Blog Hop!

Omigosh! I got tagged by my writing friend Charlotte Bennardo who is the author of BLONDE OPS and also happens to have the best chocolate swag in the whole world at her signings.




And then for some reason I got shut out of my blog for a few days. This was supposed to go up on Monday.  So ANYWAY, pardon my lateness. 

1. What are you working on?

I am working on the sequel to DROWNED, which is called BURIED. It's coming out in 2015.

2. Tell me one element of your current work that you really love.

I'm excited to finally be writing a series. I've written 5 stand-alone novels and everyone always asked me, "Are you ever going to revisit those characters?" and I kept saying, Geez, no, I'm so sick of those people!  I couldn't understand why my readers weren't, too.  But then I went back and read one of my books and toward the end I really felt like I could've spent more time with them.

So now that I'm writing a book with the same characters, I kind of feel like I know them more intimately than I've known any of my other characters. It makes my writing life a lot easier, knowing exactly how a character would respond to a certain obstacle! And I finally have come to really love my characters and will probably be sad when I have to say goodbye to them.

3. What part of the book did you most love to write?

There is a rivalry that sprouts up between two of the characters, and I find that to be extremely fun! Other than that, I LOVE writing the end of a book. And not just because it's the end. I love reworking that last line to make it something that will stick with the reader.

4. In your writing process, what was the most difficult?

There are a lot of authors who write sequels for every book they come up with, whether or not it needs one. That's not me AT ALL. So trust me, this book needed a sequel.

But for this book, as excited as I was to write a sequel, I wasn't really sure I could. I was hung up thinking that this book would need to take place immediately after the events of the first book. I wrote it and wrote it a thousand different ways and it was SO DULL. I kept thinking, this book needs a sequel, and I owe it to the characters and to the readers who stayed with me this long to write something that doesn't put them in a coma.

Then I made the decision to start the book several months after the events of the first book. And then it all clicked. Or at least, I'm hoping it's all clicking!!

And now I am tagging Margie Gelbwasser, who is the coolest, funnest chick in the world and also writes awesome books, like INCONVENIENT and PIECES OF US.  I hope she'll answer the same questions on her blog! :)