Interview - Kami Garcia/Margaret Stohl

This summer, I had the awesome opportunity to read an ARC of Beautiful Creatures, by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl.  I fell in love with the characters, the story, everything!  So, today, I am honored to bring you an interview with the authors.  I am so honored that they agreed to do this!

photo credit:  Alex Hoerner

WFAR (Write For A Reader):  Tell a little about yourself.

Margie: I’ve had my nose stuck in a book since Kindergarten. I didn’t speak to anyone outside my family until third grade. I went to a college where I could take only literature and writing classes. I went to a writing school in the UK. I wrote screenplays. I made videogames. I have a husband, three daughters, and two bad beagles. And I read a book almost every day of my life.

Kami: I’ve been writing since I was a kid, and spent most of high school filling about forty notebooks with poetry. I’ve always been a reader, drawn to fantasy in particular, since I’ve always been a little dark. I have an MA in education, and I’ve been teaching for thirteen years. Currently, I’m a Reading Specialist and when I’m not teaching kids to read, I’m discussing books with them.

WFAR:  How did you end up writing a book together?

Margie: We’ve been friends for so long, we emigrated over from being book- swappers to critique partners to writing partners. I guess we just ran out of other things to talk about!

Kami:  And the fact that Margie’s daughters, and some of my other former students, dared us to do it. We were always talking books with them, and I taught them to be demanding readers when they were in my class. They definitely remembered the demanding part – but it’s the reason we wrote and finished BEAUTIFUL CREATURES.

WFAR:  Can you give us some of the back story on BC?  How did this story come to be?

Margie:  It involves a long lunch, lots of Diet Coke, writing on the backs of many napkins, a love of the South, and the words “Sixteen Moons.” From there it was a short leap to Ethan, and telling a supernatural boy meets girl story from the perspective of the boy. Everything just sort of rolled out from there.

Kami:  It was a completely caffeinated, salsa-induced, brainstorming session of epic proportions.

WFAR:  BC is set in the South and you live in California. Did either of you live in the south once? If not, how did you decide on this setting?

Margie:  Our maternal families are both from tiny towns, mine in the west and Kami’s in the South. We both eventually lived with these three generations under one roof, so we have a shared casserole culture between us. I also came to the South through spending many years studying American Literature, and loving Eudora Welty and Harper Lee and Flannery O’Connor.

Kami:  My mom’s family is from North Carolina, and living with my grandmother and great-grandmother, I lived in a world of sweet tea and sass. My mom still remembers her summers on her aunt and uncle’s farm. But small towns are small towns, aren’t they?

WFAR:  What made you choose the YA genre?

Margie:  That’s what we read. My teenage girls and I are practically our own book club!

Kami:  We read YA, so there was never a question about writing it. I think YA is raw and real in a way few genres are. We’re pretty raw.

WFAR:  You have a blog called the Caster Girls. Can you tell the readers about the significance of the Caster Girls and how they can find out more about them? (plugging Vania's blog; it's shameless, I know)

Margie:  The Caster Girls are the girls who have been our first readers, right from the start. The blog their own authentic teen voices, which we felt were important to put out there. They can always be found at www.castergirls.com, or from links at http://www.beautifulcreaturesthebook.com/.

Kami:  The blog is actually theirs. They run it, write it, and maintain it. And they do an amazing job.

WFAR:  Lena, the main character, is a strong-willed character. Is she based on anyone?

Margie:  She’s more of a reaction to many YA heroines than anything else. We wanted her to be powerful and strong and opinionated. The teen girls we know are more individualistic and brave than we are!

Kami:  Lena is as strong as we wished we were as teens. She wants to be herself. But more importantly, she tries to be.

WFAR:  Can we expect a sequel? If so, have you already started? Title?

Margie:  The sequel is just finished, hooray! And we can’t tell you the title yet, but soon!

Kami:  We think the sequel will be out next December, and there are lots of surprises.

WFAR:  What are your writing "must haves,” the things you just can't write without?

Margie:  I think they’ve been fairly well documented: Diet Coke, Starbucks, Wheat Thins, Earphones, Reading Glasses, my MacBook Air and the soundtrack to Spring Awakening. Though sometimes my sister- in-law will make me a mix to go with what I am working on; I’ve had both a Sixteen Moons and a Seventeen Moons writing playlist that have really helped. And I have to start writing with the same song, every time.

Kami:  Aside from food, which Margie covered, I need quiet to write. No music. I hear the voices of the characters in my head as I write, and I need silence to hear them.

WFAR:  How does it feel as you wait to see your book on bookstore shelves?

