out when I first started on the bottom rung of the ladder, so I’m all about paying it forward.

10. I am so glad I got to see you at the Southeastern Young Adult Book Festival in Murfreesboro, TN! What do you like most about being an author at book festivals? How was your experience at SE-YA? 

SEYA was probably one of the best festivals I have ever done! I love doing festivals and meeting readers, panels, Q&A’s, you name it. Since I write full time I don’t honestly get out much anymore so anytime I’m social that’s a good thing.

11. You’re planning to release THIS DARKNESS MINE, a YA psychological thriller, this October. What is it about? Would you like to give us any secrets about your next book? 

I find the best way to plug anything is to use a mashup, so THIS DARKNESS MINE would be Fight Club in the Band Room and the novel I just finished is Drunk Hatchet With A Girl.

12. Do you have any tips or advice you would like to give to any aspiring authors or writers? 

You have to do the hard work and research in order to succeed. There is no such thing as an overnight success. I queried for 10 years before I got an agent. Among traditionally published authors the average is roughly 7 years. So, be ready for that. Grow thick skin.

Writing in the Raw

I think truly compelling fiction is incredibly realistic, whether it's set on a spaceship or in your own backyard. A book that makes the reader gasp for breath because they've just been emotionally gut-punched is real, and it doesn't matter that we're talking about things that never happened to people that don't exist.

It's those gut punches that I go for in every book I write. Whether I'm letting the reader in on some horrific practices in early insane asylums, showing a nine-year-old child defending her water source in order to survive in a parched world, or giving vent to the very real and often ignored world of female rage, I try to bring real life into every page.

I think this is true of my fantasy, GIVEN TO THE SEA, as well. Yes, the setting is foreign, but the people are like us - people. They are in extraordinary situations - whether asked to give their own life for the continuation of others', take their assumed place in the family tree, whittle the weak from their population in order to give strength to the whole, or fated to carry the last blood of a dying race - these are people that face struggles most of us can relate to in our own way. And if none of that strikes a chord, there's always the tried-and-true unrequited love that we all know (probably a little too well).

If you know anything about my writing, you probably know that SEA will make you cry at some point, cringe at others, and hopefully laugh once or twice.

Most importantly, it's going to feel real.

On the Verge: Interview with Mindy McGinnis

Jody: On a recent panel you talked about where your ideas come from. Not a Drop to Drink you had an image of a girl holding a gun and A Madness So Discreet started with your interest in the old insane asylum in Athens, Ohio. I’m curious about your new book—which is the first fantasy you’ve written—about the inhabitants of a dying island world.

Mindy: In a lot of ways Given to the Sea is a montage of many different thoughts that have come to me over a period of fifteen or twenty years.

The first scene that ever occurred to me was a star-crossed lovers type of situation, with an Ivanhoe-esque turn with the female refusing to cave to her own desires to be with the male, to the point that she's willing to pitch herself from a window to save her pride. That scene doesn't actually exist in the book now, but it planted the seed that told me I wanted to write a fantasy.

A combination of many things came together for everything else: an interest in Huntington's disease (also called the "dancing sickness"), the idea of genetic memory, and rising sea levels.

Jody: It just occurred to me that the rising sea level idea is the flip side of your first book. Not A Drop to Drink was a world with no water, and here, with this new book, you’ve got a world with too much water… Was the process for writing these books the same?

Mindy: My process is always the same. I sit down and write the book.

Jody: You make it sound easy.

Mindy. Not easy, but you just do it. With this book I thought I had all kinds of freedom because I was building a fantasy world.

Jody: So, you're thinking anything goes…

Mindy: Except it doesn’t. You have to keep track of your own rules that you're making, because you made them in the first place.

Jody: And sometimes you write yourself into a corner. What do you do when that happens? Any tricks you can share?

Mindy: I think a lot while I'm driving. I live in the middle of nowhere so if I'm on my way to an event I've usually got at least an hour each way, and the drive might give me some room to sort things out.

Jody: You've recently started writing full time. Has that changed how you write?

