An Interview with Christine O’Neil

The Reading Cafe is happy to welcome Christine O’Neil as our guest today.

Chrstine is here today to discuss her new YA book, Chaos, which will be released tomorrow.  Christine also writes as Christine Bell, whom we have had the pleasure of doing reviews on her wonderful romance books.

But today Christine will talk about her first foray into writing her new YA series, as Christine O’Neil. Let’s meet Christine.

TRC: Hi Christine and welcome to The Reading Café.  We would like to start with some background information.

Christine: Hello, and thanks for having me!  

TRC: Please tell us something about yourself.

Christine: Let’s see, I live in Pennsylvania with my husband, kids and two dogs, and I write full time which is excellent, because it means I get to wear yoga pants to work and eat handfuls of goldfish crackers for lunch and no one can judge me. I am a total geek and love to read fantasy and science fiction novels, especially YA. I love playing poker and going to the movies, and I’m obsessed with Game of Thrones, Firefly, Doctor Who (Team Tennant!), Supernatural and Sherlock. My favorite villain of all time is Severus Snape. My favorite hero of all time is also Severus Snape.  

TRC: Have you always been interested in writing?

Christine: I’ve always been interested in reading, and, while I did write some before college, it was something I thought everyone had the ability to do and wasn’t something I ever thought of as a career. It wasn’t until my second time around in college as an adult that I fell in love with it and was encouraged by my professors to do more.

TRC: Is there anything (in general) you find particularly challenging about writing?

Christine: Keeping up with the ideas. I have a thousand half-baked stories teaming in my brain like wriggly little worms and part of my job is picking out the fattest worm and ignoring all the rest until I get one story on the page. Luckily, I write fast, but it’s always a challenge to focus in and get the job done without allowing myself to be distracted.

TRC: What was your first book published?  Can you tell us your reaction to seeing your first book published?

Christine: My first book was actually a steampunk novella called The Twisted Tale of Stormy Gale. I’ve written over twenty novellas and novels since, and that book is still one of my favorites. Seeing your name on the cover of a book is so surreal. Like a dream come true. Totally exhilarating and I will never forget it. It was when I knew I’d found what I was always meant to do.

TRC: Can you please tell us the premise of your new YA novel, Chaos.  Is Chaos a standalone book, or a series.  If a series, how many books do you anticipate.

Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Kobo

Christine: Well, Chaos is book one of the Kardia Chronicles series, which is anticipated to be three-books. It’s about a girl names Maggie Raynard who has found out that she’s a semi-god (so like a demigod, only more diluted because it’s generations away rather than the child of a god directly) descended from the goddess Aphrodite. She’s having a rough time of it, because her new powers have caused her to do some very bad things. Her mom has written off the semi life all together and won’t help and there’s this new guy at school, Mac Finnegan, who keeps messing with her and she doesn’t know why.
Here’s the blurb:

My name is Maggie Raynard. After sixteen years being just plain me, suddenly, when I lose my temper, my fingers become weapons of mass destruction. Turns out I’m a semi-god, descended from Aphrodite. Sounds cool in theory, but when I accidentally put my ex-boyfriend in a coma, things go downhill pretty fast.

Now some new guy named Mac Finnegan has made it his mission in life to continually piss me off. I’m stuck learning how to use my new powers while also dealing with regular high school problems, and with this annoying–and super hot—guy all up in my business, I’m about to flip out.

But it gets worse. I just learned there’s this watchdog council of semis who keep an eye out for any bad apples. They think I’m the baddest one in the bunch and want to take me out before I do any more damage. My nemesis Mac might turn out to be my salvation, only he’s got secrets of his own…and they may just kill us both.

TRC: Chaos is your first Young Adult novel.  Can you please tell us how you decided to go from writing mostly Romance, to writing YA?

