Compulsion (The
Heirs of Watson Island #1)
Release Date: 10/28/14
ISBN: 1481411225
Simon Pulse, Simon Teen
448 pages
Summary from Goodreads:
Three plantations. Two wishes. One ancient
curse.
All her life, Barrie Watson has been a virtual prisoner in the house where she lives with her shut-in mother. When her mother dies, Barrie promises to put some mileage on her stiletto heels. But she finds a new kind of prison at her aunt’s South Carolina plantation instead--a prison guarded by an ancient spirit who long ago cursed one of the three founding families of Watson Island and gave the others magical gifts that became compulsions.
Stuck with the ghosts of a generations-old feud and hunted by forces she cannot see, Barrie must find a way to break free of the family legacy. With the help of sun-kissed Eight Beaufort, who knows what Barrie wants before she knows herself, the last Watson heir starts to unravel her family's twisted secrets. What she finds is dangerous: a love she never expected, a river that turns to fire at midnight, a gorgeous cousin who isn’t what she seems, and very real enemies who want both Eight and Barrie dead.
All her life, Barrie Watson has been a virtual prisoner in the house where she lives with her shut-in mother. When her mother dies, Barrie promises to put some mileage on her stiletto heels. But she finds a new kind of prison at her aunt’s South Carolina plantation instead--a prison guarded by an ancient spirit who long ago cursed one of the three founding families of Watson Island and gave the others magical gifts that became compulsions.
Stuck with the ghosts of a generations-old feud and hunted by forces she cannot see, Barrie must find a way to break free of the family legacy. With the help of sun-kissed Eight Beaufort, who knows what Barrie wants before she knows herself, the last Watson heir starts to unravel her family's twisted secrets. What she finds is dangerous: a love she never expected, a river that turns to fire at midnight, a gorgeous cousin who isn’t what she seems, and very real enemies who want both Eight and Barrie dead.
Buy Links:
Compulsion is available anywhere
books are sold. Signed copies are available from One More Page Books. You can also
order with the special “I have a Compulsion for reading” bookplate from Eight Cousins.
About the Author
Martina Boone was born in Prague and spoke several
languages before learning English. She fell in love with words and never
stopped delighting in them.
She’s the founder of AdventuresInYAPublishing.com,
a Writer’s Digest 101 Best Websites for Writers site, and YASeriesInsiders.com,
a site devoted to encouraging literacy and all this YA Series.
From her home in Virginia, where she lives with her
husband, children, and Auggie the wonder dog, she enjoys writing contemporary
fantasy set in the kinds of magical places she’d love to visit. When she isn’t
writing, she’s addicted to travel, horses, skiing, chocolate flavored tea, and
anything with Nutella on it.
Author Links:
COMPULSION
QUESTIONS
Q.
What’s your favorite thing about Compulsion?
A.
I secretly love Gothic novels. There was a point where Daphne du Maurier's
REBECCA and Mary Stewart's AIRS ABOVE THE GROUND were among my favorite novels.
I've always adored books with exotically dangerous settings, quirky characters,
and elements of mystery and suspense. Since I'm from Prague, one of the most
magical, broodingly beautiful cities in the world, the bar for magical
locations is set pretty hight. But the South. Ah, there I have all the elements
I love—a haunted past,
regret, anger, continuing conflict, and questions of morality galore. Southern
plantations are the closest thing to moldering abbeys and decaying castles that
we have in the United States. I'm grateful to Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
for reminding me of how much I love all the elements they included in BEAUTIFUL
CREATURES, because their series got me thinking about the possibilities of
Spanish moss and crumbling Southern mansions. My favorite thing about Compulsion,
hands down, is the setting and how it shaped (and twisted) the characters and
families who live there.
Q:
What do you want readers to take away from COMPULSION?
A.
That you can pick your family, the people you love. And that you need to do
more than just survive your life. You have to go out and live your life.
Q.
Is there a one sentence pitch for COMPULSION?
