Six Questions: An interview with Mindy McGinnis

1) Do you think that personal experience with mental illness or addiction is necessary to write a book which deals with mental health or addiction?

I think a measure of it is useful, of course. And – if we’re being honest – pretty much all of is have that, either in our own experience or through loved ones. Having never been an addict myself (to substances, anyway), I wanted to be sure that I knew what I was talking about when I wrote this book. Research involved reading thousands upon thousands of pages about addiction, but also talking to counselors and addicts. The best compliments I’ve had for HEROINE is when a recovered addict tells me I got it right.

2) It’s clear that society is facing a massive addiction crisis, particularly when it comes to heroin. How much was your book inspired by that ongoing issue?

I got the idea for writing HEROINE after visiting a school district that had been particularly hard hit by the opioid crisis in southern Ohio. That, combined with my own experiences as a school librarian for fourteen years (and an intense love of softball + respect for female athletes) were the two sticks that struck together to create the spark for the story.

3) More often then not, when we’re dealing with books about young adult and sports, it’s written as a male character; yours obviously has a female lead. Why do you think that is?

I was a YA librarian for 14 years in a public school system. I could count on one hand books that featured female athletes, and needed both hands to count off male authors who only wrote about male athletes. As a former high school athlete who was also a reader, I had to wonder – why the disparity? There’s no real reason. So I set out to plug that hole.

4) I noticed that a few of the reviews noted that the book made readers uncomfortable because of the subject matter. Is that level of discomfort a basic requirement when dealing with a topic this heavy?

It depends entirely on the reader. I’ve written books where people get set on fire, or nine year olds are shooting someone to protect their water source. I don’t pull punches and I don’t shy from rough topics. I show teens using drugs – and liking it – in this book. I’m sure it will make some people uncomfortable. That’s reality. It’s not pretty or nice or kind or comfortable.

5) Your book comes with a trigger warning about how has “realistic descriptions” of opioid use, and there has been a good amount of debate over the subject of trigger warnings in recent years. I’d love to hear your thoughts about why you included one and what your thoughts are on the subject generally.

I’ve never used trigger warnings in any of my books, regardless of the fact they all do feature pretty intense content. For this one, I chose to include a trigger warning because of the honest depictions of drug use. It’s not an after school special with people doing drugs and immediately hating themselves or puking. They do drugs and love how it makes them feel. I didn’t want a recovered addict to read a realistic description of the high of heroin, and miss it enough to relapse.

6) If you could do it again – anything you’d do differently with the book?

Too early to say. I can point to things in my older releases that I would do differently because I have some distance and time has passed since I wrote them. HEROINE is still too fresh to have that perspective.

Harper Stacks: Krista Taracuk on Mindy McGinnis' Heroine

The paradox of the same pronunciation of the words heroine and heroin are pivotal to Mindy McGinnis’s latest work Heroine. The author tackles the front-page headlines of the opioid crisis through the eyes of her teenage protagonist and superstar athlete, Mickey. Mickey’s physician prescribes Oxycontin to her after a severe injury sustained in a car accident and through the pages of this novel, we slowly see how Oxy consumes all aspects of her life.

In a recent conversation with award-winning author Mindy McGinnis, she stated, “It was important to me to create an addict that readers would feel empathy for, and – according to my early readers – it seems to have worked. I’ve had a lot of people tell me that they were sucked into Mickey’s slippery logic, her self-justification for always seeking out the next fix, to the point that they were almost rooting for her to get what she believed she needed…. not help, but heroin. That’s exactly the reaction I was looking for.”

Coaches hear the horror stories of their athletes who return to school after an injury or an operation and are immediately asked by other students if they have leftover drugs to sell. Emergency squads are inundated with calls for overdose victims. There’s a raging debate about how tax dollars are diverted to deal with the effects of the drug epidemic. Illicit substances can change the course of family life and the trajectory of development where addiction and dependence are prevalent; this can take the form of grandparents raising children, adjustments for teachers, and early intervention by medical professionals. Children in these situations might experience physical, emotional, psychological, and academic setbacks. Teachers are experiencing a higher rate of burn out dealing with the range of issues that are associated with children impacted by addiction and dependence. It’s even been recommended that the common citizen should carry Narcan.

So what does the opioid crisis have to do with libraries? Where do libraries fall in this issue? This book highlights the intersection where teachers, parents, educators, and students can see the impact of substance use. Reading this book helps bring about a better understanding of the protagonist’s challenges to the wide range of issues that are faced. One of the stops on the way to understanding someone’s journey with addiction and dependence involves accessing resources and knowledge. We need libraries involved in the process because they help disseminate information, share resources to the community, offer a space for forums, and provide access to those seeking information. Those with limited means and resources are utilizing the tools of the libraries more and more for those services.

Mindy McGinnis

The author states, “It’s easy to slot people into arbitrary “good” and “bad” categories, but I often tell aspiring writers to remember that no one is ever the villain in their own narrative. Everyone that makes a bad choice has a good reason (to them) why they did it. Readers find themselves sliding down the slope of self-justification along with Mickey, and that’s right where I want them to be – with her, slipping. Not judging from a safe distance.”

Thus, public and school librarians are in the midst of unusual conversations about whether staff members should be provided with the medical tool of Narcan. As staff are not trained for this mission, fear of misuse and lack of education are major concerns. Clinical studies have shown that paramedics have been using Narcan for 40 years as an assistance in reversing an overdose. Though not as dramatic as jolting awake like in the movies, the nasal dose used by non-medical personnel gives a few more minutes of life to the overdose victim before the EMTs arrived. One nasal dose of Narcan is considered the standard. Yet, this brings us to Carfentanil, a more potent form of fentanyl which is used to sedate large animals like horses, elephants, etc. Carfentanil might take 3 or 4 doses of Narcan to help the person; how on earth is a public or school library staff member supposed to know this? Having Narcan on hand falls under the Good Samaritan Act and is considered to be just another tool like a fire extinguisher, defibrillator, aspirin for heart attacks, etc. However, the impacts of the opioid epidemic are providing new challenges to citizens in jobs that require no medical training.

Thus, the realistic and well-researched novel Heroine by the ever-fascinating Mindy McGinnis is an excellent discussion starter among educators, kids, and their parents. The author states that “I’m hoping as Heroine finds more readers, that it will provide a safe space for parents and teens to talk about things like addiction through the lens of fiction, then branch out into their own realities.”

This book provides a harrowing view on the intersection where teachers, parents, students, and community members can see the impact of substance use. It is a must read for all citizens as the epidemic has started to impact each and every one of us, whether we know it or not.

Mindy McGinnis On Local Radio WWGH 107.1 FM

Unlikeable Female Characters Podcast

This week we chat with prolific and badass YA writer Mindy McGinnis (author of The Female of the Species, This Darkness Mine, Heroine, and many more) about being an unlikeable female character in small-town Ohio, writing realistically flawed teenage girls, and why you better watch out for band geeks.

Bookaxe Grill the Author: Mindy McGinnis

Teaching Tolerance: The Opioid Crisis

During an opioid overdose, the brain betrays the body. A single event—be it a rush of heroin or fentanyl or a semisynthetic prescription painkiller like oxycodone—sets off a series of repercussions: The drug travels from the bloodstream to the brain; it latches itself to opioid receptors; it suppresses the brain’s ability to control breathing rate; it blurs the brain’s recognition of dangerous carbon dioxide levels in the bloodstream; it causes the brain to cross wires in its communication with the diaphragm; and, finally, the drug causes failure in the lungs to breathe in and out as normal. The drug suffocates its user, systemically. 