Mindy: It's harder to make myself write. Before I was on a very tight timetable. If I had twenty free minutes, then I needed to crack out some words. Now, I've got all day... and I know it. I'm learning how to budget my time better, which is weirdly harder when you have more of it.

Jody: What kinds of scenes or stories do love writing most and least? 

Mindy: I love writing biting dialogue, insults, stuff like that. Least, action scenes. Writing a battle scene and trying to keep it as "realistic" as possible while still making it thrilling and fun is challenging.

Jody: You write in different genres... from dystopian to gothic historical fiction to contemp, and now fantasy-- what makes a Mindy McGinnis book a Mindy McGinnis book—besides the fact that at least one of the characters is probably going to die?

Mindy: That, and a definite layer of grit and realism overlying everything. That's my approach with any genre. If this WERE going to happen, how would it unfold? No drama. No fuss. Just, give this thing some room and see what happens. Usually nothing good, because it's a McGinnis. :)

Jody: This is on a totally different note, but I know you've launched a podcast recently. What got you interested in that?

Mindy: I started listening to podcasts while I was running, and I started on the high end of production value - Serial, This American Life, Cracked,etc. I burned through those and started listening to others that were suggested to me and, most of the time, was not impressed. I thought to myself, "I could do better than that." Then I thought I should put my money where my mouth was.

So I did, literally. It's a time investment for me, since one of my biggest complaints about other podcasts was that they needed heavy editing (lots of filler, dead space, inside jokes, side rants).

Jody: And your podcast doesn’t--

Mindy: I don't make my listeners listen to anything I wouldn't want to hear.

Jody: I'm guessing there's some money involved. 

Mindy:  For hosting and distribution. I'm hoping to at least break even with it, if not make it financially productive, by the end of one year (I paid for one year of hosting up front). If it's not lifting its own weight by then, I'll have to pull the plug. At the moment I spend more time on the podcast than I do on my writing, which economically makes zero sense.

Jody: True. But hey, what does make sense in this business?

*(Check out one of Mindy's podcasts Here)

Okay, time for the lightning round. What kinds of things do you do for fun?

Mindy: Oh, God. I'm such a geek. Genealogy. Seriously. I found an ancestor (female) that I'd been looking for for ten years a few weeks ago and I almost cried. I also love old cemeteries and will just stop the car and go visit one if I see one that looks interesting to me.

Jody: Last good book you've read?

Mindy: Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray

Jody: TV show you've binged?

Mindy: Brooklyn Nine-Nine. I'm catching up!

Jody: What's up next for you?

Mindy: Given to the Sea will have a sequel (it's a duology) in the Spring of 2018, titled Given to the Earth. I have another contemporary, This Darkness Mine coming October 10th of 2017 from Katherine Tegen Books.

Right now I'm working on a story I'm mentally referring to as "Drunk Hatchet With A Girl," about a teen lost in the Appalachian region.

I'm sure marketing will retitle that.

Jody: Probably. But wouldn't it be awesome if they didn't? Hey Mindy, thanks so much for chatting with me today! And dear readers, if you'd like to know more about the dark and brilliant mind of Mindy McGinnis, see below:

YABC Author of the Week: Mindy McGinnis

YABC:  What gave you the inspiration to write this book?

A kernel for the idea of GIVEN TO THE SEA was planted a very long time ago when I was a child. I loved the TV movie of . There's an amazing scene with Sam Neill and Olivia Hussey where she's locked in a tower and he comes to see her. She thinks he's there to force himself upon her and she gets up in the window and says she'll jump if he comes a step closer. He's a decent guy who means her no harm, so he manages to talk her down but it's a very powerful scene. It stuck with me (even though I didn't understand all the implications until I was older). Elements from that scene have found their way into SEA at various levels - the girl who doesn't want to be touched, a boy in a power position who *could* take advantage if he wanted, a girl who's pride is so strong she'll die before she submits.

YABC:  Who is your favorite character in the book?

Dara, the female Indiri twin, for sure!