Someone
the School Library Journal recently said it’s a bit Gone with
the Wind and a bit Romeo and Juliet with a dose of paranormal all wrapped up in
an engrossing mystery. I’ll take that! :) Really it’s a Southern Gothic
romance about teens from three South Carolina plantations whose ancestors
bargained with an ancient spirit and received two magical gifts and a curse
that has passed down through the generations so that the current generations
are faced with dangerous situations and family feuds, and have to unravel the
mystery of the curse to save themselves.
Q:
Can you sum up COMPULSION in one word?
A:
Sure. The title: Compulsion. I think my editor nailed it coming up with that.
Q:
So COMPULSION wasn't the original title?
A:
The book has had three titles, and I love them all. My working title was FIRE
CARRIER, and when you read the book, you'll get that. My brilliant acquiring
editor, Annette Pollert, who edited the book all the way up to copyedits, came
up with BEHOLDEN, which everyone loved, and that also suits the book perfectly.
But the bottom line is that COMPULSION fits several themes in the book and also
conveys a sense of energy that I hope I've achieved in the plot. It's by far my
favorite, and it carries through into the rest of the series.
Q:
How did you come up with the idea for COMPULSION?
A:
I wrote a short story for an anthology that ended up having some of the same
characters in it, and I knew I wasn't done with the place or the characters
yet. But it wasn't until I dreamed about a ball of fire drifting through the
woods and setting a river aflame that I had the anchoring visual for the book.
The rest all came from asking why and doing a lot of research and
brainstorming, which did include two separate research trips to the Charleston
area.
Q:
Why did you want to tell this story?
A: Pirates, ghosts, witches, voodoo, treasure, forbidden
love, mystery, murder
. . . Who wouldn't want to tell this
story? Seriously, it's the loneliness of the characters, their quest to find
each other, and ultimately their ability to save each other or destroy each
other. The characters became as real for me as my own family, and I wanted to
share them to make them live for other people, too.
Q.
What is the weirdest piece of research you had to do when writing COMPULSION?
A.
I researched a LOT of off the wall things for this book: pirates, shipwrecks,
ghosts, witches, voodoo, hoodoo, Cherokee witchcraft, slavery, drug running,
lost treasures of the Civil War, Confederate privateering, the Red Sea Gold,
indigo production, drag queens/drag shows, secret rooms, furniture with hidden
drawers, ball lightning . . . The thing that fascinated me the most on a
research level was the various forms of magic that were present in the South
with the confluence of belief systems brought there by slaves from different
regions and religions intersecting with Native American belief systems. I spent
a lot of time Googling specific spells and curses and trying to work out how
the interpretation of them might have changed over three hundred years.
Q.
Were there any scenes that had to be cut that you wish would have stayed in?
A.
I honestly can’t
think of a single scene I cut out fully. There were pieces of scenes that I
took out, and the majority of those were ghost scenes. There’s a particular one
that I can’t
share, but I fully intend to make it the foundation of a whole book someday. :
)
Q:
COMPULSION is part of a trilogy. Did you already have the series written when
you submitted the manuscript?
A:
I never meant to write a series, but I knew I wasn't done with Watson Island
yet, so after I'd written the second draft, I gave both Eight and Cassie little
sisters. I intended to let them help me explore the magical aspects of those
families in companion novels. When my agent and I were getting ready to submit
COMPULSION to publishers, I very quickly wrote synopses for the novels. Just
quick sketches. And then I immediately went to work writing the second book to
keep from going crazy while I was waiting to see if COMPULSION would sell. We
already had a phone call scheduled with a publisher for a Monday, and my agent
called me at five o'clock on Thursday night to tell me that Annette, my future
editor, wanted to talk to me the next day, and did I have time. Um, does
McDonalds sell hamburgers? Also, he said, Annette wanted to know if I would
consider making the other two books a series. Sure, I said. Of course. And then
I had until ten-thirty the next morning to come up with ideas: plot and
character arcs for the series, a plot that was progressive instead of episodic,
themes that would carry across the books. All that. So I called my critique
partners and begged for brainstorming help. We were all focusing on plot at
first, and then when I was just talking things trough, I finally realized what
the character progressions had to be. Instead of crying about the loss of what
I'd already written in Book Two, I got excited about the series idea instead,
and I also realized that I could use what I'd done for Book Two. Just in a
different way.
