Blog Tour: Buried by Gerilyn Marin

     I’m from Whitestone, New York. A little about myself? Hmm . . . I’m a wife and mother (3 boys and one adorable baby girl), I became a vegetarian just recently, I prefer cats over dogs. I am fascinated by archeology & ancient cultures and am a firm (if skeptical) believer in the supernatural.

     Buried is about a girl named Cadence who lives in a strange little town where hauntings are sort of run-of-the-mill. She realizes that the new boy, Grey, is poking his nose around and gets it in her head that she’s GOT to find out what he’s looking for. This book had a mutli-section start, if you will. When Lisa Gus of Curiosity Quills Press tripped over my first book (a self-published PNR) “Summoned: Tales of the Phantom Court”, she offered me a contract, but we both knew that book needed a lot of editing work (in fact, it’s still in editing now, ’cause I’m just a terrible person like that). During discussion, she brought up the online serials that CQ runs on their website and asked me if I’d be interested. At this point, I’d just had a very bizarre dream about a haunted town with a lost history and I had wanted to do something with that idea. Lisa asked me to write up a plot and the first few chapters and send it to her. She loved it, next thing I knew, I was hooked up with an editor (the amazing and delightful Mary Harris) and was being scheduled for the serial.

     This may sound weird, but I don’t feel like I do ‘create’ them. I sort of feel like my characters ‘are’ people. Whether they’re people who are just a multi-layered figment of my imagination, or real people out there somewhere of whom I’m simply channeling a version, I couldn’t tell you. Much of the time, when a story occurs to me, the characters are already in it. They are fully formed personalities, with a history before the first word of their story is written, and whose lives will continue on after the last word is read.

     Mostly I think I’m inspired by the very simple fact that we don’t know everything, we don’t understand everything, and we likely never will. I started writing probably when I was about 12-14, but it was awful. Terrible stuff I’d never allow seen in the light of day. I kept trying to put writing aside, but eventually I’d find myself back at it, like I HAD to write. I don’t know what I’d do with all these stories in my head, otherwise.

     At home. I have a home-office area I set up, but eh, 4 kids, I almost never get to actually be in there, so I do most of my writing in my living room at the family PC. I still occasionally write by hand, as opposed to typing. I just love flipping through my notebooks and seeing pages and pages of ideas. I will sooner tape a falling-apart notebook back together if it still has a few pages left in it than buy a new one. There’s a feeling I really can’t put into words about using that one book until you’ve filled every line, every page, every corner of the inside cover, with these stories you want to share with the world.

     I don’t need anything really, other than coffee and to be not awake, per say, more like I need to be ‘not-tired’ enough to focus. I don’t always listen to music, but one of the bands that will almost always get me geared up to create is 30 Seconds to Mars. There is just something in their lyrics that is always inspiring on some level.

    Some of them come from dreams, sometimes ideas just pop in my head when say, I’m taking a walk, or at the grocery store. It’s like “Hmm, this tomato sauce or that one? HEY! What if I wrote a story about ‘insert theme/creature’ here? And it could have ‘this’ and ‘that’, and ‘such-and-such’ would HAVE to take place.” Occasionally, a completely random scene not attached to any current story or characters I have will occur to me. Again, walking, grocery shopping, playing with my kids at the park, whatever, and a sequence of events will just unfold in the back of my mind. The only bad part is trying to hang on to that idea as is until I have the time to get it on paper. I think any writer would agree that no matter how close you get, nothing ever feels as ‘right’ as the way the story first manifested for you. You know it sounds good, but you feel like it would be so much better, so much more perfect, if you could remember exactly how you’d thought of it that first time around.

     I like to read what I write. Paranormal romance & Urban Fantasy all the way for me. It’s not that I have anything against other genres, I just . . . I’m kind of bored by historical romance, I suppose because I have that feeling like I can’t relate to the characters. I find dystopian stories kind of abhorrent, not that there’s anything wrong with them, or they can’t be phenomenal stories, but for some reason, no matter how good a plot sounds to me, or how beautiful and intriguing the cover, as soon as I trip over the word ‘dystopian’, I put the book back on the shelf. Contemporary romance/fiction doesn’t appeal to me simply because . . . I feel like if there’s not a supernatural element, then what’s the point? I guess, in a way, for me there is only PNR.

     Just keep writing. I know that’s what a lot of people say when asked this question, but it’s the only thing you really can do. Keep writing, keep reading, learn to take criticism. Pace yourself. Seriously, do not be in a rush to get your work out there, because if you put it out there and you don’t know how to take negative feedback, you’re only leaving yourself open for getting hurt. Let friends who’s opinion you trust, who you KNOW will be honest with you (not the people who will sugar coat, or tell you what they think you want to hear) read it. Let them be honest, brutally honest, if necessary, because you need to hear it. Writing is a constantly evolving art, it is a craft that never stops maturing. If we are simply content with what we can do now and have no desire to improve, or think we don’t need to improve (and the literary divas are out there, trust me, the person that’s written one story, and thinks their work is fabulously brilliant and anyone who can’t see what an amazing author they are is just jealous), then we can never become as great of a writer as we are capable. No matter who you are or how long you’ve been writing, you can always become better. Writers don’t retire, if you’re a writer, really, truly a writer at heart, it is something you will be doing until the day you die.  And in those last minutes, you’ll probably be wondering what you could have done to make this last thing you wrote ‘better’.

   And treat your characters like people. You book is only a portion of their story, a portion you’ve been blessed to know and bring forth into the world to share, they continue to exist long after and you should respect them as such.

     Anything can become a story. Any idea, any moment of your day, any interaction with another person, can be the spark that ignites an entire story in your mind. Be open to it.