YABC:  Which came first, the title or the novel?

Novel, definitely. 

YABC:  What scene in the book are you most proud of, and why?

There are four POVs in the book, two male and two female, all very different from one another in terms of their character. I'm proud of the differentiating voices and how I kept them distinct.

YABC:  What new release book are you looking most forward to in 2017?

RAMONA BLUE by Julie Murphy!

YABC:  What’s up next for you?

I have a dark contemporary thriller coming 10.10.2017 called THIS DARKNESS MINE.

YABC:  Which character gave you the most trouble when writing your latest book?

Right now I'm working on something tentatively titled NORTH COUNTRY, about a girl lost in the Appalachia forests, alone. I didn't realize how difficult it would be to execute a story with a single character for 85% of the text. She doesn't have anyone to talk to, so almost everything is internal.

YABC:  Which part of the writing process do you enjoy more: Drafting or Revising?

Drafting has it's merits. I like to sit down and create the story. I don't plan at all, I simply let it happen. So while that can be nerve wracking, it's as fun for me to see what's going to happen as it is for readers.

An Afternoon with Mindy McGinnis

1. Hi Mindy! You’ve participated in both previous OAAA events, what have you been up to in the last year?

Everything, everything! I quit my day job to become a full time writer, which I don’t regret, but it does make financial life tighter than previously. I’ve been branching out to find other avenues for my creativity to see if they can be valid for revenue.

2. I am a big fan of your podcast, can you tell us a little bit about it and why you wanted to do one?

Oh, thank you! The podcast is something I’ve been wanting to do for awhile. I listen to them while on the treadmill, and often the content is good, but heavily editing is needed. I also notice that hosts don’t know when to stop talking and give the floor to their guest. I figured I could probably do one as good as what’s out there, and with my own background in publishing, it could be a good resource for aspiring writers.

So I went for it, not fully understanding the amount of work I was giving myself over to. I edit heavily, taking out all the things I hate to hear as a podcast listener – filler words, pauses, digressions. Most of the work comes in with me finding “um, like, you know” cutting them, then stitching audio back together. I put in about half an hour of work for every minute of airtime.

Right now it’s getting decent downloads and I do have the occasional donation (it’s crowd funded). I decided I would do it for a year, regardless of my time input, and see if I’m at least covering expenses at the end of that year.

3. What’s it like hopping back and forth between genres, from fantasy to contemporary and back!

I love jumping genres! I read widely, so my mind wanders to a wide array of stories. I’ve had a fantasy in me for 15 years, at least, but I was intimidated by it and wasn’t sure if I could execute it. When I decided to try, I did indeed find that fantasy is the hardest genre to write (that I’ve attempted). 

But I love to write all different kinds of stories, and if my readers will follow me from genre to genre, that’s wonderful!

4. What is the one bit of advice you wish you’d had before you got into publishing?

Don’t expect anything. We have this idea of red carpets and big money and hordes of social media followers. The truth is you can have 3 NYT Bestselling authors at a signing and only five people show up. Usually two of them are related to one of the authors. 

5. If you could say one thing to the 2013 version of yourself just before the release of DRINK what would it be?

Pack less. Check nothing. Only carry-ons, always.

6. Your next release is GIVEN TO THE SEA, what made you want to write a book that was so different from everything else you’ve published?

That story had been in me for awhile. I grew up on fantasies – Narnia, LOTR, The Last Unicorn, Flight of Dragons. This is my jam, or at least, one of them. So naturally a story set in that genre took hold at one point in my life, and I’d been looking for a way to get it out ever since.

7. Can you tell us a little bit about GIVEN?

It’s set on a small island continent that all of the four reigning cultures believe is the only land that exists. Then they discover that the seas are rising – and will not stop. So of course they are all immediately like, well, crap, we need to make sure we survive the longest so whoever has the most land wins. Let’s go kill everyone who isn’t us.

