10 Major Challenges of Writing a Book

I always thought being a writer would be my ideal job, because it comes pretty naturally to me, I enjoy it, and I have a never ending imagination!

It's the toughest thing though. Here's why:

1) You are your own boss - no one is going to tell you when to write and what to write, and the deadline. It's up to you. You have to find that motivation, even when writer's block isn't an issue.

2) Creating a GOOD story is tougher than you think - so you have a plot, you have an outline, but now you have to fill in the details. Or you have the details of your characters, and the world they are in but you have to create a good story, that includes growth of the character and change. Etc. etc. etc. It's amazing what Jane Austen, and the Bronte sister's did. Oh goodness! We still have material - social issues in our world to base our stories on, but their characters development was so well done!

3) Its gonna take time, a whole lot precious time - to do it, to do it, do it right! yeah, so as we grow older we find we have less time. Time begins to slip away so easily. Yet when we are children a day seems to take forever. I wish I had that type of time now. Oh and then there are random chores, obligations that need to be taken care of like an oil change, or cleaning! So making time, and committing time to writing is tough as a grown up adult. Like the saying goes- "health is wasted on the young" so is time!

4) Remembering what you wrote yesterday - few chapters in and you forgot the deets from chapter one, and then 30 chapters in you forgot the details from chapter 15! Creating a timeline, or some sort of organization of characters is important. For instance, I know the world well, and I know my characters, but sometimes I forget what I put in her bag. At the time i put the things in her bag I knew what they were and why they were, but then 4 chapters later, I forget. Kind of like, you have a list of things to tell your significant other at the end of the day, and then you see them and you forget half of it. Then you remember it just when you are both about to fall asleep!

5) Setting deadlines and goals - these are hard to stick to, because of all of the above. So kick it out the window. You'll find that once you do that, you'll be able to write more, and then you'll set a goal, 'I want to finish it by the 20th of Jan'. Then once you set it, it get's tough again.

6) Thinking of Publishing? - these thought or worries rather, come and go; for me, more often than not. Self publish, or find an agent, or approach a publisher? Which one is right for you. I say finish writing, have a manuscript. Edit it twice and then worry about publishing. Maybe do some research in your free time, yes that time which is so hard to come by. I will be posting information on that soon! So stay tuned!

7) Worries of failure - you could be the next JRR Tolkien of JK Rowling or George RR Martin, but it's such a competitive world, and you're better off making video games honestly, cause I rather play video games than write cause it's easier :-P kids today rather play video games than read. There are those who read, but I fear those numbers are decreasing rapidly. Then there are those who write for Movies... aaah! Worries of failing will plague the author, but to write knowing the chance of success is very low, is quite comforting. Accept that and write.

8) Atmosphere from noisy to quiet, finding a balance for writing - so I've always dreamt of writing a novel at a cafe, where there's a fire sizzling, and I got me some hot chocolate. I am brandishing my wonderful ink pen, and writing on some wonderful parchment... scratch that. Over full Starbucks, noisy, Christmas music, no fireplace, and yeah the baristas shouting about. Nope, need to find that ideal setting, yet. It's hard to find a perfect atmosphere or ambiance that nurtures writers. The right amount of noise, as to not being distracting, as well as not to quiet to be creepy. Yes silence can distract me, so I find playlists that inspire but also help keep me focused (so different from my running play list, or driving play list!). Then there's the internet, def don't connect to the WIFI, and if you need to look something up use your phone, keep it to the minimum!

9) Prioritizing writing, life, friends, balancing? Maybe not balanced but being smart about it - writing is important, but if you have a different job that sustains you while you are writing, that should take priority. Then there are life things, as in a friend needs you, friendship is very important, don't ditch your friend, then again a good friend would understand. So setting these priorities and working around them. Sometimes you might prioritize and set up a schedule, that schedule will change! Be flexible. I set time to write, but sometimes it doesn't flow well, until my head hit's the pillow at 11:30 pm and then I get mega-inspired. I have to teach at 8 am the next morning, but I go with the flow and deal with it. Its the only way it's going to get done, sometimes I just write it on note-cards, and try to pick it up later. When I do stay up late to write, I suck it up although i am tired, and I deal with it the next morning, and drink tea and look awesome (somehow) and make sure I teach well (tea does the job for me).

10) Word count goals - so publishers have set an average word count for various genres. Fantasy / sci-fi fiction lands at about 80,000 - 100,000 words. So with length in mind, and matter of course, it's good to pace yourself, and build. Setting a word goal per day/ week is good but eventually I've found that difficult to work with.

