Hi
Martina! First I want to say welcome back to Two Chicks on Books! I loved
COMPULSION and PERSUASION and am so happy that you could stop by for a visit!
BTW I can’t wait for
book 3!
I’m
thrilled to be here, Jaime! You’ve been so supportive of these books, and I
can’t even believe that you ordered the sweet potato mustard for the giveaway.
That means so much to me that I can’t begin to tell you. I’m sending you so
much love and thanks! I also adore the Pinterest board, and I had to restrain
myself from adding more food to the book in revision just so that I could add
more recipes.
For the readers: can you give us a recap of COMPULSION and the
characters?
Barrie
Watson, after growing up very sheltered and alone with her shut in mother and
her fabulous ex-drag queen godfather in Los Angeles, arrives to live with her
aunt in South Carolina, knowing nothing about her family or the plantation that
has been in the family for 300 years. But the plantation is haunted by the
spirit of an ancient Cherokee witch, and other small spirits are taking the
house apart, wanting Barrie to do something. Since the family magic, received
from the witch when the family first settled the island, is the gift of finding
lost things, and because Barrie is now the heir to that magic, she begins to
uncover a series of secrets buried on the island. This includes discovering a
murder, which is indirectly the reason her mother ran away before Barrie was
born, and the reason her grandfather tried to suppress the magic that both
Barrie’s mother and aunt had inherited from him, as well as a very real danger
that is putting Barrie at risk as she investigates.
She
is helped in her investigations by the young man who lives across the river—Eight
Beaufort, Charles Beaufort, VIII, whose family has a gift for knowing what
people want most most. As Barrie’s gift pulls her toward Eight, she fights the
pull because she doesn’t want to be tied to someone so quickly, and she isn’t
sure whether it’s her gift pulling her toward Eight, or whether the fact that
he knows what she wants makes it easy for him to get her to like him, or
whether her feelings are genuine.
To
complicate things even more, Eight is determined to get as far away from Watson
Island as he can, and he has a scholarship to go play baseball at the
University of Southern California in the fall. But Barrie ends up magically
bound to Watson’s Landing, which makes it physically impossible for her to
leave the plantation for any length of time.
Another
complicating factor is Barrie’s cousin Cassie, whose family didn’t receive a
magical gift from the Fire Carrier, but received a curse instead. For 300
years, the Colesworths have wanted what the Beauforts and the Watsons want
most, but they never get it. For years before Barrie came, what Cassie wanted
most was to get away. To do that, she needed to find the treasure that was
rumored to be buried on her family’s property and lost since the Civil War.
When Barrie first arrives with her gift for finding things, this seems like the
perfect opportunity to find the treasure. Except that the treasure isn’t what
Barrie finds on the properly, and as she investigates and tries to befriend
Cassie, Cassie discovers that what What Eight and Barrie want most is each
other, and that leads to interference from the curse.
What can we expect in PERSUASION?
Persuasion continues very shortly after Compulsion
left off. Barrie’s godfather has died, and she’s having trouble letting go. She
and Eight have deepened their relationship while they’ve been gone, but Eight’s
departure for college is looming over them both—so much so that Eight decides
to give up his scholarship and find a way to go to school in South Carolina so
that he can stay close to home. But as much as Barrie wants to be glad about
that, she can’t help wondering if that’s his own decision. Does he want her for
herself, or is the magic making the decision for him?
To
complicate matters, as Seven learns that Eight intends to stay to be close to
Barrie—as opposed to staying for the sake of family responsibility—he reveals a
secret to Barrie that he has kept hidden from Eight all his life. That secret
not only effects the relationship between Barrie and Eight, but Eight’s entire
future and also Cassie’s future.
The
decisions Barrie makes as a result of that secret are further complicated by
the arrival of Obadiah, a man who can turn himself into a raven or disappear
altogether. Having heard about what happened recently on Watson Island, he has
returned to search for Cassie’s lost treasure and to break the Colesworth
curse, which he claims has brought disaster on his family as well as Cassie’s
family since it was originally cast. And, as he explains, the story that Cassie
told Barrie about the curse and how it came about isn’t at all how Cassie
portrayed it.
