Andrea Cremer Event Recap

Andrea Cremer

Bloodrose Book Tour

January 10th 2012

at Third Place Books

The event started off with Andrea opening up to the exact page she wanted to starting reading from, it was meant to be. She reads from pg 66-70 in Bloodrose the pages are about Sabine and Ethan's rendezvous in the garden with Calla and Shay spying on them.

Next Andrea moved on to the Q&A and her favorite part hearing from "you guys".

The Q&A is my summary of the question and Andrea's answers.

What can you tell us about the Rift?

Rift is going to be a 2 book prequel series based in medieval Scotland and the history of the Keepers, Searchers and Guardians are explored. The book is written and will be out in August of 2012. She is currently working on book 2 Rise due in 2013. 

Any other works planned after the Rift series?

Coauthoring a book with David Levithan in Spring 2013.

Also a steampunk series based in a new world with all new characters.

Why such unique names?

Names are very important to her and she can't write until the character has the name. When Andrea was little her parents showed her a baby book "Name Your Baby" in which her parents chose her name from. She became fascinated with names and took the book, she enjoyed learning the origins, different spelling and the means of all the different names. When she was younger she really liked the name Magenta, it was circled on and starred. 

Magenta: Female; Origin-Italy; Meaning: a colour name, after a town in Italy

Nightshade pack names are all of English origins

Ban pack names are all of French origins

Did anyone try to tell you to change the ending?

No, the editor was stunned but loved it.

What is your publishing story?

Her story was an odd one, as she put it. After finishing grad school and working for a year she wanted to take some time for herself. She has always loved horses so she decided to lease a horse. One day the horse got spooked by another horse causing it to rear up and come down on her ankle breaking it. Being couch ridden she realized she wanted to write a novel. when she was writing she realized she wanted to make this a career because she was in love with it and so passionate about it. Andrea was frightened by the prospect as well because she had no idea how to get a book published. To overcome this she does what she does best, research! Andrea found out there are these great things called an agent that do the work for you.
Andrea wrote two practice novels that will never see the light of day and only her mom, dad and brother will only read them. Both books are YA, one is a high fantasy the other is paranormal that she wrote specially for her mom.

Andrea went to the publisher with a series, which is something you don't do as a debut author because publishers don't want to support something that might not sell. Fortunately for her the publisher asked if there was going to be more because he saw the multi book potential. Lucky for her Andrea has been allowed to write the "evil" cliffhangers. She sees Nightshade as one whole story chopped into three books.

What inspired Nightshade?
Andrea was walking her dog when this character Calla a strong female that was a werewolf popped into her head. That was all she knew about Calla. She went to the library to do some research and she found at poem by Margaret Atwood untitled (she is going to send me the book that it is found in when she is done with her tour) that inspired the story. When she was writing this book she knew this would be THE book to get published. In March she got an agent and in August she sold Nightshade to the publisher.

She also will find inspiration in other things and put them into stories. For example in the car ride to the bookstore the woman driving her to the event was telling Andrea how when she was younger her sister wanted a horse, so she bought one without telling her parents and kept in in the backyard. Andrea loves this story and wants to some how work it into a story one day.

Was there any major story changes?

Yes, Nightshade's timeline changed drastically. Originally the mating ceremony was not suppose to happen till the Spring Equinox and the readers would never read about the ceremony causing the mating to being less of a pressing issue for the characters. The editor (or publisher, I can't remember) wanted to know what would happen in the ceremony and Andrea decided she wanted to know too. She changed it and bumped the ceremony up to Samhain on Halloween.

You had mentioned that the Bloodrose cover is a specific scene, what it is?
Bloodrose is the scene outside the cave in Tordis you can tell because it is cold there and Calla has the fury jacket. The wolf she is guessing would be Mason (I'm guessing because of wolf coloring).

Why was the Nightshade cover changed?

It was changed for visual marketing purposes. There was confusion about what the story was about since it was so abstract. The new covers are more literal. Nightshade shows her transformation and the cover art was inspired by the poem. Wolfsbane is more sexual but Calla is embracing her sexuality and coming of age and she does were leather pants in the book so it is correct. Since she is coming out of a crouch it looks as if she is going to spring and shift at any moment.

How do you balance two careers?

Thankfully her for Andrea the University she works at has been very supportive and accommodating with her writing career and she current works part time only teaching one class. "Teaching makes me a better writer and writing makes me a better teacher". Since writing can be a very lonely solo job she likes being able to have that interaction especially since writing is all about people, so she needs to stay in touch with society.

Do you have students asking you questions?
Since the book is more recently published and college students can have a focused one track mind there isn't a lot that do. Most are really shy about it and will come in after hours to ask if they can get their book signed. With the new freshman coming in those are the ones that know more. Andrea has even gotten fans inquiring about the school through her.

Random Information

Andrea has a 2 book a year contracts, she likes the fast paced writing schedule. If it was only 1 a year she would get bored.

After the Q&A everyone lined up for the signing. I just decided to wait till the end since I had 8 books to get signed, 4 were mine and 4 are Mindy's at Magical Urban Fantasy Reads. During that time I was able to meet another local Washington blogger Anna or Grace from Peace, Love, Teen Fiction (left). Which I actually have seen her at A LOT of YA events, I just never knew she was a blogger. I also meet the two girls Ruby and Jenny from Our Time In Juvie (right).

The event was a lot of fun and I so glad I got to go. I even brought a friend with me and I got her to read the 1st book and she is currently reading book 2.

 Andrea and I 

My Bookography photo for the week

Blood Rose

Have you had the chance to meet Andrea?

To see the other events I have attended and the recaps I have written, check out my Event Recaps page.

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