Fresh FIction Box Not To Miss
Sara Wolf | Find Me Their Bones
Author Guest / November 8, 2019

Hey ya’ll! Sara Wolf here! I’m super psyched to write this for Fresh Fiction, mostly because they’re a. Awesome and b. It means FIND ME THEIR BONES is almost released to the world at large! Mostly, I wanted to talk about a super serious topic today. I think the question I get most – no matter where I go in the world – is ‘how do you write a book?’, followed quickly by ‘I could never write one’. It’s maybe the hardest question to answer, because I’m not entirely sure how I write a book, either. This might out me as a complete pantser (which isn’t bad!) but it also outs me as the sort of writer who doesn’t really think things through. I always tell people who ask this question ‘I write books because I have to’, and that’s true! When I was thirteen, I came to the horrible screeching revelation that magic wasn’t actually real. The sort of magic you see in books, that always sweeps some unsuspecting down-on-their-luck teenager away to another world. I realized that would never happen to me, and that I’d always been waiting for that to happen to me, and so I launched…

Hannah Moskowitz | New Ideas
Author Guest / November 7, 2019

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…

Erica Cameron | Characters: Building Them Up and Breaking Them Down
Author Guest / November 1, 2019

I love worldbuilding. It’s fun, the best kind of neverending logic puzzle, and it’s easy for me to spend days or months layering details onto a burgeoning universe. Nobody wants to read what amounts to a history book about a fictional world, though. No matter how intricate and interesting the worldbuilding is, it’s the people who populate it who are going to be the tethers that pull readers across a landscape. I’m not one of those authors who knows everything about a character down to their blood type before I put words on pages. In fact, often the non-physical truths (i.e. things other than height, age, eye color, etc) I know about a character when I start writing can be listed on one hand. I treat characters like strangers I’m meeting for the first time, and I write partially to unveil the core of an individual. For me, worldbuilding is layering up. Building characters, though, is more a process of stripping down. Everyone has a core of principles, beliefs, motivations, and needs. Sometimes (okay, rarely) these are all in easy alignment and sometimes they’re diametrically opposed, but no matter what, the core of a person is what drives everything they…

Shannon Greenland | 5 Things I’d Tell The Teen Me
Author Guest / August 5, 2019

1. Travel! I spent two years between high school and college seeing the world. I helped bathe orphans in Mexico, saw the wall come down in Germany, rode a bike in snowy Denmark, slept in too many airports to count, sang on a stage in Poland, and so much more. Since then I’ve sailed to the Bahamas, climbed a lighthouse in Bermuda, hiked the Na Pali coast in Hawaii, canoed in Venezuela, zip lined a forest, crawled through caves in Ireland, and the list goes on… Travel! It’ll open your mind and soul to this incredible earth we live on. 2. Be open to change. When your heart and gut tell you to take a less comforting choice, consider listening. 9 times out of 10 your heart and gut are right. 3. Learn a language. Be it Spanish, French, Farsi, or whatever, dig in and learn it. Be willing to travel to a country that speaks your chosen language and do total immersion. Be willing to take more classes than are required for a high school diploma. Knowing another language is an irreplaceable skill. 4. It’s okay to break up with someone you’re dating. What’s it’s not okay to do…

Amy Fellner Dominy | My Perfect Book Boyfriend
Author Guest / August 2, 2019

Let’s talk book boyfriends. We all have them, right? And all through my teens, that was the only kind of boyfriend I had. I was such a gawky, awkward girl that when my friends were out on dates, I was home watching episodes of The Love Boat. But I did have my romance novels. I read a ton of romances back in the day and there was one similar feature to all of the stories: The girl always fell for the guy first. It was the guy who had to come to his senses and realize that she was worth loving. And I always wondered, Why can’t he fall for her first? Why can’t she be the one who has to be convinced? I wanted to read that book. If there was going to be a character in love, heart cracked open and oozing need—why couldn’t it be the guy?  Maybe it was about fairness. I want to even the score after all those books I read, all those poor heroines who fell first. Maybe it was a little wish fulfillment. There’s something sexy about a guy who’s fallen hard and isn’t afraid to admit it to a girl. Or…

Natalie Murray | Why We Still Love to Follow the British Royals (and Write About Them)
Author Guest / June 14, 2019

When I worked as an entertainment reporter for a television news channel, we weren’t allowed to file stories about the Windsors under ‘entertainment’. Instead, they were to go beneath the banner of ‘world’ news, besides elections in India and China trade tensions. There’s a reason that felt misplaced: because the British royals are unquestionably a source of entertainment, once described by a psychology professor as “one of the longest-running reality TV shows in history” (which means we’re currently on season nine-hundred-and-fifty-something). At the time of writing, Princes William and Harry are jousting for the highest number of Instagram followers (William has 9.1 million and Harry has 8.4 million—that’s around the same number as Walt Disney and Game of Thrones). Nearly 23 million US viewers watched Prince William marry Kate Middleton in 2011, with viewers tuning in from more than 180 countries. The acceleration of technology has handily turned the British royals into a global brand, with millions following them by choice rather than decree. Plenty of fans worship the Windsors to connect with their past and preserve British tradition, but why are the rest of us still so captivated by the Elizabeths, the Williams, the Henrys, the Georges, and the…

