Kindness Challenge Day 11, plus Allie Potts’ New Book, The Watch & Wand

Day 11: Do an act of kindness to help someone.

Ok the chart said someone older but I promised this to Allie and it would have been unkind of me to break my word on a kindness challenge.

The Watch & Wand by Allie Potts

A few months back I got an email from Allie saying she loved my short in The Box Under the Bed. Why thank you! She also wondered if I would like to read her new book, the second in Project Gene Assist The-Watch-and-Wand_02 .

Lucky for her I have a secret love of YA Dystopia. LOL.

The Watch and Wand. The title alone is a super fun play on the basic idea of the book. It said magic to me, silly me. So I was expecting a bad Harry Potter knock off. So NOT what I got. Woot.

YA Dystopia, I told you that much already. There is two real main characters. A cast of supporting characters who vary in just how supportive they really are. LOL. Don’t trust anyone. Very good advice.

The Magic, however, is technology with a really big dose of how much is really good for us. Can we ever go too far? I don’t want to give away too much.

This was a fast paced and fun read. I slid right through it in one day without any effort.

Here’s Allie…..

Where did the idea come from for the book?

This one is all my mom’s fault. The Project Gene Assist series was originally supposed to center entirely on the protagonist from the first book, Juliane Faris, but one day my mom and I were out walking and she asked me about how I thought a particular side character briefly mentioned in the first book might turn out. The next thing I know, I’m 20,000 words into a completely different novel. Juliane will be back for the next book in the series.

I wish that would happen to me. When people ask what I think my characters are doing, I’m always tempted to snark as Agatha Christie did, “You think they send me postcards?” Maybe I should snark less. Which is the more important of these two: write drunk, edit sober?

That is one of my absolute favorite Hemingway quotes and fantastic advice! I’m going with writing drunk because in some cases that’s the only way to keep your confidence up enough to finish that first draft and without that first draft, no amount of sober editing will help you.

Laughing. Touche. So how long were you drunk then? I mean how long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

A solid agonizing and hair pulling year. Note to other writers out there contemplating setting their novel, not in the immediate present, but not in the far-flung future either, that setting is tough! You have to have technology that is somewhat advanced by our standards, but not too advanced, and there is always a risk that technology you choose will be out of date well before you finish the writing. By contrast, I have been able to write the first draft for an entirely different story, currently sitting in my work in progress folder, in less than three months.

Now you know why all my stories take place in the past. There’s no changing that. Except, well, that’s kind of what I do. LOL. Bet you’d never guess what I majored in? What’s something most readers would never guess about you?

I am as vertically challenged as I say I am on the about me section of my blog. People always seem to act surprised by how short I am when I meet them in real life for the first time even though I’ve never treated my height, or lack thereof, as a secret. Apparently, I have a larger than life personality.

Of course you. All authors do. It’s how we survive the process. Each book we choose takes a little. How did you choose the genre you write in? Or did it choose you?

I love how you worded that. The Watch & Wand and the Project Gene Assist Series is a blend of science fiction and fantasy with a smidgeon of post-apocalypse thrown in there for fun. It’s all the elements I grew up reading, however my first book, An Uncertain Faith is a mix of women’s fiction and cozy mystery, which is a genre mash-up that chose me.

It sounds like there might be a story behind that story. Too bad, it’s just about time to wrap this up. So leave us with some words of wisdom. What’s a good writing secret or time management secret?

One of the best tips I ever came across was to schedule fifteen-minute writing sprints rather than hour-long blocks of time. Not only is it easier to fit into the average day craziness of my regular life, I find my bottom is much more willing to stay seated and my brain willing to dream up words if I know I will only be in front of a screen for a short period of time. It also relieves a lot of pressure on me. If I the ideas just aren’t flowing during a session, I know I will have the opportunity to try again later without feeling like I’ve wasted a day.

Want more Allie? You can catch her on social media:

Twitter: @alliepottswrite

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