Sunday, November 18, 2012

My next big thing is sooooo "TWISTED"


I was thrilled when mystery writer C.L.Phillips invited me to participate in “THE NEXT BIG THING,” a blog-chain designed to introduce you to stories not-yet published. Thank you for the invitation, C.L. (Btw, if you want to see the city of Austin through the eyes of attorney Jimmy Ray Hawkens, check out First Mistake, the inaugural novel in C.L. Phillips’ mystery series.)

I’m eager to tell you about what I’ve been working on for the last—dare I tell you how many years?—but first I want to introduce the authors who will continue the blog-chain next week. I invite you to drop by their sites and learn about their new projects.


Judith Rochelle/Desiree Holt
Multi-award winning author Judith Rochelle, aka Desiree Holt has—at last count—over a 140 published titles. Whether you want to read a contemporary novel, a paranormal, or a suspense this woman has a selection for you. But a word of caution. Set your air-conditioner on low. Judith/Desiree is bound to turn up the heat. 


Vonnie Davis

I met award winning author, Vonnie Davis, at a writers’ retreat. She had the group of us writers laughing till we cried with her witty storytelling. Vonnie is the author of the romantic suspense series, The Red Hand Conspiracy.

Janice Hamrick’s debut novel won the Mystery Writers of America/Minotaur Books First Crime Novel award. She has since received other accolades for her Jocelyn Shore mystery series.   Maybe next week, we’ll get to hear about the forth book in the series.

You will find their blog posts on line the week of November 26th.

Okay, now. My first ever public introduction to my psychological suspense novel, Twisted. 

The Next Big Thing: TWISTED

Where did the idea come from for the book? 
I wrote a gritty psychological murder mystery, but didn’t publish it. The mother and daughter in that novel haunted me, pleading to make their conflict public. I finally relented, reversed their character traits, gave the daughter the starring role and a story she could call her own, and voila, Twisted. 
What genre does your book fall under? 
Twisted is a psychological suspense, with emphasis on psychological.  While I actually wrote Twisted for an adult audience, the protagonist is a fourteen-year-old girl from a small East Texas town, so the novel has the potential of crossing-over into young adult. 
Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? 
The young heroine has short, curly dark hair and an innocent face, so if Willow Shields would cut and dye her hair, she’d make a wonderful Sarah Hausman. Dakota Fanning looks like Sarah’s eighteen-year-old confidant. I’d love to have Kathryn Morris and Danny Pino, from the TV show Cold Case, play Sarah’s parents. Zac Efron would make a powerful brother of Sarah’s best friend.
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? 
When secrets emerge following a gang rape in a schoolyard, an alienated, unassertive teen risks everything to expose the truth. 
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? 
Neither. I’m thrilled to announce that Twisted will be released by Bell Bridge Books in April of 2013. 
How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? 
It took much less than a year, but I continued to revise and revise and revise . . .  
What other books would you compare this story to within your genre? 
Joy Fielding’s Whispers and Lies and Sharon Sala’s The Boarding House both had me believing one thing at the beginning of the story, and by the end, something totally different. I hope I take the reader on a similar journey. Twisted shares the themes of alienation, parent-teen conflict, and search for identity with Judith Guest’s classic, Ordinary People. 
Who or what inspired you to write this book? 
I get jazzed when I can write in a way that challenges the norm, so once I got inside my characters, I knew that their story needed to be written in this particular format, and my desire to be absolutely true to them spurred me on. 
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest? 
What goes on in a person’s psyche—beneath the external facade—has always fascinated me. As an author, I hope to share that intrigue with the reader and spotlight the internal world of my characters--characters who fight and love and struggle and triumph, or not, yet show us we are all part of the same humanity.

Thank you for reading about my NEXT BIG THING. You can find out more about my writing at Marjorie's pages.

Please check out Judith Rochelle/Desiree Holt, Vonnie Davis, and Janice Hamrick on November 26, 2012 when they will blog about their NEXT BIG THING.







3 comments:

C.L. Phillips said...

Marjorie,

I can't wait to read TWISTED. I love the title and the premise. One question - how easy or hard was it to go back and forth between your real life and these characters?

Take care,

C.L.

C.L. Phillips said...

Marjorie,

I can't wait to read TWISTED. I love the title and the premise. One question - how easy or hard was it to go back and forth between your real life and these characters?

Take care,

C.L.

Marjorie E. Brody said...

The characters "became" my real life while I sat at the computer. That's why I set my computer to remind me to "step away" every so often. πŸ˜‰