INDELIBLE Interview With Author Dawn Metcalf

Today I have the honor of interviewing Dawn Metcalf. Not only is Dawn a funny, supportive, kind, and intelligent person, but she's an AMAZING author. I had the opportunity to preview INDELIBLE and I could not put it down.

Here's the blurb from Goodreads:
Some things are permanent.

Indelible.

And they cannot be changed back.

Joy Malone learns this the night she sees a stranger with all-black eyes across a crowded room—right before the mystery boy tries to cut out her eye. Instead, the wound accidentally marks her as property of Indelible Ink, and this dangerous mistake thrusts Joy into an incomprehensible world—a world of monsters at the window, glowing girls on the doorstep, and a life that will never be the same.

Now, Joy must pretend to be Ink’s chosen one—his helper, his love, his something for the foreseeable future...and failure to be convincing means a painful death for them both. Swept into a world of monsters, illusion, immortal honor and revenge, Joy discovers that sometimes, there are no mistakes.

Somewhere between reality and myth lies…

THE TWIXT

And NOW the interview:

1. I would like to live in your imagination. Where did the idea for INDELIBLE come from? 

A geekish rant, which is oddly enough where a lot of my ideas come from. I was getting a little tired of seeing the immortal male love interest swooping in to show the 16-year old human girl the "way to love." I happen to think there's a lot of immortal characters who are full of innocent bluster and charm and haven't a *clue* what it's like to be a human in love and thought, "What about them?" I adored Peter Pan and Wendy, Shakespeare's Puck and Ariel, as well as Joe Black from 'Meet Joe Black'  and these were immortals who didn't really "get" mortal love and I frankly knew a lot of 16-year old girls who are confident enough in themselves and their hearts to be comfortable taking the lead, so why not switch it up?

I got a lot of feedback from women who said that no girl wants to believe she's the one with the answers, that she has to be the one who calls the shots; girls want older guys to show them how it goes and wouldn't be interested in a "virginal male," and I thought, "They're wrong" and I wrote it anyway.

2. It's probably no surprise that I loved Ink. But the more telling thing for me was that I also loved your protagonist, Joy. What do you think was the key to bringing her to life and making her likable?

Joy wants and so rarely gets. We all want things, but I think we see Joy as someone who was always passionate about not only having goals, but going after them, heart, body and soul. She didn't mind working hard or putting in the hours or making sacrifices or even pushing her way through pain or discomfort, but when these things happen to her family life, it stole the wind from her sails and left her adrift. I think a lot of people know what that feels like--I know I do!--and so we can admire and sympathize with Joy. So when the latest thing happens to upend her life, she's not about it let it walk all over her. Her strength to face it, be powerful and take a stand for herself (and others) is something I really admire.

3. Do you plot or are you a pantser? Do you think you could have written this using the other method? 

Honestly, I'm a pantser who has a rough outline in mind as I go. But for this novel and it's sequel, I tried something new: I borrowed ideas from screenwriting (specifically Syd Field and Blake Snyder as well as hometown pal, Jeremy Bernstein) because I think that we've grown up on television and film and that pattern has set a lot of the pacing expectations and payoffs that we've grown to expect in our stories. It's been a great experience and one which I may stick to in the future!

4. I love the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet myself! How long did it take you to write this book? 

Roughly 6 months. I write 2-3K a sitting but I have a tough time turning my inner editor off!

6. What can readers expect from Dawn Metcalf next?

Something unexpected! I am like the ninja!

Seriously, I have this sequel for INDELIBLE which is due out April, 2014 and have been working on my very first steampunk story, which I hope will be a hit with some lucky editor soon! I also have a project that is close to my heart, an alternate-near-future-now speculative fiction idea that I nicknamed "The Gender Book." I can't wait to get back into it! Basically, I always have something brewing.

7. You are the master ninja. What did you use in creating the lore for the Folk? I noticed some fairy similarities, but I know it was more complex than that. Can you explain the process in creating the world of the Twixt?

My mind, it is a scary place! While I admit that there is a lot of fairy lore, I also borrowed myths, legends, magics and cultural images from around the world and around the gaming table so there are sprinklings of characters who look or sound familiar and those who are so unfamiliar, I figure that they should be real somewhere--*that* is the realm of the Twixt; the in-between places where magic still exists and explains the echoes of what was once a shared world between humans and whatever else lives beyond the campfire light. There's a bit of Dungeons & Dragons, a little Norse mythology, some random Amazonia influences as well as Chinese, Irish, German, Jewish, and Japanese cultural myths. I wanted a place where all these things could live together, sharing similar advantages and concerns with humanity, affecting us and our reality with equal chances of being just as real. I wanted them to need us as much as we needed them, whether we knew it or not. I had a lot of fun spinning out the Folks' history and how we got to this point and what might happen in the future. I don't think I'm spoiling anything by saying it all starts here in Book One of the Twixt.

Thank you, Dawn! I can't wait for book two!