Christine: It was always part of the plan. The first idea I had for a book was a YA novella, but I shelved it when I realized that I would need an agent to sell YA (at that time, at least. My current publisher, Entangled, accepts unagented YA submissions, but a few years back, pretty much the only houses accepting direct submissions were adult romance publishers). I was in my mid-thirties, and felt that it was better for me to skip the agenting process due to the time involved in landing an agent, and try my hand at smaller, digital publishing houses so I could get things moving as quickly as possible. I had always loved reading adult romance, so it was certainly no hardship. My five year plan was to write adult romance and then, once I’d established myself, I would take the time out to write a YA novel. Life has a way of throwing you curveballs when you least expect it and, three and a half years later, this amazing opportunity came my way to collaborate on this series with my Entangled publisher, Liz Pelletier, I grabbed it with both hands (and feet…and prehensile tail). One thing that made the transition easier for me was the fact that, at the heart of it, Chaos is a love story as well. It just also has fantastical world-building and the extra snark that I always enjoy reading in a YA book and don’t get to do as much of in Contemporary Adult Romance.

TRC: You write Contemporary, Erotic Romance, and now YA.  Do you have a preference?

Christine: I think it depends on the day. Sometimes it depends on the season or what’s happening in my life. I just love writing. I will say that I’ve never felt so at home and comfy in my writing shoes as I did with this book. I have been an avid reader of YA my whole life from the time I was a kid to when I worked at a middle school library a few years back, and I’ve never stopped loving it. There’s a magic to it that appeals to me so much and I feel like a kid myself when I’m writing it. I’m thrilled to be stepping into this new chapter in my career and hope people like reading it even half as much as I’ve loved writing it.

TRC: Can you please tell us what you are currently working on, as well as what you have upcoming in 2013?

Christine: I’m working on book two of the Kardia Chronicles which is slated for later this year, as well as edits for my next Entangled Brazen book. The rest of 2013 is really popping for me with a September release called Dirty Trick, a holiday novella that I co-wrote with author Riley Murphy called Full of Possibilities and then another novella from my Dare Me series called Down the Aisle.

TRC: Being a prolific writer, how do you come up with the ideas for your books?   Does it come to you in a dream, watching a television show or movie, or from real life?

Christine: Mostly real life. If you hang around me, you might as well know it off that bat, SOME part of you is going to end up in my book. I can’t help myself. I love people watching. We’re SOOOO weird and all the weird things we do that are so specific to one person really catch my interest because it’s exactly those things that make for a relatable character rather than cardboard cutouts that feel generic in a book.

For example, one of the secondary characters in Chaos is a sixteen year old named Libby. She’s a classic American beauty and everyone thinks by looking at her that she’s a cheerleader, but she’s actually a drama geek who looks at clothing as an opportunity to play a role for the day. She’s always pairing weird outfits together that are all just a little off for the occasion. She’ll have her hair up in chopsticks and wear a fluttery skirt with ballet flats to school, or a steampunk outfit to prom. Part of that idea came from my future daughter in law, who’s question before every event is “Can I wear THIS?” as she holds up what looks like a dress for a pageant or something from the Victorian era. She loves to dress up so I sorta filched that part of her personality and adapted it to fit my character.  I do it CONSTANTLY.

TRC:  What is your writing process?  Do you have a specific time or place you like to write?

Christine: *snort* The word process is so funny for what I “have”. Mainly, I sit in a room on a recliner with a laptop on my thighs for ten hours a day (except for when I shift it to the side for a while after it gets too hot). To start off my day, I surf the web for all the important things, like “What ever happened to Vanilla Ice?” and then I go on Twitter and see what my tweeps are up to. Usually, there’s talk of food, shooz, and writing (my favorite things), so I stick in for a while and get the scoop. Then I feel guilty for frittering (isn’t that a good word? Frittering. It makes me want to sprinkle powdered sugar on it and eat it) away the first hour of the day, so I guilt myself into writing some words. This is where it gets good. It’s like I get caught up in a weird sort of haze of furious typing and find myself hungry three hours later with no recollection of where I’ve been or any concept of time and voila! Words on the page. I hop up feeling good about myself, clomp into the kitchen, paw through the fridge like a mad bear looking for any food that doesn’t require fire, peeling, chopping or opening, and I shove fistfuls of it into my gaping maw. After that, I pour some coffee and go back to more writing. Then, at about a quarter to four, I jump up in horror when I realize my husband will be home soon, and I quick make dinner, check my shirt for any egregious stains, brush my teeth and sometimes even my hair and pretend that I looked that good all day. Lather, rinse repeat. WARNING: If you become an author someday too, do NOT expect your life to be this glamorous. Not everyone can be as fancy as me and I don’t want you disappointed.

