Saturday, December 3, 2011

Author Interview with C.J. Hill author of "Slayers"

C.J Hill's Bio:
C.J. Hill is the pseudonym for a popular young adult author who makes her fantasy debut with Slayers. Her real name is Janette Rallison has five children who keep her well supplied with plot ideas, sometimes even making cameo appearances in her novels. She likes to write romantic comedy because there is enough angst in real life, but theres a drastic shortage on both humor and romance. 


Playing the Field was named Society of School Librarians International Best Book Award Honor Book, and both Alls Fair In Love, War, and High School and Love, Life, and the Pursuit of Free Throws were included on YALSAs Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults list. Fame Glory, and Other Things on My To Do List, was just chosen for IRAs YA Choices list for 2007

Author Interview
Questions and Answers




1.  Are you a debut author or have you written a novel before? 

I’ve written seventeen other novels but this is my first book as CJ Hill. (The next CJ Hill book, a time-travel dystopian novel called Erasing Time, will be out September 2012).


 2. What has been your experience like as an author so far?
 
Being an author, like most jobs, has its ups and downs. I love the creative part. I love being able to come up with stories and sharing them with readers. I don’t love marketing myself. I’m a writer not a salesman, so it makes it hard to promote myself like I was a brand of toothpaste or something. 

3. How long did Slayers your exciting Young Adult Fantasy book take to write? 


Slayers took about four months to write, and longer than that to do my revisions, my agent’s revisions, and my editor’s revisions. Revisions are another part of being an author that I’m not so crazy about. By the time you’ve gone through that many drafts, you pretty much hate the story. 

4. Could you tell us briefly your own writer's writing routine? 

I get up, make sure the kids get to school, then I tell myself I will spend a half an hour going through email. Two hours later I start writing and I write until my alarm clock tells me it’s time to pick up kids from school. Then I hurry and change out of my pajamas so I can go out in public. When I’m behind schedule on a deadline—which pretty much describes my last year and probably my future year too—I try to get some writing in after school. Somewhere in all of that I eat, shower, cook, straighten, shop, and chauffer kids to piano lessons, etc. 

5. Moving more Into Slayers and Its Characters: 
Which did you love writing most about? 


Tori was a great character to write about because she was a fish out of water. Everything was new and frightening for her. Bess was also a fun character to write because she didn’t take anything seriously so she had some funny lines. I appreciate that in a character. 


6.Moving more Into Slayers and Its Characters: 
There is a complex relationship between all of the Slayers. None more than the one between Tori, Dirk, and Jesse. From your point of view, C.J., do you favor the relationship between Tori and Dirk or Tori and Jessi. No teams just a description of the relationship as you see it. You can be as vague as you like! 


When I wrote the first draft of Slayers, I planned that Tori would end up with Jesse. Then my teenage daughter read the manuscript and since then she’s been campaigning for Dirk. Every draft after that, I leaned more and more toward Dirk. I mean, okay, so the guy has some secrets and maybe a bit of baggage, but hey, he really cares about Tori. That counts for something. So to tell you the truth, I’m not sure who she’ll end up with in the third book. 


7. In Slayers, its noticeable that we see a lot of the point of views of many characters but mainly the deeper ones being Tori, Dr. B, Dirk, Jesse, and Ryker. 
Would you say, we would see a deeper point of view of the other Slayers or well.. other characters? 


In the first draft I gave Rosa and Bess both scenes where they were the point of view character. My editor made me cut those scenes out. (But you can read Rosa’s scene on my CJHillbooks.com website. It’s under the extras tab.) In the second book, I’ll probably stick with the point of view characters that I used in book one, but who knows. 

8. For those readers who haven't read your novel, Slayers, yet. What would you say to get them on your side, so they will pick up an action-packed copy of Slayers as soon as possible? 

I’m afraid that the cover might scare off some people who aren’t huge fantasy fans. I would tell them that the book takes place in our world, during our time period, and just has some fun fantasy elements added—superpowers and dragons. If readers like action, humor, and romance, they’ll enjoy Slayers. Pick it up. That really isn’t a dragon rocket ship on the cover . . . 

9. Will there be more to Slayers or was this it for you? It will really be great, if there is more. I'm a big fan and Slayers has that feel of greatness of "The Mortal Instruments" by Cassandra Clare and "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins. A sort of Epic feel. 

Thank you! That’s good company to be with. There will definitely be two more books. (Although I can’t say with certainty exactly when the next one will come out since I’m not done writing it.) I can’t leave the dragon lord free when he will undoubtedly attack DC. My sister lives in the area. She would never forgive me if I let dragons roam around.

 
Thank you for being at the blog, C.J. may many good things come your way from writing Slayers and other writing projects as well! 

Thanks for having me!

Thanks for answering my questions.


Learn About Slayers: Review of Slayers by C.J. Hill


1 comment:

Erica said...

Slayers looks like an interesting read - thanks for the fun interview!

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