Margie:  Crazy. Surreal. Amazing. Like a dream. The first time I saw the ARC I cried like a baby. The first time I saw the book on the shelf I forced Anna the bookseller to autograph it.

Kami: The book is actually on the shelves, and it is totally surreal. It’s like I’m living in an alternate universe, looking at something that someone with the same name as me wrote.

Fast Five: Margie

Favorite food and drink – Cheese & Diet Coke
Place you've always wanted to go – Prague
Favorite place to read – In bed with my 8 reading next to me
Word you love to use – “You know what I mean?”
Your wish – for my family to finally not have the flu anymore. And once that happens, to get to keep writing!

Fast Five: Kami
Favorite food and drink – Hot Fudge Sundaes & Diet Coke
Place you've always wanted to go – Italy
Favorite place to read – In bed
Word you love to use – Seriously?
Your wish – For everyone I love to be happy and healthy, and readers to find the book that makes a difference for them. Hopefully, for some, it will be BEAUTIFUL CREATURES.

WFAR:  Ladies, thank you so much for allowing me to interview you.  Beautiful Creatures is a wonderful book and I can't wait for the sequel!!

You can keep up with Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl at http://www.beautifulcreaturesthebook.com/.

Visit Little, Brown’s Beautiful Creatures website at http://www.somelovesarecursed.com/.

Beautiful Creatures is out in stores and would make a wonderful gift for Christmas!
Buy it at Amazon
Buy it at Powells
Buy it at Indiebound

Amazon.com's Best of 2009

I just received this press release in an email, and had to share it with you.  Many of you know that I am a huge fan of Kami Garcia and Margie Stohl, co-authors of Beautiful Creatures.  This is such awesome news for them and the authors of the other books on this list.  Congrats to all!

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Amazon.com Unveils Best Books of 2009, Including Editors’ Top 100 Books of the Year

Amazon.com book editors announce their favorite 100 books of 2009, as well as top 100 customer favorites, the majority of which are available on Kindle

SEATTLE—Nov. 2, 2009—Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced its picks for Best Books of 2009. This annual feature includes the Editors’ Picks for the Top 100 Books of the Year, Top 100 Customer Favorites, Top 10 lists for both editors and customers in nearly two dozen categories, including Literature & Fiction and Cooking, Food & Wine, as well as videos of the year. The majority of the Best Books of 2009 are available on Kindle via wireless download in less than 60 seconds. To see the full list of the Top 100 Books of the Year, as well as the other features for Best Books of 2009, go to www.amazon.com/bestbooks2009.

Amazon.com’s Book Blog, Omnivoracious.com, began previewing the Top 100 Books on Oct. 26, starting at 100 and working backward. This end-of-year list highlights Amazon.com editors’ picks for the best 100 books that were released in 2009. Customers looking for holiday shopping recommendations or to stock their own bookshelves will find an eclectic list, from a celebrity memoir that’s better than any celebrity memoir deserves to be to a not-yet-released young-adult novel that’s a serious contender for the coveted spot of “the next ‘Twilight.’”

“Our editorial team spends the whole year reading new releases with our Best Books of the Year lists in mind, and every year it proves to be our most popular feature among our customers,” said Tom Nissley, senior editor of Amazon.com Books. “Deciding on our Top 100 Books can often get a little contentious, but this year our choice for the Best Book of the Year, Colum McCann’s ‘Let the Great World Spin,’ was the closest we’ve ever come to a unanimous pick across the entire Amazon.com Books team. Many readers have already fallen in love with this moving story of New York City in the mid-‘70s, centered around Philippe Petit’s audaciously graceful tightrope walk between the Twin Towers, and we’re looking forward to sharing it with many more.”

Today, the Top 10 is live on Amazon.com. The Best Book of the Year, “Let the Great World Spin” by Colum McCann, was June’s Best Book of the Month, and also appeared on the Best Books of 2009… So Far list.

Here’s a quick peek at the Top 10:

1. “Let the Great World Spin” by Colum McCann: A gorgeous and moving story of 10 varied and intense New York lives, set against the backdrop of Philippe Petit’s 1974 Twin Tower tightrope crossing, that will appeal to readers of Frank McCourt, Jonathan Lethem or E.L. Doctorow.

2. “Strength in What Remains” by Tracy Kidder: In a sequel of sorts to his bestselling “Mountains Beyond Mountains,” Kidder follows, with clear-eyed empathy, the remarkable journey of a young man from the genocide in Burundi to homelessness and then a medical degree in the United States, and back to his home country to build a desperately needed health clinic.

