Month: August 2013

All About Amanda Ashby and DEMONOSITY

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BY MINDI SCOTT

Amanda Ashby has a new book out this week–DEMONOSITY–which sounds so fun and cute!

Demonosity.small

Check out the summary:

The Black Rose–a powerful ancient force–has been let loose and has taken up residence in Celeste Gibson, popular girl at Cassidy Carter-Lewis’ high school. Thomas Delacroix is the spirit of a fourteenth-century knight who is devoted to protecting the Black Rose, but he needs a contemporary living being to take on the challenge. That’s where Cassidy comes in.

She’s a quirky high school junior who just wants to dress in her vintage clothes, hang out with her best friend, and take care of her father, who is recovering from surgery. She’s the last person who would ever volunteer for such a task, but no one actually asked her. Now, like it or not, she finds herself training before dawn and battling demons at parties, the mall, and even at school. But hey, no one ever said high school was going to be easy.

I’m loving that Buffy vibe in the description!

Amanda Ashby took some time to answer a few questions for me below. To learn even more about her and her books you can, check out her website, or follow her on Twitter or Facebook! 

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At age eight, what did you want to be when you grew up? And at age eighteen? And while you’re at it, what about at age twenty-eight?

Amanda Ashby: At eight my sole ambition was to marry Will Robinson from Lost in Space and I remember quite clearly trying to break his leg so that I could then race in and care for him. At eighteen I had decided it might be quite good to be a journalist but three weeks after starting my college degree in the subject I realized that telling the truth all the time was not for me. At twenty-eight I had finally put the pieces of puzzle together and realized that anyone could think of breaking a leg as a plot device to get two characters together (and who seemed to hate telling the truth) was probably destined to be a writer.

Which Breakfast-Club-style label would have best fit your teenage self?  

AA: Fringe girl! I was always a bit left of centre at school, though I’m not sure I even knew it. However, when I look back at the secondhand shopping I used to do and all the strange outfits I used to wear, I realize I wasn’t quite like other girls (which is of course why I loved John Hughes movies so much and why I still haven’t forgiven my husband for throwing out my Pretty in Pink album during one of our moves).

Without giving away too much from your newest book, which character or scene from it are you the most pleased to have created, and why?

AA: Toward the end of the book Cassidy has had a fight with Thomas—who is medieval demon knight. Unfortunately he can’t travel forward in time so he is just an apparition and the only way for him to see what’s happening in her time is through the eyes of an owl. Anyway, after this big fight she goes out for a run and the owl/Thomas is flying beside her, trying to get her to stop. She is so mad at him and so upset that even when I think about it, I can feel her fury rising up through my chest. It was a really wonderful scene to write. Plus, you know, it had an owl, which is always cool!

Which are your favorite movies to watch again and again?

AA: Thank you for making that a plural. For a moment there I thought I could only list one! Anyway some of my favorites are: Breakfast Club, Pretty in Pink, Princess Bride, Clueless, Jurassic Park, Star Wars, Love Actually, Pitch Perfect, Sense and Sensibility (Emma and Kate version), Galaxy Quest, Serenity, The Avengers, Shaun of the Dead.

And, now, the most important question of all: Beatles or Elvis? Please support your answer. 😉

AA: Easy! It’s the Beatles because my husband is a Scouser (which means he was born and bred in Liverpool) and I lived there for six years – some of that time just down the road from Ringo’s house. And also because Blackbird is one of my favorite songs in the world.

That Time I Fangirled My Own Character. Sort of.

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by Michelle Andreani

First, a little background: Remember when Mindi and I blogged about what Kyle and Cloudy look like? When figuring that out, we decided to use actual humans as a reference. Since we were writing the same characters, we needed the same pictures in our heads.  A good plan, yes? Yes! I agree.

