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Every odd Tuesday (because Tuesdays aren't odd enough), I feature a different young adult fiction author YOU should know - from best-sellers to debuts. And what better way to do this than asking them TWO fun questions. Short, sweet, and sassy - just the way I like interviews.

I'm crazy excited! On December 19th the first seven titles available from Bloomsbury Spark will be released and we can all rejoice this holiday season with some epic reads. Today's guest author, Ashley Poston is one of the initial seven and is somewhat of an expert on the New Adult genre. If you're not familiar with NA or you're trying to wrap your head around the concept - I think you'll find Ashley's answers enlightening.

About Ashley:

Ashley Poston

Graduating from the University of South Carolina, she interned at Random House Publishers with Kodansha USA, where she (helped) edit the Sailor Moon manga and that was really, really, really cool. She wrote a play that won some award, and can quote every Motion City Soundtrack lyric by heart.  

She currently lives in South Carolina with her cat (aka her soulmate) and a plethora of books. When she's not writing, she's going to the movies (her second favorite past time) or taking extravagant road trips (her third favorite past time). Oh, and she's naturally redheaded, and she's already stolen your soul so don't ask.

On to the questions!

I've been hearing about the New Adult genre ever since my Random House internship days. Then, they were just beginning to buzz about their FLIRT imprint. I didn't know what to think about New Adult at first---but the more I became involved in the community, the more I began to absolutely love the authors part of it. I mean these men and women built this category from the ground up through self-publishing. That has never been done before, and it's spectacular how the publishing industry is changing because of it. New Adult is a great category for exploring themes of fitting in, choosing your own path, and finding out who you are outside of the constraints of high school or a job. I mean, when you're 18 you're set loose into the world, and when you find yourself at 25 you've probably worked a mess of dead-end jobs and made a lot of very bad---but very memorable---decisions. I think that's the allure to New Adult, because it can explore grittier subjects that are deemed taboo in YA and too vanilla in Adult.

2. You have some cool projects in the works, my friend. From your upcoming Bloomsbury Spark title, The Sound of Us, and other YA/NA manuscripts to the co-creation of a webcomic. (JEALOUS!) How do you divvy up your writing schedule?

I have a really wonky sleep schedule, to be completely honest. I write best between 1AM and 3AM, and I edit best around 5PM with a pot of coffee in me, so it's strange. The Sound of Us is an outlier, though. I have a passion for this story that I can't explain. I think it's because I've been through twelve drafts and 46 rejections with these characters. I just never gave up on them and their story. I could wake up at 8AM and dive head-first into the manuscript, and not come out until dinner. The webcomic, Luminoso, is a different monster entirely. It's a co-project with my fellow friend and cartoonist, Jarad Greene. We've been working on it for almost a year now, meeting every week, and hopefully y'all will see the fruits of our labor this winter! It's a really fun story.

Thank you so much for having me on your blog, Judith! These were super fun questions (and not one's I've been asked before, either!). 

Best,

Ashley

Loved having you, Ashley and I enjoyed The Sound of Us immensely. Want more Ashley? Follow her on Twitter or Tumblr.

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Every odd Tuesday (because Tuesdays aren't odd enough), I feature a different young adult fiction author YOU should know - from best-sellers to debuts. And what better way to do this than asking them TWO fun questions. Short, sweet, and sassy - just the way I like interviews.

Today I'm featuring Sarah Tregay, author of Love and Leftovers, a novel in verse that received great reviews like: From Kirkus Reviews: A verse novel with real depth to accompany all that white space. full review. From VOYA: Although the words are simple, the themes of Love and Leftovers are not. full review —Ed Goldberg.

Sarah Tregay

With a verse novel, each poem focuses in on a little piece of the story and there is often a time skip from one poem to the next. I wrote LOVE AND LEFTOVERS in the same way—in little pieces. With my overarching idea in mind, I wrote the poems first. Then I put each poem title on a 3x5 card and shuffled them around until I had the plot.

I tend to be a little more linear when writing prose. I might skip around and write chapter ten before chapter five, but nothing as extreme as writing all the paragraphs on 3x5 cards and figuring out the plot later. The two types of writing aren’t mutually exclusive—sometimes my first draft of a prose novel will have poems in it! (And sometimes my editor will let me keep them.) My next novel, FAN ART, has poems between the chapters.