Lastly: editing, but since I'm not there yet, I'll leave it for the next blog entry. So stay tuned!
And yes I have not really edited this blog!

:-P

Breathe
(always remember to breathe while writing!)

Half Way Through At The End Of The Year

I like Capitalizing the first letter of all the words in my headings, I don't know why.
Ok let me get

I am writing a fictional novel. It's a supernatural thriller, for young adults or grown ups not sure yet. It's more work than I thought it would be, and it's funny how the book grows as I grow as a person. I don't think it will be my best work, but I am pouring my heart and mind into this. I feel like i am writing it in a rush, because i gave myself a deadline, but because of Teacher Training, holidays, and my new boost for getting back in shape, I have fallen behind. I do hope to make hedgeway as I thought it was called, but then Ryan corrected me, and I know it is headway. It's going to be a fun book to read, creative and imaginative.

This book takes me places in my mind, and makes me people I am not! Can't wait to share it with you all eventually! Writing this blog, makes me feel like I've finally come clean, in regards to my absence from blogging. I mean I have blogged, but its not as incessant as it was. In fact am proud to say last year I published 137 blogs posts. My blogger stats tell me the most number of views were in July and Nov 2013. USA rules with most readership, followed by Russia! India follows in at third, and European countries including UK follow after that. I just have to say thanks for reading to all my readers! I hope you all will like my book!

Most people view it from a Windows computer; 28% from a Mac. Oooh! 48% view from firefox, and only 20% from Chrome, (chrome is personally my preferred browser. It's fast and better all round). 15% of readers still use IE, whyyy!!!! There's so much other info from the stats, but this was supposed to be about the book I'm writing, how I got carried away!

I'm half way through writing this book. YA(young adult books are usually 55k to 60k long, and I am (a grandmother figure in my life, told me to never measure/ count progress but to get through it), 26k in. Which is half way for the 50k goal, ok plus there will be more added. However for sci-fi fantasy "they" say a 6 figure range is better... really?

Trudging along then!
I can do this!


Breathe!

Re-post: The Importance of Reading

A sweet friend of mine re-posted this article, which of course I loved It emphasizes the importance of reading fiction in a world of cell phones, movies and video games. My favorite line "Albert Einstein was asked once how we could make our children intelligent. His reply was both simple and wise. "If you want your children to be intelligent," he said, "read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales." He understood the value of reading, and of imagining. I hope we can give our children a world in which they will read, and be read to, and imagine, and understand."

Neil Gaiman: Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming
A lecture explaining why using our imaginations, and providing for others to use theirs, is an obligation for all citizens

It's important for people to tell you what side they are on and why, and whether they might be biased. A declaration of members' interests, of a sort. So, I am going to be talking to you about reading. I'm going to tell you that libraries are important. I'm going to suggest that reading fiction, that reading for pleasure, is one of the most important things one can do. I'm going to make an impassioned plea for people to understand what libraries and librarians are, and to preserve both of these things.

And I am biased, obviously and enormously: I'm an author, often an author of fiction. I write for children and for adults. For about 30 years I have been earning my living though my words, mostly by making things up and writing them down. It is obviously in my interest for people to read, for them to read fiction, for libraries and librarians to exist and help foster a love of reading and places in which reading can occur.

So I'm biased as a writer. But I am much, much more biased as a reader. And I am even more biased as a British citizen. And I'm here giving this talk tonight, under the auspices of the Reading Agency: a charity whose mission is to give everyone an equal chance in life by helping people become confident and enthusiastic readers. Which supports literacy programs, and libraries and individuals and nakedly and wantonly encourages the act of reading. Because, they tell us, everything changes when we read. And it's that change, and that act of reading that I'm here to talk about tonight. I want to talk about what reading does.

What it's good for. I was once in New York, and I listened to a talk about the building of private prisons – a huge growth industry in America. The prison industry needs to plan its future growth – how many cells are they going to need? How many prisoners are there going to be, 15 years from now? And they found they could predict it very easily, using a pretty simple algorithm, based on asking what percentage of 10 and 11-year-olds couldn't read. And certainly couldn't read for pleasure. It's not one to one: you can't say that a literate society has no criminality. But there are very real correlations. And I think some of those correlations, the simplest, come from something very simple.

