A's Part Uno

Happy Beginning of the Holiday Season, everyone! In celebration, I bring you the answers to the first half of the super awesome questions ya'll left on Tuesday.

From Cat Clarke: Would you rather have squirrels for hands or muffins for feet?

Well, I'm very certain that I could live without feet, but no hands? Not being able to type or write or pick up a book? Couldn't do it. Muffins for feet, thank you.

From Dara at inthewritemind: I must be a scrooge since I cannot stand to hear Christmas music BEFORE Thanksgiving...wondering--how do you feel about it? :P

I'm kind of indifferent about it actually. At my work, we decorated for Christmas last Saturday. I love decorating for Christmas and listening to Christmas music, so it only slightly perturbed me that it was before Thanksgiving. What did perturb me was that on the DAY of Halloween, I went into Walmart to get an eye patch, and all of the Halloween stuff had been replaced by Christmas stuff. ON Halloween. That was too much.

From L&L: Will you always stay in Ohio or do you think you'll move around once you've graduated?

I used to think I'd move around, but now I'm not so sure. My future is kind of up in the air, and I'm open to whatever happens. I do know that I will move out of the city I live in now, though. No way could I ever live here forever. It kills your soul.

From Valerie: When are you going to see New Moon?

I already saw it! Last Sunday, actually. It was surprisingly better than Twilight, and had plenty of steamy Jacob scenes to satisfy me. Though I must say, I do think I'm semi-Team Mike.

From Jade: Why did you switch majors? Seriously? Now I'm alone in the Lara Croft/J.K Rowling box.

I...don't know. I've always loved history, and that was originally why I got into archaeology. But the archaeology in this area isn't the kind of history I'm interested in, thus I switched to straight-up history. I promise this will be my last major switch. Promise.

Serious questions...hmmm...oh, queries! Since you have a cool agent, one assumes that you wrote an epically awesome query letter. I'm just wondering if you did it by yourself or did you post it online somewhere to be shredded?

I'm pretty sure I posted my query on the AW forums (that was a year ago, though, and my brain's a little fuzzy). I know I sent it to friends and such to be ripped apart. Query-writing was always one of the most difficult things for me to do, until I found out that it works so much better if I write the query-summary BEFORE I start writing the book. That way I don't have all those pesky subplots clouding the main story thread in my mind.

Have you read 'The Dust of 100 Dogs' by A.S. King?

I did read it. AS King has an AMAZING voice and writing style and imagination (and hello? Pirates!). But what I loved most oddly enough wasn't even in the book. Someone actually got a tattoo based on D100D. That seems like a huge gesture of appreciation/awesomeness to me. And the tattoo looks freaking cool too.

From Hayley: How do you know which ideas to use? And if the characters are in a situation you are completely unfamiliar with, how do you figure out how they'd react? Research only goes so far.

I use whichever idea speaks the loudest. For instance, I have both Max's story and Crystal's story in my head. I love both of them, but Max, for whatever reason, appealed more. I think it just comes down to whatever character wants his/her story told the most. I will get to Crystal eventually, though; she's quite loud too.

As for unfamiliar situations, it usually takes me a few tries to figure out how the characters would react. I don't so much do research for those situations as I do trial-and-error. If a scene doesn't feel right, I start over. Still doesn't feel right, I start over. On and on until I find the one that makes me go YES.