Author Crush Friday with Tracy Wolff
Glitter girls, you have pressing questions for your favorite authors and we have their answers. Welcome to our weekly segment, Author Crush Fridays.
We love asking questions and we love the answers from some of our favorite authors. Today we’re talking to Tracy Wolff, the New York Times bestselling author of the new young adult paranormal novel, Crave (April 7, 2020; Entangled Teen). Thank you for talking to us today, Tracy! We’re honored! If you haven’t picked up Crave yet, run, don’t walk, to grab it!
Hi, Everyone! It’s so great to be here talking about my new book, Crave!!! Thanks for having me! 🙂
GLITTER: Tell us five things that people might not know about you.
TRACY: You know, this is a hard question, because I consider myself an open book. But I will give it a shot!
- I am a total make-up junkie. Forget happy, Sephora is my ecstatic place J
- I have written 64 books (Crave makes 65) under 4 different pen names.
- I am (still) a giant One Direction fan
- I have a disco ball hanging from my bedroom ceiling
- I have always hated planners of any kind, but I now am totally addicted to Happy Planners because stickers and glitter and pretty, pretty paper!!!! Plus, now I color code all my writing stuff, lol.
GLITTER: How do you find the emotional truths in your writing?
TRACY: I don’t think it’s about finding them so much as just opening myself up to being emotionally vulnerable and honest when I write. My friends and I joke that when most people go to work, they don’t have to open a vein and bleed all over the page, but it’s not really a joke, is it? Because for my characters’ emotions—especially their dark and painful ones—to ring true, I have to be in touch with my own pain and use that to make sure their emotional journeys are authentic.
GLITTER: What one question sparked the whole plot of Crave?
TRACY: What would happen if a girl, who has no idea monsters exist, ends up falling in love with a monster?
GLITTER: Is Crave a personal book for you in any way?
TRACY: Crave is actually a really personal book for me for a lot of reasons. I’ve had a really rough patch for the last few years in my personal life and that’s put a major damper on my writing. I still did it, because it’s my job, but it had become a struggle. Crave gave me back my joy in writing and creating (which I think shows in the story), and for that I will always be grateful to this book.
GLITTER: Did any research go into writing Crave?
TRACY: Actually, a ton of research went into writing Crave. I’ve never been to Alaska and I spent a lot of time learning about different parts of the state, trying to decide where to put Katmere Academy. I spent hours Google Earthing the landscape in different areas of the state so I could get the mountainous but isolated feel I was looking for. Then it was research about Gothic castles and the aurora borealis and supernatural creatures and what you have to wear to go outside in Alaska in November (the answer to which is A LOT). But that’s okay, because I’m a total research nerd. I love nothing more than falling down research rabbit holes and finding one or two really cool facts that I can use in my book.
GLITTER: Do you have any particular writing rituals?
TRACY: Most of my writing rituals involve procrastinating until I absolutely can’t procrastinate any longer and then writing really, really fast.
GLITTER: What character do you relate to the most?
TRACY: Honestly, Grace. Usually, I relate to my heroes most and while there some of me in Jaxon, Grace is pretty much all me. It’s the first time I’ve written a heroine this way, but from the moment she opened her voice and started to talk to me, that was who she was.
GLITTER: Did you have a hard time choosing between Jaxon and Flint as Grace’s love interest? I know I’m torn myself!
TRACY: My friends actually laughed at me about this, because I LOVE dragons. I mean, I love them. So, while I always knew she would end up with Jaxon, I fell more and more in love with Flint (as well as Jaxon) as the book went on. My bffs kept telling me that that’s what I deserved for making the secondary hero a dragon. If I’d made him a wolf shifter, I wouldn’t have had any trouble choosing at all. But dragons are special. So, to answer your question, yes. Yes I did have trouble, lol.
GLITTER: Why did you finally choose on Grace’s love interest to be Jaxon?
TRACY: I think Jaxon needs Grace in a way Flint never will. And I think she needs Jaxon as well, because the dark parts of who she is—some of which haven’t been revealed yet—would never be able to connect to Flint.
GLITTER: Did your past career as an English professor help you with your writing in any way?
TRACY: I do think all the training I did to become an English professor helped me a lot—I’ve done more reading and more deconstructing of novels and more craft of writing than I could ever possibly tell you. And when you pull apart a novel to examine it, to see how all the different parts fit together, I think it totally helps with understanding how to also put one together.
GLITTER: What one piece of advice could you give any teen going through difficult times now?
TRACY: Hold on. I know a lot of people say that it gets better, and it’s hard to believe it when you’re lost in the darkness of something awful. But the thing about the human condition is, nothing last forever—good or bad. So if you’re in the middle of something really terrible right now, hold on to the truth that you won’t be here forever. I mentioned above that I’ve had a really terrible few years and finally, in the last eight months, things have finally gotten better. It started slowly, so slowly I almost didn’t notice at first, but right now I’m in a really good place and I’m so grateful for it. And so grateful that I held on through the darkness so that I could get here.
GLITTER: What are you passionate about in life?
TRACY: Writing. It’s cliché, but it’s totally true. I love creating stories. I love seeing the characters I have running around in my head come to life.
Music. I’m not an encyclopedia of music by any means, but I love it in all its different forms. I love to listen to it, love to sing along with it, love to write to it, love to dance to it. I just love Music.
My boys. I have three sons and I adore them more than I can ever say.
GLITTER: What are you working on right now?
TRACY: Crush, the second book in the Crave series.
Thanks so much for having me! xoxoxox
Photo credit: Mayra K Calderón
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