Author Scavenger Hunt Stop #1 – Alexander Marestaing Interview

Greetings hunters! Glad to have you on the 32 Author Scavenger Hunt. I hope you are enjoying your self and you’ve entered to win a ton of great prizes, plus you’re on you way to winning the iPad mini and over 30 books! Wether this is your first stop, or you’ve already visited most or all of them, welcome. I hope you’ll enjoy this interview with Alexander Marestaing and learn a little more about another great author. 

 Brock: It’s not easy to get published these days. How did you break into the industry?

Alexander: I would have to say my biggest break came when Disney hired me to work on a writing project related to Beauty and the Beast.  That was kind of a “miracle” job really because I didn’t even have an agent at the time.  I heard that they wanted to publish a new line of products, so I just wrote them a letter introducing myself.  A few weeks later, I got the call that changed the trajectory of my writing career forever.

Having that name on my writing credits  really helped me move forward in the industry. I would love to say it was all my hard work and mad, Steinbeck-like writing skills that scored me that job (ha ha), but in the end it was really prayer that opened the door and put me in the right place at exactly the right time.

Brock: Tell me a little about some of your projects

Alexander: I primarily write for young adult and middle grade audiences, and that’s been a ton of fun. Writing for this market has given me the freedom to take my characters to far off and whimsical lands, lands where the laws of gravity can take a back seat sometimes.  In other words, it’s given me license to let my imagination rule.

For example – when I wanted to create a role model for my daughters, one that would counter some of the junk they were seeing on TV – I dreamed up Izzy Baxter, the hyper creative, sixteen year-old singer in my Izzy’s Pop Star Plan series (Thomas Nelson/Harper Collins).  And, when Lego in Denmark needed some story ideas for their master builders, I was able to pen wild worlds where insects, battling knights, and animals ruled.

The project that’s closest to my heart though is my latest novel,  I’m Nobody: The Lost Pages.  It came during a time of pain and loss in our family, so there’s a lot going on between the lines, more back story than in any other project I’ve worked on.  I love the fact that people are really responding to that depth and that grownups and kids alike are getting a lot out of it.

Brock: Can you give us some of that back story?

Alexander: When I began writing I’m Nobody, I wasn’t planning on selling a million copies. If that were the case I would have written a novel about One Direction meeting vampires or something else more appealing to the middle grade/YA demographic. I definitely wouldn’t have written about an agoraphobic protagonist named Caleb Reed who believes he’s getting notes from reclusive, and long dead, poet Emily Dickinson.

But I did plan on one thing, I was going to finish.  The project was just too important to give up on.  See, I got this email while I was writing the book – from my sister and biggest supporter Grace.  Since she was an artist herself, we often shared our big ideas, and I had sent her the first few chapters to see what she thought.  Her last line to me in that email – an email full of Godly encouragement – was “I can’t wait to read the ending!”

A few days later, I was shocked to hear that my big sister Grace had died peacefully in her sleep. So that sentence became priceless, as those words were her last to me.

Months later, when it was time to add the dedication, the words came easy:

To Grace, hoping you can read this in heaven

Brock: Were there any challenges you faced when writing I’m Nobody?

Alexander: Coming up with an environment where a modern day teen gets encouragement from an 19th century poet was not an easy task.  So that’s where an abandoned mansion came in.  As I was writing the novel, the mansion forced its way into the forefront, becoming a main character rather than an accessory. 

– It was a ghost that mansion – a Victorian style, hundred-year old monster watching his every move through boarded up eyes. Paint peeled and abandoned, it had rotted away for decades on the large, weed enveloped lot directly across the street from Caleb’s bedroom window.  – (I’m Nobody, Chapter One)

It wasn’t supposed to be that way.  It just kind of happened, and I think I know why.  I wrote a lot of the novel in Europe, in, you guessed it, “a hundred-year-old…ghost of a mansion.”  Well, the house in Sweden we had rented last summer was definitely not a mansion, but it was as old as Caleb’s arch nemesis on Evergreen Lane.  And it was definitely paint peeled, yet not quite as abandoned looking as the one in my novel.  There were cracks though, cracks that let the mosquitoes in at night causing me to have to sleep with my noise reducing headphones on one occasion.   It was there on a dining room table that the mansion came to life in the pages of I’m Nobody.

Brock: Is there a spiritual side to I’m Nobody?

Alexander: As a Christian, there’s a spiritual vein running through all of my tales, and this one is no exception.  I’m Nobody is about death, and hope, and faith.  At the beginning of the story, Caleb Reed is broken. His sister has died. In their grief, his parents have abandoned him. Life has become so scary to Caleb that he doesn’t even want to go outside.

But even though Caleb has given up on himself, God hasn’t…and that’s when the  mysterious notes begin to arrive.

One of my favorite quotes in the story comes from Caleb’s elderly neighbor.  I love it because it encapsulates the novel’s theme in one sentence.

– We’re all broken on this side of heaven, but God can make beautiful things from the pieces

(I’m nobody: The Lost Pages)

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Wow! I’m looking forward to getting my hands on I’m Nobody: The Lost Pages. That last quote is so true too. Well thank you Alexander for your insight to your writing journey, I have to agree that God has the right timing for everything and my published story is very similar.

If you’re looking for the next clue on the scavenger hunt, or perhaps your first clue, here it is: “As we prepare” Before you go take a moment and enter the drawing I am hosting. You can win a signed copy of Unleash and the opportunity to have your ‘first’ or ‘last’ name appear as a character’s in my next book Tangle. Simply go HERE to enter. When you’re done entering be sure to continue on to Alexander Marestaing’s blog for your next interview and clue. Click HERE.

Of course if you’re lost or if you’ve finished collecting all the clues you can go HERE to enter the full mystery phrase and bring your scavenger hunt to a close. I hope you’ve enjoyed learning about all the amazing books and authors on the tour and hopefully you’ve entered the many giveaways on their sites. 

 

AND THE WINNER OF THE UNLEASH BOOK AND NAME IN TANGLE GIVEAWAY:

Timothy Harris who won from his following me on Pinterest points! Great job!

Thank you to everyone who participated. We the authors enjoyed your wonderful comments and appreciate the time you took to help us on our journey. Stay tuned, because we know so many of you enjoyed it and allof us authors did as well, we’re going to do it again in the future.