Joanna: Samson, by Regina Spektor. It begins with a line that perfectly expresses Anne s addiction t

Life and death, light and dark, spirit and flesh-on Wormwood Island, the lines are always blurred. For Anne Merchant, who has been thrust back into this eerily secretive world, crossing the line seems inevitable, inescapable, destined.
Now, as Ben finds himself battling for the Big V and Teddy reveals the celestial plan in which Anne is entwined, Anne must choose: embrace her darkly powerful connection to a woman known as Lilith and, in doing so, save the boy she loves or follow a safer path that is sure to lead to Ben s destruction at the hands of dark leaders. Hoping the ends will justify the means, last minute inexpensive airline tickets Anne starts down the slippery slope into the underworld, intent on exploring the dark to find the light. But as the lure of Lilith proves powerfully strong, will Anne save others-only to lose herself?
Joanna: Back in creative writing class in undergrad, I worked on a short story featuring prep school boys behaving last minute inexpensive airline tickets badly at a school called Compton Christy. That school morphed, over the years, into a place called Cania Christy, which grew in my mind into a boarding school run by beings from the underworld and attended by people who need what the underworld can give.
Joanna: The first book was all about Anne figuring out the secrets of Cania Christy and Wormwood Island; in the second, this world and its rules are understood from page one. With the first, I had to be very, very careful about everything I wrote in order to prevent the reader from reading into something she shouldn t and failing to notice something she should. The first was carefully, precisely plotted. The first required me to create the rules of the island and force the characters to live by them. And the first offered me only a smidgen of time to introduce characters; last minute inexpensive airline tickets I found myself trying last minute inexpensive airline tickets to compress whole beings into a few sentences of dialogue, which was a challenge and a half.
So I d say that the second was easier to write simply because the stakes are largely understood, the setting is constructed, the characters are introduced. With the second, we get to explore the relationships between the characters and see more of the dark and light in Anne. She s transforming into a more complex person in the second book and I can t wait to see what she ll do in the third book.
Joanna: last minute inexpensive airline tickets If only I could limit the differences to one! The thing is that Anne is someone who, like many people I know and even like myself, spends more time trying to be the person she thinks she s supposed to be than letting her true self rise to the surface. There s safety in being who everyone last minute inexpensive airline tickets wants you to be. For years, Anne was trying to avoid upsetting the balance in her home, where she was surrounded by mourners and coping with her mom s illness. She grew up being the safest version of herself.
But in The Wicked Awakening , Anne learns something about herself that totally disrupts her identity. She spends much of the book trying on a new version of herself. Her days of tiptoeing through life and waiting for other people last minute inexpensive airline tickets to tell her who to be and what to do are long gone and that s both uncomfortable and exciting for her. I frankly last minute inexpensive airline tickets adore where Anne goes in this book.
Joanna: The newest faculty members at the school are the seven deadly sins personified. As I was writing them, I was thinking of the episode of America s Next Top Model in which Tyra dressed the contestants as the seven deadly sins:
Joanna: Samson, by Regina Spektor. It begins with a line that perfectly expresses Anne s addiction to Ben: You are my sweetest downfall. The whole song feels just right for who Anne is with her quirks and with the thread of light that runs through her in spite of her inner demons.
I also love the line The history books forgot last minute inexpensive airline tickets about us, and the Bible didn't mention us, not even once because last minute inexpensive airline tickets Anne thinks her relationship with Ben is something that, perhaps, it s not. Like anyone in love, she thinks her love story is the ultimate deserving of attention and even recognition but outsiders looking in wouldn t see what she sees.
Joanna: last minute inexpensive airline tickets I love the scenes in which Anne uses the rules of the island especially Mephistopheles s rules about making exchanges for her own gain. (Characters are far more interesting last minute inexpensive airline tickets when they re exploring last minute inexpensive airline tickets their dark sides, IMHO.)
last minute inexpensive airline tickets So one of my favorite scenes last minute inexpensive airline tickets sees Anne trying to convince Ben to fight for the Big V by giving last minute inexpensive airline tickets him the idea that, if he agrees to fight, she ll sleep with him. Do I think sex should be used as currency? No. And it doesn t end up going that way, anyway. But I do have a twisted fascination with seeing characters do the wrong thing for the right reasons. Here s how that scene ends:
Joanna: I love my readers, so thank you for reading and sending last minute inexpensive airline tickets your notes to me. I m published by a smaller press (with a big heart), so it s slightly tougher to get the word out about my books, which makes every reader all the more precious to me. Thank you so much!
By day, Joanna is a copywriter and the co-founder of CopyHackers.com and Page99Test.com, a critique site for published and unpublished writers. last minute inexpensive airline tickets As an undergraduate last minute inexpensive airline tickets student, Joanna won several last minute inexpensive airline tickets academic awards for excellence in creative last minute inexpensive airline tickets writing: Canada s James Patrick Folinsbee Prize, which she won twice, as well as the Godfrey Prize.
After graduating, she lived for a year on the remote northern island of Hokkaido, Japan, which is the inspiration for the verdant Wormwood Island of the V Trilogy. She holds a BA in Honors English and an MA in Communications from the University of Alberta and lives with her partner Lance in Victoria, British Columbia.