Today is a very exciting day because...
TORCHED is now on sale!
*Throws confetti*
Rose Whitfield's senior year just went up in smoke. Instead of having a blast with her best friend, her cheerleading squad, and her boyfriend Ryan, she's framed for arson. Popularity and criminal records don't mix, apparently.
Luckily, Rose knows exactly who's framing her: Paxton Callaway. Paxton and Rose have spent years locked in a war of practical jokes. This time he's gone too far. Rose sets out to prove her innocence, win Ryan back, and take Paxton down hard.
Not necessarily in that order.
This book is one of my favorite YA novels, full of blood-racing mystery and swoon-y kisses and hilarious pranks that had me chuckling out loud. I'm so proud of my friend Andrea for penning such a fantastic story, and I'm so excited to interview her today on my blog!
First off, where did you get the idea for Torched?
Torched actually came out of two sources: one was a file in which I had brainstormed half a dozen or so random plot ideas, and the other was a writing exercise in which I took a simple scene and wrote it in four different 'voices'. Rose was one of those voices that emerged, and she was so much fun to write that I took her character, checked my ideas file, and found her a story :)
If you're curious, the story kernel didn't even involve arson - it was just the concept of a cheerleader and a quarterback who loathed each other - but it didn't take long before things started to gel and I upended Rose's world. :)
Poor Rose! We writers can be so mean to our characters, can't we? Haha. Can we talk a little bit about the awesome cover for Torched? How did you come up with it?
Cover design was one of my favorite parts of the publishing process! (Figuring out how to get Amazon's conversion process to stop degrading the quality of that cover, not so much. Still a few kinks to work out.)
First, I sat down and brainstormed a few concepts. My favorite was a hand holding a match, with the flame as the central focus of the cover. Then, I thought, my sister could photoshop a pom-pom in place of the match head!
I know, right? That would have looked TERRIBLE! Luckily, once I started searching for stock photographs, I found a ton of much, much better concepts. My sister and I debated the front-runners and settled on the winner, which you can see on the cover. In the original photo, the match across the top wasn't lit, so we combined it with another stock photo of a lit match (I got all my photos from Fotolia.com, by the way, with a one-month subscription).
After that, it was a matter of replacing the white background with a cyan one, and figuring out fonts and placement. I had fun at fontspace.com, where you can find lots of great fonts that are free for commercial use. I asked friends and the internet (with a poll on my blog) for their opinion, and settled on what you see now.
The final step was making a full cover jacket for the paperback version. That was the most fun! I got to design the spine and the back, and my sister tweaked my description of the book into its fabulous back-flap copy.
Well, your hard work definitely paid off! The cover of Torched is simply stunning! So, last question: what's your favorite line in Torched?
Ooh, I guess it would have to be right after Paxton asks Rose if he can ask her a question. Rose answers, "Only if you use your mime voice." :)
There are other favorite lines, but I wouldn't want to give away spoilers!
Thanks so much for having me here, Caroline! I am SO EXCITED to share Torched with the world.
Yay! Congratulations, Andrea! And if any of you are interested in reading an excerpt of Torched or buying it, please click here!
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Andrea Lynn Colt grew up laughing, reading, and squabbling with her twin. She lives in Alexandria, Virginia with her fiancé, a fridge full of cheese, and two muses in feline form. Visit www.lynncolt.com to get to know her better.