Ever wish you could get inside an author's head? Of course you have, even though most of them would probably tell you that you don't want to be there because it's a scary place. Well, no worries, because I've done it for you.
That's right. I asked published authors, authors whose books will be released soon, authors I know, authors I didn't know, and authors whose names I don't dare try to pronounce (and luckily didn't have to because I used e-mail.) Some of these wonderful authors even forwarded my questions to their author friends, and, in the end, 32 authors agreed to answer complicated and sometimes potentially embarrassing questions about their writing and themselves.The response was overwhelming.
The unexpectedly enormous response is both a blessing and a curse. You see, with so many great authors and honest, insightful, laugh-out-loud funny responses, my intentions of posting one question a week with multiple responses from authors has been shot to hell. That many responses in one post would be out of control!
So instead, I'll be posting twice a week. One question, two days. This week I'll post today and tomorrow. After that, it will be a Tuesday/Thursday feature. Hopefully, that's not too confusing.
Now for this week's question...
Did you always know you would write a novel? Why did you finally decide to write one and when?
"Margaret Stohl and I wrote Beautiful Creatures on a dare from Margie's teen daughters, who also happened o be my former students. We had an idea for a story, and we aren't the kind of girls who walk away from a dare." - Kami Garcia, co-author of Beautiful Creatures.
"I always wanted to write but never dreamed of a novel because I never finished anything. When my kids were seven and ten, I finally got five minutes to myself and my husband gave me a night once a week to take a creative writing class. Then I just started writing and haven’t stopped. My first book The Witchy Worries of Abbie Adams is an early result." - Rhonda Hayter, author of The Witchy Worries of Abbie Adams. 
"I think novel-writing must have always lurked in the mists of the future for me – I wrote my first opus in first grade. In eighth grade, I wrote two teen romances—that was before I actually experienced teen romance (afterward, it was all tragic stories and poetry). But officially, Tell Me a Secret is my first novel. It encompasses all of those things- a little tragedy, a little romance – and most of all, hope." - Holly Cupala, author of Tell Me a Secret.
"Yes, I always knew it. However, it took me a few years to get the courage to write one, because it’s such a leap of faith. My first – a novel for adults called Small Circles – is in a drawer at my house. (I got great feedback, but it never sold.)Then it took me about seven more years to work up the courage to start another one, which became Forget-Her-Nots." - Amy Brecount White, author of Forget-Her-Nots.