2. I see you're a fellow Class of 2K program alumni from the Class of 2k12. Whoopa! I debuted with the Class of 2k10 (under my pen name, Judith Graves). How very cool. For those out there considering...what were some of the benefits you experienced launching your debut title with an author collective?

Debut author groups such as the Class of 2k are wonderful in many ways. First, there’s the marketing side of things. For example, we worked together to promote everyone’s titles to independent bookstores, schools, and librarians. Both the Class of 2K12 and the Apocalypsies put together in-person events the week of Book Expo America. These were opportunities that I wouldn’t have had if I were on my own. But more importantly, there’s the immense amount of support on a personal level. Everyone in the group is going through the same stresses—edits, deadlines, and second book jitters—so they understand and can offer suggestions and emotional support. I am really glad that I joined a debut author group and I would encourage others to do the same.

Thanks so much for the interview, Sarah! Want to know more? Check out Sarah's website and follow her on Facebook.

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Every odd Tuesday (because Tuesdays aren't odd enough), I feature a different young adult fiction author YOU should know - from best-sellers to debuts. And what better way to do this than asking them TWO fun questions. Short, sweet, and sassy - just the way I like interviews.

Today I'm featuring Jenny Kaczorowski who...Likes her heroines smart and quirky, her heroes nice, and her kisses sweet. Her debut, THE ART OF FALLING, is coming from Bloomsbury Spark in Winter 2013. 

The questions!

1. As both a photographer and young adult fiction author, you really embody the expression "a

Jenny Kaczorowski

picture is worth a thousand words". If you had just THREE words, however, to describe your upcoming Bloomsbury Spark title, The Extraordinary Art of Falling, what would it be?

Identity, longing, kissing. For me, THE ART OF FALLING is about finding who you really are behind the image you project. My two main characters, Bria and Ben, both have these larger-than-life images at their high school and their journey is really about reconciling who they are with how people see them. They both long to be more than their personas, they long for each other, they long for more than high school. And then there's lots of kissing. This whole story started with two kissing scenes I cut from another story. In my first serious manuscript, the first kiss didn't happen until about 2/3 into the story. FALLING has a kiss within the first chapter. So yes. Kissing happens.

 2. Okay, you brought this up. (Well, it's on your website.) And I can't get it out of my head. You live in, "Avon, Ohio, the duct tape capital of the world". Them's fightin' words. Here in Canada, we love our duct tape. :) Thus, I issue a challenge. Can you list 10 ways a writer can put duct tape to use?

Go Avon! Canada may love duct tape, but can you claim an annual duct tape festival? As home of the Duck Brand duct tape factory, we have a lot of pride. We wear duct tape prom dresses and suits, we duct tape entire cars, we carry wallets and purses and belts made of duct tape. For writers, there are a few special uses:

 1. A case for your laptop. Nothing protects like duct tape.
 2. A cover for your notebook. Those things take a beating.
 3. A restraint system to keep yourself at your desk during edits.
 4. A caffeine delivery system. Duct tape your coffee cup to chest for hands-free drinking.
 5. An emergency paper substitute. Don't let a valuable idea escape! Jot it down on duct tape wherever you are.
 6. A pen/pencil repair kit. Snapped your writing implement in frustration? Duct tape.
 7. An alertness aid. Can't keep your eyes open? Duct tape.
 8. A bandaid. Paper cut from your manuscript? Duct tape.
 9. A theft-deterant. Need to protect your writing snacks? Duct tape.
 10. A sound-canceling device. Friends, children or significant other talking while you need quiet? Duct tape.

 Is there anything it can't do? I guess not, lol....well done with this list. I admit, I'm impressed. Thanks so much for joining me, Jenny. Want to learn more? Of course you do! Check out Jenny's WEBSITE, follow her on TWITTER.

