Author Interview: Colina Brennan

I’m so excited to share this interview with Colina Brennan, author of Addicted to You, a New Adult novel that was just released this week! So see what Colina has to say, then check out her new book!

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Tell us what your book is about in 140 characters or less.

Addicted to You is about Leah, who has no interest in love because she's convinced everyone eventually lets you down. Then she meets Will. Dun dun dun! :P

Who’s your favorite character to write and why?

Leah, because it was amusing to push her character and see how she’d respond. There were times I actually had to scale her back a bit and soften her up because she already comes off a little harsh.

Where do you write, and what makes it the perfect place to write? What surrounds you?

I write at my kitchen table. It definitely is NOT the perfect place to write. There’s noise from the TV in the living room and people coming and going and so many distractions. I can rarely get anything done until after hours when everyone is asleep. I really need my own dedicated space!

What would you be doing if you couldn’t be a writer?

I have no idea. Writing is my passion. I don’t think I’d be happy doing anything else.

What first drew you to New Adult?

I didn’t get to experience a lot of what the typical college-aged person goes through because I got married my freshman year and then had a child the beginning of my sophomore year. So I love reading about this time in people’s lives and being able to enjoy those experiences safely through the pages instead.

What New Adult book is on top of your TBR pile?

Subject to Change by Alessandra Thomas. If only my To Do list wasn’t a mile long!

What writers inspire you?

Gayle Foreman, Katie McGarry, Lauren Oliver, and Jessica Park. I also enjoy Colleen Hoover and Cora Carmack.

Are there any authors you’d love to see do a New Adult book?

John Green. I think he’d rock it.

Leave us with a teaser/quote from your book?

“Will would show her that he was an addiction worth keeping.”

Find Colina Online: Blog ::  Facebook :: Twitter :: Tumblr :: Goodreads

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About the Book: 

When twenty-one-year-old Leah Carter's latest one night stand burglarizes her apartment, her roommate forces her to attend therapy for sex addicts. Leah insists she isn't a sex addict; she just doesn't do relationships. After all, sooner or later, everyone lets you down.

At first, the group sessions are little more than an education on how to be promiscuous. Until she meets the newest addict - blue eyes, killer body, and a smile that tempts relapse.

Psychology student Will McLean is posing as a fellow addict while researching a case study on unusual addictions. But the more he learns about Leah, the more certain he is that his desire to break through her walls and unearth her secrets has nothing to do with his assignment.

As the uncertainties spike alongside the sexual tension, the only thing Leah knows for sure is that falling in love would be disastrous. Too bad love might be one addiction she can't kick.

Book Blast: Addicted to You

Out today is Addicted to You by Colina Brennan!

About the Book: 
When twenty-one-year-old Leah Carter's latest one night stand burglarizes her apartment, her roommate forces her to attend therapy for sex addicts. Leah insists she isn't a sex addict; she just doesn't do relationships. After all, sooner or later, everyone lets you down.

At first, the group sessions are little more than an education on how to be promiscuous. Until she meets the newest addict - blue eyes, killer body, and a smile that tempts relapse.

Psychology student Will McLean is posing as a fellow addict while researching a case study on unusual addictions. But the more he learns about Leah, the more certain he is that his desire to break through her walls and unearth her secrets has nothing to do with his assignment.

As the uncertainties spike alongside the sexual tension, the only thing Leah knows for sure is that falling in love would be disastrous. Too bad love might be one addiction she can't kick.

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Excerpt:

Leah hated Thursdays. Specifically, she hated what she was forced to do on Thursdays—a program called ‘Heal the Heart, Save the Body,’ which was a convoluted way of saying ‘therapy for sex addicts.’

Despite her roommate’s insistence, Leah did not have a ‘sex problem.’ So she liked the occasional one night stand. So what? She was twenty-one and single. There was nothing wrong with wanting to make the most of it.

Yet here she was, preparing for another session where she’d have to listen to some old guy attempt to teach a room full of so-called sexual deviants the skills to function in a civilized world.

Because left to their own devices, they wouldn’t be able to resist the primal urge to hump everything that moved. Obviously.

Who decided sex was an addiction anyway? Or that someone should need therapy to “fix” it? Sex was good for you. It was a de-stresser. If it wasn’t, then you were doing it wrong.

She made a face at the platter of cookies set on an uneven seat a few feet away. She had tried one of them a few meetings ago, and it had nearly broken her tooth. They were sturdy enough to survive a nuclear apocalypse. They were cockroach cookies.

Maybe that was the key to these therapy sessions—to knock everyone out with stale confections so they were incapable of having sex.

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About the Author: 
Colina Brennan grew up in a small city, which gave her plenty of time to read and stretch her imagination. By day, she's attached to her kids, and by night, to her laptop. She writes about the fantastical and the romantic, and everything in between. Addicted to You is her first novel.

Find Colina Online: Facebook :: Twitter :: Goodreads
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Interview with Mindee Arnett

I'm so excited to have Mindee Arnett, author of The Nightmare Affair, on the blog today answering my questions. Mindee Arnett is going to be one of seven amazing authors at the Fall in Love With Teen Fiction event at Powell's this week, so if you're near there, definitely put that on your calendar! This interview was so fun and I'm so happy to share it with you!

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Synopsis: Sixteen-year-old Dusty Everhart breaks into houses late at night, but not because she's a criminal. No, she's a Nightmare. 

Literally.

