Welcome to Wickedly Bookish's stop on the Stitch Blog Tour! I'm very excited to be a part of this tour and even more excited to have gotten the opportunity to interview author Samantha Durante! Stick around after the interview for the book's blurb, more info on Samantha, and how you can get your hot little hands on a copy!
Interview with Samantha Durante
First off
Samantha, thank you so much for making Wickedly Bookish a part of your tour!
We're excited to have you here!
Thank you so much for having me! I’m so excited to be here! :-)
Now before we get
started with the questions I would like to point out to readers that as they
are reading this interview, you will actually be celebrating your wedding day!
Congratulations! What made you decide to have the last day of your book's tour
coincide with your big day?
Thank you!! Stitch
released on August 1st and we started the tour shortly after on the
15th, so I just figured, why not?
I’m so excited about the book AND about the wedding, so this gives me an
opportunity to celebrate everything all at once!
Even better, there’s been so much interest in the tour that
I’ve actually ended up extending it through the entire month of October, so
there’s plenty more to come once I get back from my honeymoon! Anyone who’s interested in keeping up can
find the full schedule here, and I
post daily updates to my
(and Stitch’s) Facebook
pages and my blog with all
the goodies, so follow the tour in one of those spots for notifications!
Readers can catch
a blurb of Stitch at the end of this interview, but tell us something about
your book that the blurb doesn't say. Something you would like readers to know
who may be considering picking it up.
I think the biggest thing to keep in mind about Stitch is
that we’ve got paranormal romance and dystopian sci-fi right in one book, so
it’s probably very different from whatever you’ve read before and totally NOT
what you’re expecting. What readers have
consistently told me so far is that whenever they thought they had it figured
out, they were hit with a big twist that they didn’t see coming, and they loved
how it kept them on their toes!
The lines of what
is classified as YA fiction and what is adult have really blurred in the market
lately. Your main character Alessa is a freshman in college. Would you classify
Stitch as YA or is it more mature?
Great question! I’ve
actually got a blog post about this coming up later in the tour, because this
was something I struggled with for a while.
Yes, my characters are definitely a little older than your typical YA
heroes and heroines, and at first I wondered if this would bar me from being
able to call it YA. But in the end, I
decided that Stitch was indeed YA,
for a couple different reasons.
First, I think the spirit of YA books is more about the
essence of coming of age and going through that stage in your life where you’re
just starting to figure everything out.
But in reality, this happens for everyone at different times, whether you’re
16 or 14 or 22 or 27 – and this is true for the characters in Stitch as well. So, if you look at it from the perspective
that my characters are going through the same things as your typical teenage YA
character, then I thought that was a pretty clear indicator that Stitch was in
the YA spectrum.
The other reason I felt Stitch should be classified as YA is
because it appeals to such a broad range of readers, including both YA and
adult readers. College is a transitional
period and it’s something that people on both ends of that transition can
relate to. High school age readers will
be excited to read about Alessa’s adventures because it will give them a window
into what their own college experience might be like, whereas readers in their
late twenties (or older) will be able to look back at their own experience and
remember that time in their lives as they relive it through Alessa’s
experience. And given all the great
series that have come out of the YA world in recent years, I know that many
adults are totally open to reading YA stuff, whereas I thought it would be a
harder sell to get younger readers to read an “adult” sci-fi book, so putting
Stitch in the YA category seemed me to like the easiest way to reach the most
people.
Many of our
readers are aspiring authors. Do you have any tips or words of wisdom to offer
them about writing?
Absolutely – don’t hold yourself back! I waited until I was 26 to even attempt my
first book, because I always felt like I needed a perfect idea for a perfect
book before I should even try, and really, that was just dumb. If you love to write, you should write, and
you should write about anything just because the act of writing makes you happy. No idea is ever going to be entirely original,
so instead of waiting for an amazing brand new idea to dawn on you, just think
of something that sounds like a book you’d want to read, and write it. It’s as simple as that.
We are seeing a
rise in successful indie and small press authors in the market lately. What
made you choose to go this route?
The main reason I decided to self-publish was because I
really just wanted to get the book to readers as quickly as possible. I wrote Stitch as a fun side project, and
when I finished it, I went back and forth a lot about whether I should try to
get an agent and a publisher or just use the tools on Amazon and Smashwords to
do it myself. In the end, I decided that
I just couldn’t wait the months/years it would take to do it the traditional
way – I’m too impatient! Plus, I love
having control over every minute detail of the book and was prepared to do all
the work of formatting and marketing, so it worked for me.
