INSANITY!!! Day 5

Congratulations to the Day 3 winner, Cassay!!!

Email me at muchlanguage(at)gmail(dot)com with a mailing address.

Today, we've got Lisa Descrochers in the PoC (hmm, I just realised what else my blog acronym could stand for). Her debut book, PERSONAL DEMONS, hits shelves September 14.

Thank you for joining us, Lisa. Congratulations on the upcoming publication of your first novel. Just a few weeks left now, how are you feeling?

Honestly, pretty freaked out. The reviews have been good so far, so I’m hoping someone other than my mother might go buy Personal Demons. We’ll see.

What was your road to publication like? From the first evil idea to the OMG is that an ARC with my name on it?

It’s all been a blur. I started writing Personal Demons when Luc’s name (Lucifer Cain) popped into my head one day 18 months ago. He and Frannie wouldn’t shut up and I wrote through February and March, revised in April and May and queried in June, July and August. By September I’d signed with my truly fabulous agent, Suzie Townsend, and we revised again in October. Then we went on submission and sold at auction on December 22.

Anybody who knows anything about publishing knows that no major publisher gets anything on the shelves in less that 14 months, so when my editor told me September 14th was our target, I seriously fell off my chair. It’s funny to think that my one-year anniversary with my agent will come after Personal Demons is on the shelves. It was pretty exciting when the ARCs came, but seeing the finished copies was surreal.

Angels and demons fighting over a soul in high school (What? That isn’t everyone’s school experience?) . Where did the idea come from?

It was all Luc. I don’t write with an outline. My characters have conversations and I’m just the poorly paid help with the laptop. Everything that happens in my books flows from the characters. So, Luc’s name popped into my head. I knew he was a demon because…well…his name was Lucifer Cain. And the first words he said to me were: If there’s a Hell on Earth, it’s high school.—the opening line of the book. So I had a demon in high school. Made sense he’d be there for a reason, which turned out to be Frannie.

Your characterisations are fantastic. Luc, for example. Hotter than HELL! How did you go about developing these characters?

Confession: I have no idea what I’m doing. The characters truly developed themselves. I did have some fun with clichés (I know. Writing 101: avoid clichés.) I also had fun taking old tropes and twisting them a little. And I did some research when I was stuck with a character.

Any advice for we who are still in the trenches, but HELL BENT on publication? (Forgive the bad pun. They’re becoming quite the habit.)

Wow… Lots, really. First, I guess, would be that if you’re truly writing the story you were meant to tell, it shouldn’t feel hard. I’m not saying writing isn’t hard work—it is. I just mean that the story itself should flow easily, for the most part.

Also, I’d say trust your gut and your voice. When you’re writing “your story” don’t try to imitate others. Keep it real and keep it yours. There were a few scenes in Personal Demons where I had forced things a little trying to introduce more conflict because I thought that’s what I was supposed to do. In other words, I wrote those scenes for someone else. I shouldn’t have been surprised when those were the scenes both my agent and editor asked me to change. (read “cut”) They were things that hadn’t felt authentic while I was writing them.

I guess the theme of all of that is, write for the love of writing. Not for agents or editors. The road to publication can be rough, but it’s rougher if you’re not loving what you’re doing. I wrote for my daughter and myself, and that was it.

You know Kurt Vonnegut said something like that once. Well you know what they say about great minds. Thanks for joining us Lisa. Good luck with the books.

Today, you can win a copy of PERSONAL DEMONS


Plus, Lisa reccomends EVERNIGHT, the first in the EVERNIGHT series by Claudia Gray


Today's contest is open to anyone, and remains open until 11.59 pm EST Friday.

To enter, just tell us, if you had a sinfully sexy demon and a heavenly hottie angel fighting over you, which path would you pick?