An interview with Rachel Higginson! Striking blog tour.

As most of you have probably guessed by now, I am a huge fan of the works of one Rachel Higginson. Thanks to my Kindle, I read a lot of self-published works... And indie has a lot of variances in quality. Rachel's works, however, are the cream at the top that make the Indie genre worth reading.

To celebrate her upcoming release of Striking, cowritten by Lila Felix, I asked if Rachel would be willing to do an interview with me. 

I am a huge fan of all the female protagonists in your books. If you were sitting down to eat with Eden, Stella, Reagan, Ivy, Ellie, and the star of your newest book Cami, what would you ladies talk about? What would the girls think of each other? Who would you sit next to? And for goodness sake, what would you be eating?

Thank you so much Regan! And thank you for having me on your fabulous blog!

I love my leading ladies, so it’s great to hear that you do too! First of all, this would be the best afternoon of my life! I would love to hang out with all my girls and share a meal. Well, outside of my head…. J

I think the first thing we would have to talk about would of course be the boys!! I mean, some of them are in some pretty difficult places with men, and we’d of course need to work out those issues. And those who are settled into their happily-ever-afters already would be required to dish all the delicious details. That would be priority number one. Obviously.

Then I’d just love to hear a firsthand account of their struggles from their perspective. I’d want to hear Eden tell her plight to save Lilly the first time from her point of view. Or what it was like for Stella to be trapped in that locker room with Seth, surrounded by such palpable evil. And I’d want to hear Cami’s humble account of spending time in Tennessee and when she felt her life was changing. I foresee hours and hours of conversation in our future!

And it would be such a relaxed atmosphere. All my girls are adventurous foodies, so we’d sit down over Indian and share roti and vegetable samosas. We’d eat with our hands, and drink King Fishers and just laugh until we cried. I would need to sit by Eden- my literary BFF. But the other girls all come in at a very close second. And they would love each other. I imagine Cami and Ivy would get really close with their mutual love of fashion and ex-mean girl ways. And Reagan and Ellie have that sarcastic, dry humor thing in common. They would keep us laughing at everything they said! And Stella and Eden would hit it off right away too, since they have that whole saving-everyone-they-love thing going for them. I’d make Eden recreate the Morocco desert tent- only the less sexy version- and we’d just enjoy the most fabulous girls’ night out ever.

I used to work as a barista and you can learn a lot about a person by their regular coffee order. If you had to pick up coffee for the gang, what would their orders be? How about yours?

So, if I was importing coffee to our desert hangout session, I would pick up a Chai Tea for Eden- the girl loves her tea and after India, she’s obsessed with chai. I would grab a Caramel Frappuccino for Stella- we know she likes things sweet. Reagan would take hers extra hot and black and maybe with a touch of half and half to bring out the flavor and then she’d probably break down into tears with the perfection of a good cup of coffee. We know Ivy loves her Caramel Macchiato. Ellie, the exhausted college student, would need a double shot of espresso with honey. And Cami, the ex-LA socialite would definitely be the most difficult order, a French Vanilla Latte, skinny, with almond milk and two sprinkles of cinnamon. I’m much simpler and share Ivy’s love of a great Carmel Macchiato, but I want mine iced and the biggest size they have.

How has being a mother affected you writing?

Being a mother has affected my writing in about every way possible. And it’s actually the whole reason I became a writer to begin with.

Growing up I had these big aspirations of writing, but I always pictured myself at a newspaper. I had really adventurous goals of being an overseas correspondent, covering like political conflict and civil wars and all these really gritty, dangerous events. When I looked at colleges, it was always schools with strong journalism programs. But then, my senior year of high school, my dad got really sick and my high school boyfriend and I became really serious- you know, for high school. In the end, I chose to go to a school close to home.

My freshman year, the school I chose dropped their journalism program. This was a bit devastating to me, but I was only eighteen, so I figured there was something else out there for me. My sophomore year of school, I visited a few more colleges with the intention to transfer to a school with a journalism major, but then my dad got even sicker and I took the opportunity to study abroad in Europe for six months instead. That trip changed my life and the direction I imagined my life going; I ended up graduating with a degree in Intercultural Studies. I also married my high school sweetheart a month before my senior year. And my dad then passed away December of my senior year of school. I will never regret staying home for college, even if it meant temporarily giving up on my dream to be this Pulitzer Prize winning journalist. I married the best man I have ever known, and my dad walked me down the aisle- those two things would not have happened if I would have went away to pursue that journalism degree. And I will always, always be grateful for that.

