Interview: Jesse Lane

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/

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jessie-Lane/123971541071199

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6150577.Jessie_Lane

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:

Createspace: https://www.createspace.com/3888792

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.