Victoria Scott | Exclusive Interview
Author Guest / February 5, 2019

Welcome YA Author Victoria Scott! Her Young Adult mystery author, WE TOLD SIX LIES, is in stores today. What is We Told Six Lies about in your own words? It’s a story about eighteen-year-old Cobain Kelly, whose girlfriend goes missing. As Cobain searches for Molly, the police look at him as their primary suspect, and as more of Cobain’s friends and family members start accusing him of hurting her – and he replays the memories of their relationship – Cobain starts wondering if maybe he did do something to Molly. You’ve published eight other books. How difficult was this one to write comparatively? This was by far my most challenging book. It’s told in first, third, and second person. You read that right. A good 25 percent of this book is in second person. There are also time jumps between when Cobain is reliving his relationship with Molly, and the present when he is trying to find her. If that wasn’t enough, there are also location jumps. So yes, a challenging book to be sure. What are some fun facts about We Told Six Lies? Cobain gets his name from Kurt Cobain (name that band!), there are handwritten journal entries…

The Gods and Goddesses of ANALIESE RISING
Author Guest / January 7, 2019

Many gods and goddesses from the many mythologies around the world populate the pages of my newest release, Analiese Rising. I had a lot of fun researching and learning about them. Some I’ve heard of before, others I didn’t even know existed. The challenge was taking from their stories and creating a modern version of each—giving them unique personalities based on their legends. Today, I thought I’d introduce you to many of them from my book. I’ll start with Sid, aka Sidapa, and Bulan. Sidapa and Bulan are gods from Philippine mythology. Theirs is a love story between two male gods. Sidapa admired the seven moons’ beauty that he tried to romance them until one, Bulan, answered Sidapa’s attempts to romance the moons. He came down to Earth, and they lived together as lovers on Mt. Madjaas. This story intrigued me so much that I had to add the gods to Analiese Rising. In my story, Sid loves to wear makeup and seems like a player, but when the moon calls, he’s off to spend time with Bulan who only comes to earth on a full moon. Lugh, a Celtic sun god of many skills. He’s a trickster god and…

Fresh Fiction Favorite Young Adult Novels of 2018!
Author Guest / December 27, 2018

Over the last week and for the rest of this week, the Reviewers of Fresh Fiction will be sharing some of our favorite reads in various genres. We hope you’ll take another look at these titles, and maybe share your favorites in the comments. We’ll have a different genre featured each day! Be sure to check the blog to see what we’ve already covered. Admittedly, we don’t read a ton of YA on Fresh Fiction, but it’s one of the areas we want to expand on in 2019! Nonetheless, here are a few of our favorite young adult titles of the year. SHADOWSONG by S. Jae-Jones Wintersong #2 Reviewer: Magdalena The gripping sequel to the Wintersong. I found the book to be engrossing from the beginning until the end. Young Adult Fantasy [Wednesday Books, On Sale: February 6, 2018, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9781250129130 / eISBN: 9781250129147] Shadowsong is a beautifully written story that makes you wish for magic in the world… Buy SHADOWSONG: Amazon.com | Kindle | BN.com | Apple Books | Kobo | Google Play | Powell’s Books | Books-A-Million | Indiebound | Ripped Bodice | Amazon CA | Amazon UK | Amazon DE | Amazon FR ***…

Erica Cameron | Why Fantasy?
Author Guest / November 8, 2018

One question I get asked the most is, “Why of all the genres did you choose to write a fantasy series?” I have always loved the fantastical. Epic adventures captured my imagination. Impossible magic enthralled me. Dragons, mermaids, fairies, and monsters thrilled every time I met them. One of my earliest book-specific memories is my father reading The Hobbit to me and my younger sister chapter by chapter every night, beginning to end. Twice. My first favorite author—at least the first I discovered for myself—was Tamora Pierce who gave children of the 80s and 90s female knights, demigods, and heroes, and from her, I branched deeper into the science fiction and fantasy section of the library and the bookstore. It was basically a given that when I committed myself to write a book, I wanted to create a fantasy world. It took me about fifteen years between the first attempt and first published fantasy novel. It took me a little longer than that to truly understand all the reasons why writing the book was so hard as well as why I loved fantasy for far more than the layer of magic on its surface. Speculative fiction—which includes fantasy, science fiction,…