How
did you craft the tone (creepy, funny, romantic, etc) of The Burning Star?
Crystal:
Humor comes naturally to Melissa. Some situations in the book flowed better with
some humor added to it and I think she did a beautiful job adding that to the
story. I however am awkward and not funny. So all wonderfully written awkward
moments in the story come from me.
What
do you think is the most unique thing about Kay?
Melissa:
Her perseverance through whatever crosses her path. She attacks her problems
head on and she opts to see the good in any situation or person.
If
Kay could only post one tweet what would she say?
Somehow
today I boarded a train with a one way ticket to crazyville!
Do
you ever take real qualities of people close to you to craft your characters?
All
the time. People in our lives make for great character studies and help us to
hone in to our characters better to understand how they would react in certain real
life situations.
Are
there any aspects to writing teen fiction that you find challenging?
Melissa:
Keeping the violence at a minimum and keeping it tasteful for everyone of all
ages.
Crystal:
I think as I went through writing the book I struggled constantly with
remembering what I thought was cool to read as a teenager and what I would want
my girls reading as teenagers. I think I played it safe in this book while
starting the series compared to some of the other young adult books I have read
lately but my readers shouldn’t be surprised if certain aspects of the
storyline escalated in the sequel. Finding the happy balance as to what teens
want to read and what parental figures think they should read and trying to hop
between those two ideals is hard.
What
are your top three reasons for writing teen fiction?
1)
Who
doesn’t enjoy reliving that moment of first love? To me it’s even better to
write about than to read about it. The way your heart flutters in your chest.
Your palms get sweaty and your tongue ties in what seems to be a thousand
knots. It’s of course nice to write about these scenarios now that I no longer
live them. Ha!
2)
Teenagers
and young adults have a great sense of humor that sometimes as adults we lose.
We like to live in that sense of humor if it’s possible. Of course that leads
to our husbands and parents still calling us juvenile from time to time when we
play a prank or crack a joke they don’t get, but hey – it’s fun!
3)
Imagination
still roams free in the young. I think it unfortunately dies a little as people
get older and reality sets in. It’s fun to write to a crowd of readers that I
think still has the off the charts imaginative world that I sometimes live in
my head.
What
is the one thing you want to caution readers to keep in mind while reading The
Burning Star?
It
is fiction, but some of the circumstances or experiences in which Kay and Kira finds
themselves in are all based on some variance of truth. They’re teenagers living
with drastic things threatening to change their lives. They have to make
choices good and bad that will forever change their way of life but they also
can’t let the chance to finally live slip by.
What
is your guilty pleasure?
Melissa:
Shelly Laurenston books and chocolate, and sweet tea! Coffee, Coffee, Coffee!
OOOhhhh Transformers movies. (Yes I am a geek – and proud too).
Crystal:
Chocolate cake, coffee, brownies, books, smores, great movies (like
Transformers – my daughter loves Bumblebee), and hot chocolate. Anyone notice a
pattern here? Move over cookie monster.
The chocolate monster is now in town!
What
is next in the works for you?
At
the moment we are working on two other books for two different series before we
continue writing on the sequel to The Burning Star, which Crystal has already
started, called The Frozen Star. We are branching out into the adult paranormal
and contemporary romance genres. One book is titled Secret Maneuvers and is the
start to our Ex Ops series about a black ops type group secretly run by the CIA
with very alpha like heroes and the woman that love them. (Or want to strangle
them depending on the situation) The other novel is titled Big Bad Bite and is
the start of the Big Bad Bite series starring all kinds of fun supernatural
characters and their crazy love lives.
Author
Bio:
Jessie Lane is the writing team
of Crystal Leo and Melissa Pahl. The two sister-in-laws share a great love of breath-taking
romance, cliff hanging suspense, and out-of-this-world characters that demand
your attention or threaten to slap you around until you do pay attention to
them. Because really, it is ALL about the characters.
When not loosing themselves in a
story they remember they have real lives. Crystal lives in Kentucky with her
husband and two little girls who plot daily the many ways they can drive their
poor mother crazy. At the end of the day Crystal then calls Melissa and
threatens to ship her two nieces to their favorite Aunt with lots of air holes
punched through their box. Melissa answers Crystal’s crazed calls in Washington
state where she lives with her husband and big furry baby of a Rottweiler named
Yuffie and reminds her that children are not shippable.