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I'm thrilled to be meeting all the fantastic authors at Bloomsbury Spark. Like Kelley Lynn. She's a vocalist, writes, plays a lot of sports (okay, I don't, but I should!), and she loves to colaborate which implies she plays nice with others. Here's bit about Kelley from her website:

Kelley Lynn

Eventually the day came when the voices in Kelley Lynn’s head were more insistent then her engineering professor’s. So instead of turning to her Thermodynamics book, Kelley brought up a blank page on her computer screen and wrote. Somewhere along the way she became a Young Adult author. FRACTION OF STONE (Sapphire Star Publishing) was released in March 2013. ROAD TO SOMEWHERE, Kelley's collab with Jenny S. Morris, is to be released by Bloomsbury Spark in the near future.

The Questions:

My current writing playlist hey? Well... I don't have one. *gasp*. I usually use Spotify or Pandora and pick stations that will fit the mood of what I'm trying to convey in the chapters I'm writing at that time. So for FRACTION OF STONE (Sapphire Star Publishing) I used the Evanescence channel A LOT. For ROAD TO SOMEWHERE (coming January 2014 from Bloomsbury Spark) I used a good amount of country channels (a lot of it takes place in Texas...with cowboys ;)). One thing about me is I don't have 'favorites'. Music, colors, foods, etc, I can't pick the best ones. I like it all :)

2. You are one smart cookie. Your bio says you spent some time in school studying engineering before venturing into the world of young adult fiction. Do you "engineer" your stories - aka, are you a plotter? Or do you let your tales unfold organically - aka, pantser much?

You know, this is a great question. I do have my BS in Chemical Engineering, and for my day job I work as a Tech Service Chemist for an adhesive's company. I think because my nine to five job is much more structured, I avoid having that much structure in my writing. I do not plot. I have general ideas of where I think the story should go, but I don't write them down. Just start at the beginning and see what happens. Oftentimes, where I thought I would end up, is not even remotely close in the end. 

Not being a plotter is tough when writing a collab, however. ROAD TO SOMEWHERE is a collaboration with the super talented Jenny S. Morris, and we did have to plot our a basic idea of where we were going. After all, even though she's amazing, she can't read my mind!

Thanks so much for having me Judith! This was so much fun! No, thank YOU, Kelley!
Want to know more about Kelley and her upcoming Bloomsbury Spark title? Check out her website.

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If you ask me, and you didn't, but I'm going to pretend you did anyway - plotting a novel, or story, or screenplay is a lot like baking. Take my recent efforts to whip up some Halloween treats, for example.

I started with a solid foundation - basic sugar cookies cut into appropriate shapes (characters / setting / theme), all the tools I might possibly need to explore creative possibilities (paths the story might take / tropes and cliches to twist / writing craft skills to apply), and an ultimate vision of what I wanted the cookies to kinda-sorta look like at the end.

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Every odd Tuesday (because Tuesdays aren't odd enough), I feature a different young adult fiction author YOU should know - from best-sellers to debuts. And what better way to do this than asking them TWO fun questions. Short, sweet, and sassy - just the way I like interviews.

Jennifer R. Hubbard

with Viking. Jennifer lives in the Philadelphia area, is an avid hiker, chocolate lover, and has been writing since the age of six. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to hang out with Jennifer during our Class of 2k10 tour to NYC during Book Expo America. Here's a bit about Jennifer, in her own words:

I will read almost anything; I prefer to write short fiction and young-adult novels. I had my first short story published when I was seventeen, but it took me many years to write well with consistency, and I continue to learn more every year. My short fiction has appeared in literary magazines such as Willow Reviewand North American Review, and a short story called “Confessions and Chocolate Brains” appears in the 2011 anthology Truth & Dare. 

When you can’t trust anyone, how can you ever feel safe? 

In seventh grade, Maggie Camden was the class outcast. Every day, the other girls tripped her, pinched her, trapped her in the bathroom, told her she would be better off dead. Four years have passed since then, and Maggie’s tormentors seem to have moved on. The ringleader of them all, Raleigh Barringer, even moved out of town. But Maggie has never stopped watching for attacks, and every laugh still sounds like it’s at her expense. The only time Maggie feels at peace is when she’s hiking up in the mountains with her best friend, Nick.  

Lately, though, there’s a new sort of tension between the two of them—a tension both dangerous and delicious. But how can Maggie expect anything more out of Nick when all she’s ever been told is that she’s ugly, she’s pathetic, she’s unworthy of love? And how can she ever feel safe, now that Raleigh Barringer is suddenly—terrifyingly—back in town?

The questions: