Ask the Author #4!

I thought I would do another ask the author, but this time answering questions that aren’t as much about writing, so you guys can get to know me as a person a little better.

These questions come from my friends Lauren and Zack, who I asked for questions about a year ago and never got around to answering on here until now. :)

Q: What if your favorite TV show?

A: I have a LOT of favorite TV shows, but some of my favorites are Once Upon a Time, King of the Nerds, Heroes, The Amazing Race, America’s Got Talent, and Survivor.

Q: What if your favorite book/author?

A: My favorite author is Khaled Hosseini. I have too many favorite books to even begin to list a few.

Q: What book can you not stand that everyone else likes?

A: THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS SERIES. This has got to be up there with the worst books I have ever read in my life, and I honestly don’t get why the fandom is so large. However, a lot of my close friends don’t like this book as well, so at least I’m not the only one.

Q: What is the worst book you have ever read and why?

A: The worst book I’ve ever read for school is The Sun also Rises by Ernest Hemmingway. I really hated this book and the entire thing was about sex and dinking and it was really boring and stupid. (For example: We went to a bar then crossed the street to go to another bar, then I came home and some people came over and we drank some more and when they left I cried about how I can’t have sex). This was what the entire book was like.

The worst book that I’ve read for fun that I can think of off the top of my head right now is The Girl in the Area. I got this book because it said that you would like it if you liked The Hunger Games, but this book was honestly so bad I couldn’t get past the first 40 pages no matter how hard I tried. The plot in general was really stupid, it was formatted in a weird way that really pissed me off, the main character was annoying, it lacked a lot of action (for being described as an action book) and character development, the main character’s decisions seemed random without any explanation, and the violence that was in it was random and out of place.

Q: If you were given a million dollars, what would you do with it?

A: I would first of all put some of it aside so I could pay for college (have to be the boring responsible one). I would also move out and buy or rent an apartment somewhere (assuming I would be in college by then). I would buy a new laptop, get a better camera, and some other stuff so I can make better quality Youtube videos. I would go and buy a huge wall sized bookshelf and buy a whole bunch of books and manga to fill it up with. I would probably just save whatever I had left, if I had anything left.

Q: TV show or movie that you like that no one would expect you to like?

A: The anime series Free. If I were just searching for things to watch, I would have never in a million years decided to watch it, but my friend recommended it, so I watched it and it is now one of my favorite animes.

Q: Favorite board game?

A: Probably Apples to Apples or if we’re talking like actual board games, Life Twists and Turns.

Q: Favorite video game?

A: Toss-up between My Sims Kingdom and Mario Kart 7. Alice the Madness returns is up there as well, although I never played through the whole thing.

Q: Favorite place to shop at?

A: Barnes and Nobel duh? But realistically in terms of clothing, like 90% of my wardrobe is from Aeropostale. I do also love Forever 21 and Hot Topic.

Q: Eye color?

A: dark brown

Q: Age you get mistaken for?

A: Pretty much whatever age I am, which is currently 17.

Q: Last time you cried?

A: Watching the Budweiser Super Bowl commercial with the puppy and the horse. Yes I know, it’s a really stupid thing to cry over, but that commercial was just too cute!

Q: Favorite songs at the moment?

A: Make it Up by Sam Tsui. He is a really awesome lesser known artist. He’s both pretty big on Youtube and I recommend you check him out! Also, Classic by MKTO.

So, this is ask the author for today! I hope you enjoyed reading my answers and now know me as a person better!

~K.M.D.

Ask the Author! #3

Today’s question comes from Sylvanie Van Huesen.

If a movie was being made, 1) Would you want to be involved, 2) How would you want to be involved(actor, director, producer, costumer designer) and 3) Given the choice, who would you cast as the characters?

I absolutely love this question just because it’s something I’ve thought about many times before. 

I’m going to answer this question in regards to The Unusual Isles.