Anyway, by the time I graduated, my five year plan and career goals had completely adapted to the degree I graduated with- a degree and career I was absolutely in love with. Now, instead of reporting the news about third world countries and suffering around the world, I decided I wanted to live in it, work in it. Before I even graduated, I accepted an internship for the following year with my program. I was going to work with students living in Mali, West Africa for six months. Part of the internship required me to travel with them, live with them for three months and teach them and work with them. This was going to be the start of my career in relief work and humanitarian projects. Writing had been put on the back burner- indefinitely.

The week after I graduated from college, I found out that I was pregnant. Well, you can’t exactly live in Mali, West Africa with an itty bitty newborn and I couldn’t exactly leave her behind for that long either. Well, maybe some women could, but I was not that strong. I was also more or less, let go from the internship after my baby was born halfway through the year. Probably not the most politically correct thing to ever happen to me, but it all worked out for the best. Because now, with all this free time on my hands, and a brain that now felt stagnant with the day to day tasks of motherhood, I sat down to write my first book.

Motherhood was the entire catalyst for my writing career. Who knows where I would be, or what I would be doing if I hadn’t gotten pregnant. Probably, I would have dragged my husband into the Peace Corp and left my love of writing to journals about traveling. Which wouldn’t have been a bad life for us, but I’m pretty happy with the one we have now.

Since that first book, motherhood shapes my writing every single day. It makes it a little scattered, definitely chaotic and sometimes overwhelming. I wrote for many years as a stay at home mom without having anything published. At that time it was a hobby. Now it’s a full time job. The hardest transition my family has had to make was for me to go from a stay at home mom to a work from home mom. It hasn’t been easy- anyone with kids knows that. But it’s been worth it. They, my four beautiful children, make it worth it. And they make the struggle and sleepless nights, rewarding. If I can give them their dreams by providing for my family then I will love what I do no matter what it is. And I just cannot wait until they have a dream they want to follow more than anything else- because I’ve been there, I’ve done the sacrifice/rejection thing – hopefully they will be able to take something away from that.

How much research goes into your writing?

There is actually quite a bit of researching that goes into my writing. I really try to make every aspect of my writing authentic. So if it’s something I can experience, I do. If it’s a place I can go, I go. I really try to limit my settings to places I’ve been, just so that I can write exactly from my experience. Everything else is hours on the computer. If I’m choosing a college, I research it to death. There’s a reason I picked that particular school, and there’s a reason I assigned those majors or areas of study to those people. When I wrote the Star-Crossed series, I spent tons of time looking at maps and bus and train schedules and flights. Whenever Eden travels, that is technically a trip any person could make. The same for any kind of plane or car or SUV- I take all that into consideration. Fashion is another thing I’m obsessive about. Even if I’m not using a particular designer, I’m researching trends and seasonal lines, so that my characters are in style, or at least not wearing something dated- unless it’s part of their character. If I’m describing an outfit, it is out of pieces I’ve found and exist in real life. Except for maybe the gowns- some of those are my own creations. I also research names. I spend hours finding the right names for characters. They often mean something I think is integral to the story, or symbolic in some way.

For Striking, I wasn’t so much on the research side of the story, but a lot of research went into that book. Learning about blacksmiths and how they work and what they work on. There was a lot of time spent perfecting Stockton’s craft by Lila.

I think it’s important to back up books with facts. Sometimes I do just sit down and write for hours without looking things up. But then sometimes I’m writing about guns or swords, and I have no experience with those. So I put in the time, I make it as realistic and honest as possible and I hope it shows in the end product.

How long does it usually take you to finish a book?

This depends on the book! My first three books took me about six months start to finish. Fearless Magic happened in six weeks and I thought for sure I’d become a pro by then. But then I’ll get stuck and need an entire year to finish a book- like Sunburst. Bet in the Dark took me a shameful ten days. I procrastinated a bit with that one.... But to be fair, Contemporary is easier for me to write than my Paranormal worlds and it’s shorter than my usual full length novels! So it just depends on the project and where I’m at. Sometimes the only thing stopping me from finishing a book is the four little ones I have running around here. We stay busy as a family and life easily gets in the way. But I like it like that! I like to try and keep everything balanced- in a completely chaotic, hot mess kind of way…. but balanced all the same.