The suffocating tendrils of addiction reach wide…

Writer to Writer: An Interview with Author Mindy McGinnis

WOUB: ‘Blood, Brains, and Lobotomies’ Coming to SEO History Center

A Madness So Discreet is a young adult historical fiction novel set in the late 1800s that follows the story of Grace Mae, a young woman who has been raped by her father, a well-established Boston politician, and unwillingly admitted to an insane asylum. In the book, which was written by Ohio-based author Mindy McGinnis, Grace manages to get out of the inhumane quarters of the Boston asylum she was originally imprisoned in to the Athens Insane Asylum, a humane hospital that still overlooks Athens.

On Thursday, April 19 at 6 p.m., McGinnis is coming to the Southeast Ohio History Center (24 West State Street, Athens) to give a free presentation entitled “Blood, Brains, and Lobotomies,” which will explore the history of the Athens Insane Asylum (especially as it pertains to McGinnis’ Edgar-Award-wining book,) as well as the history of the treatment of the mentally ill, a subject that McGinnis researched in great deal before writing the book. The presentation is also a part of the history center’s ongoing 2018 celebration of the Athens Asylum’s sesquicentennial anniversary.

McGinnis learned of the Athens Asylum by way of Katherine Ziff’s lauded Asylum on the Hill: the History of a Healing Landscape, which she picked up from Ziff at the Ohioana Book Fair several years ago.

“After I read the book, I knew that I wanted to set a novel there, if I could ever come up with a plot for it,” said McGinnis. “Asylum on the Hill is great, it’s a very thorough history of the asylum that dispels the many misconceptions that people have about the asylum. Those misconceptions, that the asylum is a scary place, or a haunted place, are just good fodder for bad, untrue stories. In fact, the asylum was one of the best places to be if you were mentally impaired in the early 1900s.”

McGinnis was fascinated with the hospital’s moral treatment plan, which meant providing a beautiful, inspiring grounds for patients to work and heal together. The entire asylum, although it may look stark and mysterious on the hillside overlooking the Ohio River, was actually built according to the Kirkbride Plan, which was literally an asylum building plan contingent to some very humane theories in the treatment of the mentally ill: that they needed sources of natural light and ventilation.

“It’s true that the asylum was overcrowded later on, but in the beginning, it was pretty idyllic, patients farmed and made their own clothes and food, it was a completely self-sustaining environment that gave the patients a sense of belonging and purpose, and it was also all free,” said McGinnis. “It was wonderful, but over the years people did start to abuse the asylum, like if you had an elderly relative at home that you just didn’t want to take care of anymore, you’d just drop them up on the hill. Although any asylum could be, of course, horrible, honestly the story of the Athens Asylum is one of the nicest ones you’re going to find.”

Katherine Ziff’s “Asylum on the Hill,” which played a part in inspiring Mindy McGinnis to write “A Madness So Discreet.”

McGinnis said that her discovery of Ziff’s book came just as McGinnis was supposed to pitch another novel, so she pursued the idea of a novel set there with more intensity, devouring both The Devil In the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness and the Fair that Changed America (about American serial killer Dr. H.H. Holmes by Erik Larson) and The Lobotomist: A Maverick Medical Genius and His Tragic Quest to Rid the World of Mental Illness (a biography of Dr. Walter Freeman, who simplified the lobotomy procedure in the ‘50s, and who travelled around the country performing the procedure by Jack El-Hai,). McGinnis read lots of other books about the history of psychiatry, rounding out in about 18 months of research before she had even written a word of A Madness So Discreet.

The history of psychiatry is a notoriously difficult topic. From the discipline’s early struggles to be considered a hard science with the capability to confront some of the most baffling issues of the human condition to the early methods of treatment for the mentally ill that were, at best, ineffective, and at worst, terribly inhumane. Perhaps the most controversial of these methods was the psychosurgery known as the prefrontal lobotomy, which effectively cuts most of the connections to and from the prefrontal cortex in the brain. The prefrontal cortex houses one’s personality, will to live, and general executive function capabilities. Although the procedure is thought of as barbaric now, it should be noted that in 1949 Portuguese neurologist António Egas Moniz won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for the development of the procedure.

Although the surgery did often come at the cost of the patient’s self immediately and permanently vanishing, it was considered a true innovation at the time, and widely utilized until the introduction of the first widely marketed antipsychotic, trazodone, in the ‘60s. Trazodone, and other antipsychotics, work largely the same way on the brain that a lobotomy does, only chemically. Antipsychotics are commonly prescribed to treat everything from schizophrenia to major depression to eating disorders.

“Dr. Freeman had a bad reputation, but he was actually a very good doctor,” said McGinnis. “He really did care about his patients, about the people he lobotomized. He would follow up with his patients for 5, 6, even 20 years after the lobotomy, he really believed he was helping people. We need to remember that, at the time, lobotomies were considered very humane, as the most humane way to treat some people. Of course, you should never do something to someone against their will, as some patients were lobotomized without their permission, but it’s interesting to think that another method of treatment that is sometimes considered inhumane is still used today: electroshock therapy. And it’s still used today because it works, in small doses, much smaller than what they were doing in the ‘50s, and as a last resort for some patients.”

McGinnis ran into a bit of problem while penning A Madness So Discreet, in that for several reasons she needed to set the book in the late 1800s, but the problem being that lobotomies, (a false lobotomy is performed on Grace in the book to make her “unreturnable” to her wealthy, abusive family,) did not actually become a regular, widespread practice until the late 1940s.

Enter Phineas Gage, one of the most famous names in the history of neuroscience.

Phones Gage with the tamping iron that shattered his skull and destroyed his left frontal lobe.

On September 13, 1848, American railroad construction foreman Phineas Gage was directing a work gang south of Cavendish, Vermont, blasting rock in preparation for a Rutland & Burlington Railroad. Around 4:30 p.m. that day an explosion threw a three-foot-seven-inch, 13.25-pound tamping iron through Gage’s open mouth, destroying his left frontal lobe. Improbably, Gage survived, going on to become one of the most famous cases in the history of neuroscience. Gage experienced some marked personality changes after the accident, which changed the way that scientists of the time understood the importance of the prefrontal cortex.

“I felt like it was very possible that in the late 1800s there might have been a doctor who used Phineas Gage as his touchstone for a procedure that would be a like a lobotomy, even if lobotomies were not widespread quite yet,” said McGinnis.

McGinnis decided on Grace as her protagonist for the book for several reasons, one of them being the fact that it would allow her to explore the injustices done to women at that time in history.

“The truth is that women had very few rights in the late 1800s, and the only think it took for a woman to be sent to an asylum for the rest of her life was for a male family member to recommend it and for a circuit court judge to sign off on it, and they could be easily bribed,” said McGinnis. “During my research I read about one instance where a woman was hospitalized just because her husband had his eye on a younger woman. He already had in his possession all the land that came as a part of his marriage to his wife, and he wanted the younger woman, for one, because she was younger, and for her land, as well. It was a very simple, common thing to bribe a circuit court judge and it was a very simple, common thing for male family members to have ulterior motives in sending their wives or daughters to the asylum.”

McGinnis said that sometimes she is questioned as to why she tackles the troubling topic of rape in her book, which is specifically targeted at younger readers.

“Some people ask me why I had the father be the aggressor in an abusive relationship with his daughter in the book, and the reason is: that’s who it happens to. It happens to young girls and it’s done to them by older male family members,” she McGinnis. “And it’s very important that Grace had some type of enormous trauma in her life as she is a selective mute, which is very important to the plot of the book.”

A Conversation with Mindy McGinnis

1. Hi Mindy. As you know my first question is always the same. What have you been up to in the last year?

Lots! I’ve been promoting GIVEN TO THE EARTH, which comes out April 10th, the second and final in the GIVEN TO THE EARTH series. I also have a book releasing in January of 2019, HEROINE, which is about the opioid crisis. Lots of work has gone into that manuscript, and I’m excited to get it to the reading public. I also have a full slate of appearances scheduled for 2018, which you can view here and will be updated as more are scheduled.

