Over The Edge Book Review interviews Melissa Foster

Thank you, Christine, for hosting my blog tour and for having me on as a guest today.

1. What is the best part of being a writer? What is the worst?

That’s a great question. For me, there are a few things that make my writer’s life wonderful. The first, of course, is that I can work from anywhere. I often take my laptop outside when I’m editing and enjoy the weather. Last week I wrote from a rooftop in New York City. Another reason I love being a writer is that everyday is an adventure—new and exciting characters come in and out of my life, environments change, and I can take part in all types of vicarious situations that I might never entertain in real life.

The worst part of being a writer is that my children tell me that I sit around playing on my computer all day and that’s not real work in their eyes.

2. Why do you write?

The true but corny answer is that it makes me happy. I enjoy every aspect of writing, from the creating of characters and stories to the solitude of the writing process.

3. Name one eye-opening thing you learned from your book research.

I learned that there are more people with secrets than I’d care to imagine.

4. Do you have a favorite motto?

Absolutely—Enjoy each and every day. No one else will do it for you.

5. Do you have a favorite fictional hero? Favorite fictional heroine?

Yes, but they’re so weird I worry what my readers will think. Here goes—Winnie the Pooh and I don’t really have a favorite fictional heroine. I know, Winnie is not really thought of as a hero, but he’s thoughtful, he’s a good friend, and he lives a simple life. To me, someone who thinks of others first, is a hero.

6. Which fictional character would you hang out with?

Nancy Drew, Elle Woods, or Rebecca Bloomwood—I like to mix it up.

7. What is one of your favorite book covers, your own or someone else’s?

My favorite book cover is Megan’s Way. I love the spiritual flow of it.

8. What would readers be surprised to learn about you?

That geography and history and I don’t play well together.

9. What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever learned by Googling your name?

Great question—that there are way too many Melissa Fosters in the world, and that I should have a disclaimer after my name that reads, I have never worked in porn, nor am I a transsexual, although I have no issue with either of those Melissa Fosters.

10. If you could go backward or forward in time which would you chose? Why?

That’s a really difficult question for someone who wants to live forever. Can I stand still? If I go too far backwards, I might not yet have my children, and if I go too far forward, I’d surely lose my mother. I think I like living exactly in my current time period.
 

11. Melissa, I desperate to know more about CHASING AMANDA would you share a bit about it.

Nine years ago, Molly Tanner witnessed a young girl’s abduction in the busy city of Philadelphia, shifting her occasional clairvoyance into overdrive. Two days later, the girl’s body was found, and Molly’s life fell apart. Consumed by guilt for not acting upon her visions, and on the brink of losing her family, Molly escaped the torturous reminders in the city, fleeing to the safety of the close-knit rural community of Boyds, Maryland.

Molly’s life is back on track, her son has begun college, and she and her husband have finally rekindled their relationship. Their fresh start is shattered when a seven-year-old girl disappears from a local park near Molly’s home. Unable to turn her back on another child and troubled by memories of the past, Molly sets out to find her, jeopardizing the marriage she’d fought so hard to hold together. While unearthing clues and struggling to decipher her visions, Molly discovers another side of Boyds, where the residents–and the land itself–hold potentially lethal secrets, and exposes another side of her husband, one that threatens to tear them apart.

12. Which do you find is most important to you as a writer, voice or story? Why?

That’s a really difficult question, but I think I’ll go with voice. As a writer, I really want to connect with characters, otherwise I cannot write about them in a three dimensional way that makes them believable. The voice carries the story.
 

13. Melissa, please share with desperate readers where they can connect with you in cyber world. =)

First and foremost, thank you for asking, because I love to connect with readers. I think I have become true friends with more readers than non-readers—real world friends, not Facebook or Twitter friends, lol.
Connect with me;

EMAIL — thinkhappygirl at yahoo dot com

FACEBOOK PROFILE — http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1218506882

FACEBOOK FAN PAGE — http://www.facebook.com/pages/Melissa-Fosters-Books/212842902076685

TWITTER — http://twitter.com/#!/Melissa_Foster

GOODREADS — http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3023973.Melissa_Foster

14. I know this is a difficult question with there being so many amazing authors out there to choose from but who are some of the GOT-TO-HAVE authors in your TBR pile?

Diane Chamberlain, Jodi Piccoult, Stephen King, Mitch Albom, Khalid Hosseini

15. What’s next in the works for you? When can readers expect to see it out on shelves in their local bookstores?

Thank you for asking. I’m almost done with COME BACK TO ME, an international tragic love story.

Coming Soon: Come Back to Me (working title)

Tess Johnson has it all, Beau, her handsome photographer husband, a thriving business, and a newly discovered pregnancy. When Beau accepts an overseas photography assignment, Tess decides to wait to reveal her secret—only she’s never given the chance. Beau’s helicopter crashes in the desert.

As Tess struggles to put her life back together and deal with the pregnancy she can no longer hide, a new client appears, offering more than just a new project.
Meanwhile, two Iraqi women who are fleeing Honor Killings find Beau alive in the middle of the desert, his body ravaged. Suha, a doctor, and Samira, a widow and mother of three young children, nurse him back to health in a makeshift tent. Beau bonds with the women and children, and together, with the help of an underground organization, they continue their dangerous escape.

What happens next is a test of loyalties, strength, and love.

Melissa, thanks so much for stopping by and chatting with Over the Edge readers and myself; it has really been a blast getting to know more about you and your books,