What is your writing schedule like; is there a time of day that you're most productive and how many pages do you average each day?

I am terrible when it comes to schedules. And this has a lot to do with the life I just talked about. With four little ones, they keep me busy. And I like the freedom to be able to volunteer in my children’s classrooms, or take an afternoon off and meet friends at the park. For the most part, I set word counts for myself every day, but I rarely meet them, or I exceed them by thousands of words. I’m horribly inconsistent.

Most days are a mixture of squeezing time in to write and making meals, doing laundry and running errands. With the start of the school year, I will find a better rhythm; but summer was absolute mayhem for us! I find that I’m more productive in the morning after a cup of coffee. I used to be a night person to the millionth degree, but something happened. I don’t know if I grew up or just grew old, but I can’t seem to focus past nine pm anymore. So definitely during the day. I start dragging about mid-afternoon though, so I excuse myself for a chocolate break and then get right back to it. The chocolate seems to be able to keep me on task.

As far as pages, I’m not sure. I track my writing by word counts. So a full length book of mine has about 110,000 words. If I can write 5-7k a day, I’m doing really well. Usually though, I don’t get to write for days and then have to pull out 10k days just to catch up. My record is 20k in one day. I was like a machine. However, my fingers were definitely numb by the end of it and my brain was non-functioning. J

Any sneaky lessons in your books that you hope the readers will learn? Is there anything that YOU learned from your stories? What do you hope readers to take away from your writing?

Absolutely! There are all kinds of sneaky lessons in my books. I keep a soap box next to me at all times, just in case. No, just kidding. But the primary audience I write for is young adult, and I think it’s easy to slip life lessons into those books because at that age, there is so very much to learn. I try to weave respect through all of my stories- respect for mankind, the planet, authority figures when worthy. I would like to believe that there is a message about independence apart from love. While love is life-changing and consuming, it does not have to be the end all. If your heart gets broken, you can survive. Single people can be happy and successful too. In The Rush, and Siren Series, I highlight the disgusting issues with the sex slave industry. This is a tragic global issue that, in my opinion, does not get enough media attention, and not really touched on at all unless you go looking for information. I hope that Ivy and her story can shed some light on the issue and how at risk every young woman is today. In Love and Decay, I hope to convey a message of hope in humanity. Even in our pre-dystopian world I think there is a lot of bad, but as a whole we are capable of great good. Those are just a few examples.

I’ve definitely learned a lot through writing. It seems each book teaches me something different, something important. One of the biggest lessons I learned was while writing Bet in the Dark. I had the opportunity to make it more sexually intense than I did. And I’ve certainly heard negative feedback about a college sophomore who is still a virgin, or a couple that falls in love and doesn’t have that “sex scene” to seal the deal. It’s easy to preach abstinence in YA books, when the heroines are only sixteen. But what about a twenty-one year old that lives on her own?

The defining moment came for me, as I was writing Ellie’s thoughts about Fin. She, or we- her and I together- decided that sex is not out of the picture for them, but it didn’t fit into the context of the book. It’s not about a soap box, or a “preachable” moment, but it is about a girl that is strong enough to decide for herself when she’s ready. Sex is obviously a huge deal, and to throw it in for Ellie and Fin before she felt safe and ready to give that up, felt inauthentic. She learned a bit about who she was by saying she wasn’t ready and I learned that strength of character is not always just about getting the guy to fall in love with you, it’s about determining what that love means for you and your life. Now, I’m not discouraging other books from making it apart of their plot lines- not at all. I’m just saying, I learned that sex- even when it’s age appropriate- does not define love. Love defines love and the rest comes after.

I hope readers take away all kinds of things from my books. I would love for them to have a feeling of escape, and a smile at the end of each book (Except maybe Hopeless Magic). I want them to feel like they have a friend in my characters or find them relatable. One of the biggest things I want readers to take away is a desire to travel the world. In the few trips I’ve taken, I’ve been blessed with a bigger perspective of the world and an understanding of other cultures that I didn’t have before. Plus, there are those great moments of finding true beauty outside of our familiar places- like houses that have been standing longer than the US has been a country, or landmarks that hold important historical significance. I would love for people to read about the places in a book I wrote and then decide that they want to go there. Tomorrow. That would just be the greatest compliment to me.

