Crossroads Blog Tour Day 5: Karen Kincy

Welcome to day 5 of The Crossroads Blog Tour! If you're not familiar with how the tour works, you can check out my kick off post here, and then be sure to visit The Crossroads Tour main page for a full list of participating authors and bloggers as well as details on prizes, giveaways, and collecting the mystery clues!

Today I'm excited to have Karen Kincy on the blog, she's nice enough to stop in and answer a few questions for me!




Do you find it more difficult to write the initial story or to edit and refine the first draft?

First-drafting challenges me more, because all my ideas are in my head rather than on the page. After I’ve penned my initial thoughts, then I can start shaping and reshaping them during revisions, and actually see where the story’s going.

Since there are quite a few young adult novels that focus on shapeshifters and werewolves, did you think it would be difficult to differentiate your characters and make them stand out?

Actually, that’s what I set out to do: to write about shapeshifters that hadn’t been explored much before—such as the wily pooka—and create my own werewolf mythology that was rooted deeply in the idea that all paranormal people have been living in plain sight for years now, and this alternate America is different because of it. Different laws, different prejudices, different foods in the aisles of the grocery stores. Not to mention centaurs browsing in the produce…

Which character did you find was the most difficult to write? Easiest?

Gwen was the toughest, because point of view characters can’t see themselves from the outside. True, the reader gets to know narrators better by hearing all their thoughts, but they better be interesting ones! I’d say Tavian was the easiest to write, just because he’s a 5’ 4” Japanese fox-spirit with a tendency to be quirky.

When you are planning a novel, do you create an incredibly detailed outline, or do you just list main points and fill in the blanks as you go?

Both, actually. Other was fill in the blanks, Bloodborn had a complete synopsis, and the Super Secret Project I’m working on now has a detailed outline that I’m trying to make as twisty and exciting as possible before I start drafting.

What was the last book that kept you up too late because you couldn’t put it down?

The DUFF by Kody Keplinger—not paranormal like I usually read, but really, really good. You can read my review on my website http://www.karenkincy.com/?p=1354

Thanks so much Karen! The next book in the Other series, Bloodborn, releases in Fall 2011 from Flux, mark it as to-read now! For more information on Karen and the Other series be sure check her out here:

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BLOODBORN (from Goodreads)

Brock Koeman lost his older brother Chris to werewolves. Now he’s in danger of losing himself. Bitten by a werewolf at sixteen, Brock fights the transformation, taking the excruciating pain as a punishment for his mistakes. There are more like him, bloodborn werewolves and vampires, changed against their will when bitten by one of the Others. And then there are the naturalborn Others, many who look down on the bloodborn and consider them diseased outcasts.

Brock’s mother passed away when he was only eleven, leaving behind a withering rose garden and photographs he can’t stand to look at anymore. Now that Chris is also gone, Brock and his dad live alone in a farmhouse too big for two, on the dairy that’s been in their family for three generations, in the little town of Klikamuks, Washington. It’s not like Brock can help Dad out anymore; before it happened, the cows trusted Brock. Now they panic at the smell of him. They know what he is, what he’s becoming, even though Brock hasn’t yet given into the urge to transform into a werewolf. With the help of anti-lycanthropic medication, he’s managed to fight the change for two full moons. But he knows he can’t last much longer.