2. You live in a home with lots of furry friends, can you tell us a little bit about them and how they impact your life as a writer?

I do have many fur babies. Two dogs, and nine cats. I had the normal mount of cats – 3 – and then a litter up at the family farm was abandoned by their mom and I ended up bottle feeding them. Once you connect like that, you can’t just give them away. There is always at least one kitty hanging out with me while I’m writing. They keep me warm, and sometimes entice me to nap, so I don’t know if they are actually helping or not.

3. Since you started your podcast WRITER WRITER PANTS ON FIRE, what have you learned from talking to all of the different guests you’ve had on?

That everyone’s journey as a writer is different. I love running the podcast, and I hope to continue it in the future. 

4. Though you wrote a set of companions (NOT A DROP TO DRINK and IN A HANDFUL OF DUST) how has writing the GIVEN duology been different from the rest of your standalone works?

GIVEN has been very different for the simple fact that it’s a fantasy, which is by far the most difficult genre I’ve ever attempted to write. The world building, plot, and character motivations are extremely complex, and both titles were quite the challenge.

5. You seem to enjoy genre hopping, what is one genre you haven’t written that you would like to, and why?

I don’t really know that there is a genre I want to write, but I can pretty much guarantee you’ll never see a romance from me.

6. Your books have a lot of intense an emotional scenes, what is it like for you when you finish one of those heartwrenching moments?

Honestly, they don’t feel that different from the rest. The climaxes are intense, but in order to make them work I have to put just as much effort into building up to them.

7. Can you tell us where some of the ideas from your past novels have come from?

In most cases, we writers usually don’t know where our inspirations come from. A lot of us are fortunate to just have them fall from the sky into our minds, and I don’t like to poke too much at that lovely miracle. I just accept the gifts.

8. Will you ever revisit some of the worlds you’ve created for DRINK, MADNESS, or others?

I would love to! If I were ever to revisit the world of DRINK I would probably write a prequel, showing the experiences of Stebbs and Mother as teenagers when the Shortage was occurring. I do have a sequel idea for MADNESS, but no pub date to announce as of yet.

9. What’s up for you next?

GIVEN TO THE EARTH releases April 10th and HEROINE will be coming in January of 2019!

The InkBlotters: This Darkness Mine

Mindy McGinnis has been delivering badass (sometimes unlikeable) but definitely strong female protagonists since her early works. This Darkness Mine is no different from her previous novels in that regard. Sasha Stone is the epitome of perfection: first chair clarinet player, straight-A student, and also comes equipped with a “perfect” boyfriend who’s handsome, well-dressed, and doesn’t pressure her into sex. All of this slowly begins to erode once bad-boy Isaac Harver enters the scene. Soon, she begins to feel feelings towards him that she never did and recalling events she’s never taken part of. Or has she?

Some light begins to shed when we find out that Sasha had a twin that she ultimately ended up absorbing whilst in the womb (known as Shanna). Unlike Sasha, this twin despises control and perfection and begins to wreck havoc into her life once she starts to take over Sasha’s psyche. But is Shanna real or merely a figment of Sasha’s imagination?

The book flirts with the notion of unreliable narrator, much like Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan did with Natalie Portman’s character. Is what is happening real or is it all just a sign of Sasha’s ultimate madness?

McGinnis breathes life into the “dead twin” Shanna, allowing her to be the personification of Freud’s ID (meaning being a person who only lives for their own passions and don’t allow their brain to control their emotions). Sasha on the other hand is Freud’s EGO end of this yin-yang duo, the brain and captain of the ship. But what happens when the emotion-driven Shanna takes reins of the situation and how will that effect Sasha’s “perfect” world?

This book isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s dark. It’s gritty. It’s gory. (Yes, I L-O-V-E-D it!). And just when you think you know where it’s leading you, you’re completely blindsided by yet again another improvised detour that will leave you questioning your own sanity and judgment. McGinnis delivers a punch to the gut with her sharp writing and often ruthless character interactions.

So take the plunge, cause it’s one hell of a crazy ride.

Short Q & A With the Author:

When I started reading This Darkness Mine I realized that the book was based off of the short story that appeared in Among The Shadows, entitled Phantom Heart. When did you decide to further explore Sasha’s world and what was it about this character that compelled you to do that?

Great question, thanks for noticing! Yes, DARKNESS is based on my short, “Phantom Heart.” Originally, I had no intention of taking this any further. Then my fellow editors for Among The Shadows – Demitria Lunetta and Kate Karyus Quinn – insisted that there was a whole novel there. I wasn’t sure, but I pitched the idea to my editor at Harper Collins, who was like – Yes! Write it!

Sasha Stone is the typical overachiever. Do you think that her mental illness derives from expecting perfection out of herself and the pressures that come along with that, or does she suffer from multiple personality disorder?

I worked in a public school for 15 years, and I always thought it was interesting how black and white rules and programs were. Drugs are bad. Sex is bad. Smoking is bad. Period. In some ways, we’re telling the kids that even curiosity about our “darker” inclinations are plain wrong, and need to be smothered, not investigated. Perfection is impossible, yet many strive for it. I wondered what would happen if you took an already strained teen, trying to be the “good” kid, and had her repulsed even by any interest in doing “bad” things. Would she be able to accept that such urges can be normal? Or is that so far outside of what we’ve taught her is “good” that she has to come up with an alternative explanation?

For many years I’ve been very fascinated with the creepy phenomenon of Fetus in Fetu, where a twin ends up absorbing the other twin in the womb, and in some cases doctors have later found the missing twin inside of the living twin, usually mistaken for a tumor later on in life. When did you become interested in this strange phenomenon?

It’s actually not a rare event, it’s something that usually goes completely unnoticed. I can’t remember the first time I ever heard of it, because it is pretty pervasive in pop culture, but I did have a student years and years ago who had absorbed his twin. It’s something I collected in my lint trap of a brain, and it became paired in my mind with the mirror therapy that they use for phantom limb syndrome, which is how “Phantom Heart” came about.

In the novel, Sasha is a clarinet player. Were you ever in band in high school and how did that help with writing the novel from a musician’s point of view?

You bet!!! Trombone since 4th grade!!! I tell everyone this is my band geek book. I also took piano lessons throughout most of my childhood, so music has always been a part of my life as both a consumer and a producer. This was a chance to work that into a book.

This novel was exceptionally dark. It explored the trials of mental illness as well as what it means to be a successful girl. Which actress could you see in the role of Sasha if this were to be made into a movie?

Oh, I have no idea. I don’t ever do any fan casting.

(Editor note: I asked that question because I could totally see Emma Roberts portraying stone-cold crazy bitch Sasha to perfection.)

I often use music to get into a certain mood depending what scenes I’m writing. Since your novel was about a girl who was obsessed with music, did you use music as a way to aid you in the writing of this book? And which music/artist/or song did you listen to when immersing yourself into Sasha’s world?

I actually don’t listen to music when I’m writing because while it can be helpful to get you into one mood, it can also end up controlling you mood so that when you need to flip to something else when you change scenes it can be hard. Instead I have a white noise app that I keep on while I’m writing. It’s a back ground noise that lets my creativity be in control, not someone else’s.

Mindy McGinnis On Rejection Existing At Every Level

Mindy, what was your inspiration for writing THIS DARKNESS MINE?

I went down the rabbit hole of the internet one night and learned about mirror therapy, where inverted images are used to treat itching, pain and discomfort in missing limbs. I began thinking about the issue in a less physical way, as in, what if someone believed they had they wrong heart inside of them? This idea grew and turned into a short story called "Phantom Heart" which is in the anthology titled "Among the Shadows." My fellow editors on that project, Kate Karyus Quinn and Demitria Lunetta, convinced me that there was a novel-length story there.

What do you hope readers will take away from THIS DARKNESS MINE?

