Wicked Jungle Goes to RT

If you don’t know what RT is or why we are so excited over here at Wicked Jungle, RT is short for the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention and this is our first year, well my first year, attending. We can’t wait to spend five whole days mingling with authors, chatting with fellow fans, and generally just geeking out about books.

For those of you attending be sure to look for us. We have some spots in Promotional Row, with a giveaway sign up and free chocolate (first come first serve). I will be attending some of the parties and socials, including the RWA FFP chapter cocktail on Tuesday evening.

For those of you not attending, please don’t fret. We will be blogging live from the conference. We will be tweeting live from the conference. We will be interviewing and attending signings, and basically getting tons of information, all of which we hope to post on the site for our readers.

Here is a listing of all the authors we will be hunting down, staking out, and basically drooling over:

1.     LA Banks	16. Mark Henry	31. Jeri Smith-Ready
2.     Michele Bardsley	17. Leanna Renee Hieber	32. Jeanne C. Stein
3.     Jennifer Lynn Barnes	18. Jackie Kessler	33. Rachel Vincent
4.     Anya Bast	19. Caitlin Kittredge	34. J.R. Ward
5.     Laura Bickle	20. Melissa Marr	35. Jaye Wells
6.     Holly Black	21. Liz Maverick	36. Rebecca York
7.     Jenna Black	22. Richelle Mead
8.     Jim Butcher	23. Patrice Michelle
9.      Cat Adams	24. Devon Monk
10. Carolyn Crane	25. Nicole Peeler
11. Alyssa Day	26. Kat Richardson
12. S.J. Day	27. Linda Robertson
13. Jennifer Estep	28. Michelle Rowen
14. Jeaniene Frost	29. Carrie Ryan
15. Charlaine Harris	30. Jessa Slade

So yeah, it will be a very busy week! Out of this list, who is your absolute, top favorite, must snag an interview with author? Tell me in the comments and I’ll see what I can do! Add your question, and if I get them to answer it, you may win a special prize!!

Behind-the-Scenes with Megan Crewe

This week’s guest blogger is Megan Crewe, author of YA novel, Give Up the Ghost. Megan lives in Toronto, Canada, with her husband and two cats. Her short stories have appeared in anthologies and magazines such as Brutarian Quarterly and On Spec.  GIVE UP THE GHOST is her first novel.  You can learn more about Megan by visiting her website at www.megancrewe.com.

Guest Blogger: Megan Crewe

As an author, I think the question I get asked most is “Where did you get the idea for your book?” This is often difficult to answer, and not just because inspiration can be mysterious.  The truth is that one book idea comes not from one specific place, but from many different sources, all blended together into something new and exciting.

To give you an example, here are some of the pieces that came together to form what is now my first novel, GIVE UP THE GHOST:

Life

When I was in high school, I overheard some younger girls talking about how they were avoiding another girl they used to be friends with, whom they’d now decided was too weird.  They made fun of her and laughed about how no one wanted to hang out with her any more.  That stuck with me, and made me wonder what it’s like being on the receiving end of that sort of “friendship.”  And eventually it produced Cass, GHOST’s main character, who had her own friends turn on her in junior high.

Fiction

Because I write YA, I’m always reading YA fiction.  One thing I’ve noticed over the years is that most real-world protagonists who are saddled with a supernatural ability (like talking to ghosts) resist their talent and wish they were normal.  I started thinking it’d be interesting to write about a character who embraced her ability, and incorporated it into her everyday life.  In GHOST, I explored what might happen if someone relied too much on her supernatural talent, at the expense of the good parts of “normal” life.

Mythology

While writing GHOST, naturally I drew on my knowledge of standard ghost lore.  I played around with the idea that ghosts may be waiting for some sort of trigger to move on, and that they might be stuck in the time period when they died.  The existing mythology gave me something to build on, and also inspired some of the plot’s twists and turns.

Research

After I determined that my main character had been bullied and ostracized, I wanted to make sure I portrayed what had happened to her authentically.  The book that helped me the most was ODD GIRL OUT by Rachel Simmons.  It allowed me to create a believable backstory for Cass and to understand how her experiences would have shaped who she was.

Good Old Random Inspiration

Before the research and the writing, the book first came into being one night when I was drifting off to sleep.  The image of a teenage girl talking to her dead sister like it was an everyday thing popped into my head–out of nowhere, or some unknowable part of my unconscious.  That’s where the mystery of creativity comes in.  I may be able to see where the pieces of the idea came from, but there is a spark I can’t control, that made it all more than just the sum of those parts.

Contest: Win a signed copy of Give Up the Ghost!

Once again, a big thanks to Megan for joining us today on Wicked Jungle. We want to keep the conversation going so this contest is going to be all about comments! Given the gossip girl nature of the book, we want to know what your experience was (or is) like in high school. Did you loose a childhood friend as you entered teenage life? Did you ever participate in gossip? What was the craziest gossip rumor to hit your high school?

Each person who posts a comment (in response to the above questions) will get one entry in the contest.

You can get an additional entries by doing the following (note these are in addition to posting a comment. You must comment first to be qualified).

Option A: Tweet about the contest on Twitter (you must include @wickedjungle for your tweet to qualify each tweet will get you an additional entry).

Option B: Become a follower of our blog (only new followers joining between the time of the contest will be counted).

Contest Ends Saturday at 12PM Eastern!!!

Behind-the-Scenes with Carolyn Crane

Today our featured guest is Carolyn Crane, author of the new urban fantasy Mind Games. Carolyn has taken a few moments out of her very busy writing schedule to share six writerly behind-the-scenes anecdotes about her recent novel. We hope you enjoy this special behind-the-scenes peak.  As  a special treat, we are also giving away a signed copy of Mind Games to one lucky Wicked Jungle reader.  Details on how to enter the contest can be found below. Good luck and a big welcome to Carolyn!

