Saundra Mitchell, author of Shadowed Summer, is one of the most generous people I know. She works tremendously hard at everything she does, and still makes time to lend her support during the setbacks and her unstinting joy in the triumphs of her fellow authors (not to mention some excellent fan art covers, book trailers, and more). So I guess I should not have been surprised when I invited her to post a guest blog here in celebration of the paperback release of Shadowed Summer, and she sent me a nice long post about my books. And I have included it below. But since I am guessing most of you reading this blog already know about me and my books, I forced (well, asked nicely) Saundra if she wouldn’t mind doing a little Q&A. Because really, I’d rather find out some of the cool behind-the-scenes stuff on her books than sit here blushing. Plus, I wanted to hear what Saundra thinks about Southern settings, age branding, and mystery writing!
So! Here’s the Q&A:
DF: One of the things I love about Shadowed Summer is the strong sense place and the overall atmosphere, both in terms of the southern setting and the spookiness of the supernatural elements. Did you draw on real world places and experiences when you were writing this book? If so, how?
SM: Ondine, Louisiana doesn’t exist, but Ascension Parish and all the other towns I mention in the book *do*. I read extensively about Ascension Parish; I read the newspapers for Donaldsonville and Gonzales to get a feel for the region and the people, the weather and local concerns.
I also read about the history of the parish, so that I could put the families in context. Towns don’t sputter out for no reason, so I wanted to find out why Ondine was down to 346 people by the time I got there.
But I built the town because I wanted to have the freedom to create a place, rather than the stricture of trying to recreate somewhere real that I’d never been. So when I put it together, I based it on places I knew, like Gem, Indiana near where I live, and Ila, Georgia, where my best friend grew up.
I wanted Ondine to be realistically cobbled together, a place that *could* be real, even though it wasn’t. The place was important to get right, because I would be asking readers to believe in a ghost and all kinds of spectral goings on. I didn’t want them to have to suspend their disbelief over the town, as well.
As for the rest of the book- there are personal truths hidden in SHADOWED SUMMER. My grandmother really did see her late parents in a turned off television. I really did live near a couple of boys who liked to throw firecrackers and M-80s into the creek. But most of the book is like the town- made up, but hopefully real anyway.
DF: I’m always interested to see how books end up categorized, since it often seems to me that the dividing line between middle grade and young adult can get blurry. For example, I could imagine a wide range of readers enjoying Shadowed Summer. Did you write it with a particular age range in mind? Do you have any thoughts on age-branding, either specifically with respect to your book(s), or in general?
SHADOWED SUMMER has a mixed-up dog’s breakfast of an age range. When I initially wrote the book, I intended to write a book for adults. It was 76,000 some-odd words long when I handed it to my original beta readers. One of those readers said, “Hey, this is a YA novel!” and looking over it again, I had to agree.
(How I failed to realize it was YA on my own, I dunno. I started out with the idea that I wanted to write a book that made me feel the way Annette Curtis Klause’s THE SILVER KISS made me feel when I was seventeen. Writers can be a little myopic sometimes, eh?)
So when I shopped it to agents, I shopped it as a YA novel. It went through two fairly extensive revisions just with my agent- and lost about 35,000 words in the process. Before we sent it out, my agent dickered about whether I should change the characters’ ages to 13, or leave them as 14- finally we decided to leave them.
And then, when Delacorte Press acquired it, I had two more rounds of revision that firmly centered the book as YA and/or MG. For a long time, the house didn’t know whether they planned to market it as middle grade or YA. Finally, they opted for YA because of subject matter.
But readers are split- some feel it’s YA, some feel it’s MG. The market is split, too. Junior Library Guild put it in their middle grade mystery section; The Edgars listed it as YA. When I did all of my promotion for the hardcover, I treated it as a YA horror novel. Now that I’m promoting the paperback, I treat it like a MG mystery novel.
It’s kind of messy and definitely confusing. But I think it’s kind of appropriate for the book. Iris is wobbling between being a girl and a teen, and so is her novel.
DF: Shadowed Summer has beautiful prose, spookiness, and wonderful atmosphere. But it’s also a mystery (and was even nominated for the 2010 Edgar Award for YA Novel!). What do you think makes a successful and satisfying mystery? Did you know the “answer” to your mystery when you began writing, or did you figure it out along the way?
SM: I think the most satisfying mysteries are the ones you COULD have solved, but you didn’t. When all the clues are there, and you look back over the book when you get to the end and go, “Ohhhhhhhhhhh!”
There’s not a lot of fun in a story where the ending is openly telegraphed. And there are mysteries where the whodunit is unsolvable by the readers, because the villain is the previously unmentioned twin, or the plumber who never appeared in the book. When I read mysteries like those, I feel cheated.
About halfway through drafting my book, I figured out the ending. So I knew early, but I did figure it out along the way. Once that draft was finished, I had to go back and rewrite parts, and add information, and tune things so that all the threads lead to that conclusion.
I really hoped that people would get to the end and be more like, “Ohhhhhhhh!” than “Huh?!” That was my main goal.
There was definitely a part of Shadowed Summer where I went “Ohhhhh!”
If you’re interested in reading Shadowed Summer you can find it in lots of libraries (it was a Junior Library Guild selection!) or buy your own copy via your local indie bookstore, the Book Depository, and Powell’s, among others.
Saundra is doing a whole series of guest blogs around the internets: details are here.
And now, as promised, here’s the ACTUAL guest blog that makes me blush. Thank you Saundra!
SAUNDRA MITCHELL on FAIRY TALES FOR MY DAUGHTER
Finding books to read for my daughter can sometimes be a hard task. I don’t really care for princess books- Disney or otherwise- because I like her to experience stories where the protagonist is strong, resourceful and capable. Where she makes the story- not where the story happens around her, and to her.
Which is why we love Deva’s books in our house. FORTUNE’S FOLLY was a bedtime favorite for months. My daughter loved Fortunata- how clever she was, and also how flawed she was.
We had so many great discussions about taking care of ourselves and other people, and whether it’s ever okay to lie. And we also got to gasp at the danger, and cry at the heartbreak, and cheer when (this might be a spoiler!) everything works out all right in the end.
It’s a special book for us- one of the first books without illustrations that my daughter ever attempted to read on her own, and the first book where we took turns reading aloud to each other.
Which means, even though it was just a year, it seemed like an unreasonably long wait to get THE ADVENTURES OF PRUNELLA BOGTHISTLE, which just came out May 25th.
We’re hoping we can stretch it out a ways, so that the wait for CIRCUS GALACTICUS won’t be quite so painful. But one thing is certain- Deva’s books hold a special place on our bookshelves.
They’re beautiful, and full of memories to read, and to make- they are the perfect fairy tales for my daughter.