That the line of what we think of as "good" and "bad" isn't something you can define by how someone dresses, the social roles they play, or how they behave only when they know someone is watching. It's the core that defines us, and you have to honestly know someone before making that judgement call.

How long or hard was your road to publication? How many books did you write before this one, and how many never got published?

I wrote 4 novels before my 5th, NOT A DROP TO DRINK landed an agent and garnered a publishing deal. Since then I've released it's sequel, IN A HANDFUL OF DUST, the 2015 Edgar Allan Poe winner - A MADNESS SO DISCREET, a rape-revenge vigilante justice story titled THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES, and the first in a fantasy series, GIVEN TO THE SEA. That sounds like a lot of success - and I remind myself that it is - but I wrote for 10 years before acquiring an agent and 3 of those 4 early novels remain unpublished, as well as a few projects I'd love to get off the ground that aren't highly marketable. Achieving publishing doesn't mean everything you produce is automatically green-lighted. Rejection exists at every level.

I recently started a podcast for aspiring writers, hoping to inform authors so that they don't make the same mistakes I did when I was starting out. The podcast is free and can be found here: http://writerwriterpantsonfire.podbean.com/

What Book Hooked You? Podcast

Writing Fun

The Pink Moose: Interview with Mindy McGinnis →

I recently read The Female of the Species and was absolutely stunned. I gathered up my courage and reached out to Mindy McGinnis, who graciously agreed to an interview. I learned about her, and her process, and hope you enjoy it too.

TPM: Your website says you have nine cats and two dogs. As a person with two cats and six dogs, I’d like to know a bit more about your pets. Can we get names/breeds/genders?

MM: CATS

All my cats are boring, silly American shorthairs. They’re also all strays and dumps. I have a beacon buried somewhere inside my body that brings them to me. Six of the nine cats were bottle-fed (which also includes rubbing their bums to make them go to the bathroom, or else they’ll die of sepsis). Once you’ve made that kind of connection with something, you can’t “find a good home” for them.

Alicia – gray/white, often absentee. She’s my old lady, coming in at about 10 years old. She will disappear for sometimes months at a time, and come home and tell us ALL ABOUT IT.

Samuel Wilderness – possibly a MaineCoon, discovered by former students in the woods, who immediately thought I was the person to take him to. Also a bottle fed. Somewhat internet famous. #SamuelWilderness

Samhain – long-haired, pure black, difficult to photograph. Dropped in my lap by a co-worker who heard I liked black cats.

“The Kittens”

Panda – oddly-spotted killing machine, polydactyl. The hero of the abandoned kitten group who flagged down my father at the farm and looked so pathetic it sent a 6’4″ man into a panic. I was called in.

Gilly – overweight, somewhat cross-eyed, escape artist. We think she climbed out of the box and hit her head too many times as a kitten.

Norton – gray tabby, overly handsome, broken vertebra at tip of tail. He doesn’t give a shit if you like him or not.

Ginger – orange tabby, perma-freckle on nose, drools when happy. Thinks my boobs are her bedding.

Minnow – calico runt, utterly spoiled, polydactyl. Either believes that she is a human or that my boyfriend is a cat. Either way, she’s pretty sure he’s her spouse.

DOGS:

Dana “Scully” – 17-year old Australian shepherd. I was recently shaving her for the summer and found a growth on the side of her face bigger than her face (it had been hidden by her beard). Took her to the vet. They removed it. Said her heart is great, her lungs are great, her blood work is great. She came home and frolicked like a puppy. I believe she may be a horcrux.

Brutus – 8 y/o German Shepherd / Greyhound mix (seriously, you should see this guy). Adopted from pound. Boyfriend believes he’s incredibly stupid. I believe the opposite – he’s smart enough to have convinced the b/f he’s stupid, so that he doesn’t have to obey him.

If you want to learn more about ALL my animals follow me on Instagram, or better yet, support me on Patreon, where all my tiers are named after cats, and each month’s reward includes kitty pics!

TPM: You’ve written across multiple genres (which I’ll ask more about later), what is your favorite genre to read? As a teen librarian do you typically read Young Adult exclusively, or do you jump around a bit?

MM: I am constantly jumping around on what I read, both in age and genre range, as well as non-fiction. Honestly, if it’s well-written, I’ll read it. You can keep up with what I’m reading by friending me on Goodreads, or following this Pinterestpage.

TPM: You have a blog, Writer Writer Pants on Fire, which some people may not know about, but I’ve poked around. What is your favorite feature? Do you consider the blog another job, or is it a labor of love?

MM: I love my blog! Thank you for asking! Yes, I started Writer, Writer, Pants on Fireback in 2010, when I secured an agent. My original intent was to provide answers to all of the questions I had when I was an aspiring writer, and wished I had published authors I could reach out to. I started a series of interviews for that purpose, featured every Tuesday.

I do Mindy-centric posts on Mondays, typically with writing advice or announcements for my readers. On Fridays I do ARC Giveaways, and Saturdays bring the Saturday Slash, where I provide feedback on queries to followers for free.

In less-hectic times I also do Word Origin Wednesdays (etymology based) and Thursday Thoughts, which tend to be… interesting.

My newest – at the moment, favorite – feature is a podcast! I decided to move forward with this recently and have begun the Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire podcast, which features one author guest per show, talking about writing, their journey from aspiring to published, and their books.

Both of these things are entirely labors of love. I’m actually losing money on the podcast right now, but I’m dedicated to doing it for a year and re-assessing goals at the end of that time.

TPM: Between writing, your blog, your pets, and your time at the library, when do you have time for yourself? How do you spend downtime that you have? Do you have any hobbies you wouldn’t mind your fans knowing about?

MM: I’m actually working full time as an author right now, having left the high school library a year ago. I volunteer once a week, though. I have TONS of hobbies. Too many, really. I do genealogy (obsessively), I also knit and garden and I work out three times a week. I did kickboxing for a few years, but I recently started circuit training so we’ll see if it kills me.

TPM: When writing do you prefer silence or background noise? If you like having background noise, is it music or just noise in general? What is your writing anthem? How do you stay focused during your process?

MM: No music. White noise. I’m positive that all my writing is just subliminal messages buried in static.

TPM: I’ve read Not A Drop to Drink and The Female of the Species. You’ve crossed from post-apocalyptic to contemporary with what seems like great ease. Is it challenging to move from one sub-genre to another? What are the most challenging aspects of going from one sub-genre to another?

MM: I’ve written in quite a few genres, from post-apoc with Not A Drop to Drink and it’s sequel, In A Handful of Dust, and then to A Madness So Discreet, which is a Gothic historical set in an insane asylum (it won the Edgar Award in2015, *cough*), then to contemporary with The Female of the Species and most recently, high fantasy with Given to the Sea. My upcoming release, This Darkness Mine is another contemporary thriller, and I have the sequel to Given to the Sea (Given to the Earth) releasing in April of 2018. After that I will have a survival tale coming from Harper Collins in the Fall of 2018. It’s untitled as of yet, but my working title for it is Drunk Hatchet With A Girl.

It’s not challenging to switch genres as much as it is to be working in multiple ones at the same time. For example, I was doing copy edits on a historical, while doing structural edits on a contemporary, while drafting a fantasy. That was definitely not easy, but you learn to compartmentalize.

TPM: The Female of the Species is written from three different points of view, Alex, Peekay, and Jack. Was it different to move between their perspectives? What about the change from male to female?

MM: I only wrote one section per day, so that voice got to take over entirely. Then I’d palate cleanse and come back the next day to whoever was up to bat. Peekay was the easiest to write because she used humor as a coping mechanism, and she’s as refreshing for readers as she was for me as a writer.

