Tell
us the story behind that cover!
The cover was designed by Kelly Abell of Select-O-Grafix. I love the way the shadowy figure on it fades out to nothing at
the bottom!
What can we learn from your main character?
When I was working on Waking Up Dead, someone
asked me why I would want to limit my protagonist by making her a ghost, unable
to easily interact with the world around her.What can we learn from your main character?
I didn’t have a good answer then, but I’ve thought about it a lot since.
And here’s the deal: I love writing about Callie and her limitations. Because ultimately, that’s what many books are about, right? The limitations we face when interacting with the world around us. Callie’s limitations are just more immediate and obvious. She has to really work to have an impact on the world, and that’s something we can all sympathize with. Who hasn’t had days when getting anything done felt like swimming through peanut butter? When, try as we might, we can’t seem to communicate with the people surrounding us. When our attempts to move people or things fall flat and we have to start working on new ways to try to be seen and heard.
For Callie, these obstacles are instantly recognizable, but her attempts to make connections echo the attempts in our own lives. So why would I want to limit my protagonist by making her a ghost? Because sometimes, we’re all ghosts. But if we keep at it, we can overcome that little problem.
What has been your greatest compliment as an author, your worst criticism?
The single greatest compliment is always “when is the
next book coming out?” The second greatest compliment is writing a review—it
doesn’t matter whether the review is positive or negative; the fact that
someone took the time to read the book and write the review is always amazing
to me!
And I don’t mind criticism, so I don’t think of it as
“worst.” I generally first try to see if there’s any merit to the criticism
(I’ve gotten some great comments that have already improved my fiction
writing!) and then, if I disagree with the criticism, I simply assume that this
book (or my writing style) isn’t right for that reader.
What part of the story was the hardest to write, the beginning, the middle, the climax?
I think probably the middle. The beginning was relatively
easy, as it set up the character and her dilemma, and once I’d figured out
where the novel was going, the end was pretty clear. But getting my characters
from point A to point B in a way that makes sense and makes for a good story is
always the hardest for me!
Is your main character based on anyone in particular? Did you have a muse for this book?
Is your main character based on anyone in particular? Did you have a muse for this book?
My
main character isn’t; she just showed up full-blown in my head one day (though
there’s always a little of me in all my characters). But the character of
Maw-Maw (a reader favorite) is actually largely based on a combination of my
own grandmother and great-grandmother--the only real difference is that they
were white and from Texas rather than black and from Alabama. Otherwise, she
talks like them and acts like them. It's my great-grandmother's voice I hear in
my head when I write her dialogue, my grandmother's movements I see when I
picture her walking around. Physically, I imagine her looking a bit like Ruby
Dee in the television movie version of The
Stand. But her attitude? That's straight from my own family! I loved
writing Maw-Maw. Every time she opened her mouth, she delighted (and sometimes
surprised) me.
Fast Round
Names
of your pets: Roscoe, Mickey, and Bastet. (Bastet was
named after that famous Egyptian cat statue—all black and sleek—because when
she was a kitten I thought that’s what she would grow up to be. Instead, she
looks like a huge ball of greyed-out black dryer lint. That’s what I get for
giving her a pretentious name.)
Favorite ice cream, color, book, and television show
Ice
cream: Vanilla.
Color:
Pink.
Book:
Unfair question! Too many to list. I have a Ph.D. in eighteenth-century British
literature and also read fantasy, science fiction, and romance. So a little of
everything!
Television
Show: Only slightly less unfair. This week, I discovered (late
to the party) Big Bang Theory. I’ve
been watching it obsessively. I went to graduate school with those people . . .
and may have sometimes been one of them. . . . Usually, though, I watch
supernatural dramas like Supernatural,
Vampire Diaries, The Walking Dead.
Fame
or Fortune: Fortune.
Grapes
or Raisins: Grapes.
Zombies,
Vampires, or neither: Both! I write about vampires in my upcoming
release Legally Undead, but I’ve been
preparing for the inevitable zombie apocalypse for years!
The Book!
When Dallas resident
Callie Taylor died young, she expected to go to Heaven, or maybe Hell. Instead,
she met her fate early thanks to a creep with a knife and a mommy complex. Now
she's witnessed another murder, and she's not about to let this one go. She's
determined to help solve it before an innocent man goes to prison. And to
answer the biggest question of all: why the hell did she wake up in Alabama?
Excerpt
As
Molly straightened up, the man slipped the wire over her head and twisted it
around her neck. She struggled, but he pulled the garrote tighter and tighter.
I
was screaming at the top of my ghostly voice, for all the good it did me. I
moved up behind the man and beat at his back with closed fists--fists that
slipped in and out of his back without ever making real contact. He shuddered a
little--clearly he was one of the very slightly sensitive ones--but he didn’t
loosen his hands.
I
reached up and tried to grab the wire, tried to pull against the pressure he
was exerting on the wire and it did loosen for an instant. But only for an
instant. The living have more control over solid
objects than the dead do. I never resented that fact more than at that moment.
But
I kept trying. I kept trying as Molly’s face turned purple, then blue, then
black, kept trying even as she drooped in the man’s grip.
Then
he loosened the wire and it was too late. I watched that wispy, light-on-fog
life force slip out of Molly and move on to wherever it is that other people go
when they die. I was glad she didn’t show up next to me as a full-blown ghost.
At that moment, I wouldn’t have wished my impotent half-existence on anyone.
I
couldn’t help thinking that if I’d been alive, I might have been able to save
her.
If
I could have cried real tears, I would have. As it was, I was sobbing hoarsely
and calling the man every dirty name I could think of.
I
was still cursing as I followed him around the kitchen. First he opened the
pantry and pulled out a box of Hefty garbage bags. Then he grabbed a knife out
of the block on the counter. And finally, he picked up Molly’s body and carried
it to the bathroom.
Author’s Bio: Margo Bond Collins lives in Texas with her husband, their daughter, several spoiled cats, and a ridiculous turtle. She teaches college-level English courses online, though writing fiction is her first love. She enjoys reading urban fantasy and paranormal fiction of any genre and spends most of her free time daydreaming about vampires, ghosts, zombies, werewolves, and other monsters. Waking Up Dead is her first published novel. Her second novel, Legally Undead, is an urban fantasy, forthcoming in 2014 from World Weaver Press.
Links
Email: MargoBondCollins@gmail.com
Be sure to add Waking Up Dead to your Goodreads bookshelves: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18428064-waking-up-dead
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