Have you always enjoyed writing?
My personal feeling is that if anyone enjoys writing,
they’re doing it wrong. I enjoy coming up with story ideas, and I
certainly enjoy finishing a big writing project—heck, there are times I
even enjoy the fine-toothed-combing of that final edit, weeding out the
unnecessary adverbs and eliminating passive verbs, etcetera—but that
first draft is never what I’d call enjoyable. It’s worth it, of course
it’s worth it, but the process of churning out those chunks of words
every day? At best it’s tedious; at worst it’s agonizing.
What motivates you to write?
Fear
of failure. I’m inherently lazy, but I’m driven by a craven fear of not
meeting expectations and not getting things done. Not counting the
books I’ve ghostwritten, I’ve written six novels. Four have been
published; the other two will be published at some point. There’s one
book, however, that I’ve never finished—I wrote a blisteringly awful
first draft maybe ten years ago, and I’ve never had the guts to revisit
it. I hate that
it’s unfinished. It sits there like a canker sore in my writing
history. One of these days, that hatred will probably grow strong enough
to motivate me to sit down, dust it off, and finish it once and for
all.
Location and life experiences can really influence writing. Tell us where you grew up and where you now live.
I
grew up in Spokane; I currently live in New York City. The place that’s
had the most influence on my writing by far, however, is Los Angeles,
where I lived for twenty years. Two of my books—Charlotte Dent and Wrong City—are
primarily set in Los Angeles; the city is crucial to the storylines of
both. If Charlotte were a New York-based actress, say, instead of an
L.A.-based one, her story would be dramatically different.
What other jobs have you had in your life?
I’ve
worked at a bunch of jobs in the entertainment industry—for instance, I
was an associate producer on the E! Entertainment Television show “Talk
Soup” and a production coordinator on ABC’s “America’s Funniest Home
Videos.” I’ve been a legal assistant, both inside and outside the
entertainment industry. I’ve churned out articles for an online content
mill. I’ve ghostwritten books. I’ve temped at an awful lot of places.
I’ve answered phones at agencies, I’ve sold popcorn at a movie theater,
I’ve mopped floors at a rehab clinic.
How often do you write? And when do you write?
I
write daily. When I’m between books, I write essays and reviews for my
blog, Preppies of the Apocalypse. Mornings tend to be my most productive
time, but I’ve worked very hard to train myself to be able to write
whenever and wherever I can. Flexibility is one of the most useful
traits a writer can have; being able to mix up my routine—write in the
morning, write at night, write on a laptop, write in a notebook, write
at a desk, write at a coffee shop, write on a plane or in a hotel
room—serves me well.
Who designed the cover?
The cover for Charlotte Dent is
a wonderful oil painting by my aunt, Elsbeth Monnett. The subject is my
beautiful cousin Katie, and something about her posture, her eyes, the
way she’s clutching the towel around her body just seemed right for
Charlotte. In the actual painting, Katie is smiling; Charlotte is not
necessarily the smiley type, so the title bar on my cover is placed over
her mouth to make her expression more of a mystery.
Have you included a lot of your life experiences, even friends, in the plot?
Of all my books thus far, Charlotte Dent comes
closest to reflecting my life experiences. I am not Charlotte, but
there’s some overlap: I lived in Los Angeles and worked in the
entertainment industry, I was once cast in a play that was canceled just
before performances started, I once worked as a legal assistant, I’ve
taken some fairly worthless acting classes. I have a lot of friends who
are professional actors, so I also drew upon their life experiences—bad
auditions, appearances at fan conventions, long hours wasted on freezing
cold film sets—to shape Charlotte’s journey.
When
struggling actress Charlotte Dent is cast as a leggy killer robot in a
big, brainless summer blockbuster, the subsequent hiccup of fame sends a
shock wave through her life. The perks of entry-level celebrity are
balanced by the drawbacks: destructive filmmakers, online ridicule,
entitled costars, and an awkward, unsatisfying relationship with the
film’s fragile leading man. Self-aware to a fault, Charlotte fights to
carve out a unique identity in an industry determined to categorize her
as just another starlet, disposable and replaceable. But unless she can
find a way to turn her small burst of good fortune into a durable
career, she’s destined to sink back into obscurity.
Buy Now @ Amazon
Genre - General Fiction, Chick Lit
Rating - PG
More details about the author
Posts
