Yesterday, June 11, was release day for ANOTHER LITTLE PIECE by Kate Karyus Quinn. I was so excited to interview Kate recently about her awesome book. Here’s what it’s about:
The spine-tingling horror of Stephen King meets an eerie mystery worthy of Sara Shepard’s Pretty Little Liars series.
On a cool autumn night, Annaliese Rose Gordon stumbled out of the woods and into a high school party. She was screaming. Drenched in blood. Then she vanished.
A year later, Annaliese is found wandering down a road hundreds of miles away. She doesn’t know who she is. She doesn’t know how she got there. She only knows one thing: She is not the real Annaliese Rose Gordon.
Now Annaliese is haunted by strange visions and broken memories. Memories of a reckless, desperate wish . . . a bloody razor . . . and the faces of other girls who disappeared. Piece by piece, Annaliese’s fractured memories come together to reveal a violent, endless cycle that she will never escape—unless she can unlock the twisted secrets of her past.

Nicole McInnes: I really enjoyed ALP. It’s like nothing else I’ve ever read, and I’m so excited for the book to be officially out there in the world. So, what are your plans for release day?
Kate Karyus Quinn: My launch party is on my release day, so I plan to be running around like a chicken with its head cut off. So, yeah, really not that different from my average Tuesday. (Nicole’s note: be sure to check with Kate’s blog, Twitter feed, etc. to get an idea of how release day went!)
NM: ALP is one of those books that resists being placed into a clear-cut category. What’s your favorite way to describe it for readers who don’t know what to expect?
KKQ: Yes, it definitely straddles several different categories, and one of the reasons I love writing YA is that we have the ability to do that. I called ALP a paranormal mystery when I was sending out query letters. HarperTeen has categorized it as literary horror. Honestly, I think it is all those things – and there is a little romance in there too!
NM: Your main character, Annaliese, is so intense and multi-faceted (for reasons which become clear throughout the story). Of all of her personality traits, can you name a few you most admire?
KKQ: I think what I most admire about Annaliese is her courage in trying to find out what has happened to her, even as the truth leads her to darker and darker places. I also love how she comes to love the people in Annaliese’s life and how that makes her a stronger better person.

NM: How did you keep track of the multiple points of view that sometimes weren’t as multiple as they seemed?
KKQ: Well I am terrible with naming characters and then coming back to them fifty pages later and calling the same character by a different name. So mostly I try to keep track by going back to what I’ve already written and trying to remember not to contradict myself.
NM: With which of your characters could you most closely relate, and why?
KKQ: Probably the mom. She is an incredibly anxious person, who worries a lot and I definitely have quite a bit of that in myself as well.
NM: Did you draw on your own high school experiences when it came to writing about some of the everyday unpleasantness of high school life?KKQ: Yes. I was a lot like Annaliese, in that I was a quiet and shy girl who tended to crush on boys from afar. I was so concerned that the objects of my crushes might ever get a hint of how I felt that kept a good distance between myself and them, and would have been completely mortified if one of them had ever really talked with me.
NM: Which scene in the book was your favorite scene to write, and why?
KKQ: The final scene was my favorite. Usually I am a pretty slow writer, but the last twenty pages just flowed out of me and just felt so very right. It wasn’t the ending that I thought it was going to be when I started the book, even halfway through I didn’t know how it was going to end. It is embarrassing to admit that I really wanted it to end with an awesome kick-ass fight scene. Once I admitted that this didn’t at all fit with the book I was writing, I was able to find the ending that had been right for it all along.
NM: What’s the best way for readers to find you online?
KKQ: katekaryusquinn.com is probably the one best place and from there you can find my blog, contact me via email, and find links to all the other places where I am online.
Nicole’s note: Here are some of those links, including places where you can order ANOTHER LITTLE PIECE:
Kate’s Twitter
Kate’s Facebook page
Order ANOTHER LITTLE PIECE on Amazon
Order ANOTHER LITTLE PIECE at Barnes & Noble
Order ANOTHER LITTLE PIECE at IndieBound
ANOTHER LITTLE PIECE on Goodreads
The HarperTeen Browse Inside feature where readers can read the first 80 pages

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