Literate people read fiction. Fiction has two uses. Firstly, it's a gateway drug to reading. The drive to know what happens next, to want to turn the page, the need to keep going, even if it's hard, because someone's in trouble and you have to know how it's all going to end … that's a very real drive. And it forces you to learn new words, to think new thoughts, to keep going. To discover that reading per se is pleasurable. Once you learn that, you're on the road to reading everything. And reading is key.

There were noises made briefly, a few years ago, about the idea that we were living in a post-literate world, in which the ability to make sense out of written words was somehow redundant, but those days are gone: words are more important than they ever were: we navigate the world with words, and as the world slips onto the web, we need to follow, to communicate and to comprehend what we are reading. People who cannot understand each other cannot exchange ideas, cannot communicate, and translation programs only go so far. The simplest way to make sure that we raise literate children is to teach them to read, and to show them that reading is a pleasurable activity. And that means, at its simplest, finding books that they enjoy, giving them access to those books, and letting them read them.

 I don't think there is such a thing as a bad book for children. Every now and again it becomes fashionable among some adults to point at a subset of children's books, a genre, perhaps, or an author, and to declare them bad books, books that children should be stopped from reading. I've seen it happen over and over; Enid Blyton was declared a bad author, so was RL Stine, so were dozens of others. Comics have been decried as fostering illiteracy. It's tosh. It's snobbery and it's foolishness. There are no bad authors for children, that children like and want to read and seek out, because every child is different. They can find the stories they need to, and they bring themselves to stories. A hackneyed, worn-out idea isn't hackneyed and worn out to them. This is the first time the child has encountered it. Do not discourage children from reading because you feel they are reading the wrong thing. Fiction you do not like is a route to other books you may prefer. And not everyone has the same taste as you. Well-meaning adults can easily destroy a child's love of reading: stop them reading what they enjoy, or give them worthy-but-dull books that you like, the 21st-century equivalents of Victorian "improving" literature. You'll wind up with a generation convinced that reading is uncool and worse, unpleasant.

 We need our children to get onto the reading ladder: anything that they enjoy reading will move them up, rung by rung, into literacy. (Also, do not do what this author did when his 11-year-old daughter was into RL Stine, which is to go and get a copy of Stephen King's Carrie, saying if you liked those you'll love this! Holly read nothing but safe stories of settlers on prairies for the rest of her teenage years, and still glares at me when Stephen King's name is mentioned.) And the second thing fiction does is to build empathy. When you watch TV or see a film, you are looking at things happening to other people. Prose fiction is something you build up from 26 letters and a handful of punctuation marks, and you, and you alone, using your imagination, create a world and people it and look out through other eyes. You get to feel things, visit places and worlds you would never otherwise know. You learn that everyone else out there is a me, as well. You're being someone else, and when you return to your own world, you're going to be slightly changed. Empathy is a tool for building people into groups, for allowing us to function as more than self-obsessed individuals. You're also finding out something as you read vitally important for making your way in the world. And it's this: The world doesn't have to be like this. Things can be different. 

I was in China in 2007, at the first party-approved science fiction and fantasy convention in Chinese history. And at one point I took a top official aside and asked him Why? SF had been disapproved of for a long time. What had changed? It's simple, he told me. The Chinese were brilliant at making things if other people brought them the plans. But they did not innovate and they did not invent. They did not imagine. So they sent a delegation to the US, to Apple, to Microsoft, to Google, and they asked the people there who were inventing the future about themselves. And they found that all of them had read science fiction when they were boys or girls.

 Fiction can show you a different world. It can take you somewhere you've never been. Once you've visited other worlds, like those who ate fairy fruit, you can never be entirely content with the world that you grew up in. Discontent is a good thing: discontented people can modify and improve their worlds, leave them better, leave them different. And while we're on the subject, I'd like to say a few words about escapism. I hear the term bandied about as if it's a bad thing. As if "escapist" fiction is a cheap opiate used by the muddled and the foolish and the deluded, and the only fiction that is worthy, for adults or for children, is mimetic fiction, mirroring the worst of the world the reader finds herself in. If you were trapped in an impossible situation, in an unpleasant place, with people who meant you ill, and someone offered you a temporary escape, why wouldn't you take it? And escapist fiction is just that: fiction that opens a door, shows the sunlight outside, gives you a place to go where you are in control, are with people you want to be with(and books are real places, make no mistake about that); and more importantly, during your escape, books can also give you knowledge about the world and your predicament, give you weapons, give you armour: real things you can take back into your prison. Skills and knowledge and tools you can use to escape for real. As JRR Tolkien reminded us, the only people who inveigh against escape are jailers.

