Interview with literary agent/author Lucienne Diver

Please welcome my guest, Lucienne Diver. It's a pleasure to have you Lucienne! 

If you all haven't gotten the opportunity to meet Lucienne or get to know her or her writing, you're missing out. 

Her latest installment in her series VAMPED, just launched last month. 

 

FANGTASTIC is a fantastic read! If you love YA and strong heroines, check it out. You can read my review HERE.

 

What do you consider the hardest part of writing a book?

 Figuring out how to end it.  I always have a general idea where the book is headed, but exactly how it’s going to get there…that’s as big a mystery to me as it is to the reader until I write it.  And rewrite it. And…well, you get the idea.   

My first version of the ending is always a bit rushed.  I’m so excited to get to those all-important words “The End” that I race to the finish line.  But once the pressure is off, I go back over the final chapters, as I do everything else, and really take my time.  Sometimes (often) I throw out my original ending and come up with something else entirely.  

 I’ll never forget saying to my editor on Revamped, “Um, you know those last sixty pages?  I’ve decided they suck, and not in that good vampire-y way.  How about if I toss them and take things in a whole ’nother direction.”   

What followed was a very tentative, “O-kay” and a lot of trust.  Thank goodness.  The book is so much better for the complete *cough* revamping of the ending.

If you had to choose, which writer would you consider a mentor?

 Way back when I first started writing again, the amazing Lynn Flewelling was good enough to read some pages for me.  They were totally atrocious, I’m sure, but she was kind not to say so and instead to point out what it was they were lacking, what I’d overdone, etc.  

 Her very specific examples and suggestions really strengthened my work.  Those lessons have become so deeply ingrained I hardly have to consciously think on them any more as I write.

Any advice for other writers?    

     

 When you start out you’re not going to have any idea how much you have still to master.  I know I didn’t.   

Even though I’d been a writing major and had written for and edited my high school literary journal and my college anthropology magazine, I had a long way to go in honing my craft.  Trust that you will need critique and revision.  When you read, pay attention to what you think an author has done particularly well. 

Is it action?  Characterization?  Deconstruct.  Try to decipher why it worked so well.  You never want to imitate another author, but you can certainly learn from them.

What's the best thing about being an author?

 Fan mail!  Really, I live for hearing from my fans, and knowing that I’ve made a connection.

What was the funniest thing that happened to you as an agent or a writer?

Well, let’s see…as an agent, back when I was working at Spectrum Literary Agency, which represents the Robert A. Heinlein estate, we received a letter from a man claiming that he’d given Mr. Heinlein many of his ideas and that he’d been promised a house.  He was writing to collect . 

 Um…yeah.  We’ve also received some pretty crazy queries over the years.  I don’t feel comfortable sharing those, but let me just say that letters written in all caps, folded like origami insects or including affidavits certifying that the querier is not crazy are generally not the way to go.

Can you share a little of your current work with us?

I’ve just finished writing Crazy in the Blood, the sequel to Bad Blood, the first in my Latter-Day Olympians urban fantasy series from Samhain.  I’m currently tearing my hair out over revisions.  

I’m hoping that the editorial letter on my fourth Vamped book, Fangtabulous (following Vamped, Revamped and Fangtastic) will wait until my current revisions are in, otherwise Crazy might well describe my state of being.

As a brief teaser from Chapter 1:

“Beware embossing.  It often heralds formal gowns and rubber chicken.”

—    Tori Karacis, words to live by

Los Angeles, CA

The Feds and my cousin Tina’s wedding invitation blew in on the same ill wind.  Truth be told, one came in bearing the other.  It couldn’t be harpies or banshees or even, hell, desert scorpions.  Oh no, those I could probably have handled.  But it didn’t seem terribly good form to use my gorgon mojo on guys who could lock me up and lose me in the system without needing much in the way of probable cause.  

Thanks so much for coming by, Lucienne! 

Thank you, Martha!
 

To learn more, visit her website: www.luciennediver.com and blog http://luciennediverauthor.wordpress.com/

Lucienne Diver is the author of the Vamped series of young adult novels for Flux Books, featuring Gina Covello, fashionista of the fanged. VOYA calls it “witty vampire romance/adventure with plenty of heart and action.” 

She also writes the Latter-Day Olympians series for Samhain, the first of which, Bad Blood, is just out in digital and will be released in May 2012 in print. 

Long and Short Reviews says of it, "Bad Blood is a delightful urban fantasy, a clever mix of Janet Evanovich and Rick Riordan, and a true Lucienne Diver original." This makes her happier than she can say. Lucienne is also a literary agent, blogger, wife, mom and caffeine-enthusiast, in no particular order.