Saoirse Redgrave: A Tale of Werewolves


Saoirse Redgrave’s cell phone novel 13 to Life: A Werewolf’s Tale was picked up by St. Martin’s Press in a 3 book deal after taking first place in the 2008 Textnovel contest.

Teenage love, loss and--oh, yeah--Werewolves. Monsters are everywhere and what if the most frightening isn't a werewolf at all? Jessica's life seemed tragic enough since the loss of her mother, but meeting Pietr turns her world upside down again. The newest member of Junction High, Pietr has secrets to hide--secrets including dramatic changes he is undergoing that will surely end his life early.

Saoirse, you wrote 13 to Life in 5 weeks. Did you do several installments per day? How long did this novel end up being? I've heard the norm for Japanese cell phone novels are around 6000 characters. For St. Martin's to pick it up I imagine it would have to be longer. Beside any expected revisions and edits, did you have to change alot from text novel to traditional novel?

Because I was experimenting with the medium, I thought a lot about how I wanted to present things. I thought about limited time, schedules and readibility. I did a lot of odd jobs back in college (factory stuff and tour guiding mainly) and I thought about the schedules we kept on the line. Break time was freakishly short. So I decided to post 2 (occasionally 3-4 as we approached the contest's end) segments every day. One before work and one sometime in the afternoon. It kept me on the site's main page because I was updating relatively frequently. [I wanted bite-size chapters with a hook in the beginning and a cliffhanger at the end to keep it fresh in readers' minds. And I wanted readers to feel they'd contributed. I built a blog about the characters, added playlists, brief bios about the primaries, snippets of info about werewolves and the paranormal. And I posted a number of polls related directly to the action. The trick was posting the polls, getting the answers and then writing according to public opinion (and almost immediately). It kept me on my toes. The polls helped determine what both Derek and Pietr looked like, who the werewolves were, how Pietr's family wound up, who Jess went to Homecoming with and what the first dance was she and Pietr danced together to. It was fun!

The main things that changed in 13 to Life from the abbreviated TN version and what will release next year from SMP relate to subplots, description (I had more room to build the world and describe my characters), some important twists and a totally--totally--different ending that lines things up for book 2. Essentially I went from 50 pages to 350 pages--79,000 words, but the heart of the novel remained the same.

More with Saoirse Redgrave...

Rosemary Clement-Moore






Rosemary Clement-Moore is one of my RWA chapter mates and is also one of the sweetest people you'll meet. She helped me out with the first interview I did for Examiner.com but I wanted to leave a longer version of it here. She is also the 2009 Romance Writers of America’s Rita Heart winner in the Young Adult Category.

A lot of exciting things are happening for you recently. Hell Week took this year’s RWA RITA for YA and you also have a new book The Splendor Falls coming out this week. Tell us a little bit about Hell Week.

In Hell Week, aspiring investigative journalist Maggie Quinn gets around her colleges rule against freshman on the newspaper staff, by writing a story only a freshman can--she goes undercover during Sorority rush. She’s stunned to get a bid from the most exclusive, successful house on campus--but there’s more to the Sigma Alpha Xi’s than fraternity mixers and study parties. There’s something supernatural going on, and while Maggie’s targeting them with her girl detective mojo, something truly fiendish just might be targeting her.

I once saw a mother have to prod and practically pull her daughter over to speak with you because the 13-year-old was completely star-struck. You were so sweet to her. Is that a typical reaction from your fans?

I get reactions across the board. Some girls are flustered, some talk a mile a minute. I have to admit, whenever I hear a squeal of excitement, I always turn around to see who’s standing behind me. I suspect some of the shyness isn’t just star-struck-ness, but also that I’m a grown up, and they may think I don’t have time to talk to them. The secret is, I don’t feel much like a grown up, and I love to talk to readers, especially teens. One of the things I love best is when a girl tells me she feels like she’s found a friend in my character, or that she identifies with Maggie because she loves books, or because she’s a bit of a nerd, but still very happy with who she is. That’s the more rewarding than anything.

