Signed Book Hop, Featuring Mindee Arnett, author of The Nightmare Affair, and INT Giveaway!

Signed Book Giveaway Hop

April 16th to 22nd

Featuring Books Signed by the Author

Co-hosted by Wholly Books

Thanks so much to both I Am a Reader, Not a Writer and Wholly Books for co-hosting this awesome blog hop! I'm so excited to introduce this author, Mindee Arnett, who wrote one of my favorite books read yet this year-- The Nightmare Affair! 

Goodreads Book Description: 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 much 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.

My Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Author Blurb:

Mindee Arnett lives on a horse farm in Ohio with her husband, two kids, a couple of dogs, and an inappropriate number of cats. She’s addicted to jumping horses and telling tales of magic, the macabre, and outer space. She has far more dreams than nightmares.

  

Author Interview 

1. I love hearing stories about how authors got started in their writing career. Can you tell us a little bit about yours?

 I started telling myself stories before I could even read. Most of these involved my Breyer  Horses toys and My Little Pony dolls. Then in the sixth grade my teacher gave us an assignment to write a short story using a “prompt.” Even though I was an avid reader it had never occurred to me that I could write my own stories until that moment. To call this defining would be an understatement.

2. I loved your world building. Can you tell us a little about how Nightmares were born and the world in which your book takes place?

The folkloric nightmare has been around for ages, the idea of a demon sitting on your chest while you’re asleep and giving you bad dreams. I came across it while researching possible monsters for a short story I was working on. I asked myself what it would be like if the nightmare wasn’t a demon but an ordinary girl. And just like that, Dusty and her world were born.

3. Characters are so important for me. How do you go about developing your characters? Did you have a favorite? Did any of them surprise you?

 Dusty is definitely my favorite. For me, the main character always has to be the most interesting. That attraction is what makes me want to write the story in the first place. I also really enjoy writing her best friend, Selene. 

The character who surprised me most was Paul, but I can’t go into any of the reasons why because of spoilers. To put it very mildly, his character is one of the most complex I’ve ever written. He still surprises me, honestly.

4. I'm sure you derive inspiration from everywhere; can you tell us some of your sources?

 I really do derive it from everywhere, but one of my biggest inspirations is folklore. I explore and incorporate some famous folkloric stories in the novel—I won’t say which one for fear of spoilers—but weaving this folkloric history into the book was one of my favorite parts, and something I will continue to do in the upcoming books.

5. For our aspiring writers. Can you tell us a little about the editing process and how many drafts you go through before publication? 

I went through approximately four drafts before I started submitting to agents. After that I did another two quick edits for my agent before we started submitting to editors. Once with my editor, we went through another two rounds of edits, a copy edit, a first pass pages edit, and then we were finally done. So in other words—there were a lot of drafts!

6. What was your favorite YA book in the past year?

Such a hard question, so I’ll cheat and name them all. I adored The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater, Days of Blood and Starlight by Laini Taylor, Girl of Nightmares by Kendare Blake, and The Diviners by Libba Bray. All of these made my I’ll-read-this-again list.

7. If you could pick a best friend for Dusty from another book, movie, TV show, who would it be and why?
Definitely Veronica Mars. Then Dusty could learn all the handy private detective tricks from her. Plus, come on, it’s Veronica Mars! Who wouldn’t want to be friends with her? (Well, except for Lilly Kane, of course)

8. I know you are a Buffy fan-- any shows that you've watched lately that you recommend?
My favorite TV show at present is Justified. I also love Doctor Who, Supernatural, Vampire Diaries, and Castle. My all time favorite TV show is Firefly followed closely by Veronica Mars, and Lost.  

9. As an avid horse rider and Civil War re-enactivist, are we going to see any of that in upcoming novels?
I think you’ll definitely see some horse content in upcoming novels. At least, I hope you will. I’m in the prewriting stages for a fantasy series that I think of as the Pony Express meets Shadow and Bone. As far the Civil War, probably not. I haven’t done reenacting in years, and frankly the amount of research involved in writing a historical would be really hard for me to do at present. But you never know. If I’m someday able to quit my day job and write full time, I just might venture into a historical. It would be a lot of fun.

10. Tell us a little about your book coming out next year and also, what we can look forward to in further adventures with Dusty and her friends-- how many books are you planning in the series?

 The sequel to The Nightmare Affair should be out around this time next year, I believe. And in it, Dusty and her friends are faced with a new mystery to solve while also dealing with the fallout from the events in the first book. As of right now, I’m on contract for three books, but ideally I would like there to be four, possibly five to really complete the main story arc. But whether or not that will happen all depends on how well the first book does. So we’ll see.

Also coming winter of 2014 is my YA sci-fi thriller Avalon from Balzer + Bray (HarperCollins), which is about the adventures of a group of teenage spaceship thieves.

Thanks for such a great interview!

Thank YOU, Mindee, for being so awesome! Now enter to win this awesome book!

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