Another way to destroy a child's love of reading, of course, is to make sure there are no books of any kind around. And to give them nowhere to read those books. I was lucky. I had an excellent local library growing up. I had the kind of parents who could be persuaded to drop me off in the library on their way to work in summer holidays, and the kind of librarians who did not mind a small, unaccompanied boy heading back into the children's library every morning and working his way through the card catalogue, looking for books with ghosts or magic or rockets in them, looking for vampires or detectives or witches or wonders. And when I had finished reading the children's' library I began on the adult books. They were good librarians. They liked books and they liked the books being read. They taught me how to order books from other libraries on inter-library loans. They had no snobbery about anything I read. They just seemed to like that there was this wide-eyed little boy who loved to read, and would talk to me about the books I was reading, they would find me other books in a series, they would help. They treated me as another reader – nothing less or more – which meant they treated me with respect. I was not used to being treated with respect as an eight-year-old. But libraries are about freedom.

Freedom to read, freedom of ideas, freedom of communication. They are about education (which is not a process that finishes the day we leave school or university), about entertainment, about making safe spaces, and about access to information. I worry that here in the 21st century people misunderstand what libraries are and the purpose of them. If you perceive a library as a shelf of books, it may seem antiquated or outdated in a world in which most, but not all, books in print exist digitally. But that is to miss the point fundamentally. I think it has to do with nature of information. Information has value, and the right information has enormous value.

For all of human history, we have lived in a time of information scarcity, and having the needed information was always important, and always worth something: when to plant crops, where to find things, maps and histories and stories – they were always good for a meal and company. Information was a valuable thing, and those who had it or could obtain it could charge for that service. In the last few years, we've moved from an information-scarce economy to one driven by an information glut. According to Eric Schmidt of Google, every two days now the human race creates as much information as we did from the dawn of civilisation until 2003. That's about five exobytes of data a day, for those of you keeping score. The challenge becomes, not finding that scarce plant growing in the desert, but finding a specific plant growing in a jungle. We are going to need help navigating that information to find the thing we actually need. Libraries are places that people go to for information. Books are only the tip of the information iceberg: they are there, and libraries can provide you freely and legally with books.

More children are borrowing books from libraries than ever before – books of all kinds: paper and digital and audio. But libraries are also, for example, places that people, who may not have computers, who may not have internet connections, can go online without paying anything: hugely important when the way you find out about jobs, apply for jobs or apply for benefits is increasingly migrating exclusively online. Librarians can help these people navigate that world. I do not believe that all books will or should migrate onto screens: as Douglas Adams once pointed out to me, more than 20 years before the Kindle turned up, a physical book is like a shark.

Sharks are old: there were sharks in the ocean before the dinosaurs. And the reason there are still sharks around is that sharks are better at being sharks than anything else is. Physical books are tough, hard to destroy, bath-resistant, solar-operated, feel good in your hand: they are good at being books, and there will always be a place for them. They belong in libraries, just as libraries have already become places you can go to get access to ebooks, and audiobooks and DVDs and web content.

A library is a place that is a repository of information and gives every citizen equal access to it.
That includes health information. And mental health information.
It's a community space. It's a place of safety, a haven from the world.
It's a place with librarians in it.
What the libraries of the future will be like is something we should be imagining now. Literacy is more important than ever it was, in this world of text and email, a world of written information. We need to read and write, we need global citizens who can read comfortably, comprehend what they are reading, understand nuance, and make themselves understood.

Libraries really are the gates to the future. So it is unfortunate that, round the world, we observe local authorities seizing the opportunity to close libraries as an easy way to save money, without realising that they are stealing from the future to pay for today. They are closing the gates that should be open. According to a recent study by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, England is the "only country where the oldest age group has higher proficiency in both literacy and numeracy than the youngest group, after other factors, such as gender, socio-economic backgrounds and type of occupations are taken into account". Or to put it another way, our children and our grandchildren are less literate and less numerate than we are. They are less able to navigate the world, to understand it to solve problems. They can be more easily lied to and misled, will be less able to change the world in which they find themselves, be less employable. All of these things. And as a country, England will fall behind other developed nations because it will lack a skilled workforce. Books are the way that we communicate with the dead. The way that we learn lessons from those who are no longer with us, that humanity has built on itself, progressed, made knowledge incremental rather than something that has to be relearned, over and over.

