Author Interview With Belle Whittington

Belle resides somewhere north of Houston, Texas in a small inconsequential town with the smallest most inconsequential name. There in the shady reaches of the pines, elms, and oaks, she daydreams of adventures and secrets that she weaves throughout her stories.  She studied literature at University of Houston and has been known to consider the idea of becoming a professor of English someday.

I finished Cicada and fell in love with the book. I just can’t stop thinking about it and can’t wait for the 2^nd book, Firefly, to come out. So I am so happy and honored to have Belle Whittington on I Rawr Books. It is also my first too. :)

Yoshi Luver: OMG! I just loved your cover! Who designed it? And was it as you imagined?

Belle Whittington: Thank you!  I love it, too!  My daughter designed the cover using licensed stock art, and I think it is so very magical.  Actually, I didn’t know how I wanted the cover of Cicada to look.  But once I saw her creation, I knew it was perfect.  The girl on the cover is being lifted into the air and transformed, just like the main character Blair Reynolds.

Yoshi Luver: Cicada is your first book, what decided that you will stick to Sci-Fi, instead of romance, horror……and so on?

Belle Whittington: Most of my early writings were stories with a twist of science fiction…even my earliest poems.  I remember sitting on the dam of a neighbor’s pond around the time I was eleven, writing a story about space travel.  In fact, I still have that little handwritten story.  It’s still bound in the same yellow notebook that I put it in way back in the sixth grade!

And when the basic story introduced itself to me, it only seemed natural that it was a science fiction tale.  I suppose sci-fi is my favorite genre to write.  There’s a dash of romance and horror mixed into the trilogy, though.  And I think readers will enjoy those little sparks of flavor in the recipe!

Yoshi Luver: Mostly everyone would ask what inspired you to write this book….and so, what did inspire you?

Belle Whittington: There’s not any one thing that inspired me to write Cicada. I find inspiration in everything around me, and there are a lot of cumulative memories of inspiration from over the years that all culminated in this YA Paranormal Sci-Fi trilogy.

Growing up in Nacogdoches, the oldest town in Texas, afforded me summers full of adventure with my friends.  I call on those adventures and memories a great deal for my YA stories.  Cicada has a lot of the energy of those childhood adventures spun throughout.  One of them is something that actually happened to me when I was thirteen years old.  I was on one of my adventures in the woods with my dog, Dusty.  We made our way through the woods to a neighboring pasture and crawled through the barbed wire fence.  When we got to the top of one of the rolling hills in the grassy field, I realized I was standing in the middle of a giant circle imprinted in the pasture grass.  No one had ever told me about crop circles at that time in my life, so I just thought it was an odd occurrence that there was a strange circle in the tall grass.   Now that circle is forever memorialized in a YA novel, Cicada!

Yoshi Luver: Was the location in the book related to any specific place that you visited or lived at?

Belle Whittington: Cicada is actually set in the town in which I live: Willis, Texas!  As you can see from the book, Willis is a very mysterious town with giant secrets.  I did include a lot of actual places from the town in which Cicada is set.

For instance, I pass a ranch on my way home every day (and sometimes night!), and out in the middle of one of the grassy fields is a small forest of trees with a dense wall of tightly grown underbrush. For years, I’ve imagined that something very mysterious was going on inside that forest, and sometimes at night I’d get creeped out while driving by it! Now readers can get a feel for that forest by reading about the “haunted forest” in Cicada!

Yoshi Luver: Did you find yourself stuck while writing this book? If so what part?

Belle Whittington: I didn’t really have any problems while writing Cicada.  The story just sort of flowed out of my fingertips and onto the page. My characters lead the story, so I’m merely the recorder.

The most difficult part to write was the ending.  I cried so hard when I wrote the last sentence that I had to take a long drive to calm myself down.

Yoshi Luver: I know that authors come to love their character, but who is your truly favorite character?

Belle Whittington: This is actually a really good question to which I have an odd answer.  I related to all of my characters equally, actually.  I feel that each one of them has a small part of me in them, and I have a connection with each one of them.  For instance, when they hurt, I draw upon some memory of a time when I was under emotional stress or heartbroken.  When they are in love, I remember a time when I was thoroughly smitten with someone.  So, I’m sorry I cannot be more specific with my answer.

Yoshi Luver: I know I am dying to know, and I bet a bunch of other readers are too, about your second book in the Cicada Trilogy! Can you give us a little pre-view as to what firefly is all about?

Belle Whittington: Without giving away any spoilers, I will say that the trilogy really heats up in Firefly.  And there will be a very hot new character named Ash who readers will love to hate to love!  Everything changes in Blair’s life, even her little town.  Will it be for the bad or for the good?  Readers will have to be the judge of that.  Firefly is due to release this fall.  But I’ve included a sneak peak at the end of Cicada just to tide you over!

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The cover for Firefly is going to be gorgeous!  I think readers will be very pleased.

Belle Whittington: Thank you so much for having me over to your adorable blog for a glass of ice tea and a chat!  I’m so happy to have the opportunity to get to know you and your readers!  I hope everyone will stop by any or all of my social networking sites to say “hi”.  I love comments from my readers, and I always respond.  Happy reading!

For additional information, and where to find and contact Belle click this link below
Belle Whittington Links

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