Brigid’s Comments (group member since Apr 08, 2012)

Brigid’s comments from the Q&A with Brigid Kemmerer group.

Thank you so much! I'm so glad you liked the book! :-D

Back when I was in high school, they were vampires. I still have all the handwritten pages. Maybe one day I'll scan them to the blog. :-P

Yes. Here, from a guest blog I did:

I have four brothers in my story, named Michael, Gabriel, Nicholas, and Christopher. My husband's name is Michael, and my son's name is Nicholas. A lot of people think I named the characters after people in my family. They're wrong. I first wrote about these four brothers back when I was in high school, and these are the same four names they had then. One of my favorite male names is Michael, and I always swore I would marry a man named Michael. (Sheer luck, I swear.) When I got pregnant with my first son, I wanted to name him Christopher (the lead character in my first book), but Christopher Kemmerer just has too many -ers going on. So my first son was named Nicholas.

UGH. Stupid html. It pulled an extra period into the link.

http://thestrangestsituation.blogspot...

Try that.

Braiden, you should check out Sarah Fine's website, http://thestrangestsituation.blogspot.... She's a psychologist and a YA writer, and she writes some AWESOME stuff.

Braiden wrote: "“working hard at college”? HAHAHAHAHA... hahaha... hah.. ha!"

Okay, that's what it looks like from your Facebook feed. Maybe you just put on a good show. :-P

I try to love them all the same! Every time I'm asked this question, I think about it, but I really do love them all.

Lisa wrote: "You said once the boys were (long ago) vampires. What gave you the idea to switch them over to elementals?"

The quick and honest answer is that I couldn't sell them as vampires.

The longer answer is that my writing wasn't good enough when they were vampires, and I couldn't land an agent with the story I'd written. I got my first agent with a book called A Wicked Little Rhythm , an urban fantasy about the son of Apollo running a music store in downtown Baltimore. It never sold, and I couldn't get those four brothers out of my head. I'd written about them twice as vampires (once in high school, and again in my twenties). I wanted to do something different, and I kept playing with the number four. I thought about the four horsemen, four-leaf-clovers, four, four, FOUR. Finally I settled on the four elements, because I thought I could really make that fun. And what teenager wouldn't want to be able to control the elements? (Heck, what adult? :-D)

Eve wrote: "Obviously with four guys who can control the elements, I'd expect a little romance from the Elemental series. Maybe you can't answer this, but will Becca be attracted to all four guys at some point..."

There's a romance in each book! But only the first book feature's Becca's romance. The brothers have their own stories to tell, and it doesn't follow Becca's romance throughout.

Brodie wrote: "Every relationship in the book came across so realistically. Especially the Merrick's brotherly bond. Their dialogue and emotions... I'm still in awe over how well you nail the psyche of a teenage ..."

I'm a people watcher, by nature, and I'm fascinated by psychology. I've never read writing books, but oddly, I got the most "writing" use out of a book I bought about raising sons. It had a lot of insight into what makes boys tick, especially teenagers, and I took it all to heart.

But on top of that, I think that teenage boys have the same feelings as anyone else, they're just more quick to say it. They're complicated in that they're not complicated.

I'm probably not answering your question all that well. :-P

And Braiden, you seem like a great type of teenage boy! Into books and music and working hard at college? What's NOT to like?