Q: How did the phone call go?
A:
Awesome. I fell in love with Annette. We talked forever, and it went by like it
was five minutes.
Q.
Did anything change in the story as you were writing COMPULSION?
A. Besides me, you mean? Um. There was a character
who was meant to be a very minor character who kind of took over the book. But
also there were things that changed in every draft: motivation, or past
history, or character, or plot. I got to know my characters better each time,
and the more I knew them, the more something changed.
Q:
What was the most surprising part of writing COMPULSION?
A:
How it turned out. People who read my blog, AdventuresInYAPublishing.com may
know that I used to think of myself as a plotter. I wrote outlines. Long
outlines. Thirty or forty thousand word outlines. And if someone asked me to
write a synopsis of a book, I had to first write the outline – at which point, I
eventually realized that I wasn't writing an outline at all; I was writing a
first draft. I don't know where I first heard the word, but someone somewhere
mentioned doing something they called a discovery draft. Coming across that
term was one of the biggest AHA! moments of my life. So yeah. It turns out I'm
not a plotter, but I'm also not completely a pantser. I'm a plantser. With
COMPULSION, I knew where I was going – I
had that draft to use as a roadmap, but things kept changing. I was constantly
surprised.
Q:
What do you think will shock readers the most in COMPULSION?
A:
There are a lot of surprises—I hope. At least I
hear from readers that there are surprises. And several of them are meant to be
shocking, but they are shocking in different ways. I'd love to hear from
readers (privately or at least in a non-spoilery way ☺) what they think
shocked them the most.
Q:
What do you want readers to take away from COMPULSION?
A.
That you can pick your family, the people you love. And that you need to do
more than just survive your life. You have to go out and live your life.
Q:
Who is your favorite character in COMPULSION?
A: This is such a
mean question—and yes, I know I
ask this of other writers when we do interviews for YASeriesInsiders.com. But
it is mean. Choosing between characters is like choosing between your
children. I'm also going to make a distinction between who is my favorite
character and who is my favorite character to write. I think Barrie is my
favorite character, because I know things about her that no one else knows yet—things she doesn't
even know herself. But it's a close call, because Eight is an amazing guy—I'm half in love
with him as I write him. And then Mark, and Pru, and Lula, and Cassie. Oh,
Cassie. Sigh.
Q:
Which character in COMPULSION is the most fun to write?
That
one is super easy. Mark. He was meant to be a tiny part of the story—really, he was
originally a ficelle, a character who is really just there to deliver
information. But his personality took over my heart.
Q:
If you could hang out with one of the characters from COMPULSION, who would you
pick?
A:
Well, I'm married. And I'm old. Er. Older. So I shouldn't say Eight,
right? Okay, yeah. Definitely not Eight. And if we take Eight out of the
picture, then I'd have to say Mark, because anyone would have a blast hanging
out with Mark.
Q.
How would you describe Barrie?
A.
Sheltered, feisty, stubborn, compassionate, and courageous.
Imagine
growing up with a mother who never went outside and was scared and jealous
every time that you were able to leave. The main loving influence in Barrie’s life was her
godfather Mark, the ex-drag queen who stepped in to take care of her when she
was a baby, and he loved her so much that he stayed to take care of her ever since.
But at the beginning of the book, both of those people are yanked away, and
Barrie discovers she has a family she never knew about on the other side of the
country. She’s
been so sheltered she doesn’t know how to read people, and she
longs for connection so badly that she’s prone to making a
lot of mistakes about whom to trust. Especially with regard to using the family
gift for finding lost things, trusting the wrong people can be deadly.