Jack is actually the first male POV I’d ever written. It was important to me to have a very real, flawed boy in this book, but to also have him be a good person. It’s a feminist book, but feminism isn’t anti-male. It’s anti-harming-women. Plenty of men fall into that category, and Jack needed to be one of them. I had multiple male beta readers go through it with me, and would send texts to male friends asking about things like locker room talk and masturbation, and they’re all cool enough to just answer me, which is awesome.

TPM: How do you mentally prepare yourself to write a book with such a dark premise? Where did the inspiration for Alex come from?

MM: I’m basically always thinking worst-case scenario. People ask me all the time how I put myself in the right frame of mind to write such dark fiction, and I’m like, “Dude, I always think like this. I walked into this room and ascertained the best place for me to sit in case there’s a fire. That’s how I operate.”

I was in college when I ran into the inspiration for SPECIES. I never had cable television growing up, so my freshman year in a dorm I was suddenly mainlining all kinds of things, but especially true crime. I watched a mini-doc about a girl who had been raped and murdered in a small town, but there wasn’t enough evidence to convict. Even so, everyone knew who did it. I was watching this becoming more incensed, and realized, that if I were capable of it, I could easily find this town, find that mine, and take care of things myself. Then I thought it was probably time to turn off the TV.

TPM: When I read books like this, it effects my mood as well as my internal psyche and I have to take breaks to remember to look on the bright side of things. Does writing such a storyline have the same kind of effect on you?

MM: Actually, writing A Madness So Discreet was more difficult for me, mostly because I wrote it in three weeks. It was a deep, dark dive into the world of insane asylums and I couldn’t come up for air if I wanted to hit my deadline. SPECIES I wrote a chapter a day, and always had Peekay to look forward to as a brightener. Honestly it wasn’t that bad.

TPM: While Alex is the main character, I felt like I saw a lot more of Peekay, and I feel like she has the most growth throughout the book. Was there ever a struggle to tell the story from Alex’s point of view? Was Alex or Peekay’s point of view easier to write?

MM: Alex wasn’t easy to write. She didn’t want to be written and didn’t want poking and prying. Peekay was so easy. She just had a lot to say. So yeah, I did have to struggle to MAKE Alex open up, and Peekay was a breeze.

TPM: I feel like there is a lot to be said about Alex, with her dark tendencies, working at an animal shelter and being so loving could seem out of place. Only Peekay really got to see this side of her. Is there a reason that you let the reader see this bright side of Alex? Were you worried that Alex would be seen as a villain instead of the hero?

MM: I wasn’t worried about how people see her, other than I didn’t want anyone thinking she’s a psychopath. A true psychopath has a complete lack of empathy for other humans. Alex has the opposite problem – she feels too much for others, leading to a protective nature that escalates into violence. The tenderness for animals definitely exists for that reason, to show that she has empathy and compassion.

TPM: Branley as the “popular hot chick” seems to meet most high school stereotypes. By the same manner, Jack, as the all around jock, does as well. It seems most people want to move away from stereotypical characters, but you seem to have embraced them. Was this planned from the beginning, or did they develop this way on their own?

MM: That’s exactly the point – those stereotypes exist, so write them. Then make them people. Sure, you hate Branley in the beginning, but does anyone, really, by the end? Jack, of course, was planned to be who he is. But Branley surprised me, much in the same way she surprised Peekay when she showed up at her house and she found out she had a St. Bernard… because honestly only really patient people own Saints.

TPM: There’s a lot of talk about sexual assault in the book. From Anna’s death, to the police officer that comes to school, we kind of see a theme building from the beginning. When Peekay’s assaulted, after the police officer had been at the school, why didn’t she report it? Was this a statement about the reluctance of victims to speak up? Do you think the book would have ended differently if Peekay reported the incident?

MM: Impossible to say, because that’s not the book I wrote – make sense? Her friend Sara exists as a voice to say, “Hey, you need to speak up… but we also need to talk about Alex.” The reader needs to draw their own conclusions about what would have, could have, should have happened.

TPM: In the book, Peekay tells Jack that Branley is a Golden Retriever and Alex is an Irish Wolfhound. With all the possible breeds out there, why would you choose to describe Alex this way?

MM: Because everyone loves a Golden Retriever. Look at advertising. They’re the All American Dog. An Irish Wolfhound is odd, out of place, awkward… but beautiful and different and unique.

TPM: Was the end of the book the ending you expected? I don’t want to spoil anything, just want to know if every one’s fates were planned before you finished writing, or if it developed this way.

MM: I never know how my books are going to end. I write them from beginning to end without knowing what will happen next. I was definitely wondering, as things escalated, what I was going to do. When it happened I definitely sat back and said, “Well, that makes sense.”

Lil' Booklovers Summer of Authors Launch: Mindy McGinnis

1. Why do you love writing? When did you first have a love for writing, and how was it formed? 

Honestly I think most authors will tell you we don’t necessarily love writing. It’s work, sometimes almost impossible work. We put it off, and find other things to do instead as often as possible. I wouldn’t say I love it – I’d say that I can’t not do it. I’ve always had stories in my head, but I didn’t write my first novel until I was in my 20s.

2. What are your favorite books, genres, and authors? Which ones have impacted you and you writing style the most? 

I don’t really have favorites. I read widely and write widely. If its good, I’ll read it. I don’t really know who has influenced me either, as I do read SO much, it would be hard to pin any one thing down.

3. What do you do when you’re not writing? Is writing a part-time or full-time job? 

Writing is the full time job! I was working full time AND writing full time up until about a year ago.

4. Your latest novel GIVEN TO THE SEA just released in April, and it takes place in the fantastic Kingdom of Stille. What was your process of world-building for this book? How was trying to create the Kingdom different from creating the fictional worlds in your other books? 

The unique challenge in fantasy is that your reader can assume nothing. If I’m writing a contemporary and I tell you that my main character goes to a private school, drives a Mercedes, and only wears Prada, you can draw about 20 assumptions about her, her environment, and probably her past pretty easily. I don’t have to fill in the blanks.

In fantasy, if I tell you that one of my characters is the last surviving female of the Indiri… you know pretty much nothing. You can’t infer from that that she’s the only person in this world with magic, as only the females of the tribe carry that gift. You don’t know what her life is like – are in the Indiri a reigning class living in a castle with servants, or are they a wild, feral people? Are these royals? Are they cannibals? What is expected of this character in her class and situation?

You don’t know. And so I have to tell you. And I have to do it in a way that is not a bullet point list, boring to read and onerous to write. I have to give you seventeen years of backstory while also illustrating the present, seamlessly giving you the entire picture of her life while making it, you know, interesting.

Not easy. And that’s just one character. GIVEN TO THE SEA has four POV’s and as many highly unique and different cultures. Delivering all four – along with the land, the layout, the animals, the legend and history of this fictitious place – er… yeah.

Writing fantasy was the hardest genre I’ve tackled yet.

5. Let’s say you were a character inside GIVEN TO THE SEA. Who would be your best friend/closest ally, and who would be your archnemesis? 

Oh I don’t know. I’m terrible at any of those kind of questions. The only thing I’m good at making crap up about is my novels.

6. I have read THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES a few months ago, and it was amazing! Since the book explores the theme of rape culture, what do you want the reader, regardless of gender, to take from it?

How it feels to be the opposite gender!

8. You set many of your novels, such as A MADNESS SO DISCREET and your upcoming THIS DARKNESS MINE, in your home state of Ohio. What are some of your favorite things about Ohio? Why did you choose to use your home state as the setting? 

It’s best to write what you know, and I know Ohio – thoroughly. I live in the middle of absolute nowhere, and my favorite thing is the isolation. Adore.

9. How is it like using your blog Writer, Writer Pants on Fire to help aspiring writers with the drafting, editing, publishing, and marketing processes? How did you come up with those hilarious acronyms for your interviews? 

