Author Interview & Contest: Tracy Deebs

A big thanks to Tracy for stopping by to answer a few questions! You can check out her website here: http://tracydeebs.com/, and her blog here: http://www.tracy-deebs.blogspot.com/

1. Tell us a bit about your upcoming release, Tempest Rising.

Tempest Rising a dark paranormal romance that tells the story of sixteen-year-old surfer, Tempest Maguire, on the cusp of her seventeenth birthday. The daughter of a pro-surfer and a mermaid, she has to make a choice between staying human as she’s always wanted, or becoming mermaid, a fate that she’s dreaded her entire life. But as her birthday approaches, she realizes the choice might not be as simple as she’d hoped (growing gills in English class will do that to a girl).

Add in a love triangle between Tempest and two (very) hot guys, a lot of surfing, an underwater kingdom and a showdown between Tempest and the most evil creature in the sea, and you have a good idea about what Tempest Rising has in store …

2. The book deals with mythological sea creatures, what inspired you to create a novel dealing with this topic?

I’ve loved mermaids since I was three years old and my dad brought me home a VHS copy of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid. I fell in love with the story the first time I saw it and then tortured my parents for the next three years by watching the movie at least once every single day. Seriously. When we moved to California when I was six, I fell in love with the ocean and all things in it (except sharks, which I have a terrible fear of) and when I first learned of selkies many years later (from a Nora Roberts novel, actually) I became just as fascinated with them. So when I told my agent I wanted to write a YA and she answered with, “How do you feel about mermaids …” I couldn’t resist. Tempest Rising is the book I’ve always wanted to write.

3. This is your first YA novel, would you mind sharing a bit about your journey to getting published?

For me, getting published in YA has been a really fabulous experience. I have an amazing agent whose first love is young adult novels. She was incredibly supportive when I told her I wanted to switch genres from romance and try my hand at a YA. Within two weeks, we’d come up with a credible idea, within six weeks I had a full proposal together (eighty pages and a synopsis) and just about three months from the day I told her I wanted to write YA, she sold Tempest Rising to Walker Books :)

Since then, I’ve sold two more YAs to Stacy Abrams, my awesome editor at Walker—one called The International Kissing Club (January 2012) which I wrote with two of my good friends and another that I’m working on now, tentatively called Zero Day, that is a modern day retelling of the Pandora myth, except instead of a box Pandora opens an attachment and brings about technological Armageddon.

4. One of the things that I loved about Tempest Rising was the variety of unique names in the book. How did you decide on those?

I love names and I’m never happy until they are exactly write. Tempest’s name was the hardest for me—she went through a bunch of different names and I had taken to calling her mermaid girl in my own head as I plotted out the story, when I finally decided to just relax and let the name come to me. Almost immediately I heard her voice in my head, along with a demand to be called Tempest. Everything else about her stemmed from her name—including her abilities and the prophecy.

The other names were easier for me to come up with. I had a general idea of what I wanted each character to be, so I looked for names that would suit their personalities/role in the novel.

5. Tempest Rising leaves things open for a sequel, can we expect another book in the near future?

I really hope so. I’ve always conceived of Tempest as a trilogy and the synopsis for the second book, Tempest Unleashed, is under consideration with my publisher as I write this :)

Enter to win an ARC of Tempest Rising by filling out the form below. This is only open to US residents, because it's being shipped straight from the publisher.

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