Guest Blogger: Carolyn Crane

Hey, thanks so much, Melissa, for inviting me here! So, because this is a community of writers as well as readers, Melissa suggested I talk a little about behind the scenes stuff around Mind Games. So, a few things:

How I got the idea.

This is actually something I may regret going around telling, but I got the idea after reading Straw Dogs, a hugely depressing book by this philosopher, John Gray, who takes a super dismal view of humanity. It made me feel really awful, and I thought, if I had an enemy, I would give them this book as a gift, so that they could feel as disillusioned as I did. In fact, I actually recommended it to somebody I was mad at. Then I thought, what if there were people who disillusioned other people for money? Hey, that would make a great plot!

Non fiction books: secret sauce.

There’s this one scene from Mind Games where this creepy villain follows my heroine out of a grocery store, and she knows she can’t get away from him, so she asks him to carry her groceries as a way to tie up his hands and free hers. Totally inspired by a tiny detail from a book on predators and intuition called The Gift of Fear, which I had read years ago—the detail popped out of nowhere.

I think non-fiction books are such a goldmine for writers because you build a store of details like that. I’ve gotten super valuable ideas, details and analogies out of books on animals, art, you name it. To me, reading nonfiction is like making an investment in myself as a fiction writer.

How one of the central concepts of Mind Games got totally degraded!

So, this is sort of funny. A bit of background: the psychological hit squad in Mind Games is called the disillusionists, and it’s run by this tortured mutant mastermind who has these extreme powers of psychological insight, and he recruits people who are really messed up to be on his hit squad. Anyway, in early drafts, they’d disillusion criminals in a kind of philosophical way. As you can imagine, this made for a pretty thinky book. Philosophy is not really action packed! Who knew?

Little by little I revised it; in the final drafts, the characters are basically just weaponizing their internal darkness, turning it outward on their targets to overwhelm and “reboot” them, and the targets bounce back with a fresh attitude. However, the ‘disillusionists’ name stayed. I’m always wondering when somebody is going to notice that nobody is being technically disillusioned. It’s sort of like that Irony song by Alanis Morissette where none of the stuff she sings about is all that ironic.

Rejection.

I wrote three totally finished, polished, slaved-over novels before selling Mind Games—we’re talking like 8 years of failed novel projects. It was hard because when I’m working on a novel, it’s my world, and I put all this energy into it, and have all these hopes, and then at some point, enough agents or editors say no that I realize that it’s going nowhere. It’s a little like having your heart broken. The secret for me is to start over on a new project, and find things to love about it. If you’re a writer who is in a learning and growing mode, you’ll usually end up liking the new novel better than the old one anyway. I know everybody says this, but it really does work to just keep going forward.
Querying and a trick.

Contrary to popular belief, most writers sell without connections, and I’m one of them – a slush pile baby. (To see actual statistics on how first novels get sold, there’s a fantastic study done by Jim Hines [http://www.jimchines.com/2010/03/survey-results/])

Anyway, the most important thing in a query letter is the “hook,” the sexy line that sells your book. My trick for writing a hook is to write the best hook I can. Then put it aside and write another completely different, but excellent hook. Then another. Do it ten times. And I mean, write ten good hooks. The trick works because people get fixated on their first ideas, and your first idea is rarely your best one.
Characters & being popular at parties.

Writing can mirror life in such weird ways. For example, whenever I deliberately try to create a character that is attractive or fascinating, that character usually ends up boring. But when I’m not trying to do that, like I’m making a secondary character, and just working on creating a realistic, true, quirky or even offensive person, a lot of times people LOVE that person. It reminds me of being at parties—when you’re trying to be popular, it doesn’t work out, but when you’re just being yourself and you don’t care, people are more interested in you.

That happened with this character Simon–he’s a disillusionist whose specialty is recklessness, and he doesn’t like my heroine, Justine, who is the new girl, with a specialty of hypochondria. So I made him menacing and weird and mean, and he wears clothes like a space age pimp. I meant him to be this dark force, but readers love him. And he actually is fun to write. So much so, that I’m letting him have an expanded storyline in books 2 & 3.

Contest: Win a signed copy of Mind Games!

Once again, a big thanks to Carolyn for joining us today on Wicked Jungle. We want to keep the conversation going so this contest is going to be all about comments!  To enter post a comment below about the Carolyn’s post, her novel, or your experience as a writer. Can you relate to any of the things Carolyn referenced?

Each person who posts a comment will get one entry in the contest.

You can get an additional entries by doing the following (note these are in addition to posting a comment. You must comment first to be qualified).

Option A: Tweet about the contest on Twitter (you must include @wickedjungle for your tweet to qualify each tweet will get you an additional entry).

Option B: Become a follower of our blog (only new followers joining between the time of the contest will be counted).

Contest Ends Friday at 12PM Eastern!!!

Mind Games by Carolyn Crane

Mind Games heroine Justine Jones isn’t your typical kick-ass type – she’s a hopeless hypochondriac whose life is run by fear.

She’s lured into a restaurant, Mongolian Delites, by tortured mastermind Sterling Packard, who promises he can teach her to channel her fears. In exchange, she must join his team of disillusionists – vigilantes hired by crime victims to zing their anxieties into criminals, resulting in collapse and transformation.

Justine isn’t interested in Packard’s troupe until she gets a taste of the peace he can promise. Soon she enters the thrilling world of neurotic crime fighters who battle Midcity’s depraved and paranormal criminals.

Eventually, though, she starts wondering why Packard hasn’t set foot outside the Mongolian Delites restaurant for eight years. And about the true nature of the disillusionists. Read more