TRC: Do you have a favorite female and male character from your books, if so why?

Christine: ACK! This is like Sophie’s Choice. Um, let’s see. Okay, so for my adult novels, it’s a toss up between Lindy Knight from Wife for Hire and Stormy Gale from the Stormy Gale series. Lindy  was so hilarious and sweet. I loved her like she was a real person, but Stormy is my idol. She’s everything I want to be.  A cool, witty, funny, smart, sexy, tough as nails, fiercely loyal steampunk time pirate. I’ll pick Stormy. For guys, I’m going to have to go with Galen Thomas in Down for the Count. Sexy boxer, loves his woman, smart and funny. Love me some Galen.

For YA, it’s all about my protagonist in Chaos, Maggie Raynard. She’s excellent and if she were real, we would have been besties in high school. She’s dry and sarcastic and funny, but also flawed and confused and afraid because she’s got some serious stuff going on in her life and she is having trouble figuring out how to handle it. She’s juicy and deep and I felt very close to her when I was writing, to the point that there were times where I could almost hear her snort like, “Dude, I would NEVER say that. Delete.”

TRC: Many author bounce ideas and information between each other and their family and spouses.  With whom do you bounce ideas?

Christine: Anybody who will listen! No, but seriously, I talk to my husband a LOT, my kids all the time too, especially about world building elements. We have a big family, there are 7 of us in the house, and we are all pretty much geeks (see attached photos for evidence of our celebratory cakes and our CominCon costumes) so I have the benefit of a huge base of fantasy, paranormal and science fiction knowledge at my fingertips. They are so awesome in helping me brainstorm and problem solve. Especially with trickier elements like time travel or the way magic powers work etc. We are also a family of readers, so if I tell my kids an idea, a lot of times they can be like, “Wait, I think I read something similar in XYZ series,” which is priceless to me. I want to be as original as I can and that’s not always easy due to the sheer volume of books out there and the fact that, in fantasy and paranormal, oftentimes we’re all drawing from the same lore, myth, pool of knowledge. I think the key is taking something that everyone is familiar with and then trying to turn it on its ear a little. I can’t re-write mythology, but I can twist it mercilessly until it feels somewhat fresh and new again.

TRC: Would you like to add anything else?

Christine: I’m terrible at adding. Don’t make me do math. That’s why I do words.

TRC:  LOL

LIGHTNING ROUND

Favorite Food: Lobster

Favorite Dessert: Salted Carmel Chocolate Mousse *drools*

Favorite TV show: ACK! Sherlock. Wait! Luther. No…Game of Thrones. NO! Sherlock. *nods* It’s Sherlock.

Favorite Movie: Stardust (based on the Neil Gaiman book). Most of the time. Then Ghosttown some of the time. And Cabin in the Woods. And the new Star Trek movie. And Seven Psychopaths. ACK! I love movies, so this is reallllly hard.

Dark or Milk Chocolate: I KNOW THIS ONE! THE ANSWER IS MILK! Definitely milk.

Favorite Literary Character (male & female) not your own: Severus Snape from Harry Potter and Holly Root from the Artemis Fowl series.

Christine, thank you very much for taking the time to answer our questions.  The Reading Café wishes you good luck with Chaos.

To learn more about Christine, you can find her at the following links:
Christine O’Neil
Website:
Twitter:
Facebook:
Goodreads:

Christine Bell
Twitter:
Facebook:
Goodreads