This
is their first novel but they are all geared up and excited to be releasing
other projects soon!
Website:
http://jessielanesite.blogspot.com/
Available
to buy ebooks at:
Barnes
& Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-burning-star-jessie-lane/1111097532?ean=2940014377010
Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Burning-Star-Series-ebook/dp/B00865SLNE/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1340157783&sr=1-1&keywords=the+burning+star
Smashwords:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/165216
All
Romance ebooks/OMNI Lit: http://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-theburningstar-820786-143.html
Kobo
books: http://www.kobobooks.com/search/search.html?q=%22The+Burning+Star%22
Diesel
Book store: http://www.diesel-ebooks.com/item/SW00000165216/Lane-Jessie-The-Burning-Star/1.html
Apple
iBooks
Available
to buy book in print at:
Blurb:
She'll have to believe the unbelievable to survive.
The doctors have told Kay that she will die
before she reaches her eighteenth birthday. Her mother’s determination to save
her life leads them to a move outside of Asheville, NC to a new set of cancer
specialists in the hopes to help her. But it’s not what Kay and her Mom find in
the doctor’s offices in Asheville that lead them on the journey to save her
before time runs out. It’s what Kay finds in the woods outside of Asheville,
and an inhumanly gorgeous guy named Ryan, instead.
Myths and fairy tales come to life before
Kay’s eyes, bringing her closer to the ultimate cure if she can stay alive long
enough to get there. And if the cancer doesn’t kill her before she finds the
cure the secrets her mother has hidden from her may be the beginning of the
end.
Can
she reach her destiny before tragedy strikes?
Excerpt:
I
stood there frozen knowing that I would probably die because of this wretched
creature. All of a sudden I saw the quick movement of an arm bringing down the
point of the knife slicing towards the large creature’s skull. The animal’s
enraged screams ripped through the woods around us. My brain tried to analyze
what was happening before me I stood as still as a statue and watched as the
monster started crumbling away. That’s right, I said crumbling. Like something
that had been burnt from the inside out and then fell apart, it was just
disintegrating into nothing. This can’t be real. I looked up from the ashes
into the face of an angel. No, he’s not an angel, he’s just a guy right? He was
staring at me like he had just seen me sprout a second head and I was staring
at him like I was about to scream again and that’s when I fainted. At least I
didn’t scream again, right?
When
I opened my eyes to see his two ethereal blue eyes staring back into mine my
head felt like it might split in two from a raging headache. “Are you okay?”
his strong but sweet voice whispered.
But
before I could stop myself from saying anything ridiculous I replied, “Are you
an angel? Did I finally die and go to heaven?”
He
bellowed a laugh and I blushed a shade that was more than likely lobster red. I
really just didn’t say that did I? Stupid, stupid, stupid Kay. I smacked myself
in the forehead and tried to hide my face. That’s a great way to make a first
impression to an extremely hot guy. Let’s just faint like an air headed girl,
which I am not, and then wake up asking stupid questions. And then that’s when
it hit me. The past few moments of events flooded my brain again and I started
to panic. “Wait, wait a minute! What was that thing and how in the world did it
just, just…”
“The
dog? I’m sorry to tell you I had to cut it with my knife to scare it away. It wasn’t
a mortal wound though. He took off through the woods in an escape. Sorry if you’re
one of those animal lovers, but I was afraid it might kill one of us.”
I
shook my head to try and clear it. “No, no, no, no. That was no dog. Well I
mean, it was at first, but then it became something else. It was black, and
huge, and had those red eyes…” And before I finished my sentence I looked up at
him to see complete shock and amazement on his face. I had never seen anyone
look so bewildered. “Don’t look at me like that! I know what I saw! Now what
was that thing and what happened to it at the end. It didn’t run off, I saw you
kill it. And I would point to the body to prove it, but it; well it fell apart
or something.”
And
in just a split second the shock had disappeared from his handsome face and was
replaced by something more masked and calculating. “I’m sorry. You’re quite mistaken.
I didn’t kill it. I only wounded it. And it was a dog. Are you sure you didn’t
hit your head or something? I’m afraid you might be having some kind of
hallucinations of some kind.” Somehow, when he said it, it didn’t seem as scary
or grotesque as it did when I played what I thought I saw back in my head.
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