Being the only Nightmare at Arkwell Academy, a boarding school for magickind, and living in the shadow of her mother's infamy, is hard enough. But when Dusty sneaks into Eli Booker's house, things  get a whole lot more complicated. He's hot, which means sitting on his chest and invading his dreams couldn't get more embarrassing. But it does. Eli is dreaming of a murder.

Then Eli's dream comes true. 

Now Dusty has to follow the clues - both within Eli's dreams and out of them - to stop the killer before more people turn up dead. And before the killer learns what she's up to and marks her as the next target.  

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In the Best Worlds: Since you write for teens, what were you like as a teenager?

Mindee Arnett: Not a very typical one, unfortunately. I’ve always been the “thirteen going on thirty” girl. In high school all I wanted was to get out and be in college. Looking back now, I wish I had been more focused on the present and less on the future. Of course, this is probably why I like writing young adult so much—to recapture my underappreciated youth.

ItBW: You do such a fabulous job building the world of Arkwell Academy. What was the hardest part of world building?

MA: The hardest stuff for me is always the “big picture.” The day to day details of the world Dusty lives in, one with all the various magical kinds and electronic equipment with lively personalities and so on, came at once and without any deep thinking on my part. Bringing in the bigger stuff, the logical context in which these details exist, is always harder. I spent a lot of time asking myself questions about the politics behind the Will and the implications of the racial (for lack of a better term) divisions between the various magickinds. Not a lot of this bigger picture stuff makes it into the story directly, but I have to be aware of it in order for the world to have realistic cohesion.

ItBW: What aspect of Dusty’s fantastic, magical world do you wish existed in real life?

MA: Well, it would be cool if all of it existed, right? But I guess if I had to choose one it might be idea that all of our myths and fairy tales are actually true. That there really is a magical public relations department ought there whose job over the centuries has been to convince human beings that all fantastical stories are fiction.

ItBW: I love the way you work Eli’s dreams into the narrative of this story. What is the weirdest dream you remember? 

MA: Oh I have so many dream stories to share. One of my most distributing—and regularly occurring I might add—are dreams involving my teeth falling out. In one particularly vivid one, I was singing on stage and the entire rim of my top gums and all the teeth attached to it just broke off into my mouth. Gross, right? I think this is what you call an anxiety dream. This dream was so vivid it actually ended up in one of my story horror stories, Vatticut Dead Man, which was published in a little fiction magazine called Trail of Indiscretion.

ItBW: Was there anything – characters, plot twists, scenes, etc - in The Nightmare Affair that surprised you while you were writing?

MA: Pretty much all of them. I’m very much a pantser when it comes to writing. I don’t outline at all, although I do usually have an idea about where the story is going and sometimes about certain scenes. But for the most part, I discover the twists while writing. However, I will say that the motivations and inner turmoil of one particular male character did surprise me quite a lot, and continues to surprise me as I move on with the series. And I think anybody who’s read the book will probably guess who I’m referring to.

ItBW: How has your life changed since becoming a published author?

MA: You know, it really hasn’t. I’m a lot busier than I used to be, of course, and my stress level has gone up 100%, but my day to day is more or less the same. I still get up and go to my day job every morning and spend the evenings with my husband, kids and pets. Really, aside from the times I’m signing or doing a writing workshop I forget I’m a published author at all. So much of being “published” happens out there and well away from me my writing.

ItBW: So excited that Nightmare Affair is the first in a series! Is there anything you can dish about The Nightmare Dilemma?

MA: Dilemma starts a couple of months after the events in The Nightmare Affair. It’s approaching the end of the school year, and once again Dusty is presented with a mystery that she must use her dream-seer skills to solve, this one involving a vicious attack on one of her friends. She’s also dealing with the aftermath of what happened in book 1, especially when it comes to her relationship with Eli.

ItBW: Finish these sentences:

We could be best friends if…you love books and horses. Seriously, I share one of these in common with pretty much all of my friends. Some of them I even share both.

When I was a kid, I wanted to grow up to be...an Archeologist (translation: I wanted to be a female Indiana Jones)

If I were a paranormal creature, I would be…a Nightmare of course. 

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Find Mindee Arnett online: Website :: Blog :: Twitter :: Facebook :: Tumblr 

Thanks so much to Mindee for answering my questions! Hopefully some of you will have a chance to meet her in person at Powell's on April 17th! At the event they will be giving away exclusive booklets with never-before-seen content from seven amazing authors. If you can't make it, I have a giveaway for three of these booklets, courtesy of the fabulous New Leaf Literary, going on now! 

Fall in Love With Teen Fiction: Exclusive Booklet Giveaway!

Hey, friends on the West coast, GO TO THIS EVENT! I'm so jealous of you who are in proximity to Powell's, because you have some amazing authors coming your way. Fortunately, if you're like me and not exactly within reasonable traveling distance to this event, I have something to cheer you up. For those who get to go, there are these awesome little booklets of exclusive content available. AND thanks to the amazing New Leaf Literary you can win one of these booklets! 

The booklets contain exclusive never-before-seen content from Mindee Arnett, Leigh Bardugo, Lisa Desrochers, Sarah Fine, Kristin Halbrook, Kody Keplinger, and Ingrid Paulson. They will be signed by all seven authors and will include deleted scenes, alternate POVs, and annotated passages!

Awesome right? Giveaway will end on April 17th. There with be three lucky winners! Just fill out the Rafflecopter form below! *Update: Contest is US only.
(P.S. Check back on April 15th to check out my interview with Mindee Arnett!)

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