Category Archives: Author Interviews

If you don’t read The Debutante Ball blog or keep up with the publishing world, you may not have heard of Lori Rader-Day. But in just a few months, that’s all going to change–and it’s an honor to have her here before everyone else begins clamoring.

Lori’s debut novel, a mystery from Seventh Street Books, is set to be released July 8. But today, she’s offering a head start to one lucky reader. After the interview, leave a comment for a chance to win an advanced reading copy of THE BLACK HOUR.

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1. Your debut novel, The Black Hour, will be released in just a few months. I know this is a mystery, but what else can you tell us about the story?

The Black Hour is the story of a university professor, Amelia Emmet, who returns to teaching after being shot by a student she didn’t know, had never met. The story starts on that first day back. She’s been gone ten months, and the rumor mill’s been churning her over in her absence. The student shooter killed himself, so there’s no one to ask: Why her? But then she gets some help sleuthing from a far too enthusiastic grad student, and the real trouble gets started.

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2. What do think people will love most about the book? What do you love about it?

I had a lot of fun writing two narrators because Amelia, the professor, and Nathaniel, the student, aren’t really working together at all. So the reader gets to see how they’re actually getting everything wrong. And even though Amelia starts out a little difficult—she got shot, so she’s hair-trigger angry at life—I think people will like her and Nathaniel and the people who surround them. Continue reading →

I’m particularly excited about today’s interview because, like me, Melanie Dickerson knows how fun it is to take a classic fairy tale and bring it to life in a whole new way.

She has reinvented characters like Beauty, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty, and is now celebrating the release of her newest project, a retelling of Cinderella called The Captive Maiden (after the interview, leave a comment for a chance to win a copy!)

I’m so happy to welcome her to Skipping Midnight.

Reimagining classic fairy tales has become almost as timeless as the fairy tales themselves. Some opt for modern, some go totally dark. Your books retell them in a more historical, plausible way—set around the time they might actually have taken place. How did you decide on this approach?

To be honest, I don’t know! I decided I would take the basic premise of the fairy tale and make it realistic, set it in my favorite time period—the 14th and early 15th centuries—and write it as it might have actually happened. It was fun, challenging, and exciting, so I decided to keep writing more of them!

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So far, you’ve reimagined Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and now Cinderella. What can you tell us about your latest, THE CAPTIVE MAIDEN?

The Captive Maiden tells the story of Valten, whose betrothed ended up marrying his younger brother in the previous book, The Fairest Beauty. Valten was a great guy, but he needed to be the hero of his own story for all his best qualities to shine, so I set about giving him his very own maiden to be heroic for. I wanted to be true to his tough guy character but still make him complex and sweet. And my heroine also turned out to be pretty complex, as she had been mistreated most of her life, but she still wasn’t going to let anyone push her around without a fight. I thought they made a good combination. Continue reading →

A.L. Waddington (hereafter referred to as Angela) is a mother, a writer, and a visionary with loads of advice for aspiring authors. She is the force behind the EVE series–of which the first installment, Essence, came out last week. I am honored to host her during her Essence release blog tour.

After the interview, enter to win one of three Essence e-books on behalf of Angela and Skipping Midnight. And then sign up for her super exciting grand prize drawing: a signed copy of the next book in the series, Enlightened, as well as … wait for it … a walk-on character named after you! Now how’s that for some riveting dinner conversation?!

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1. The EVE series is set in two parallel planes of existence–following a young woman as she falls asleep in one and wakes up in the other. Where did you get the inspiration for such an intriguing premise?

My inspiration for the creation of the EVE series was my three teenage children and their strong love for the imagination of something just a little beyond their own existence. I have, hopefully, written my manuscript(s) in a fashion that will appeal to this particular genre’s ever-changing reality that translates into the adult world and allows them to melt into a world grounded in reality yet makes them ponder their own perception of reality.

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2. What else can you tell me about the story? What will people love about it?

Hopefully, I have created characters that are relatable to just about everyone. That was my goal; to create the average high school girl who discovers she’s inherited an ability that only a few people have. The EVE series is ultimately a love story between Jocelyn and Jackson. It is freshly unique in that it bridges genres with its cross over between science fiction/time travel/romance/young adult as a work of commercial fiction. The main characters are relatable to a large audience in that their age group is late teens to early 20s. The narration of the story is told from 18-year-old Jocelyn Timmons’ viewpoint and the distinctively different lives that she leads on parallel planes when her soul travels nightly.

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I met Mari Passananti through a mutual author friend, Wendy Walker, and I’m so glad I did. She is truly the sort of person who makes her own luck and doesn’t take “no” for an answer. In 2011, after leaving a longterm law career to pursue her real dream of writing, she published THE HAZARDS OF HUNTING WHILE HEARTBROKEN with her own Rutland Square Press. Two years later, she veered off the “chick lit” path dramatically to release a political thriller called THE K STREET AFFAIR. 

Like self-publishing phenom Heather Gaynor, she’s an inspiration to every writer who has what it takes to make it in the big leagues and won’t stay put until she gets there. I’m honored to have her here today.

After the interview, leave a comment for a chance to win a signed copy of one of her books. This week, you’ll have two chances!

1. You practiced law for many years before deciding to take the plunge and try your hand at writing full-time. Was this something you always knew you wanted to do? If so, what gave you the push to finally take that leap and how did you make the transition?

I practiced law at the beginning of my career, and left law firm life to become a headhunter, which I did happily for several years. I always wanted to write, and I had flirted with the idea of writing a book for I don’t know how long. Then I had one of those milestone birthdays that makes you stop and think, and I decided to go for it. 

This may sound macabre, but I looked in the mirror, realized that (in actuarial terms) I’m probably halfway out of time, and that if I want to reinvent myself, to take a stab at making it as an author, I had to get to it. 

I had one of two key things I should have had when I took the plunge: a bit of a financial safety net. Little did I know that I would also need a tribe. I thought writers lived a solitary existence, that they worked at cluttered desks surrounded by cats and overgrown plants. Maybe that works for some teeny minority, but I think most of us benefit from robust discussion with other professionals about both the craft and business of fiction. Continue reading →