There are tales that are older than most countries, tales that have long outlasted the cultures and the buildings in which they were first told. I think we have responsibilities to the future. Responsibilities and obligations to children, to the adults those children will become, to the world they will find themselves inhabiting. All of us – as readers, as writers, as citizens – have obligations. I thought I'd try and spell out some of these obligations here. I believe we have an obligation to read for pleasure, in private and in public places. If we read for pleasure, if others see us reading, then we learn, we exercise our imaginations. We show others that reading is a good thing. We have an obligation to support libraries. To use libraries, to encourage others to use libraries, to protest the closure of libraries. If you do not value libraries then you do not value information or culture or wisdom. You are silencing the voices of the past and you are damaging the future. We have an obligation to read aloud to our children. To read them things they enjoy. To read to them stories we are already tired of. To do the voices, to make it interesting, and not to stop reading to them just because they learn to read to themselves. Use reading-aloud time as bonding time, as time when no phones are being checked, when the distractions of the world are put aside.

We have an obligation to use the language.
To push ourselves: to find out what words mean and how to deploy them, to communicate clearly, to say what we mean.
We must not to attempt to freeze language, or to pretend it is a dead thing that must be revered, but we should use it as a living thing, that flows, that borrows words, that allows meanings and pronunciations to change with time. We writers – and especially writers for children, but all writers – have an obligation to our readers: it's the obligation to write true things, especially important when we are creating tales of people who do not exist in places that never were – to understand that truth is not in what happens but what it tells us about who we are.

Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all. We have an obligation not to bore our readers, but to make them need to turn the pages. One of the best cures for a reluctant reader, after all, is a tale they cannot stop themselves from reading. And while we must tell our readers true things and give them weapons and give them armour and pass on whatever wisdom we have gleaned from our short stay on this green world, we have an obligation not to preach, not to lecture, not to force predigested morals and messages down our readers' throats like adult birds feeding their babies pre-masticated maggots; and we have an obligation never, ever, under any circumstances, to write anything for children that we would not want to read ourselves. We have an obligation to understand and to acknowledge that as writers for children we are doing important work, because if we mess it up and write dull books that turn children away from reading and from books, we 've lessened our own future and diminished theirs. We all – adults and children, writers and readers – have an obligation to daydream. We have an obligation to imagine. It is easy to pretend that nobody can change anything, that we are in a world in which society is huge and the individual is less than nothing: an atom in a wall, a grain of rice in a rice field. But the truth is, individuals change their world over and over, individuals make the future, and they do it by imagining that things can be different.

Look around you: I mean it. Pause, for a moment and look around the room that you are in. I'm going to point out something so obvious that it tends to be forgotten. It's this: that everything you can see, including the walls, was, at some point, imagined. Someone decided it was easier to sit on a chair than on the ground and imagined the chair. Someone had to imagine a way that I could talk to you in London right now without us all getting rained on.This room and the things in it, and all the other things in this building, this city, exist because, over and over and over, people imagined things. We have an obligation to make things beautiful. Not to leave the world uglier than we found it, not to empty the oceans, not to leave our problems for the next generation. We have an obligation to clean up after ourselves, and not leave our children with a world we've shortsightedly messed up, shortchanged, and crippled. We have an obligation to tell our politicians what we want, to vote against politicians of whatever party who do not understand the value of reading in creating worthwhile citizens, who do not want to act to preserve and protect knowledge and encourage literacy.
This is not a matter of party politics. This is a matter of common humanity.

 Albert Einstein was asked once how we could make our children intelligent. His reply was both simple and wise. "If you want your children to be intelligent," he said, "read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales." He understood the value of reading, and of imagining. I hope we can give our children a world in which they will read, and be read to, and imagine, and understand.

Shudder by Samantha Durante 2013 Blog Tour - Interview!

Back in March I wrote a short review (click to read synopsis) on Stitch. I recommend this series - the plot line is amazing, and just keeps getting better. If you like zombies, post-apocalyptic stories, politics, suspense, little bit of romance, adventure, and a strong young woman protagonist, then this is book is for you. So if you haven't read the first book in the series, you can check it out on :Amazon and Goodreads.  Just $0.99! 

I recently got the opportunity to interview the author on the release of the second book in the Stitch trilogy - Shudder! I am so excited about this!

Hi Sam! How are you today?