But it’s definitely not for everyone. Right now I am working full-time as a
freelance business writer and my fiancé works full-time as well, so writing
novels is more of a hobby for me and not something that I am depending on for
income. But if I had decided to pursue
being an author as my livelihood, I think it would have been a better decision
to get an agent who had the industry contacts that would enable me to turn this
hobby into a financially-stable career.
That just wasn’t the boat I was in, though.
Do you have any
advice for others who are considering self-publishing?
You just need to understand what you’re getting into. Self-publishing is A LOT of work. I actually kept track of the hours I put into
Stitch, and writing was less than half of the hours I had put into this project
up until release day (and I stopped keeping track after that – if I had, the
writing would probably be closer to 25% of my time investment). The rest was revising/editing (and begging
family and friends to read the drafts and make editorial suggestions or help me
find typos…), formatting the multiple e-book versions, getting a cover created,
figuring out how to get ISBN numbers and where I wanted to distribute the book,
putting together a marketing plan and website and Facebook pages, and finally
organizing the blog tour. I’ve got
around 90 stops on this blog tour, but I think I’ve still got a ton of work to do with marketing the book, if I really
want it to succeed. And that’s not to
mention the stigma you still need to combat as a self-published author (read
more about my experience in this guest
post). So it’s not easy.
That being said, you’d have to do at least some of this
stuff (particularly the marketing) as a new author anyway, since publishers
focus most of their efforts on established authors who are guaranteed to make a
return. And the good news is that you
can price your book a lot lower and make the same amount per book as you would
have if you were sharing the revenue with a publisher (and all the other people
who would get a cut of your sales). And
it’s also very satisfying to know that you did this on your own, and that you’re
in full control of the destiny of your book.
So I would recommend that people take a look at their goals and evaluate
their willingness to do all these things other
than write, and figure out if it’s right for them.
Again, thank you
so much Samantha for taking the time to answer our questions! Congratulations
on your marriage. Our best wishes go out to you and your new hubby today!
Thank you so much!
I’m so thrilled to be able to share this special day with all my loved
ones and with everyone who’s participating in the tour – I really can’t ask for
anything more. :-) Thank you again and I hope all the readers
out there get a chance to enjoy Stitch!
Book Blurb
Her heart races, her muscles coil, and every impulse in Alessa’s body screams at her to run… but yet she’s powerless to move.
Still struggling to find her footing after the sudden death of her
parents, the last thing college freshman Alessa has the strength to deal
with is the inexplicable visceral pull drawing her to a handsome
ghostly presence. In between grappling with exams and sorority soirees –
and disturbing recurring dreams of being captive in a futuristic prison
hell – Alessa is determined to unravel the mystery of the apparition
who leaves her breathless. But the terrifying secret she uncovers will
find her groping desperately through her nightmares for answers.
Because what Alessa hasn’t figured out yet is that she’s not really a
student, the object of her obsession is no ghost, and her sneaking
suspicions that something sinister is lurking behind the walls of her
university’s idyllic campus are only just scratching the surface…
The opening installment in a twist-laden trilogy, Stitch spans the
genres of paranormal romance and dystopian sci-fi to explore the
challenges of a society in transition, where morality, vision, and
pragmatism collide leaving the average citizen to suffer the results.
Stitch Purchase Links
Amazon (print $9.99 & Kindle $2.99): http://www.amazon.com/Stitch-Trilogy-Book-1/dp/0985804602/
Smashwords (multiple e-book formats $2.99): https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/208278
Barnes & Noble (Nook $2.99): http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/stitch-samantha-durante/1112193442
Also available in the iTunes store ($2.99 e-book)
About the Author
Connect with Samantha
Facebook:
Stitch - http://www.facebook.com/stitchtrilogy
Author Samantha Durante - http://www.facebook.com/authorsamanthadurante
Goodreads:
Stitch - http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15779886-stitch
Author Samantha Durante - http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6453465.Samantha_Durante
LibraryThing:
Stitch - http://www.librarything.com/work/12870151/book/88297636
Author Samantha Durante - http://www.librarything.com/author/durantesamantha
Shelfari:
Stitch – http://www.shelfari.com/books/30363286/Stitch-(Stitch-Trilogy-Book-1)
Author Samantha Durante - http://www.shelfari.com/authors/a1002689147/Samantha-Durante/