8. You have another book releasing this year, THIS DARKNESS MINE, how  has having 2 releases this year been different?

It’s a constant work schedule. At one point I was working on four different projects that were at different levels of completion. FPP’s (first pass pages) for one, an edit letter for another, drafting a third book that was contracted, and putting together a proposal for a fourth that I hope I can sell. 

9. Can you tell us anything more about THIS DARKNESS MINE?

It’s a contemporary psychological thriller where my MC, Sasha, is a very Type A “good” girl. She’s always done the right thing, but suddenly is having exploratory inclinations towards things like sex and drugs, and doesn’t understand why. She finds an ultrasound that shows she was supposed to have been a twin, and convinces herself that her twin – Shanna – was the “bad” twin, and she absorbed Shanna’s heart, which is now trying to place some claim on her life. Shortly after this discovery she begins to get communications from Shanna. So the question is – is she right, or is she crazy?

Between Chapters: Author Interview with Mindy McGinnis

Jumping Genres

If you follow my books at all you know that I write all over the place. My first two books were post apocalyptic survival tales, my third a Gothic historical thriller, and my fourth a gritty contemporary. With my fifth book, GIVEN TO THE SEA, I wandered into the realm of fantasy.

When it was time to begin GIVEN TO THE SEA I was ecstatic. I had just finished A MADNESS SO DISCREET, my historical, for which I had researched for 18 months before penning a single fictitious word. At one point I couldn't finish a line of dialogue without doing a solid 15 minutes of research to learn what a cop would have been called in Boston in the 1890s. 

No more of that - it was time for pure fiction, a world of my own in which I could make up any word I would like to fill in the pesky blanks. This was the first time I'd ever written fantasy, and I went into it thinking this would be my easiest drafting process yet.

Wrong. So, so wrong.

The unique challenge in fantasy is that your reader can assume nothing. If I'm writing a contemporary and I tell you that my main character goes to a private school, drives a Mercedes, and only wears Prada, you can draw about 20 assumptions about her, her environment, and probably her past pretty easily. I don't have to fill in the blanks.

In fantasy, if I tell you that one of my characters is the last surviving female of the Indiri... you know pretty much nothing. You can't infer from that that she's the only person in this world with magic, as only the females of the tribe carry that gift. You don't know what her life is like - are in the Indiri a reigning class living in a castle with servants, or are they a wild, feral people? Are these royals? Are they cannibals? What is expected of this character in her class and situation?

You don't know. And so I have to tell you. And I have to do it in a way that is not a bullet point list, boring to read and onerous to write. I have to give you seventeen years of backstory while also illustrating the present, seamlessly giving you the entire picture of her life while making it, you know, interesting.

Not easy. And that's just one character. GIVEN TO THE SEA has four POV's and as many highly unique and different cultures. Delivering all four - along with the land, the layout, the animals, the legend and history of this fictitious place - er... yeah.

Seeing Double In Neverland: Interview with Mindy McGinnis

1) Did you have to do any research for Given to the Sea? 

A little. Khosa's "blessing" of being the Given is very much like chorea, or the dancing sickness of the 14th and 17th centuries. I also drew upon the symptoms of Hutchison's Disease when working with her character and ailment. But in the end it is a fantasy, and her issues are not strictly of a scientific nature.

2) What is your favorite read so far in 2016?

I just finished IRON CAST by Destiny Soria and loved it!

3) What was your favorite scene to write in Given to the Sea and why?

It's a multiple POV book with four different characters. At the end there's a nexus of all four being in the same place, at the same time, with something extraordinary occurring. It's the first time they are all together, and it's a culmination of many things, plot, character, story arc. So that was fun to execute.

4) What is your next project going to be? 

I have a contemporary coming from Harper in Fall 2017, THIS DARKNESS MINE, and the sequel to GIVEN TO THE SEA will be out from Putnam in Spring of 2018.

5) In Given to the Sea who was your favorite character to write?

Dara! The Indiri is so sure of herself, at all times. She always knew what she had to say, and she said it

6) What do you hope readers will take away from this book?

That there are no "good' and "bad" characters. Everyone in this book just has a different goal.