Honestly, I’m just full of shit is the best answer I have for that. I had a lot of authors who were agented, and even published, help me out when I first started on the bottom rung of the ladder, so I’m all about paying it forward.

10. I am so glad I got to see you at the Southeastern Young Adult Book Festival in Murfreesboro, TN! What do you like most about being an author at book festivals? How was your experience at SE-YA? 

SEYA was probably one of the best festivals I have ever done! I love doing festivals and meeting readers, panels, Q&A’s, you name it. Since I write full time I don’t honestly get out much anymore so anytime I’m social that’s a good thing.

11. You’re planning to release THIS DARKNESS MINE, a YA psychological thriller, this October. What is it about? Would you like to give us any secrets about your next book? 

I find the best way to plug anything is to use a mashup, so THIS DARKNESS MINE would be Fight Club in the Band Room and the novel I just finished is Drunk Hatchet With A Girl.

12. Do you have any tips or advice you would like to give to any aspiring authors or writers? 

You have to do the hard work and research in order to succeed. There is no such thing as an overnight success. I queried for 10 years before I got an agent. Among traditionally published authors the average is roughly 7 years. So, be ready for that. Grow thick skin.

How to Be Female: Mindy McGinnis & Amber Keyser

HOW TO BE FEMALE

A conversation between Mindy McGinnis, author of THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES, and Amber J. Keyser, author of POINTE, CLAW.

Amber: Let’s talk about Alex first. She’s a character that I can’t stop thinking about. She is about as far from the stereotype of what a girl should be as you can get, and yet she is driven by an experience that is all too common–the victimization of girls by men. Tell us about her. 

Mindy: She’s angry, that’s the simple answer. Female rage is something that goes largely unexplored except in a sexualized manner, yet women get pissed – maybe even more so than men. There is nothing more violent in nature than a mother protecting its young. Animals know that – we’ve been socialized away from it.

Mindy: You deal with anger and protective feelings for fellow females as well in POINTE, CLAW, and – like me – chose to couch it in terms of an animalistic nature. What made you decide to take that route?

Amber: I’m trained as an evolutionary biologist and much of my research was on animals. We observe a behavior and then ask questions. What are the evolutionary pressures that would result in that behavior? How does that behavior enhance survival or reproduction? How are multiple behavioral strategies maintained in a population? I brought that perspective to the story. At the same time, I was growing more and more convinced that maintaining highly-social mammals like whales, primates, and elephants, in captivity is immoral. That led me to pose other questions. 

What is the survival strategy when you have been caged? In an essay I read long ago Alice Walker proposed that if women could not express their true selves then they either go mad or die. All of that came together in POINTE, CLAW. I’m not sure I can even put it into coherent sentences. I had hoped that understanding animals would help me understand humans.

Amber: I’m interested in the contrast of Alex’s underlying violence and her gentleness and competence with animals. It strikes me that both of us have more sympathy for animal nature than human nature. It’s a direct contrast to the Judeo-Christian world, which has so elevated “humanity.” Is there a difference in your mind between human, female, and animal?

Mindy: Not necessarily. For me the inclusion of Alex’s compassion for animals was to show that she is not a sociopath. Killing in defense of others is a choice that she makes, and while she tells herself she doesn’t feel bad about it, the guilt does weigh on her in the end. The difference for her is that animals don’t KNOW better. Animals don’t live in a moral world; humans do. 

Mindy: How about you? How did you weigh the more animal nature of one character against the other?

Amber: This idea of a moral world is bouncing around inside my skull. Humans lay such claim to the moral high ground. Or maybe I should be more precise: many men claim a moral high ground, from which they tell girls and women what to do. So much of POINTE, CLAW is about the barriers girls and women face when trying to express their true selves. When they embrace the more animal side of their nature–the lust, the anger, power–society slaps them down.  There’s a quote by John Steinbeck on the inside cover of my book: We are no better than the animals; in fact, in a lot of ways we aren’t as good. This guided my writing as I explored the ways humans fail to act morally toward animals and toward each other.

Amber: In an earlier post, Elana and I talked about “unlikeable” female characters. I have a feeling Alex would fall in that category. (I can’t help it… I like her.) The other two female characters in THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES, Branley and Peekay are, at least at the beginning, fit a more “typical” girl stereotype. Can you describe them for us? Both Peekay and Branley push, in different ways against the boxes they are shoved into. Can you talk about that?

Mindy: The vast majority of reaction to Alex from both male and female readers is that they love her. I think she says and does a lot of the things that they *want* to, but are prohibited from doing. Peekay definitely has violent fantasies about things she wishes she could do, but isn’t the kind of person who can – or even should. Branley we don’t see from an internal POV, but the blonde sex-bomb patina chips away and we see her as a real person by the end.

Mindy: This is an interesting dynamic at work in POINTE, CLAW as well. You have an attractive female who is filling a stereotypical role, paired with a girl who is anything but. What do those two have in common?

Amber: Ballet is such a weird thing. You get all these little girls who love their tutus and pink tights and want to grow up to be famous dancers. Often their mothers fuel these dreams, but the dream is impossible. Only a very select few succeed. They’re the ones whose bodies grow in exactly the right way so that the proportion of femur to tibia is perfect, their feet have the right shape, and the length of the Achilles tendon allows the right kind of movement. You can work hard and have great talent but if your body isn’t exactly perfect you will fail to achieve the dream. What a set-up for disaster! 

In the book, we have Jessie. She is almost perfect, and it’s still not enough to get her to where she wants to be. Dawn is very far from the societal ideal of a “perfect woman.” She’s stocky and queer and butch and completely unconcerned with social niceties. But here’s the deal. Dawn might be 1000 miles away from perfect woman and Jessie is an inch from it, but neither one can hit the mark. That tells me that the whole concept of perfect woman is a complete and utter waste of time. Be “woman” whatever that means to you. 

Amber: But let me throw that question right back at you. What do Alex, Peekay, and Branley have in common?

Mindy: They’re all three definitely sexual creatures. Branley has learned how to use her attractiveness and sexual drive – which she definitely has and celebrates, and hooray for her – in a way that gains her power. She’s conventionally beautiful, and has all the elements of sexualization working for her. Jack makes a comment at one point that he misses the girl who rolled her pants up and walked in the creek with him, the girl that was his friend before she figured out that she was cute as hell. I thought it was interesting to throw out there that Branley has figured out her power over men, and she believes it’s her greatest strength because that’s what society has taught her. 

Peekay is budding into someone who is more secure in herself physically and wants to explore more sexually, partially in rebellion to her “preacher’s kid” label, but also because she is a sexual being and she wants to have sex. However, because of her upbringing she wants that to be with someone she loves and and trusts, and is planning on losing her virginity to her long-time boyfriend when Branley “steals” him.

Finally, with Alex it was important to me to show that Alex is by no means frigid, or frightened of her sexuality. What happened to her sister is horrific, but she hasn’t allowed it to internalize into an “all men” statement. She trusts Jack – maybe even loves him – and because of this is able to be with him physically in ways he wasn’t necessarily expected, with her having had such trauma in her past. Alex is very much a creature of instinct – and the sexual instinct is strong. She’ll follow that, for sure.

Mindy: You made a bold choice by including female desire in the form of masturbation in your book. Sadly, I can think of very few books that portray female masturbation – and even less in a positive light. What made you decide to include this facet in the narrative?

Amber: Like anger, which you wrote about above, female desire, especially when separate from romantic love, is an underexplored topic. When I was working on THE V-WORD, a nonfiction anthology of personal essays by women about first-time sex, I interviewed author and teen librarian Kelly Jensen about depictions of young women and sex in YA. One of the things she mentioned was how rarely female masturbation is depicted in fiction, especially compared to the frequency of male masturbation. I took that as a personal challenge to work into my next book! But in the context of POINTE, CLAW, the scene where Jessie masturbates and the other short glimpses of both girls touching themselves are absolutely organic. 