The Splendor Falls has been described as a modern gothic romance. Can you tell us more?

In the classic gothic novel, there are elements of horror and suspense in a gloomy old castle or ruin full of buried secrets and lurking dangers. The Splendor Falls follows the traditions of Daphne du Maurier and Mary Stewart, but with a thoroughly modern heroine. Sylvie is grieving the end of her dance career when she’s shuttled off to stay with her late father’s cousin in Alabama, in a ramshackle antebellum mansion where the past is a little too alive. When she starts seeing things that aren’t there--a girl in the woods, a watcher at a window--are these really ghosts, or is she losing her mind along with everything else?

You've been the driving force to get a Young Adult chapter of RWA established. What kind of benefits will this specialty chapter offer to authors?

The Romance Writers of America has a lot of practical advice and resources for published and unpublished writers of all sort of fiction--not just of what you think of as a Romance Novel (i.e., the clichéd couple in a clinch on the cover). A romantic subplot, after all, is hardly limited to one section of the bookstore, and the principles of writing apply across genres.

The purpose behind the YA chapter is to share information that’s more specific to authors of books aimed at the teens and young adults, considerations both in craft and in marketing. The YA genre is extremely strong right now, not just with teens, but adults, too.

Anything else you'd like to add?

If you’ve never read anything from the teen or YA shelves in the bookstore, you might be surprised by what’s there. It’s not all teen vampire romances. (Not that there’s anything wrong with those!) But “Grown ups” often dismiss something because it has “teen” on the spine. A young protagonist doesn’t mean it’s a “kid’s book.” The best novels are those that offer something to readers of every background and age. I got a letter recently from a woman who said she, her mother and her daughter all loved my books. What’s more awesome than three generations of fans!

Thank you so much, Rosemary. Rosemary can be found on Sept. 18th-20th at FenCon VI in Dallas.
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Boot Hill



Boot Hill in Tombstone is one of those places you gotta see at least once, even though it is very small. If you didn't want to linger, you could probably walk through the area within 5 minutes. It is well tended with a quiet somber atmosphere, even with a multitude of tourists strolling the ground with their cameras--it is the final resting place for several larger than life people after all. The graves are similarly marked with painted white wooden gravemarkers and black lettering, obviously not the orginal markers, which was a little disapointing. Most of the graves are piled high with stones, a few with gates around them. There are no brilliantly colored flowers, just the scrub brush and small cacti that are natural to the dusty desert region. Boot Hill really is a hill at the far edge of town, not a towering one but more of a sloping rise that has a great view of the plain beyond. In fact all the feet were planted facing the direction of the best view on the downward slope.




Evermore by Alyson Noel

A friend of mine advised me to read Evermore because it had some eerily similar things in it to the manuscript I completed. Okay, my mouth was hanging open, unattractively at that, after reading the first couple of pages because Evermore's couple meets in the back of a high school classroom as the heroine takes a seat after being taunted by the popular girls. My couple meets in the back of a high school classroom as the heroine takes a seat after being taunted by the popular girls. Crrr-aaap!

Then I read on and the similarities ended, thank you very much, cuz I was literally dying and thinking I was going to have to rewrite everything. Ugh!

But the two stories have nothing in common so we are all good. Not that Ms. Noel had anything to worry about, it was all me, but you know...

Anyway, Evermore is a fantastic read with surprises. I like that. At first it seemed a lot like Twilight, you know, girl meets incredible looking boy who is mysterious and we think he is a vampire, only the actual writing is far tighter and better. Then just when I thought I had the plot pigeon-holed--BAM--it's not what I thought at all. I totally love being caught by surprise like that. Well done, well done. I can see why this book is so popular.

Trip to see my sisters

My sister Bekie is the best. She flew myself and my younger sister Heather out to visit her in Arizona simply because she knew we needed it and wanted to see us. I can't begin to describe how much fun we have and how little sleep. You'd think we would have exhausted our topics after a few hours, but not us, we gabbed so much hours at a time flew by. It was heaven. No kids, no husband, no responsibilites. Here's some of the highlights:
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