Q.
Where does the name Eight come from? Is that anything like Four?
A.
Nope. Not at all. Family and tradition are big in the South, and that’s even more true on
Watson Island where the family histories go back three hundred years and the
gift is passed down to the oldest child. Eight is short for Charles Robert Beaufort,
VIII. His father is Seven, Charles Robert Beaufort, VII. And obviously, that
tradition goes back a few years. : ) Eight is tired of feeling more like a
number than a person, so when we first meet him, he can’t wait to get away
from Watson Island. That becomes a big problem once Barrie arrives, because it
turns out she literally won’t be able to ever
leave the island.
Q:
What is your favorite thing about Eight?
A:
Apart from the fact that he’s sexy, swoony, and sweet? It’s that he’s got a little edge
of badass, but he’s
intensely kind and treats Barrie well—he
may call her out once in a while when she does something reckless, but he lets
her make her own mistakes and supports her through them. I’m all about alpha
males as long as the relationship is equal. Eight makes Barrie stronger and
helps her see herself through his eyes, helping her to realize that she is more
than she ever thought she could be.
Q:
I've heard that readers, especially men, are fascinated by Cassie. Why?
A:
Well, Cassie's kind of Scarlett O'Hara-ish, so I can see that. But I didn't
realize just how intrigued men would be by the bad girl edge she has to her.
I'm curious to see what people think after Book Two.
Q.
What happens in PERSUASION, the second book of the trilogy?
A. I can't share that yet, but it's kind of
epic. And heartbreaking. Really, really heartbreaking and also healing.
Q:
Are any of the characters personalities based on you or on people you know?
A:
I'd love to have known Eight when I was young enough to enjoy him, because yum.
But also Mark because he's so fierce and so Mark. I'd love to have a
best friend like Barrie and an aunt like Pru. In real life, I know people who
might have a trait or two that could be similar, that might have sparked a
thought, but ultimately, the characters became themselves as they spilled out
onto the page. They are nothing like me or anyone I know. Except maybe for Mrs.
Price—who is based on a
lovely woman I met while on a research trip. She was so spunky and fun that
I've never been able to forget her.
Q:
Some of the characters in COMPULSION are a bit extreme. Do you feel like that's
realistic?
A:
I think that junior high and high school aren't very realistic. They can be
horrible, terrible places where people do things to each other than I can't
even imagine putting into a book. Schools are all about finding who you are,
and that's what books are about. I feel like sometimes writers need to make
things a little bigger in a book to give readers the chance to let themselves
feel like what's happening is removed from them, even while it is speaking
directly to them. I mean, are there going to be Hunger Games in the near
future? Man, I hope not. But that doesn't make Katniss' feelings resonate with
me any less.
Q:
Is there really a Watson Island?
A:
In some parallel universe, Watson Island is somewhere near Edisto Island, South
Carolina. The plantations are loosely based on plantations I've visited, and
I'll admit that Boone Plantation figured heavily into the mix. It's beautiful.
If you haven’t
been there, go visit when you get a chance.
Q.
How would you describe Watson Island?
Watson
Island is the sort of sleepy, close-knit, gossipy town that most people who
have visited the South will recognize, with a bit of a difference. The town is
well aware of the magic that surrounds the three founding families, and
particularly the plantation at Watson’s
Landing. They keep the secret. In that way, the book begins like magical
realism, but the magic is part of the mystery that Barrie Watson has to uncover
when she arrives.
The
truly magical place is Watson’s Landing. There,
the spirit of a Cherokee witch sets the river surrounding the property on fire
each night at midnight in a ceremony he has performed for longer than anyone
remembers in order to keep the land protected and to keep the yunwi, the
mischievous and magical little people confined to the island. As Barrie comes
to find out, she is bound to this land, both physically and spiritually, and
uncovering what that means and why the island exists is part of what I am
having a blast exploring in the course of the trilogy.