Hey Pree!  I’m doing well, very excited to be here!  :-)

I just finished reading Shudder last night. :-D  it was so intriguing I want to ask you what Stuck is going to be like, but aaah! I know you won’t tell me.

Glad you liked it!!  I actually couldn’t tell you about Stuck even if I wanted to, since I haven’t started writing it yet, haha.  However, I will tell you that there’s still plenty of excitement in store for Alessa and the gang, including some big setbacks that will require them to think creatively about how to take down Paragon...

 

Ah! But you did write the epilogue, and that was pretty intense as it is!

Yes, the epilogue definitely sets the stage for some major conflict coming in the third book...

I was wondering if you could give our readers a small synopsis as to what Stitch leading to Shudder is about?

Sure, for anyone who’s not familiar, the Stitch Trilogy is a YA/NA dystopian series with some romance and paranormal elements mixed in.  Stitch starts out seeming like a college ghost romance, but there’s a BIG sci-fi twist in store for our protagonists - I can’t say too much without ruining it - but suffice it to say, nothing the characters think is going on is real.  Shudder is the continuation of their story and reveals a lot more about the background of their world and is more of an action-packed thriller with lots of surprises for our characters!

So Shudder was very different – stylistically- from Stich. Can you explain? I loved both, but Shudder definitely shows how you have matured as a writer. Which means Stuck can only be super awesome.

Haha, well hopefully I haven’t set the bar *too* high!  But thanks for the compliments.  :-)  Stitch was my first book, and due to the nature of the twist, it’s more of a slow burn - there’s a lot of build-up as you get to know the characters and their backgrounds, until eventually you’re knocked over the head with this huge revelation right along with Alessa.  The book pretty much takes off at lightning speed from there, and Shudder picks up right where Stitch leaves off.  So in Book 2, it was easier to keep the pace high since all the world-building and character introductions had already been taken care of in Stitch.  And of course, I’m always listening closely to reader feedback, so I tried to tailor Shudder to what readers were looking for - more action, more romance, more interactions between the characters, etc.  Naturally, the genre-bending twist in Stitch was hard to top, but I think Shudder does a good job of keeping the story engaging by filling in all the details and dropping a few new bombshells.

What inspired the story behind Stitch? What inspired the ideas?

The idea for Stitch came from my attempt to give a happy ending to a ghost romance.  How could I get the ghost and the girl in the same place at the same time, given that he’s been dead for 100 years?  The solution I came up with was a *little* out-of-the-box, but the more I thought about it, the more excited I became about the story.  I just kept wishing someone would write this book, so eventually I realized that maybe I should do it, lol.  And from there on out, I just looked at different stories that I’d enjoyed and tried to borrow elements I loved and piece them all together to create something new.

That makes so much sense...  :)

Are you a fan of apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic, zombie, science fiction, supernatural, psychological, thrillers?

Yes, yes, yes, and more yes!  I love ALL of these genres - hence the ginormous mash-up of all these genres in the Stitch Trilogy.  :-)  I couldn’t choose just one!

What are some of your favorite sci-fi books? Fantasy books? Adventure/horror books? Your favorite books as a teenager?

I became a fan of the dystopian genre in middle/high school when we read classics like The Giver, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, etc.  I also got into sci-fi kind of young with A Wrinkle in Time, which was kind of mind-blowing as a kid.  Some more recent favorites include The Hunger Games, the Divergent and Delirium series, and on the fantasy side, Twilight, Game of Thrones, the Eragon series, plus classics like Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia.  I actually haven’t read too much horror, which is surprising b/c I’d consider that one of my favorite genres - I definitely watch a lot of horror movies, but in terms of reading, it’s mostly been short stories.  I guess I’ll have to add some more to my TBR!

I've never read "a wrinkle in time" but I think I saw the movie...

Hmm, I don’t think I’ve seen the movie - I can’t even imagine how they’d film some of that stuff!  I’ll have to check it out.  :-)

If you could be a character from Game of Thrones who would you be? (random question) and why?
Game of thrones Spoiler alert :-P

I would be Daenerys Targaryen, because she’s so goddamn FIERCE.  And she’s kind and fair and a good leader.  I hope she marries Jon Snow and takes it all - Westeros, Beyond the Wall, everything over the Narrow Sea -  in the end.  That would make me SO happy.

I love Dany too. She isn't too exciting in book 2 but I hope it picks up in book 3. I can see you as Dany.

Aw, thank you!  I’d have to get a lot blonder though, lol.