3. “Wolf Hall” by Hilary Mantel: The most popular Man Booker Prize winner in years was an early favorite for us too: a thrillingly confident reinvention of one of the most familiar tales in the bloody history of the British monarchy.

4. “Brooklyn” by Colm Toibin: Toibin’s story of an industrious young girl in 1950s Ireland who reluctantly finds herself on a boat to New York City is elegantly told and full of beautiful, bittersweet moments.

5. “Beautiful Creatures” by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl: Everyone wants to find "the next ‘Twilight.’" We think this is it: a tale of star-crossed, small-town teens that draws you into a lush world of mystery and magic from the very first page.

6. “Crazy for the Storm” by Norman Ollestad: Ollestad has written a memoir that will last—just the story itself could take your breath away: as an 11-year-old boy, he was the only survivor in a small-plane crash and made his way to safety down an icy mountain face in a blizzard, using the skills and determination he learned from his father (who perished in the crash).

7. “The Girl Who Played with Fire” by Steig Larsson: No sophomore slump here: the second book in Larsson's thrilling trilogy is even more heart-racing than “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” as Larsson dives further into the fascinating character of his heroine, Lisbeth Salander.

8. “The City & The City” by China Meiville: Fans of hard-boiled mysteries and literary suspense will love “The City and the City,” Meiville’s ingenious breakout novel that imagines two cities coexisting on the eastern edge of Europe: one dying, one thriving, and both home to a host of mysterious secrets.

9. “Stitches” by David Small: Small, best known until now as a Caldecott-winning children's illustrator, finds a voice for the terrors of his own childhood in this delicate and haunting graphic memoir of a boy learning to stand on his own.

10. “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind” by William Kamkwamba: Kamkwamba's memoir is an unabashedly inspirational story of a teenager in famine-stricken Malawi who ingeniously turns the few resources at hand (scrap metal, borrowed textbooks and wind) into a powerful source of energy for his village.

Because of A Book with Margaret Stohl

 

Today, I am proud to welcome Margaret Stohl to Write For A Reader.  Margaret, or Margie as some call her, is one half of the awesome writing duo that is responsible for the upcoming YA release, Beautiful Creatures (Dec '09).  Let me share with you a little bit about her, in her own words.

Writing has gotten me in and out of trouble since I was 15 (back then, mostly just in trouble.) I have written everything from video games and video game manuals to live action screenplays (one optioned, many never happened) and animation (one optioned, one never happened), as well as poetry in the UK & the US, marketing documents in Vegas, coverage for a big Hollywood agency where a guy walked around with a writing crop hitting desks, and an Imax movie (come to think of it, not sure what ever happened to that...?) For 10 years, I designed &/or wrote for lots of video games, one of which was nominated for “Most Innovative Game Design,” but I lost to a rapping onion. If you know games you get why my two bad beagles are named Zelda and Kirby.

School: I spent more years in it than a person ever should, because let’s face it, reading books is so much better than having a job. I fell in love with American literature at Amherst and Yale, earned an MA in English from Stanford, and studied creative writing under the late great poet George MacBeth at the University of East Anglia, Norwich. I taught Intro to Film as a TA at Yale and Romantic Poetry as a TA at Stanford. Don’t tell the people at Yale but sometimes I taught the section before I’d seen the movie it was about...

I live in Santa Monica, CA, with my family, most of whom were enslaved into working with me in one form or another on my forthcoming YA book for Little, Brown. I’m not kidding; when my daughters wanted to go to school I said “Why are you so selfish? Get back in there and edit,” and by said I mean yelled and maybe threw things, it’s all a haze. I have a writing partner named Kami and she is why we ever get anything done. (Well, K and the daughter-slaves...)

And so we wrote a book this year, and it’s going to come out in lots and lots of countries in a few months. And I am really, really hoping there is no hot title about a rapping onion coming out at the same time. 

You can find Margie on her blog, at Goodreads, at the Beautiful Creatures Facebook page, and at the Beautiful Creatures website.

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On car trips long before car seats, the three of us lay in the back of the station wagon in the night. My mom read aloud by the dim light of the glove compartment. The glass on the window was cold, and I would press my face against it and look out in the dark desert sky, trying not to let my brothers see me cry. Banner in the Sky. Where the Red Fern Grows. The Outsiders. Ah, Ponyboy. At gas stations we shuffled out of the car, jarred by the smell of the gasoline and the lights and the Cheetos, hiding our wet faces until we could disappear into the story and the Way Back again.  At least, that’s how I remember about those trips, though I’ve forgotten where we were going.