The
gifts (and the curse) that belong to the Watsons, Beauforts, and Colesworths,
all tie into this magic, but not necessarily for the reasons the families
think.
Q.
Watson Island is really a character in the book, did you do that intentionally?
A. Up to a point, yes.
That’s
part of Southern Gothic fiction, but I think that it happened very organically
because it all had a history and an atmosphere that I saw very clearly. I did
try to use that to highlight certain themes and plot elements, but I would have
been crazy not to do that.
Q:
What was one of your favorite scenes to write?
I
have a lot of favorite scenes, but I love the first beach scene with the turtle
nests and that first big jump in the romance between Eight and Barrie. That's
followed closely by the fountain scene. And the sandbar scene where Barrie
first gets a hint of her strength. And Mark. Any scene with Mark is my
favorite. I have a few that I wish I could have put in the book. I may write
them someday, just for fun.
Q:
What was the hardest scene to write?
There
are several scenes that made me cry—and
I still teared up even when I was reviewing copyedits, despite having been
through something like a hundred and forty seven drafts (okay, maybe not quite
that many…). But yeah, there
are a lot of emotional scenes that wrung me out and left me feeling like a
strand of overcooked spaghetti. Hands down the hardest scene for me to write
was the beginning, though, which is ironic because I founded and still mentor
the First Five Pages Workshop, where I (along with some AMAZING authors) help
aspiring writers nail the early part of their manuscript.
My
problem with the beginning is that Barrie is literally broken at that point,
but the reader doesn't know that. Even Barrie doesn't know it fully. It was so
hard trying to find a way to show the reader a girl who would be interesting to
read about, a girl who would become strong, while at the same time hinting at
her brokenness—at the way that she
perceives herself before she's found that she is worth loving. Barrie is like a
lot of girls who don't recognize the strength and beauty within themselves.
Q.
There's a lot of Southern Gothic fiction hitting the marketplace lately. What
sets COMPULSION apart?
A.
At its essence, the Southern Gothic fiction I really love is about haunted
families and the kind of tradition that passes down from one generation to
another whether the next generation wants it or not. It's about haunting
settings, quirky characters, and dangerous situations, but it's also about epic
love. COMPULSION is about all of that in equal measure, but it's also a coming
of age story, a story about finding your place, your family, yourself. There are
definitely weird, memorable characters. Someone I really respect once described
it as MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL meets ROMEO AND JULIET meets THE
SIXTH SENSE. I hope that's kind of different.
Q:
What makes Barrie a character that readers could look up to?
A:
She's vulnerable and clueless about herself the same way that so many girls are
clueless, the same way that society sends us signals about not being worthwhile
unless we conform to some kind of "ideal image." She's naïve and she falls into
the trap of wanting to look for the good in everyone. But she hasn't had a lot
of life experience, and her longing to belong makes her willing to put up with
too much for the sake of fitting in. At the same time, she's deeply
compassionate and she fights against injustice whenever she finds it. She's
willing to go to the mat for anyone who is being treated unfairly. She's heroic
in that way. And eventually she does find her strength. Or at least she starts
to find it in this book.
Q:
What appealed to you about creating a character who is compelled in the way
Barrie is?
A:
We're all, as human beings, locked up in some way. Figuring out how to free
ourselves is a huge challenge, and I loved being able to explore that in a
literal way that was metaphysical at the same time.
Q:
Who was the hardest character to write?
A:
Cassie. Hands down. She's so complicated and influenced by . . . secret,
spoilerish things. But I know things that no one else, including Barrie, knows
about her. Also we are all seeing Cassie through the filter of Barrie's point
of view, so that makes her more elusive and hard to grasp. My original Book Two—the one I put aside
when my publisher wanted a series instead of two companion books—was from Cassie's
point of view. That was due to a request from beta readers (okay, male beta
readers) who needed more Cassie. My original plan had been to write the
companion book from the perspective of Cassie's sister Sydney, but hearing the
reader responses, I changed my mind and changed the end of Book One to make it
possible to keep Cassie around. Writing from her perspective, even for a little
while, made me see her completely differently. But she's still a difficult
character to bring to the page. I really want to do a novella from her POV at
some point.
