Release Days Round-Up: March 31 - April 6

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In Paperback

More Author Insight: Character Calamity

Which of your characters causes you the most problems while writing? What kind of shenanigans do they pull?

"Heron, by far. She's just a side-character in Partials, in one or two scenes at most, but I put her in there because I knew she'd be a big deal in Fragments and book 3. We even gave her a starring role in one of our digital extras :) She's a great character, but she's always trouble because she doesn't care about you or your problems--she's in this for herself, and maybe for some other secret reasons she hasn't told you yet, and if she disagrees with the way the other characters are doing something she's more than capable of doing it her own way instead (over their dead bodies if necessary). Finding ways to keep her engaged in the story and not disrupting the whole plot is a challenge, but sometimes it's great because her ideas are better than mine." - Dan Wells, author of Fragments. 

"I have a character with anxiety, as in panic attacks and all that good stuff. It can be hard to write her because she freaks out over things that don’t seem like a big deal to the average person, so it’s hard to balance her pov without it getting annoying. And I have a tendency to absorb some of her anxiety and get more stressed while writing her. So yeah, I’m now rewriting her story entirely. That pretty much says it all." - Natalie Whipple, author of Transparent. 

"Definitely my main character’s twin brother, Grayson. He’s kinda like Jeremy on The Vampire Diaries: always doing something annoyingly stupid." - Page Morgan, author of The Beautiful and the Cursed. 

"My narrators are definitely the ones who cause the most trouble. I spend the most of my time lost in their heads while they play games with me, send me off on aimless walkabouts, hide in trees, and tie my laces together so I trip and fall on my face and have to start over. They are the most frustrating, maddening fictional people I’ve ever come across in my life. But they’re mine." - Nova Ren Suma, author of 17 & Gone.

Author Insight: Character Calamity

Which of your characters causes you the most problems while writing? What kind of shenanigans do they pull?

"The character Aisha in my current work-in-progress is causing me all sorts of problems. I think it’s her determination and positivity in
the face of adversity. I tend to be a 'mountains out of molehills'
kind of guy, so her going the other way is making it hard for me to
connect with her interior. She just keeps doing the exact opposite of
what I’d do! Darned Aisha!" - Bill Konigsberg, author of Openly Straight. 

"I am a bit of a control-freak author so I don't know that I have any characters that really cause me problems. For me, the hardest character to work with is the point-of-view character--especially if I'm writing in first person--because you have to push them around while you're in their head and sometimes finding balance between those two is tricky." - Aprilynne Pike, author of Life After Theft and Earthbound.

"One of our main characters, Lucy, has been criticized for being too simply the damsel in distress. Admittedly, she was a challenge because, in The Loners, she was meant to cause trouble between the brothers, David and Will, and so her personal desire as a character could never trump the heroes’ plot. Her problem as character was that she didn’t pull many shenanigans at all. But we’ve taken that issue head on in The Saints. Lucy gets wild." - Lex Hrabe , co-author of Quarantine: The Loners. 

"Girls are hardest for me. There’s something about writing guys that’s easy. I think girls change their minds more often and are maybe more conflicting. My husband always says men are simple and reliable in their wants. Women change their minds often. I tend to agree." - Victoria Scott, author of The Collector.