In this book we are introduced to the people that run Paragon. Are they the “ruling class”?

Shudder brings you up close and personal with the Engineers, the previously faceless leaders behind the “Ruling Class.”  While they’re definitely part of that class, there *is* an important distinction to make - whereas most members of the Ruling Class are generally good citizens who have just gone a little wrong by abusing their privileges, the Engineers are another story.  They’re the masterminds behind the whole scheme of Paragon, and while they might think they’re trying to do good towards the people of Paragon, I think most readers would agree that they have an interesting way of showing it.  So even though the Engineers are the de facto rulers of Paragon, I wouldn’t lump them in with the Ruling Class as a whole.  They definitely have their own motivations and agenda, beyond what the Ruling Class is trying to achieve.

The Developer, the Engineer, the Economist and so on. In one of the chapters they are explained in detail. Is there a reason they are all male? Can you tell us more about these guys, their qualifications, their ideas and what makes them the expert in their field (ie. who were they before paragon?).

Check out this guest post (an Engineers “Cheat Sheet” if you will) from earlier in the tour for a full run-down of who each of the Engineers are and where they come from.  As far as why they’re all male (and white, I might add), that’s because who else would come up with such a barbaric idea as Paragon besides rich white men who think they know better than everyone else?  I’ve never met a woman with little enough empathy or compassion to ever consider doing something this extreme, and unless you’ve spent your entire life under a cloak of privilege like white males in our society generally do, you would never even conceive of the kind of ideas that the Engineers have enacted.  I know that’s generalizing - and there’s always an exception to the rule - but at its core, the Stitch Trilogy is about one powerful class of people oppressing everyone else.  And in the real world, let’s face it, it’s usually men doing the oppressing.

Amen sister! :)

Personally I found these guys intriguing because they essentially, like you say in the book, play god. Their arrogance is what really moves me, cause like Phoenix, I am somewhat brainwashed too.

Yeah, that was something that was important to me to dissect a bit in Shudder - I didn’t want the bad guys to just be evil for the sake of evil.  I wanted to explore how evil is really perpetrated, even by otherwise normal people who might even believe they’re doing good.  Passion and arrogance are a very dangerous combination.  We see it all the time with religious extremists, whether they’re Muslim terrorists or over-zealous Christians hating on gay people (or pretty much anyone who’s different than that they consider “normal”).  Anyone who believes so strongly in their own viewpoint that they refuse to acknowledge others’ - and especially anyone who can communicate well enough to win new believers over to their side - is a threat to all of us.  There can be no peace without tolerance, and there’s no tolerance when you think everyone else’s opinions are invalid.

I totally agree with you... So well said.

Thank you.  :-)

Question for Janie- Janie do you hope to meet a real nice guy soon? I understand that now is not the time or place to look for a boyfriend, but do you hope? Also describe your ideal man.

Thanks so much for inviting me along today, Pree!  Of COURSE I’d love to meet a good guy.  Like you said, Paragon is not exactly an ideal dating pool, but hey, love happens - I’m certainly keeping my eye out.  I don’t have a “type” necessarily, I just want someone fun and trustworthy, someone who makes me laugh.  You know, the usual.  :-)

The usual? You're a special girl Janie! But I hear you def someone as energetic as you! Where do all the characters work out at?

Haha, if mandatory labor counts as working out, then Paragon is a very effective fitness program!

Janie- do you resent Alessa sometimes for 1-escaping 2-being happy with Isaac? I know she’s your sister, but there is sometimes sisterly rivalry. I was just wondering how the events have affected your relationship with Less.

Well, naturally, I love my sister and I want what’s best for her.  It wasn’t easy to stay behind and let her go, but I knew the rebellion needed her, so I did what was asked of me.  And Isaac is amazing, but yes, I certainly feel like a third wheel around them sometimes...  Less and I fight like any other siblings, but in the end, I know she’s always trying to protect me, so I try to let stuff go.  She’s the only family I’ve got left, after all.  She’s a pain sometimes, but she means well.

Third wheel sucks! But as a sister you get used to it... I know from experience!

Janie- what do you hope for the future of paragon? The rebels? And you?

 I just hope that someday we can all get along and live happily ever after!

Janie- if a movie was made about your life who would you have play you?

 Willa Holland, but she’d have to get a good bob.

She acts in Arrow the TV show. I love that show- guilty pleasure! Do you watch it? Almost dystopian...