7) Who's writing most inspires you?

Unsure. I can't really pick out a specific author but I know I'm reading something amazing when I'm uplifted as a reader and despairing as an author because I know I'll never be that good.

8) What inspired you to write Given to the Sea?

A kernel for the idea of GIVEN TO THE SEA was planted a very long time ago when I was a child. I loved the TV movie of IVANHOE with Anthony Andrews. There's an amazing scene with Sam Neill and Olivia Hussey where she's locked in a tower and he comes to see her. She thinks he's there to force himself upon her and she gets up in the window and says she'll jump if he comes a step closer. He's a decent guy who means her no harm, so he manages to talk her down but it's a very powerful scene. It stuck with me (even though I didn't understand all the implications until I was older). Elements from that scene have found their way into SEA at various levels - the girl who doesn't want to be touched, a boy in a power position who *could* take advantage if he wanted, a girl who's pride is so strong she'll die before she submits.

9) What TV show is a must for you to watch? 

Right now it's VICE PRINCIPALS on HBO. Obviously anyone who actually talked to the students the way the characters do would immediately be fired, but it's fun to watch because sometimes that's *exactly* what we're thinking in our heads, even if we can't say it.

10) What was the hardest character to write in Given to the Sea?

Witt. He's a closed off person, naturally, so writing him was difficult because he won't even admit his feelings to himself. Getting him to be okay with me writing them out was a struggle.

Top 5 Things You Need To Know About Given to the Sea →

1) A kernel for the idea of GIVEN TO THE SEA was planted a very long time ago when I was a child. I loved the TV movie of IVANHOE with Anthony Andrews. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanhoe_(1982_film) There's an amazing scene with Sam Neill and Olivia Hussey where she's locked in a tower and he comes to see her. She thinks he's there to force himself upon her and she gets up in the window and says she'll jump if he comes a step closer. He's a decent guy who means her no harm, so he manages to talk her down but it's a very powerful scene. It stuck with me (even though I didn't understand all the implications until I was older). Elements from that scene have found their way into SEA at various levels - the girl who doesn't want to be touched, a boy in a power position who *could* take advantage if he wanted, a girl who's pride is so strong she'll die before she submits.

2) This is my first fantasy, and I went into it reminding myself that I had complete creative freedom. This is my own world in which I can do anything that I want. The life forms don't even have to be carbon based if I choose. It came time to make up some woodland creatures and for the life of me the only thing I wanted to populate the woods with was huge feral housecats. So I took all my freedom of creativity and made big tabbies.

3) Likewise, I had this idea that writing fantasy would be easy because I get to make up all the rules, no research required. Not true. In a contemporary your audience already knows, in a sense, what the setting is. If I say the main character attends a poor public school, you get the idea and I don't have to do all the world building - it's implied. In  fantasy, nothing is a given, nothing is assumed. I have to do a lot of explaining... and keep that interesting. I've written post-apocalytpic, historical, contemporary, and now fantasy. Fantasy is by far the hardest.

4) Part of the idea for Khosa's pre-disposition to dance into the sea is based on a book I read about Huntington's disease, which is what killed Woody Guthrie. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huntington%27s_disease) It's a hereditary disease that causes spasmodic movements that make it appear that the sufferer is dancing, however the movements are outside of their control. I wondered what it would be like to be trapped in a body you can't control, headed toward the sea, while onlookers simply let you go because they think you are doing this willingly. *shudder*

5) The Indiri twins, Donil & Dara, are my favorite characters in the book. I know I'm showing my age here, but part of their creation comes from the dancing baby off Ally McBeal. I thought that was just about the creepiest thing I had ever seen in my life. But then I thought about a baby that could have that kind of body control, what it could learn early on about coordination and movement. That baby could become one heck of a fighter... and so a long time ago I had this idea in my head about a culture where babies are "born knowing" - able to speak, walk, process logic - all from birth. They don't have to spend the first few years of their life learning how to feed themselves, or the alphabet. They'd be way ahead of everybody else.