Today I’m pleased to welcome author Audrey Rich to the blog. I hope you enjoy getting to meet Audrey and don’t forget to check out her Stonehaven High Series.
1. Hello Audrey and welcome to my site. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you got into writing?
Honestly, I didn’t know I would become a writer until the moment I began writing and I say it was an answer to a prayer back in 2008. It happened one night without any thought. Too wired to sleep, I went to check out FB and emails but instead I opened Word. My fingers flew across the keyboard. The story poured out of my fingers the entire night. The next morning I had written thirty pages. When I showed my husband, he read the first six pages and encouraged me to continue. For the next three months, I couldn’t stop writing. Every single moment I could find in a life full of two children, volunteering at school, and holding the position of Treasurer in my Homeowner’s Association was spent on this story until I finished.
2. What made you decide to write for teens instead of another age group?
The characters picked me. But I like the innocence of the age and that they don’t have the usual adult baggage. While teen characters do have their own pains, issues, and problems I love how their internal fight is bigger than anything else and revolves more around them. Presenting their internal struggles is one of the things I love about writing teenage characters.
3. Your debut novel, Masquerading Our Love (A Stonehaven High Series Book 1), features two characters in love but forced to hide their relationship due to their feuding families. Was the story inspired by Romeo & Juliet? If so how are the stories similar and how are they different?
Deep down I do believe that Romeo and Juliet played an influence in my subconscious. The obvious similarities are that it’s about the two teen’s parents who haven’t spoken to each other in over a decade. These two teens aren’t allowed to even talk to each other much less form a romantic bond. The difference is that Thalía wants to obey her parents and Christopher is pushed by this constraint to hatch out a plan if he wants to hang out with her and, of course, there is a happily-ever-after.
4. How did you come up with the names of your main characters, Thalía Reynari and Christopher Cooper?
The names just came to me as I wrote late that night. I would stop as each new character entered the scene and I could see who they were with their unique names.
5. What was it like to go from studying literature (to get your B.A. in Comparative Literature) to writing?
I read the great writers not only from England and America but from all over the world for my Comparative Literature degree. It allowed me to read the world classics, which helped me to learn the structure of how novels work from so many cultures. Once I learned how the great writers structured their stories, it helped me to follow similar paths.
6. What is the best advice you would give to young writers?
Besides reading and writing as often as possible, young writers should also live life. It’s harder to write about pain if you haven’t experienced pain, love, joy, friendships, etc., should be experienced to be able to write about it. Not that you have to experience everything that a character experiences but a writer needs to know what it is to have butterflies in your insides when that special person touches your arm or gives you a certain look.
7. What can readers look forward to from you next?
My second and third books cover the romance of Thalía’s friend, Trina Weber and her romance with Stuart Grant, Mr. Perfect. Thinking About Love, Part 1 is already available for sale and the second part will be released either in the late summer or early fall.
About the Author:
Audrey Rich is a New York City transplant living in South Florida, who writes sweet YA and NA Contemporary Romances and is an avid reader of novels where love conquers all.
She’s married to her own happily-ever-after Hero, is an inactive CPA, and a stay-at-home mom homeschooling her teenage daughter.
Audrey enjoys volunteering with children of all ages at church and teaching the Junior Achievement curriculums at local middle and high schools. She also loves to travel with her family.
Find Audrey online:
Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook
About the Book:
Can faith trump love?
Seventeen year old, Trina Weber has the world at her feet: beautiful, part of the in-crowd, and with almost enough college credits to earn her AA while only a junior at Stonehaven High School.
With her whole life planned, all she needs to complete her perfect world is a boyfriend.
But not any guy will do.
She’s searching for a partner, who will accept her goals and all the studying that goes with becoming a family doctor.
When the gorgeous, equally ambitious college freshman Stuart Grant blazes into her South Florida paradise, he fits right in. He’s everything she dreamed of and more…except he doesn’t agree with the most important part of who she is.
Thanks so much Farah!