The entire book is about various forms of desire: sexual, creative, a yearning for self-expression, the need to be truly seen, and of course, the desire for freedom. It would be completely weird to explore those things without acknowledging that young women also have sexual desires and can satisfy them in various ways.

Amber: There’s a lot of consensual sex in THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES and also rape and attempted rape. One of the biggest and thorniest issues of growing up “girl” in today’s world is the intersection of sex and violence that even the most feminist of men don’t seem to grasp. Can you talk about how Alex, Peekay, Branley, and Peekay’s gay friend Sara navigate this territory? What does Jack’s perspective add or reveal?

Mindy: Branley as the “hot one” deals with a lot of sexual humor that is aimed at her, like penises drawn on her locker, even rape jokes during a school assembly. Her answer is to ignore, which is always an option, but I wanted the reader to be able to see the anger that percolated in her during these occasions, even if it remained unspoken.

Peekay is drugged and nearly gang-raped, which she reacts to as I think a lot of people do – with disgust, and self-blame. She’s sickened about what nearly happened to her, and can’t help but analyze what role her own actions played in the events. 

With Sara – who is a lesbian – I wanted to be clear that she is not eliminated as a possible target for rape because of that. Peekay’s father says as much to her in a family-meeting style sit down. 

Without putting it too heavily into the text, rape is more about power than it is about sex. Rapists can and do go after young or old, attractive or unattractive, fat or thin, gay or straight. Victims can include pregnant, physically or mentally disabled individuals, even the very elderly. Your own orientation or physical appearance rarely has anything to do with the targeting – rape is a crime of power and opportunity.

For Jack, it was important to me to show a man who is at heart, a great person. There are plenty of expectations on young boys as well as women, and Jack falls into that. He’s supposed to be okay with having casual sex with Branley. He’s supposed to be okay with killing animals in a slaughterhouse for a living. These are masculine traits that he, as an all-American boy, should revel in.

But he doesn’t. Jack questions his actions with Branley and looks for ways to distract himself while at work so he doesn’t have to think too hard about what he’s doing. He wants more out of his life than what is being asked of him. It was also important to me to show Jack and another male step up – out of outrage – when they see what was about to happen to Peekay at a party. They are not okay with that, and make it clear… it’s just that Alex beat them to it 

Amber: One of the things that all the female characters in our books have in common (and maybe I’m going out on a limb here but I’m going to say that all women share it) is the ever-present threat of sexual assault. After the Trump pussy-grabbing video came out pre-election, I read an article about how many hetero couples were talking about this issue for the very first time. Even the most feminist of men were shocked at how often the women in their lives experienced sexual assault or lived with the apprehension of sexual assault. Margaret Atwood wrote about how sexual assault has always been a weapon of war and tool of oppression. 

I wonder what it would be like to live and write in a world where we didn’t have to live under this threat of violence. Honestly, I hate that I am even writing that sentence, but both of our books make the claim that women are fundamentally not safe in this world and that fact shapes how we live our lives, how we interact with each other, and how we inhabit our own bodies.

On the Verge: Interview with Mindy McGinnis

Jody: On a recent panel you talked about where your ideas come from. Not a Drop to Drink you had an image of a girl holding a gun and A Madness So Discreet started with your interest in the old insane asylum in Athens, Ohio. I’m curious about your new book—which is the first fantasy you’ve written—about the inhabitants of a dying island world.

Mindy: In a lot of ways Given to the Sea is a montage of many different thoughts that have come to me over a period of fifteen or twenty years.

The first scene that ever occurred to me was a star-crossed lovers type of situation, with an Ivanhoe-esque turn with the female refusing to cave to her own desires to be with the male, to the point that she's willing to pitch herself from a window to save her pride. That scene doesn't actually exist in the book now, but it planted the seed that told me I wanted to write a fantasy.

A combination of many things came together for everything else: an interest in Huntington's disease (also called the "dancing sickness"), the idea of genetic memory, and rising sea levels.

Jody: It just occurred to me that the rising sea level idea is the flip side of your first book. Not A Drop to Drink was a world with no water, and here, with this new book, you’ve got a world with too much water… Was the process for writing these books the same?

Mindy: My process is always the same. I sit down and write the book.

Jody: You make it sound easy.

Mindy. Not easy, but you just do it. With this book I thought I had all kinds of freedom because I was building a fantasy world.

Jody: So, you're thinking anything goes…

Mindy: Except it doesn’t. You have to keep track of your own rules that you're making, because you made them in the first place.

Jody: And sometimes you write yourself into a corner. What do you do when that happens? Any tricks you can share?

Mindy: I think a lot while I'm driving. I live in the middle of nowhere so if I'm on my way to an event I've usually got at least an hour each way, and the drive might give me some room to sort things out.

Jody: You've recently started writing full time. Has that changed how you write?

Mindy: It's harder to make myself write. Before I was on a very tight timetable. If I had twenty free minutes, then I needed to crack out some words. Now, I've got all day... and I know it. I'm learning how to budget my time better, which is weirdly harder when you have more of it.

Jody: What kinds of scenes or stories do love writing most and least? 

Mindy: I love writing biting dialogue, insults, stuff like that. Least, action scenes. Writing a battle scene and trying to keep it as "realistic" as possible while still making it thrilling and fun is challenging.

Jody: You write in different genres... from dystopian to gothic historical fiction to contemp, and now fantasy-- what makes a Mindy McGinnis book a Mindy McGinnis book—besides the fact that at least one of the characters is probably going to die?

Mindy: That, and a definite layer of grit and realism overlying everything. That's my approach with any genre. If this WERE going to happen, how would it unfold? No drama. No fuss. Just, give this thing some room and see what happens. Usually nothing good, because it's a McGinnis. :)

Jody: This is on a totally different note, but I know you've launched a podcast recently. What got you interested in that?

Mindy: I started listening to podcasts while I was running, and I started on the high end of production value - Serial, This American Life, Cracked,etc. I burned through those and started listening to others that were suggested to me and, most of the time, was not impressed. I thought to myself, "I could do better than that." Then I thought I should put my money where my mouth was.

So I did, literally. It's a time investment for me, since one of my biggest complaints about other podcasts was that they needed heavy editing (lots of filler, dead space, inside jokes, side rants).

Jody: And your podcast doesn’t--

Mindy: I don't make my listeners listen to anything I wouldn't want to hear.

Jody: I'm guessing there's some money involved. 

Mindy:  For hosting and distribution. I'm hoping to at least break even with it, if not make it financially productive, by the end of one year (I paid for one year of hosting up front). If it's not lifting its own weight by then, I'll have to pull the plug. At the moment I spend more time on the podcast than I do on my writing, which economically makes zero sense.

Jody: True. But hey, what does make sense in this business?

*(Check out one of Mindy's podcasts Here)

Okay, time for the lightning round. What kinds of things do you do for fun?

Mindy: Oh, God. I'm such a geek. Genealogy. Seriously. I found an ancestor (female) that I'd been looking for for ten years a few weeks ago and I almost cried. I also love old cemeteries and will just stop the car and go visit one if I see one that looks interesting to me.

Jody: Last good book you've read?

Mindy: Defy the Stars by Claudia Gray

Jody: TV show you've binged?

Mindy: Brooklyn Nine-Nine. I'm catching up!

Jody: What's up next for you?

Mindy: Given to the Sea will have a sequel (it's a duology) in the Spring of 2018, titled Given to the Earth. I have another contemporary, This Darkness Mine coming October 10th of 2017 from Katherine Tegen Books.

Right now I'm working on a story I'm mentally referring to as "Drunk Hatchet With A Girl," about a teen lost in the Appalachian region.

I'm sure marketing will retitle that.

