The voices in my head make it difficult to concentrate on everyday life. As Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory would say, 
Ideas for interesting characters and random plot bunnies pop into my head all the time. Should I be worried about this? Probably not. I’ve met enough authors to understand why E L Doctorow referred to writing as, “a socially acceptable form of Schizophrenia.”
The “My Writing Process Blog Tour” is all about letting normal people see how writers’ brains work. Fellow Entangled author Reese Monroe tagged me to participate. Check out her blog here: http://reesemonroe.net/my-writing-process-tour/
1.What am I working on?
Right now I’m in the final stages of editing my debut Paranormal Young Adult romance, Going Down In Flames. It’s the story of sixteen-year-old Bryn McKenna, a girl who discovers she is a shape-shifting dragon when flames shoot out of her mouth for the first time. I’m also working on a New Adult romance which I’m pitching as La Femme Nikita meets The Matrix. I’m 40,000 words into the first draft, and I can’t wait to see what happens next.
2. How does my work differ from others in its genre?
Growing up, I read Sci-Fi and Fantasy. Both of those genres include large casts of characters and great world building details. I love creating interesting worlds and populating them with quirky main characters and even quirkier side characters.
3. Why do I write YA?
I wrote an entire post on this question: http://wp.me/p3D2M2-7Z
Here is a snippet from that post.
Fair warning…I’m about to step up on my soapbox. Young adult does not refer to the age of the reader; it refers to the age of the characters in the book. Please feel free to re-read that sentence if it didn’t make sense. Why, you might ask, would a grown up want to read a book about sixteen year old characters? I’ll tell you why. At sixteen, life is full of possibilities. There are first loves and first broken hearts. The first attempts at something great and the first epic fails. It’s when things start to count for real and the choices people make can affect the rest of their lives. It’s also a grace period where second chances are possible.
4. How does my writing process work?
I would love to say I plot everything out in meticulous detail, but that would be a big, fat lie. I’m envious of those who can plot. I’m a total Panster. I imagine a character who is put into an odd situation, I come up with a few key plot points, and aim for a certain type of ending.
Going Down In Flames came into being like this:
What if a girl opened her mouth and flames shot out? What if her parents ran away from a secret shape-shifting society and didn’t tell her about their true nature because they didn’t think she inherited the shape-shifting gene? What if her mom jilted the most powerful man in the shape-shifting society to run away and marry someone else? What if the jilted ex is the most powerful man in that society? What if the girl has to go back to the secret society and deal with the fall-out from her mother’s defection?
I hope this view into a writer’s brain wasn’t too disturbing.
Amy Evans is next up in the blog tour. You can check out her Facebook page here:
