![]() ![]() It is embarrassing to look back now.Īt that time, it was all about entertainment value for me. I felt, without a doubt, that we would be successful. So, she lied to me about being famous, but, I think, because I was so ignorant to the realities of the publishing industry, it helped me. It wasn’t until Chosen, the third book in the series and her 18th book, that we finally hit the New York Times list. When Phyllis asked me to work on the books with her, I asked if I was going to be famous. How have your goals as a storyteller changed, shifted, or stayed the same? The first House of Night book was published in 2007, over a decade ago. It was a baptism by fire you learn a lot when you’re thrown into the deep end. Having spent a decade of my life in that stage, it really taught me the fundamentals of writing and how to develop strong characters and build worlds in a different way than being a reader or going to classes taught me. ![]() That’s the part of the process I love and am always trying to get to. Having worked on the House of Night books definitely has had an impact on every book I’ve worked on since. And if we have rogue behavior, we call each other first to update the outline accordingly. After trial and error, we’ve learned that this works well. When Phyllis and I work on our books, we do the same thing because there’s two of us and she has a tendency to go rogue and write whatever she wants. At that point, I know who the characters are, and if there are multiple points of view, I’ll assign the chapters accordingly. Then I do a three- to five-act outline, depending on the story structure I want, followed by breaking it down into a chapter by chapter outline. At that point, I don’t usually have names or characters. When I write alone I create an outline, beginning with a page explaining what the book is about. Luckily, because of my past with House of Night, I already had my foot in the door. So I did the same and found it was writing for me, too. She decided that whatever was more successful would be the path she followed. Back in the early 2000s, when she wrote her first novel, that’s exactly what she did she was enrolled in a master’s program and writing a book. I had a conversation with my mom and she said that I should either go back to school or write a book. I didn’t think about writing or the future the way I do now. I started working on the House of Night series when I was 19. After House of Night, I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I didn’t think I was actually going to write books. The books that we’ve co-authored together are The Dysasters and our upcoming Sisters of Salem trilogy. Cast-was the writer and I was the editor. How does your approach to writing differ when you’re working solo rather than as a team?įor the House of Night series, Phyllis-P.C. This is your first book published without your co-writer and mother, P.C. And, because I constantly think about stories, I thought, what would have to happen in our world to make it so we weren’t allowed to touch each other, and all our interactions were virtual? What if it was mandatory? What if it was the only way we knew? Of course, because of my obsession with deadly viruses, I came up with a virus that is spread by touch. I could tell that they were couples, even though they weren’t talking to each other or physically interacting, except to nudge one other to share something on their phones. The premise of The Key to Fear came to me while I was at a pizza shop back in 2014, standing in line behind a group of teens. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, so, for my entire adolescence and early 20s, I’ve been fascinated by viruses, reading books and articles about it. ![]() I read Richard Preston’s The Hot Zone when I was in middle school and was convinced I’d one day work at the U.S. It’s not the first time a deadly pandemic has threatened humanity. ![]() A lot of friends have joked that I must be clairvoyant and I should write about something happy next! I first had the idea of The Key to Fear six years ago, so I wasn’t inspired by this pandemic, but by those of the past. It felt like the fictional world had bled into our real world. I finished the last copyediting on this book in February, when all the lockdown stuff where I live in Portland was beginning. What has it been like living through a real-life pandemic while working on and thinking about this book and its speculative premise? ![]()
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