What is one of your favorite things about writing?
Telling stories! For me, being a writer is almost a calling or a compulsion—you do it because you have to, because you’ve got stories inside you that you have to tell. I know that if I go a few days without writing (life does have a bad habit of intruding sometimes) I get a bit cranky, and as soon as I settle down into the story, I feel so much better.
When you’re writing, who is more in control, you or your characters?
That’s an interesting question, and the answer is that it depends on where I am in a book. When I’m just starting out, building my world and laying out the basics of the plot and where it’s going to go, I’m definitely in charge. But once all that has been established and the actual writing takes off, then the characters begin to take over, and pretty soon it’s their story and they’re just letting me be the one to record it. It’s profoundly thrilling and profoundly weird when you type a sentence or an exchange of dialogue and have no idea where it came from—it just seemed to come out of your fingers, with no conscious thought or effort. That’s when you know that the story is in the driver’s seat.
What are your favorite research resources?
Although my newest release is a contemporary, I write a lot of historical stories for both teens and adults. Because those stories have all (so far!) been set in the 19th and early 20th centuries, my absolute favorite way to research those settings has been through antique magazines. They’re easily obtainable (hello eBay!), relatively inexpensive, and just an amazing way to immerse myself in an era—you get not only physical information (clothes, consumer goods—the ads alone are fascinating!) but also zeitgeist—what the era felt like, what was important—and even things like what words and speech patterns were used (reading serialized stories in magazines from 1917 was fascinating.)
Would you tell us about your latest release?
Yes! Skin Deep is a contemporary fantasy romance that involves several of my favorite things: a Cape Cod setting, quilting, selkies, and magic—which not only made it great fun to write but also deeply satisfying. Here’s the blurb:
Garland Durrell has moved to Cape Cod to piece her life back together after a difficult divorce and hopes to get back into her great passion, quilting. On the first morning of her new life she finds a man and a small boy washed up on the beach, both badly wounded. Since the town chief of police is strangely reluctant to help, Garland takes on the care of the mysterious pair who don’t seem to remember what happened to them—and feels her own heart begin to heal.
Alasdair does remember. He and his son Conn are the last of the ruling family of selkies from the waters around the Cape, locked in a decades-long struggle with an evil that threatens all, selkie and human. He’s not sure if he can trust the lovely, blue-eyed woman who takes them in until he touches one of her quilts and feels the magic she’s sewn into it…and the emotions he’d never thought he’d feel for another woman after his wife’s death.
But the evil entity that stole Alasdair’s sealskin and left him for dead quickly senses both his presence and Garland’s magic, and is determined to destroy one and possess the other. Only Garland and her quilts, made with a power she barely believes she has, can save Alasdair and her new community from destruction—if she can avoid being destroyed first.
Skin Deep is available in both ebook and print through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple iBooks, and Kobo.
What are you working on now?
Something completely different from Skin Deep, because that’s how I keep life interesting. J I’m working on an adult historical fantasy—while I have three young adult historical fantasies published, this will be my first for adults. And of course it’s set in the Regency, because that’s my obsession. But even though my settings are very different, all my books have one thing in common: heroines who discover their true strengths, save the day, and get the guy.
If you could meet one of your characters, which one would it be?
Promise you won’t laugh? The character from one of my books I’d most like to meet isn’t, strictly speaking, a character even though she appears in and plays an important part in my YA series—she’s also an historical figure: Queen Victoria. But not the old lady swathed in black that usually comes to mind—I want to meet her when she was a brand-new 18-year-old queen who loved to dance all night and buy new dresses and confide details in her diary about the cute guys she met. Yes, really.
Do you have any particular writing habits? (Listening to music, best time of day to write, etc.)
I think that cultivating specific writing habits or rituals is hugely helpful for writers—it’s a way to signal to your “writer brain” that it’s time to get down to business. So most of the time I write in the same place (my office, a.k.a. the guest bedroom), preferably in the morning. I have a large cup of something warm (coffee or tea), and I light a candle. Not just any candle: when I start a new book, I pick out a scented candle and buy about ten of them, and burn that candle when I work on that book. Pretty soon the act of writing is strongly associated with that scent, so it’s a good way to get myself back into the flow of the story. And I always begin by reading over what I wrote the previous day and editing it, which also makes it so much easier to step into the action of what happens next. I can’t listen to music, though—it distracts me way too much. I need quiet.
Do you have any pets?
Oh dear, you asked me about my pets. That was probably a bad idea, because I can go on for pages about mine. J We have two house rabbits—two adorable, bossy, curious bunnies who are litter-box trained (all rabbits are very litter-box trainable) and live free-range as a cat or dog would—we don’t have a cage for them. We discovered bunnies by accident; I’m a cat person but my husband is violently allergic to them, and neither of us particularly cares for dogs, so I was resigned to being petless until my son volunteered us to take care of his classroom’s pet bunny over vacation one year. We were smitten, and no one had an allergic reaction…so a few weeks later we adopted our first bun from the Animal Rescue League (all our bunnies have been from rescue organizations.) Our current buns are named Saffron and Beatrice, and they are total lovebirds. I post a lot about them on Facebook just because they’re sooo cute and funny.
Bio:
Marissa Doyle graduated from Bryn Mawr College and went on to graduate school intending to be an archaeologist but somehow got distracted. Eventually she figured out what it was she was really supposed to be doing and started writing. She’s channeled her inner history geekiness into young adult fiction: her award-winning books Bewitching Season, Betraying Season, and Courtship and Curses (all from Henry Holt Books for Young Readers/Macmillan) blend history with magic and romance. She also writes contemporary and historical fantasy for grownups, including By Jove (Entangled Publishing) and now Skin Deep. She lives in her native Massachusetts with her family, including a pair of bossy but adorable litterbox-trained pet rabbits, and loves quilting, gardening, and collecting antique fashion prints. Oh, and coffee.
Please visit her at her website, www.marissadoyle.com, and at her teen history blog http://nineteenteen.com or elsewhere on the web on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/marissadoyleauthor/ and Twitter https://twitter.com/marissadoyle
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