Ask the Author! #2

All of this week’s questions come from ChristiAne' M.

How did you get the idea for your story?

I’m not exactly sure when or where exactly I got the idea for this story. I’m pretty sure it when I was in the car one day after I finished The Year of the Elephant and I started thinking about something that hasn’t been done often and for some reason, deserted islands popped into my mind, although it is something that I’ve seen a lot of lately. A lot of the brainstorming and plot elements and other ideas I got at random times. My America History and Government classes are where I got a lot of ideas, as well as when I was trying to fall asleep at night, but just couldn’t so my mind started to wander.

What was the hardest part of your story to write?

Probably just the really boring parts I had to write, but didn’t really want to. When I’m bored and don’t want to write something, I think it really shows through in my writing, so writing a scene I think is really boring and making it sound good, is probably my biggest challenge.

What was the easiest?

The parts that were easiest for me to write were the ones I was looking forward to writing. This may sound weird and confusing, but my favorite parts of the book were the once I really looked forward to writing; these included big fight scenes, confrontations, big reveals, and back stories. I always had the plot laid out in my head, and I knew when certain parts of it were nearing, and those parts were the ones that I got done the fastest and easiest. I could’ve just wrote those parts all first and then went in a put more stuff in between them, but I didn’t want to do that. I did it once with my first book and I really didn’t like doing it. I just didn’t feel right and I’m pretty sure I just ended up giving myself writer’s block.

How long did it take you to write your story, from its conception to the last edit?

For The Year of the Elephant, I’m pretty sure it took me somewhere around three to four years. I started writing as soon as I got an idea; I didn’t really take the time to go over the plot in my head a lot, which is probably one of the reasons part of the plot doesn’t make sense. I know I started it sometime in seventh grade around when we did battle of the books, which I think was around February or March of 2009, and I finished editing it in around early July before my sophomore year in 2011.

The Unusual Isles is still a work in progress, so I’m still editing so and I don’t have a publishing date yet. I started in September of my sophomore year in 2011, and I plan in finish it in winter of 2013-2014.

How did you come up with the title?

I actually have a really weird story of how I can up with the title. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to have the word Islands or Isles in it, and since the main plot of the island was that they were weird islands, I literally went on Thesarus.com and looked up synonyms of “weird” and started paring up the words to see which one sounded best, and The Unusual Isles ended up winning.
~K.M.D