Q:
Who or what was the inspiration for the villain in COMPULSION?
A:
There are several "villains" and not all of them are obvious. But
none of them really had an inspiration. Except the guy with the skull tattooed
on the back of his head. That I know where it came from, but I can't say
because . . . um . . . I can't say.
Q:
What is something about Barrie that you didn't put in the book/series?
A:
She sucked her index and middle fingers until she was seven, but she was living
with Lula, so I think that's totally understandable.
Q:
If you were going to write a spin-off about one of your characters, who would
it be and why?
A:
Cassie, because I know why she is how she is—and
because I know the relationship that's coming to her in Book Two, and the guy
is so super hot and wonderful (seriously, possibly my favorite hero EVER) that
I want to write the falling in love process from her perspective just so I can
feel it with her. ☺
Q:
Which character refused to stick to your script?
A:
Mark. He was meant to have a small part in the first couple of chapters, but he
kept sticking his size fourteen Louboutins into the book at every opportunity.
Q:
What's the best scene you've ever written?
A: A scene in the companion novel I meant to
write from Cassie's point of view. That became the foundation for Persuasion,
but seen from Barrie’s point of view it’s not the same. The
original was heartbreaking. I'm hoping to put it into a novella sometime soon.
Q:
What scene made you cry while you were writing?
The kitchen scene
the first night Barrie is at Watson's Landing. Almost every conversation with
Mark. The attic scene with Pru, and some other scenes I can't mention because
of spoilers.
Q:
What is the core thing in your book? The one thing you would never in a million
years have given up no matter how much money someone paid you?
A:
Mark and the Fire Carrier. And having Watson's Landing as a character.
Q:
If you could pull one thing from your series world to have in real life, what
would it be?
A:
Watson's Landing. I'd move there in a heartbeat.
Q.
There are a lot of things woven together in COMPULSION: Barrie's compulsion and
the situation at Watson's Landing, the mystery of Lula's leaving, the romance
with Eight, the situation with Mark, and the situation with the Colesworths.
Which came first and which do you think is the most important?
Those
are all part of the story of Barrie finding herself and her place in the world,
which also ties into the romance between her and Eight. Watson’s Landing and the
mystery of Lula's leaving both came from a short story I did, they came before
the rest of the characters. The Fire Carrier came after that, and everything
else derives from the origin story I created for the Fire Carrier. Because
they're all interconnected, I think they're all important, but ultimately, for
me, it's the romance between Barrie and Eight, and the relationship between her
and Watson's Landing that’s the heart of the
story. For me, those things are impossible to separate. I'm eager to hear what
readers take away.
Q.
Watson Island is an important character in COMPULSION. Did you plan it that
way?
A. There are certain conventions in Gothic
fiction, but to be honest, I tried very hard not to think about any of that
while I was writing or editing COMPULSION. I just wanted to convey the history
that shaped the families and made Barrie, Eight, Cassie, Pru, Seven, and Wyatt
who they are all in the book. Because the history creates the story instead of
just forming a framework for the story, I think it takes on a deeper meaning.
It's certainly fascinating—at least to me. I
mean, pirate treasure, ancient spirit witches, blood feuds, lonely, demented
characters, curses, forbidden romance . . . How could I resist?
At
the same time, I love having the opportunity to use elements of Watson's
Landing, Colesworth Place, Beaufort Hall, and Watson Island itself to
underscore Barrie's moods and trace the way she grows and changes. That’s going to be
especially true in the subsequent books as well, but the questions of morality
that are often a part of Gothic literature are definitely going to be an even
bigger part of Books Two and Three. And yet I'm having fun going places where
Southern Gothics don't normally go. Give me a rule, and I pretty much have to
break it.
