My Interview With... Cassidy Taylor

Welcome back to the My Interview With... series. May's author is a soon-to-be debut YA novelist, Cassidy Taylor.

 

Cassidy and I swapped interviews to be featured on our respective blogs. My interview with Cassidy will be posted in the coming months.

Below is Cassidy's bio and interview:

Bio:

Cassidy studied English and Creative Writing at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and won the Bill Hooks Award for Young Adult Fiction in 2007. Her first novel, The Runaway Queen, the first in a YA high fantasy series, is forthcoming from Fantasy Works Publishing. She is also a paralegal and amateur photographer. She lives in beautiful North Carolina with her husband, two kids, two dogs, and one cat who thinks he's a dog.

When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer? 
I'm one of those that's been writing since I was little and has always wanted to be a writer. After graduating, I let "real life" get in the way and take me away from writing for several years, but thanks to NaNoWriMo, I rediscovered my passion several years ago and have been working to realize my dream! 

What are you working on right now? 
My first book, The Runaway Queen, is in edits, and I'm currently in the midst of writing the sequel. There are three books planned in the series, called The Mondragon Chronicles.

Why did you choose the genre you write in? 
I'm going to say that the YA life chose me. In my Advanced Writing Workshop in college, my first story was torn to pieces. The biggest criticism was about the "immature" voice. This was before YA was a thing, but looking back now I'm able to realize that I've always been writing YA. The Runaway Queen is a fantasy, but I like to dabble in contemporary and dystopian, too, and am looking forward to branching out when this series concludes. 

What is your work schedule like when you're writing? 
I'm a mom to two young kids and I have a full-time job, so I'm very strict in my schedule and value my writing time dearly. I free-write in a journal in the morning before work (usually only about 5 minutes), and then will sometimes work on my blog during lunch. I spend the evenings with my kids, but once they're in bed, I sit to write for at least one hour every night, more if I'm on a roll. My parents spoil me, too. They've started taking the kids for a few hours on Sundays so that I can get in a big block of uninterrupted writing time, which has been awesome.

How does your writing process work? 
I am a pantser in every sense of the word. The Runaway Queen was just an image in my head when I started. The first draft is quick and dirty, with minimal editing. Then I print it out, do a read-through, and start on the second draft, which usually expands the story and turns into almost a re-write. It's been eye-opening to work on a trilogy because I'm having to learn how to plan, but even still, I have just vague ideas of the plots for the next two books. I trust my creative process and know that the stories will emerge as I write them.

What other authors do you read? 
All of them! :-) My Goodreads TBR list is over 1,000 books long. Right now I'm reading Elise Kova and Morgan Rhodes, both of which are amazing. Some of my other favorites are Sarah Dessen, Marie Lu, Alex Bracken, Maggie Stiefvater, and of course, JK Rowling. I am also patiently waiting for the next installment of A Song of Ice and Fire.

What do you like to do when you're not writing? 
Read and hang out with my kids. I don't watch much TV, but when I do, it's either The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones or Grey's Anatomy. 

Links:
Website and Blog 
Twitter 
Facebook 
Instagram 
Pinterest 

The Amazing Pickwick Circus - Ramton Gallow Mysteries Book 2

Today is the day I release the second of the Ramton Gallow Mysteries books, The Amazing Pickwick Circus.  It's been a while since I stepped back into this strange town with its even stranger characters, but as I have ideas for a few more books in the series, I'm hoping that the next book in the series won't be too far behind this one.

Story:

It’s been a few months since Daniel Grade and his friends tackled Miss Sanderson, a soul stealing succubus who had disguised herself as their Art teacher, and all has been quiet in Ramton Gallow. Now, as the annual town celebrations loom on the horizon the mysterious Mr Pickwick and his amazing circus come to town, and everything is once again not all it seems.

Links:
Paperback
Kindle (UK)
Kindle (US)

My Interview With... Amy Cross

Having missed March, my Interview With... series is back with the prolific horror writer, Amy Cross.  With well over 80 books to her name it will take me quite a while to read them all, but if the quality, both in writing and in horror, are all like the first book of Amy's I read, The Haunting of Emily Stone, I am certainly in for a treat as I add more to the ever growing list of her work I have on my Kindle.

Below is my interview with Amy, and links to her social media and Amazon pages:

When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?

I'm not sure, but I think an early influence was probably my mother. She used to write short stories for me, just a page or two, and the deal was that for each story she gave me, I had to give her one in return. I was only six or seven then, and I don't remember what I wrote, but I guess that got me started with the idea that writing stories was a possibility.

What are you working on right now?

I tend to write about three months ahead of release, so at the moment I'm working on things that should come out in the summer. I've been promising new Dead Souls, Grave Girl and Mass Extinction Event for a while now, so I'm focused on making sure I finally get those out. But as for what's coming in the next month or so, I would say vampires, ghosts and a computer genius are going to feature heavily.

Why did you choose the genre you write in?

I tried various other genres, but I didn't really enjoy them and I don't think the results were very good. For now, I prefer writing horror and paranormal fantasy, sometimes straying into thrillers or more traditional fantasy. I tried writing a romance novel once and I couldn't do it, so I re-wrote it as a horror story and released it as Other People's Bodies.

What is your work schedule like when you're writing?

I usually start writing at 8am, sometimes a little earlier, and go through until midday, and then I take the dog for a walk. That's when the ideas come. And then I start again at 2pm and work until 6pm. Sometimes I do a little more in the evening.

How much research do you do before and during a writing project?

It depends on the book. For something like The Priest Hole or The Death of Addie Gray, where parts of the story are set in the past, I need to look things up so that I don't make any historical blunders. With The Priest Hole, for example, I had to read about that period in British history, just to make sure that I didn't include any anachronisms.

How does your writing process work?

It's quite scatter-shot. Sometimes I have a plan for the week, and then suddenly a new idea comes along and I decide to write that instead. I recently went on a binge of writing short stories, some of which I put out in a collection. The rest are sitting in a file on my laptop, waiting for an opportunity to come out.

Sometimes I plan out the structure of a book ahead of time, other times I dive straight in. When I plan the structure, I usually divide it into eight parts, which helps me to see how the plot and the characters are supposed to move along. Some books get written very quickly, while others sit around waiting for me to get started. The Death of Addie Gray, for example, started as a short story I wrote last year, and then gradually it expanded and expanded until it was around 70,000 words.

Who are your writing influences?

The first book I read and truly loved was Wuthering Heights. That one has always stayed with me.

What other authors do you read?

I just finished Peter Ackroyd's book London, which was a fascinating look at the history of the city, and now I'm going through a collection of Lydia Davis short stories.

What do you like to do when you're not writing?

Cooking. It's a good way to separate the writing day from the evening. I'm not a particularly good cook, but I try to keep improving, so I think I've gone from being bad to being pretty okay. Other than that, the dog is always happy to go for another walk.

Do you hear from your readers much? What kinds of things do they say?

Yes, I do, mostly via Facebook. It's always good to hear what people liked, and what they didn't like as well. I try not to promise release dates for books these days, since I almost always miss those deadlines.

 Links:

Website 

Twitter 

Facebook 
Amazon.co.uk 

Amazon.com