What about book 3? Do we have a title yet?
We have a title—it’s Illusion. And also we have a cover color—teal. It’s
gorgeous. The brilliant Regina Flath is still finalizing it, but I’ve seen the
initial direction and it’s the best one so far!
I know I asked this last time but who was your favorite character to write?
What about your least favorite? Has that changed between the two books?
I still adore Barrie and Eight, and the scenes where they’re together are
always such an absolute joy to me. Even when the magic is tearing them apart,
their love and concern for each other is very real and beautiful. And by real,
I mean that true relationships are messy. They’re never perfect, especially
when two people are under extreme pressure and when what each wants and needs
in their own lives conflicts with what the other wants and needs. Add magical
compulsions into that mix, and it makes it even harder.
That
said, in Persuasion, my favorite new heart throb is Berg. I really need
to give him his own book.
And
my favorite villain is Obadiah. He really was not what I expected, and
to be honest, I didn’t know until the end of Illusion whether he was
going to turn out to be a hero or a villain.
What is your favorite passage/scene in PERSUASION?
There are a lot of scenes that I love for different reasons, but the cemetery
scene when Eight builds a tire swing for Barrie at midnight is my favorite. I
love that Justine Magazine picked that one too. : )
What kind of research did you have to do for the story? There’s more magic in this one (or it seems like
there is) so did you create your magic or did you research different kinds of
magic?
The books require a huge amount of research. The trilogy is based on the very
real history of the Carolina Lowcountry, where at the turn of the 18th century
when the Watson Island plantations were settled, over 50 percent of the slaves
who worked the plantations were Native American, most of them women and
children. The slaves imported from the West Indies and from Africa were pulled
into this horrible framework, and the resulting the blend of Native American,
African, and European belief systems and magic called Hoodoo still exists in
the Lowcountry today. None of this is written about nearly enough, and even the
inhabitants of the Beaufort and Colesworth plantations don’t understand this
history enough to explain it to Barrie as she first arrives at Watson’s
Landing. The journey of discovery that she undertakes as she and Eight
investigate the magic more deeply in Persuasion and Illusion brings
to light a lot of omissions and errors and reveal how history is warped and
changed by those in power. I also wanted to make the connection to the power
imbalances experienced by women and children over the course of history, and
still today—there are still 30 million slaves in the world right now.
What are you reading right now? Or what do you have on your TBR that you’re dying to read?
I’m reading Thief of Lies by Brenda Drake, which I’m loving. I can’t
wait to get my hands on Liza Wiemer’s Hello?, which I’ve already read
and is fabulous, in print form. And I’ve got Gabriel by Nikki Kelly
coming up as soon as I finish up Six of Crows which is beyond
fabulous!
Who is your ultimate Book Boyfriend? Is it still Gansey or Sean Kendrick? Or
have you met someone new? ;)
Maggie still does fabulous book boyfriends, so they’re still up there. I am
loving Kaz in Six of Crows, and I couldn’t go without mentioning Elias
from An Ember in the Ashes, and Arin from The Winner’s Curse
and The Winner’s Crime.
What inspires you to keep writing YA?
I love the freedom to examine love, life, and history with fresh eyes and take
them in new directions.
Lightening Round Questions
Twitter or Facebook?
Twitter.
Favorite Superhero?
Groot.
Favorite TV show?
Blindspot.
What Harry Potter House would the Sorting Hat place you in?
Gryffinclaw.
;)
Sweet or Salty?
Today?
Sweet.
Any Phobias?
Heights.
Snakes.
Song you can’t get
enough of right now?
Brave.
Just did a bunch of panels with Brenda Chapman who wrote and directed the movie
this weekend, and listened to it nonstop on the way home.
Fall Movie you’re most
looking forward to?
Mockingjay.
Thanks
so much Martina for answering my questions! I can’t
wait to read book 3 and we still need to get that glass of wine!
DEFINITELY
need that glass of wine and a LONG talk about books. : ) Hugs and many thanks,
Jaime!
