Before we get to the fabulous giveaway, let's have some fun.
Martina, what’s your favorite thing about Compulsion?
I secretly love Gothic novels. There was a point where Daphne du Maurier's REBECCA and Mary Stewart's AIRS ABOVE THE GROUND were among my favorite novels. I've always adored books with exotically dangerous settings, quirky characters, and elements of mystery and suspense. Since I'm from Prague, one of the most magical, broodingly beautiful cities in the world, the bar for magical locations is set pretty hight. But the South. Ah, there I have all the elements I love—a haunted past, regret, anger, continuing conflict, and questions of morality galore. Southern plantations are the closest thing to moldering abbeys and decaying castles that we have in the United States. I'm grateful to Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl for reminding me of how much I love all the elements they included in BEAUTIFUL CREATURES, because their series got me thinking about the possibilities of Spanish moss and crumbling Southern mansions. My favorite thing about Compulsion, hands down, is the setting and how it shaped (and twisted) the characters and families who live there.
Exotically dangerous settings ... #clearsthroat #blushes
What is the weirdest piece of research you had to do when writing COMPULSION?
I researched a LOT of off the wall things for this book: pirates, shipwrecks, ghosts, witches, voodoo, hoodoo, Cherokee witchcraft, slavery, drug running, lost treasures of the Civil War, Confederate privateering, the Red Sea Gold, indigo production, drag queens/drag shows, secret rooms, furniture with hidden drawers, ball lightning . . . The thing that fascinated me the most on a research level was the various forms of magic that were present in the South with the confluence of belief systems brought there by slaves from different regions and religions intersecting with Native American belief systems. I spent a lot of time Googling specific spells and curses and trying to work out how the interpretation of them might have changed over three hundred years.
What do you want readers to take away from COMPULSION?
That you can pick your family, the people you love. And that you need to do more than just survive your life. You have to go out and live your life.
Very profound.
Can you sum up COMPULSION in one word?
Sure. The title: Compulsion. I think my editor nailed it coming up with that.
So COMPULSION wasn't the original title?
The book has had three titles, and I love them all. My working title was FIRE CARRIER, and when you read the book, you'll get that. My brilliant acquiring editor, Annette Pollert, who edited the book all the way up to copyedits, came up with BEHOLDEN, which everyone loved, and that also suits the book perfectly. But the bottom line is that COMPULSION fits several themes in the book and also conveys a sense of energy that I hope I've achieved in the plot. It's by far my favorite, and it carries through into the rest of the series.
COMPULSION is part of a trilogy. Did you already have the series written when you submitted the manuscript?
I never meant to write a series, but I knew I wasn't done with Watson Island yet, so after I'd written the second draft, I gave both Eight and Cassie little sisters. I intended to let them help me explore the magical aspects of those families in companion novels. When my agent and I were getting ready to submit COMPULSION to publishers, I very quickly wrote synopses for the novels. Just quick sketches. And then I immediately went to work writing the second book to keep from going crazy while I was waiting to see if COMPULSION would sell.
We already had a phone call scheduled with a publisher for a Monday, and my agent called me at five o'clock on Thursday night to tell me that Annette, my future editor, wanted to talk to me the next day, and did I have time. Um, does McDonalds sell hamburgers?
#snort #giggle
Also, he said, Annette wanted to know if I would consider making the other two books a series. Sure, I said. Of course. And then I had until ten-thirty the next morning to come up with ideas: plot and character arcs for the series, a plot that was progressive instead of episodic, themes that would carry across the books. All that.
'K, me interjecting here ... Now that is chaos for a writer - less than a handful of hours to mind-create two full stories. But, obviously, you handled it amazingly!
So I called my critique partners and begged for brainstorming help. We were all focusing on plot at first, and then when I was just talking things trough, I finally realized what the character progressions had to be. Instead of crying about the loss of what I'd already written in Book Two, I got excited about the series idea instead, and I also realized that I could use what I'd done for Book Two. Just in a different way.
Martina, you rock in ways I can't even express here. I remember when you first contacted me as you were launching Adventures in YA Publishing. I am thrilled for you! Congratulations.
Now for you amazing readers: GO ENTER THE COMPULSION GIVEAWAY!
Best of luck to you.