Firstly, yes, I would definitely want to be involved with it; probably mostly as a screen writer to make sure that they don’t screw anything up like they do to most book adaptations. That’s why I think that this book in particular would work better as a mini TV series because there is a lot of action in the book and not a whole lot that you can take out without it majorly affecting the plot in some kind of way. I also think being an actor would be cool, just because I would love to get to experience something like that. I would be happy playing any of the characters, but if given the choice, I would want to be Ellary just because she is the main female lead in the book, and she’s also one of my favorite characters.

For the twin brothers Luke and Bryce, I would want Dylan and Cole Sprouse to play them, just because they fit the physical description so well.

For Keane, I would want Dayo Okeniyi, who played Thresh in the Hunger Games to play him. Keane’s character is similar to Thresh in terms of personality wise so I think he would do a good job at playing him.

For Maddie, I think Anna Kendrick would do a good job playing her. Although she doesn’t match Maddie’s physical description, I think she would do a good job playing her character wise.

For Ellary, I’m not really sure who I would want just because she’s one my favorite characters and I’m really particular about her. The person I think who would do the closest job of what I would want form Ellary would probably be Diana Argon.

Harvey I would love to see played by Woody Harrelson. I think that he would be great at playing the crazy character that Harvey is and also bring a bit a comic relief to his character.

For Brooke, I think Vanessa Marano from Switched at Birth would be the best for her character.

*note: I do wish that most of these actors would be younger so they were actual high school age, or at least around that age.

**You can find some descriptions of the characters on an earlier blog post or on my Facebook page.

I have thought about who I would want cast, at least for certain characters.

The rest of the character I can’t think of anyone to play them at the time, or just don’t really see any well known actor playing them.

~K.M.D

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

Ask The Author #1

Today's question was a rather long one so I decided to only answer one question this time.

Elly Marks: 


“Tell us about The Year of the Elephant. Where did you get the ideas for that? How did you motivate yourself to stick to it? How long did it take to write, from its conception to the final edit? Finally, what's your favorite thing about your first novel?”

I really don’t think I can answer this question without giving quite a lot of background info on it. For those people who don’t know, The Year of the Elephant was the first ever novel I’ve written, and actually one of the first creative writing projects I’ve ever done in the first place. I actually got the idea to write it when I was in seventh grade. Our grade had to participate in battle of the books, and one of the books we had to read was Alex Rider: Stormbreaker. Now, before I read this book, I was really into girly books like the Clique series and Secrets of my Hollywood Life.  I really do consider reading this book as a life-changing moment for me, and it really got me into the action-adventure genre, which is what ultimately got me into reading more kinds of books. After I read this book, I went and researched all of the spy books that existed. I read the rest of the Alex Rider series, read the entire Young Bond Series, and practically order the entire CHERUB series off Amazon since a majority of those books aren’t sold in America. However, I was very disappointed to find that none of them really had any female characters. The only series I found that had a main character as a girl was the Gallagher Academy series, which ended up boring me to death in the first chapter because it was just overall too girly of a book for me to take seriously as a spy novel. This is when the thought occurred to me, if there are no good books about girl spies out there, why don’t you write one yourself. This is what really inspired me to write this novel, and that was when The Year of the Elephant was born. It actually was not called The Year of the Elephant at first. The original name was Jade Tooth, but as the plot progressed the name no longer made sense. The title The Year of the Elephant didn’t really make all that much sense either, so I had to add something into the plot line to make it make more sense. What really motivated me to stick with it, was just the fact of finishing it. Another one of the things was that a group of boys in my grade had self-published a book when I was in seventh grade and I figured that if they could do it, so could I. This book took me about three to four years to finish. I started it in seventh grade, and self published it in the summer before my sophomore year in high school. I actually wrote a majority of it during freshman year of high school, because before freshman year, I only had about 36 pages written and when freshman year was over, I had about 60-100 pages. In all honesty, I really don’t like my first novel all that much. Compared to my writing now, the writing in it is terrible, and a lot of the plot seems over dramatic and doesn’t really make a lot of sense. I also didn’t edit it that much, just because since it was my first book, I wasn’t really sure what to do about anything. If I had to pick something that I liked the most about it, I really liked the prologue I wrote because I think it’s some of my best writing in the book, and it is also very interesting. 

 I hope you enjoyed this answer! Comment with any more question you would like to hear me answer!