I remember hiding in my closet with a pillow and Jello powder stolen out of the garage, reading the entire Narnia series. Sitting high up in our avocado tree reading A Wrinkle in Time and The Witch of Blackbird Pond. Crowding under the steps of our classroom bungalow with Pam Ling, to recite the poem from the front of The Dark is Rising books. “When the Dark Comes Rising, Six Shall Turn it Back/Three From the Circle, Three From the Track…”

I read the Little House books by my nightlight, even though the shadows scared me, and The Girl of the Limberlost on the piano bench instead of practicing. I held Anne of Green Gables low enough in the church pew that you might confuse it for the Bible. When we visited my grandma, I stole into her linoleum basement and borrowed everything from my mom’s old bookshelf, with battered covers and titles like Sal Fisher at Girl Scout Camp, Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, and one about a particularly dashing student nurse named Cherry Ames. To this day, even my daughters have been known to exclaim, “Pshaw, Mrs. Shaw, and all the Little Shaws!”

Because of a book, I had Fancies. I knew that, if caught in a thicket, rowan and ash would protect you from Dark Magic. Likewise, a Highway was old magic, neither Light nor Dark, so our station wagon was vulnerable in traffic on the 405. I believed that eyes flashed when angry, a boy traced a girl’s cheeks with a thumb just before a kiss, and that you could be stricken if caught out in the rain, though I was vague on the details. I pined for lawn and muslin, fine whalebone stitching, dressing gowns and/or smoking jackets (and yes, if you had asked me I would have used the word pined.) Thought I had not even the smallest bustle, I still hoped to live in a gabled house overlooking an azure sea/apple orchard/Sunnybrook Farm with a cupola and a garret, a root cellar and a grape arbor. A secret garden would be ideal, but I’d settle for a veranda. In fact, I’d pull right up to it in my surrey and pass a pleasant afternoon on the settee in the parlor with a cherry cordial and a thick slice of icebox cake.

Because of a book, I’d hold warm salt against your ear if it ached, make an onion poultice or a mustard plaster for your chest if you had galloping consumption, the aigue, or even a fainting spell. Dropsy. Horsehair. Battenberg. Petit fours. Kid gloves. Real silk stockings. A muff. I’d have come calling and left you my card. My name was probably Lavinia, and I was here for the High Season. Or the Grand Tour. Or cream tea in the drawing room. Or as a companion for my aunt, Her Ladyship, who was of a Higher Station. I hoped I wasn’t being forward. I demurred.

Because of a book, I was never quite sure where I was, what you just said, or why I should know things like, say, 4 x 7. “Never hold a lady by her arm,” said I, at five, to my father, while getting out of the station wagon. “You, sir, are either a jealous husband, or you’re insane.” What can I say? I was always looking for a duel, or at least fisticuffs and a few boxed ears.

Because of a book, I went to study at the school that had Emily Dickinson’s house on campus. I took 36 English classes. I went to a Writers Program in the UK and took more. Because of a book – because of a thousand – I began to write.

Because of a book, I have never once had a single thing I Fancied – neither mustard plaster nor cupola -- yet I have somehow always had all of them. Because of a book, I had Expectations. Tens of thousands of books later, I expect I still do.

And that, as someone in a book once said, has made all the difference.

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About Beautiful Creatures:
There were no surprises in Gatlin County
We were pretty much the epicenter of the middle of nowhere.
At least, that’s what I thought.
Turns out, I couldn’t have been more wrong.

There was a curse.
There was a girl.
And in the end, there was a grave.

Lena Duchannes is unlike anyone the small Southern town of Gatlin has ever seen, and she’s struggling to conceal her power, and a curse that has haunted her family for generations. But even within the overgrown gardens, murky swamps, and crumbling graveyards of the forgotten South, a secret cannot stay hidden forever.

Ethan Wate, who has been counting the months until he can escape from Gatlin, is haunted by dreams of a beautiful girl he has never met. When Lena moves into the town’s oldest and most infamous plantation, Ethan is inexplicably drawn to her and determined to uncover the connection between them.

In a town with no surprises, one secret could change everything.

Pre-order it at Amazon

About The Outsiders:  First published by Viking in 1967, The Outsiders immediately resonated with young adults. This groundbreaking novel was like nothing else out there—it was honest and gritty, and was a deeply sympathetic portrayal of Ponyboy, a young man who finds himself on the outside of regular society. Forty years later, with over thirteen million copies sold, the story is as fresh and powerful to teenagers today as it ever was.

Buy it at Amazon
Buy it at Powells