Jody: Probably. But wouldn't it be awesome if they didn't? Hey Mindy, thanks so much for chatting with me today! And dear readers, if you'd like to know more about the dark and brilliant mind of Mindy McGinnis, see below:

YABC Author of the Week: Mindy McGinnis

YABC:  What gave you the inspiration to write this book?

A kernel for the idea of GIVEN TO THE SEA was planted a very long time ago when I was a child. I loved the TV movie of . There's an amazing scene with Sam Neill and Olivia Hussey where she's locked in a tower and he comes to see her. She thinks he's there to force himself upon her and she gets up in the window and says she'll jump if he comes a step closer. He's a decent guy who means her no harm, so he manages to talk her down but it's a very powerful scene. It stuck with me (even though I didn't understand all the implications until I was older). Elements from that scene have found their way into SEA at various levels - the girl who doesn't want to be touched, a boy in a power position who *could* take advantage if he wanted, a girl who's pride is so strong she'll die before she submits.

YABC:  Who is your favorite character in the book?

Dara, the female Indiri twin, for sure!

YABC:  Which came first, the title or the novel?

Novel, definitely. 

YABC:  What scene in the book are you most proud of, and why?

There are four POVs in the book, two male and two female, all very different from one another in terms of their character. I'm proud of the differentiating voices and how I kept them distinct.

YABC:  What new release book are you looking most forward to in 2017?

RAMONA BLUE by Julie Murphy!

YABC:  What’s up next for you?

I have a dark contemporary thriller coming 10.10.2017 called THIS DARKNESS MINE.

YABC:  Which character gave you the most trouble when writing your latest book?

Right now I'm working on something tentatively titled NORTH COUNTRY, about a girl lost in the Appalachia forests, alone. I didn't realize how difficult it would be to execute a story with a single character for 85% of the text. She doesn't have anyone to talk to, so almost everything is internal.

YABC:  Which part of the writing process do you enjoy more: Drafting or Revising?

Drafting has it's merits. I like to sit down and create the story. I don't plan at all, I simply let it happen. So while that can be nerve wracking, it's as fun for me to see what's going to happen as it is for readers.

An Afternoon with Mindy McGinnis

1. Hi Mindy! You’ve participated in both previous OAAA events, what have you been up to in the last year?

Everything, everything! I quit my day job to become a full time writer, which I don’t regret, but it does make financial life tighter than previously. I’ve been branching out to find other avenues for my creativity to see if they can be valid for revenue.

2. I am a big fan of your podcast, can you tell us a little bit about it and why you wanted to do one?

Oh, thank you! The podcast is something I’ve been wanting to do for awhile. I listen to them while on the treadmill, and often the content is good, but heavily editing is needed. I also notice that hosts don’t know when to stop talking and give the floor to their guest. I figured I could probably do one as good as what’s out there, and with my own background in publishing, it could be a good resource for aspiring writers.

So I went for it, not fully understanding the amount of work I was giving myself over to. I edit heavily, taking out all the things I hate to hear as a podcast listener – filler words, pauses, digressions. Most of the work comes in with me finding “um, like, you know” cutting them, then stitching audio back together. I put in about half an hour of work for every minute of airtime.

Right now it’s getting decent downloads and I do have the occasional donation (it’s crowd funded). I decided I would do it for a year, regardless of my time input, and see if I’m at least covering expenses at the end of that year.

3. What’s it like hopping back and forth between genres, from fantasy to contemporary and back!

I love jumping genres! I read widely, so my mind wanders to a wide array of stories. I’ve had a fantasy in me for 15 years, at least, but I was intimidated by it and wasn’t sure if I could execute it. When I decided to try, I did indeed find that fantasy is the hardest genre to write (that I’ve attempted). 

But I love to write all different kinds of stories, and if my readers will follow me from genre to genre, that’s wonderful!

4. What is the one bit of advice you wish you’d had before you got into publishing?

Don’t expect anything. We have this idea of red carpets and big money and hordes of social media followers. The truth is you can have 3 NYT Bestselling authors at a signing and only five people show up. Usually two of them are related to one of the authors. 

5. If you could say one thing to the 2013 version of yourself just before the release of DRINK what would it be?

Pack less. Check nothing. Only carry-ons, always.

6. Your next release is GIVEN TO THE SEA, what made you want to write a book that was so different from everything else you’ve published?

That story had been in me for awhile. I grew up on fantasies – Narnia, LOTR, The Last Unicorn, Flight of Dragons. This is my jam, or at least, one of them. So naturally a story set in that genre took hold at one point in my life, and I’d been looking for a way to get it out ever since.

7. Can you tell us a little bit about GIVEN?

It’s set on a small island continent that all of the four reigning cultures believe is the only land that exists. Then they discover that the seas are rising – and will not stop. So of course they are all immediately like, well, crap, we need to make sure we survive the longest so whoever has the most land wins. Let’s go kill everyone who isn’t us.

8. You have another book releasing this year, THIS DARKNESS MINE, how  has having 2 releases this year been different?

It’s a constant work schedule. At one point I was working on four different projects that were at different levels of completion. FPP’s (first pass pages) for one, an edit letter for another, drafting a third book that was contracted, and putting together a proposal for a fourth that I hope I can sell. 

9. Can you tell us anything more about THIS DARKNESS MINE?

It’s a contemporary psychological thriller where my MC, Sasha, is a very Type A “good” girl. She’s always done the right thing, but suddenly is having exploratory inclinations towards things like sex and drugs, and doesn’t understand why. She finds an ultrasound that shows she was supposed to have been a twin, and convinces herself that her twin – Shanna – was the “bad” twin, and she absorbed Shanna’s heart, which is now trying to place some claim on her life. Shortly after this discovery she begins to get communications from Shanna. So the question is – is she right, or is she crazy?

Audrey's Book Blog: Interview with Mindy McGinnis

1. What inspired the story of The Female of the Species? 

I was in college when I ran into the inspiration for SPECIES. I never had cable television growing up, so my freshman year in a dorm I was suddenly mainlining all kinds of things, but especially true crime. I watched a mini-doc about a girl who had been raped and murdered in a small town, but there wasn't enough evidence to convict. Even so, everyone knew who did it. I was watching this becoming more incensed, and realized, that if I were capable of it, I could easily find this town, find that mine, and take care of things myself. Then I thought it was probably time to turn off the TV.

2. How did you get the idea for Alex Craft? 

She came about organically once I had the plot. My characters grow into real people alongside the story if I give the them the space to do it.

3. How do you write a book? Is there a certain writing process that you go through?

My process is a definitely lack of process. I start at the beginning and I write until I'm at the end of the story. There's very little planing. I usually don't know how the book is going to end.

4. What aspect of writing do you find the hardest and how do you overcome it? 

Just starting is hard. I don't write every day because I'm not always on a project. I get into the habit of NOT writing (which is very easy) so when I do have a new project on deck it's hard to jump start again.

5. From the books you've written, who is your favorite character and who can you relate to the most? 

My favorite character is easily Stebbs from NOT A DROP TO DRINK. He's a good person in a horrible world, and he was just so easy to write. The character I can relate to the most is Lynn, from the same book. 

6. What YA book would you recommend to anybody? 

I just started THE HATE U GIVE by Angie Thomas. It's stunning.

7. Can you give advice to aspiring writers about literary agents, query letters and etc? 

My biggest advice on that is to do you homework. It took me 10 years to get an agent, mostly because I didn't want to go through all the work I needed to do in order to succeed. I didn't want to learn the industry, the market, the agents and agencies... all the necessary things in order to make it. I wanted to just be a writer, and send off my book and have someone love it. It doesn't work that way. It also didn't help that my first book was shit.

8. What upcoming works can we expect from you in the future? 

I have the first in a fantasy series releasing April 11, GIVEN TO THE SEA, and a contemporary thriller THIS DARKNESS MINE coming in the fall!