1–What’s the name of your latest release? SELECTED 2–What is it about? A teen who comes from nothing and finds herself at an amazing school with a golden ticket for the future. She quickly learns that nothing at the school is what is seems and falls for a guy who she isn’t sure she can trust. 3–What word best describes your heroine? Gifted. 4–What makes your hero irresistible? He’s superpopular but turns his back on his shallow friends to find something real in life, to find someone real. I love that quality in him. 5–Who are the people your main characters turn to when they need help? My main characters turn to their friends when they need help. They are also very self-reliant. 6–What do you love about the setting of your book? I loved playing around in the near future, like, twenty years ahead. I loved playing around with what society would look like if an overarching government broke down. And I loved setting a story in a make-believe prep school. There’s so much pressure on teens today that I think is captures at Easton Prep. 7–Are you a plotter (follow an outline) or a pantster (write by the…

One of the questions I hear a lot is, “How do I come up with an idea that someone hasn’t already done?” We talk a lot about rewrites in fiction, and the idea that nothing is really new. Everyone’s heard the basic story types–man against man, man against self, man against nature, etc. etc. And of course, we’ve seen retellings, for everything from fairy tales from villain points of view to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. It’s possible there really is nothing truly new out there, and that’s something that can be hard for writers to sit with. So much of what we pride ourselves on is our creativity. We love the idea that we might have come up with an idea that nobody else has had before, that nobody else could have. We rush to get the idea out on paper and into the world because we’re terrified that if we don’t, someone else might get there first, and then our story will be meaningless. We feel like it only matters if nobody else has come up with the idea before. People will ask you a lot what’s different about your book. What makes it stand out? What are…