7 Questions with Indie Chick Lit Author Holly Christine + Book Giveaway

14 CommentsTuesday • October 12, 2010 • by michelle

Today I’m welcoming author Holly Christine (@hollyrambles) to Bleeding Espresso, and the first thing I must do is apologize; her interview was supposed to have been featured here a *long* time ago, but things kept coming up in my editorial calendar that pushed it back, and I’m truly sorry. But here we are finally, so without further ado…

Holly Christine is an indie author from Pittsburgh; her third book is called Tuesday Tells it Slant and is about a girl who goes back and changes her diary, thereby changing her life. Holly is self-published, and I thought her experiences with writing and self-publishing might interest some of my readers, so let’s get started! See the end of the post for contest details.

1. Tell us a bit about Tuesday Tells it Slant.

Tuesday Tells it Slant is about one girl, one diary and one past. At the age of 23, Tuesday decides that she is tired of her past. She wants to make it into something more desirable. To do this she uses her diary. She packs away her old diary entries and transforms a new past. She becomes enviable, skinny and popular. In doing this, she loses a bit of herself with each new entry. The books flows like puzzle pieces, each narrative, poem and diary entry fitting into the larger picture of Tuesday’s real identity.

2. Where did you get the idea?

The concept itself came about, alarmingly enough, during the drive into work. John Mayer’s Who Says was playing on the radio and I was intrigued by one part of the song: Who says I can’t be free/ from all of the things that I used to be/ Rewrite my history/ Who says I can’t be free? I was thinking of a way for a character to actually rewrite their history and a diary struck me. I have always kept a diary or journal of some sort and have fought the temptation to lie in an entry or two, trying to make up a day that I wanted instead of a day that I actually had.

3. Where did you get the title?

The title came up from an Emily Dickinson poem: Tell all the truth but tell it Slant/Success in Circuit lies. It seemed fitting for the concept of the story. During my senior year of college, I studied Dickinson for an entire semester. Each chapter is divided by a Dickinson poem that relates to memory, hope and fleeing from the past.

4. As a writer myself, this is the obligatory question: What is your writing process like?

It’s disturbing. My office becomes a sort of campground; filled with ashes, post it notes and gigantic pieces of paper, all taped together to allow me to fill in the plot holes as I go along. I sit for hours, but never begin before the voice of the narrative hits my head. From there, the muse takes hold of my brain and I don’t stop until the voice stops. She’s very demanding of my time. I also write in silence, but many of my characters’ traits are inspired by music.

5. Why did you choose to self-publish?

With Tuesday Tells it Slant, I never questioned whether to self-publish or not. After I finished cleaning up the prose and editing, I almost immediately made the story available for Kindle. I wanted to know what readers thought of the tale and because it did well with Kindle sales, I made it available in paperback. Self-publishing opens many doors. It isn’t a dead end street. Major publishers later picked up many self-published authors who made their works available for Kindle: Boyd Morrison and John Rector to name two.

6. What or who inspires you as a writer?

I’m inspired by relationships and oddities. I always find mannerisms interesting and often become inspired to write when I am around crowds. It’s very interesting to sit back and observe. I’m also inspired when I’m around other writers or chatting about the writing process.

7. Do you have any advice for aspiring novelists?

I think that many will agree that in order to advance your writing skills, you have to be a comprehensive reader. I also believe in writing every day, even if it’s a bit about what happened during the day that made you happy or angry or something that someone said that stuck with you. It’s like recording life. When you think about it that way, you will develop an arsenal of writing material.

BOOK GIVEAWAY:

Holly has offered to give away a copy of Tuesday Tells It Slant to one lucky Bleeding Espresso reader. Just comment on this post to be eligible; follow @hollyrambles on Twitter and leave me another comment here telling me you’ve done so for an extra entry. The contest is open only to those with U.S. shipping addresses and ends on Sunday, October 17 at 11:59 p.m. CET.

Good luck!

Posted in: books, contests