Ohh, I haven’t seen it, I’ll have to update my DVR!

We’ve seen a lot from Alessa’s perspective, Isaac, Nikhil, and Lizzie, but will we see anything from Janie’s perspective next book?

(This is Samantha answering again!)  We’ll definitely see a lot more Janie next book, but I’m not 100% positive yet if I’ll write any chapters from her POV.  It’s definitely not off the table, but I try not to bring in extra POVs unless the story warrants it.  We’ll have to see how things go.  :-)

I'd love her perspective... although similar to Alessa, her character has grown to a personality of her own.

Questions for Phoenix- what was it like when you faced the various founders of paragon? Were you scared, awestruck?

I was definitely a little freaked out.  I couldn’t remember who I was, and with all the injuries I’d sustained, I was having trouble processing everything... Information overload!

I  was scared they were going to physically hurt you more... As in...

Phew, yeah, luckily I was too out of it mentally to even consider that possibility... otherwise I would have been a lot more worried!

Phoenix- how can you knowing what you know, think what you think is superior to those of experts, ie the founders of Paragon? They are obviously older, more educated, experienced than you are, how does knowing that make you feel what you think is right? (I hope this question is clear) :-P

I think I get what you’re saying.  Well, I guess the short answer is I think everyone’s entitled to an opinion.  You should certainly take what the experts say into account, but it’s impossible to agree with everyone, so sometimes you just have to go with your gut.

What's the long answer? Or is that for Stuck? ;-)

Let’s save the long answer for Stuck  ;-)

Phoenix- if a movie was made about your life who would you have play you?

Katheryn Winnick! 

What did she act in? I def saw you as a Regina from mean girls... But Ms. Winnick is quite on the dot too...

I think Katheryn Winnick is best known for her role on the TV show Vikings. Oh wow, Rachel McAdams is gorgeous so that’s quite a compliment!  But she’s very thin - I’ve got a little more going on in the curves department.  :-)

Samantha- seeing this book is for young adults, would you ever expose them to the brutal reality of 1-politics 2-loss and death (especially of characters we’ve grown to love) 3-heartbreak?

Absolutely - these things are part of life, and experiencing them through characters we love is part of how we learn how to cope with these things in our own lives.  Young adult or not, we all need to face these hardships at one point or another.  Reading can be cathartic in its own right.

Oh no now I'm going to be worried...should I be? Please not Janie. :(

(Janie butting in) PLEASE NOT JANIE!!!

Where is Paragon? is it in USA? or is this left unknown on purpose? I like it like that but would love to see maps someday!

I didn’t want to tie Paragon to any one real place so that I could have total freedom in setting up the geography/history, etc., but Paragon and the surrounding area is based on the Northeast US (NY/NJ/CT/PA) where I grew up, since I know that area best.  I do have a very rudimentary map that I whipped up in PowerPoint to help me measure distances and make sure that Isaac and Alessa’s timelines were realistic while traveling outside Paragon, but it’s not pretty.  I would need to hire an artist or something if you wanted a real map!

I love that you did that. I'd totally help you do a map! I am a cartographer/geographer! let me know.

Oh awesome!

If you have to pick one character to be in Shudder, who would you be and Why!?!?

Alessa, because she’s already a lot like me, so it’d be an easy transition!

This makes sense, I can almost see the similarities... so are you an empath too?

Haha, NOT quite... but I do like to think I’m pretty intuitive and good at reading others’ feelings.

Thanks so much for doing this Sam! I hope to do more author interview with you, or if you would want to do a guest blog sometime about motivation, writing, women entrepreneurs, leadership etc. I’d love to have you guest write!

Thanks so much for hosting today!!  I’d love to come back for a guest post sometime!

Lots of Love!

-Pree

Author Samantha Durante

About Sam:

Samantha Durante lives in Westchester County, New York with her husband, Sudeep, and her cat, Gio. Formerly an engineer at Microsoft, Samantha left the world of software in 2010 to pursue her entrepreneurial dreams and a lifelong love of writing. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Jerome Fisher Program in Management & Technology, Samantha is currently working full time for her company Medley Media Associates as a freelance business writer and communications consultant. The Stitch Trilogy is her debut series. Learn more about Samantha at www.samanthadurante.com.

Length: ~80,000 words (348 pages)

Sample Chapters: Ch1-4 (31 pages)

Release Date: June 15th, 2013

Links
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LibraryThing: Stitch | Shudder | Author Samantha Durante
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Breathe!