Q:
COMPULSION covers a lot of ground, from difficult family situations to the way
love can be both harmful and healing. Is that what you set out to write about?
A:
When I started writing this story, I knew it was going to be an exploration of
love and healing, of the meaning of home and family and obligation. I didn't
know how that was going to all come together, and there were times when I
couldn't see how I was going to pull the many threads into something coherent.
But really, it's just a love story that looks at many different sides of love.
If it makes readers feel something, then I've done my job. I hope they feel
something.
Q:
There's a moment when the love between Eight and Barrie almost feels a little
insta-lovish. But it isn't. Did you worry about that when you were writing?
A:
At the moment when Barrie and Eight meet, the reader doesn’t fully understand
their gifts, so it was a risk leaving that open to the reader’s interpretation. I
like to leave room for the reader, though, so I never spell that out. Once
readers understand the gifts, they get it when they think it through. It isn’t insta-love at
all! And Barrie is very determined not to make the mistake of letting herself
believe in love that comes too quickly. The two of them do fall for each other,
but they go through a lot together very quickly. And trust me, their story is
far from over in the first book.
As
far as insta-love in general goes? My husband told me he loved me in the middle
of a poker party two weeks after we met. We married less than a year after we
met, and we're still married. Love can happen very fast and still be real and
lasting. I'm not personally a fan of the kind of insta-love where a character
is in danger but the second she sees a hot guy, all she can do is think about
how hot he is. Or the kind where one or two super-hot guys fall in love with a
heroine who's not only ordinary looking but doesn't really do anything
that makes her stand out. Barrie takes action early on, even though she's
scared and not used to handling things on her own. She's naïve, so sometimes
her decisions aren't the smartest, but you know what? I was making naïve decisions when I
was a lot older than Barrie. That's what I love the most about her. She does
the best she can at any given time. Her choices sometimes drove me crazy as I
was writing, but I had to let them be her choices, based on her
background and her character.
Q.
Why did you decide to write a Southern Gothic novel?
A. I love Gothics. There was a point where
Daphne du Maurier's REBECCA and Mary Stewart's AIRS ABOVE THE GROUND were among
my favorite novels. I've always adored books with exotically dangerous
settings, quirky characters, and elements of mystery and suspense. Since I'm
from Prague, one of the most magical, broodingly beautiful cities in the world,
the settings in the Los Angeles and even D.C. fell short. But the South. Ah,
there I have all the elements I love—a
haunted past, regret, anger, continuing conflict, and questions of morality
galore. Southern plantations are the closest thing to moldering abbeys and
decaying castles that we have in the United States. I'm grateful to Kami Garcia
and Margaret Stohl for reminding me of how much I love all the elements they
included in BEAUTIFUL CREATURES, because their series got me thinking about the
possibilities of Spanish moss and crumbling Southern mansions.
Q:
What’s the coolest part of COMPULSION's journey to publication
so far?
Talking
to readers about my characters as if they are real. Hearing the excitement in
my agent's voice and in my editor's voice when they talk about my characters.
That's fabulous, because to me Eight and Barrie and all the others are very
real. But also seeing the incredible amount of love and support that everyone
at Simon Pulse has given to this book. I'm awed and overwhelmed by that. Ask me
what the most humbling and the most inspiring part of COMPULSION's journey has
been so far, and my answer will be identical to this one. : )
There
was also a moment four days after I got the electronic version of the
copyedited pages hot off the press. I noticed a line from a book in my Twitter
notifications. I frequently tweet quotes I like from my Tumblr account, but
while the quote looked familiar, I didn’t remember posting
it. The bookstore that tweeted it used hashtag #mynewfavoritequote, though, and
I stared at it for like thirty seconds before I realized it was from my book,
which I hadn't even realized was out in the world anywhere. That was a
jaw-dropping and immeasurably cool moment I will remember forever. (Thank you
Sara Hines from Eight Cousins Bookstore!)
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