Friday, February 24, 2017

Guest Post: Love, Hate, and Why I Write by Deirdre Riordan Hall

I'm thrilled to have Deirdre Riordan Hall on the blog today to talk about why she writes what she writes. Until recently, I was most familiar with her YA books, so I was interested to know why she decided to make the leap to women's contemporary fiction (especially since I've done the same in the span of my own 5-year writing career). Deirdre was kind enough to write a post for my readers, and I love her reasons for wanting to branch out and try her hand at all kinds of stories. 


Love, Hate, and Why I Write
By Deirdre Riordan Hall


I'm nothing if not unconventional. I tend to do things backwards, inside out, sideways… When given the traditional path or something else, guess which way I'll go? I don't know if it's a quirk in my biochemistry or that I prefer to eat my pie from the crust to the middle, but that's how I roll—or bite as the case may be. And it's no different with my writing life.
Years and years ago, I started with screenplays and picture books then dove into young adult fantasy fiction, took a new adult detour, returned to young adult fiction—paranormal, then contemporary, then fantasy, then back to contemporary… In between the writing and publication of YA contemporary my novel Sugar (and then Pearl) I also tried my hand at middle grade and then back to young adult (I always return to my home in YA). To date have written about thirty manuscripts. Do you see a pattern here? 

No? 

That's because there isn't one. 

So why do I write what I write? 

I write what I want to read and to answer the inspiration and story ideas given to me. But more concretely, I write because I feel the need to connect the dots between what I'm feeling and the big picture—the universal, the you and me. To bridge the feeling of loneliness with the knowledge that we're linked. To bring a world beyond what is at our doorstep or in our kitchen or on the screen to inky life. To remind myself and everyone else that we're not the sum of who we've been told we are. 

We get to define ourselves. We're bigger and bolder and brighter than we could ever imagine. It's through fiction that I find courage and strength and possibility. I uncover magic and love and light. I discover that it's you and me not us and them. In Sugar, a young adult contemporary novel, I told the story of the heroine who was told she was too much yet not enough. She found her more than enough and set the world alight with her courage. Pearl was dealt a crappy hand, had a grim home life, but was given a way out. Even though she proved human and made mistakes, she forged her own way forward, breaking the abusive and addiction riddled cycles of the past. 

In my new adult series, Follow your Bliss, each of the main characters takes a long look in the mirror and decides to define life on her terms and have fun while doing it. In Love, Hate, and Other Lies We Told, my latest and a romantic comedy, Navy is lost, but finds herself—and love—in books, romantic fiction with book boyfriends to be exact. Her best friend urges her to come out from the pages and live more by daring her to go on a series of dates leading up to Valentine's Day. Navy ultimately goes along with the plan and experiences a series of sexy, unfortunate, exhausting, and bizarre encounters that she documents on her blog. Not the least of which is with her nemesis, Carrick, who she successfully avoided for years. But he's like an itch, one she resists scratching until he reveals the truth about who he is and what he's been doing for the last decade. But Navy has secrets of her own and it's not until she learns to trust again that she lets the people who care most about her into her life and steps out of her box (aka her tiny studio apartment in Manhattan). 

I think the beating heart of this book is that despite the main character feeling betrayed and alone, there's an underpinning of interconnectedness she discovers when she reaches out, stretches past her comfort zone, and turns up the volume on her life. 

This storyline came to me in the form of the main character going on a series of dates that aren't Instagram worthy. Well, Bash's dinners are 😉 but the rest, well, they're certainly blog worthy disasters. I wanted to integrate the dating aspect and the quest for love in a more mature way than I felt I could portray in YA, while leading the story with humor and heart. The best vehicle, one I hadn't yet attempted, was women's romantic comedy. 

I'm a big fan of Alice Clayton, Emily Giffin, and more recently Sally Thorne. The books by these authors have depth, but also feel like a little escape into someone else's drama and reliably have a happy ending, which I'm all for! So I took a chance. More than anything, after the second half of 2016 that I had personally and what we experienced here in the US (where I live), I felt like we could all use some more love in our lives as well as comic relief and an escape, at least for the space of 300-plus pages. 

As a hybrid author, both traditionally published and self-pubbed, I have a list of books I'm hoping to see in print this coming year while I co-write an exciting YA with Cheyanne Young. Available on Valentine's Day is the follow up novella to Love, Hate, and Other Lies We Told following Kat's story: How Not to Fall in Love.

After that, I'll be back at it with young adult contemporary, paranormal, fantasy, and then some middle grade to finish the year. It's a big year! My motto for 2017 is: go big or go back to work. I have a lot of exciting things in store and hope you'll join me for the twisting, turning, plot-twisting ride. 

 ~*~*~*~*~*~


Thank you so much for being here today, Deirdre! As someone who writes the stories in her heart and mind, regardless of genre or age category, I enjoyed reading about your own writing journey. 


Be sure to check out my reviews for her two latest releases, Love, Hate, and Other Lies We Told and How Not to Fall in Love

http://sweetmarie-83.blogspot.ca/p/about-me.html
http://www.bloglovin.com/en/blog/4690637

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thanks for visiting Ramblings of a Daydreamer! I love hearing what you have to say, and I appreciate every single comment. I hope to see you here again soon! ♥
~Marie

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...