The unfortunate part of all this was I didn’t know the name of the Cloudy-ish girl I’d chosen. (I’d saved the photo a few years ago — for another WIP — and never bothered to add her name when doing so. NICE FORESIGHT, MICHELLE CIRCA 2009.) It would’ve been nice to see if she looked Cloudy-ish in any other photos. And I felt rotten for not being able to credit her and the photographer in my post. Alas! In the end, it didn’t seem completely necessary to know who she was. So, that was that.

But then . . . it wasn’t!

Because God and MTV put Catfish on the air, which brought Google Image Search into our hearts and lives. Finally, I was able to find out this Cloudy-ish girl’s name! (FYI: It’s Devynne. And I only omit her last name in the hopes that she never, ever sees the nerdiness this hath wrought.) So, yep, I was VERY EXCITED when I found out. Very!

I rushed to edit that previous post, and finally give credit where it was due.  A few days later, I innocently clicked on a WordPress link (fine, it was an EW article about The Vampire Diaries), and I saw that I had a notification pending. A pretty, yellow star! It was this notification:

devynne_note

Guys.

WHAT.

NO.

BRB.

It was terrifyinggggggg.

Right away, I discounted the possibility that this was an Impostor Devynne . . . I don’t know why. Because I felt like it? After that, I was able to focus on the reality of her knowing I’d based a fictional character ON HER FACE. And clearly, she was now commenting to say I was big time creep, and to quit it already, oh and also she’s calling her lawyer.

But that wasn’t her comment at all.  She was full-on lovely — especially considering it is maybe not the most normal thing to stumble upon yourself in this context. She didn’t think I was crazy! Or, I mean, she didn’t SAY IT in text form, which totally counts legally!!!!!

So, then things went a little like this:

I’m serious. I had the kind of out-of-body experience that only comes from the purest, code-red kind of fangirling. Obviously, Devynne is not Cloudy. She is her own person, and very much incredibly separate from the Cloudy I know. But for a little while, just like when I met Max Irons (swoooon), it was sort of like this person who doesn’t actually exist did, well, exist. And she’d broken through and talked to me.

So I texted Mindi, and while I’m sure she was like, “Hey, that’s cool, just maybe calm the eff down?”, she nonethless gave me the sage advice to reply in a gracious and complimentary manner. So I did — at least, I hope I did. (After a looooot of agonizing, obviously.)

And I think I succeeded! Maybe not. I haven’t heard from any lawyers., though. That’s something! 😉

More Than Words

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BY MINDI SCOTT

The other night as I was falling asleep, I came up with an idea for a blog post! My mind was going crazy with how great it was going to be:

I’ll write about [this] and [this] and [this]! And I’ll find a picture of [this] to include. Oh, and also use [this] as a cute anecdote. (And why can I never spell that word? Antecdote? Antidote? What?) Then I’ll embed the video for the song “More Than Words” at the end to tie it all together. YES!!!!!!

A funny thing happened. As you might guess from all the brackets above, I woke up the next morning with no recollection of anything that the Super-Great Blog Post was meant to include except for the video. I’ve thought about it long and hard, but the idea has not returned to me.

This meant that I had a choice to make. I could continue to not have a post on “We Have Words” featuring “More Than Words,” or I could, you know, post the video for no good reason at all.

This is it. This is what I have to do:

 

I think I made the right choice.

(One thing I do want to say about this, which probably has nothing at all to do with my blog post that is forever forgotten: This song and the video for “More Than Words” by Extreme came out when I was in eighth grade. I remember that there was much tittering amongst my friends and me about the fact that that one guy flips off the camera while playing guitar. As I’ve gotten older, I’d come to think that we were silly and clearly knew nothing about how guitar playing works to think he did that on purpose. HOWEVER, re-watching this video all these years later, I can see that we were truly onto something. In this somewhat long song where a number of different guitar parts are played and various angles are shot, why does the camera zoom in precisely when his middle finger is lifted, and only then? WHAT WERE THEY TRYING TO GET ACROSS?)