Striking, which you wrote with Lila Felix, is being released on September 1st. How would you describe this book in one sentence? How did you two come up with the idea? Was it difficult including another person in your creative process? When can we expect the next book in the series?

In one sentence, I would say: Striking is the story of two people trying to find themselves and along the way they find each other instead.

That was kind of hard, Regan!! J

Lila and I came up with the idea for Striking over several phone conversations. We were good friends before the book and had actually decided to write a different story together. In a text message, Lila told me that she was going to write a story about a blacksmith, to which I responded something like, “Oooh, I cannot wait for all that gritty, dirty, rippling, muscly hotness!!!” And she immediately texted back and said, “That’s it, this is the story we’re writing together.” Of course, I said, “Ok.”

And then it began. We developed most of the plot over a two hour Skype conversation where we mostly laughed and talked about nothing book related and then the rest through email and phone. I think the story developed into something neither of us could have predicted, but we’re both very proud of the final product.

Writing a book with another person was one of the easiest things I’ve ever done, to be honest. Which is funny because we were warned. A lot. Other writer’s, friends, bloggers, everyone seemed to want to warn us about writing together.

 In general, I believe creative people can be very difficult to work with. We all have our own visions and we are usually very, very, very passionate about keeping it in tact. But Lila and I made it easy. We alternated chapters, so we didn’t have to share a unified vision for every part. Our characters fell in love as the story progressed, as we developed more and more of them. It happened very organically.

And I think, we would both agree that this is one of the most inspirational ways to write possible. I would write my chapter and send it to her, and then a few days later get hers back. And what I got back was all new to me, all new material. I would read it, the story had moved and progressed and there were more interesting points to the plot and I would always be extremely inspired to write my next chapter. When I write alone, I am stuck with all the details by myself. Every chapter is left up to me and if I get bogged down in the plot, I’m the one who has to find a way get inspired again and move the story along. But that wasn’t true with Lila. She inspired me with each of her chapters, and it was almost impossible to get bogged down in the plot when there is someone else, just as excited about it as you are, working through plot ideas, or coming up with solutions, or taking the story places you never would have dreamed about. Co-writing is very motivating. I found myself anxious to write my next chapter immediately after I finished reading Lila’s. Plus she’s fabulous and makes it super easy to work with her!!

I think it takes a certain type of person though. You have to be flexible and willing to change your vision. Lila and I were both, and we also have very laid back personalities, not to mention we allowed the story to happen naturally between us. Our desire to write an exceptional story and the mutual respect we have for each other gave us a fantastic environment where we could both just create something beautiful. Which is what I think we did with Striking.

You can expect Brazing, the second book in the Forged in Fire series in December, 2013!!

You've now written in the YA fantasy, New Adult, post-apocalyptic zombie genres, and you're about to come out with something even more different than your usual books. What genre of book-writing comes most naturally to you?

That is a good question. If this were six months ago, I would have said YA Paranormal Romance hands down. It’s the only genre I write, it’s the only genre I want to right, and it’s the only genre I’m ever going to write. But I had a bit of a conversion during Bet in the Dark.

I think there is something about too much of a good thing. And while I love and will always love YA Paranormal Romance, I needed a break from it after I wrote The Rush. Bet in the Dark was basically a mental rest from huge world-building Paranormal and ridiculously complex plot lines. It was an easy-going story with no end of the world drama. It was kind of heaven. And I could just relax and write what I wanted to.

Bet in the Dark made me a huge fan of stand-alones, another thing I once upon a time never thought I could write. And it expanded my mind outside of my typical genre. I am now writing Dystopian, a few more Contemporaries and I have an Adult Contemporary in the works as well. I don’t think my writing ability lays in the genre, but in the story-telling. Whatever story I am desperate to tell- that is the story that comes most easy for me.

Thanks again Regan, for having me on your blog!!!!  

• Striking will be released on September 1st... Click HERE to view the synopsis and beautiful cover art
• Rachel's Website
• Rachel's Facebook
• Rachel's Goodreads
• Rachel's Twitter
• Rachel's Youtube
• and last, but not least, Rachel's author page on Amazon, where you can go grab her stuff.
•  Reckless Magic and Love and Decay Episode One are currently free.
• Starbright,  Love and Decay, Episode Two and Episode Three, and Bet in the Dark are only $0.99
• There are officially no good reasons not to try her out now!