Addicted to Novels - YA Books and more... discussion

Who are you? Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

I'm Andy Davidson. I currently live in Georgia with my wife and five cats (Byron, Harry Potter, Mrs. Mia Wallace, Winifred Burkel, and Ray). My first novel, RUTH DE LUNE, has been available as an ebook since August 2012; it's the story of a sixteen-year-old girl who becomes a werewolf.

A little background about me...I was originally born in Arkansas, grew up and went to a small liberal arts college there. I went on to graduate school at the University of Mississippi, where I earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing in 2004. Currently, money-making-wise, I'm an online English teacher and instructional designer. I've been writing pretty much since I was ten.


What made you want to be a writer?

Two things: 1. Reading WATCHERS by Dean Koontz in the fourth grade, the first grown-up novel I ever read (it had everything: suspense, romance, super-intelligent dogs, monsters, machine guns); 2. Journaling in the fifth grade (my teacher gave us time each morning to write, and I knew I wanted to be a writer when another guy in class read my stories out loud and I was able to sit back and watch people's reactions, and I saw that my words, not me, had everyone's attention).


Are the names of the characters in your novels important?

Choosing a good name for a character is a delicate thing. You want it to have some meaning, some weight to it, but you can't hit the nail too squarely on the head. You can't have a cop named John Law. A name has to evoke something in a kind of sideways fashion. I picked "Ruth" for my title character in Ruth de Lune simply because it had a sturdy, solid quality, which is how I saw Ruth, a girl who, despite her many insecurities, knows her own mind completely.


While you were writing, did you ever feel as if you were one of the characters?

I don't really inhabit a character that way (I'm obviously not a sixteen-year-old girl and don't find myself pretending to be one when I'm writing), but I do tend to write in a first-person voice that's really more me than the voice that comes out of me in the real world, day-to-day. My writer's voice is my most natural, confident voice. My best foot forward, so to speak. So, in that regard, if that voice also happens to be the voice of a sixteen-year-old girl, then I guess I do feel a certain amount of kinship with a character -- if I don't actually feel I am that character. I like to learn about my characters as I write them, let them surprise me, so I can't be them entirely; otherwise, where's the mystery for me?


What types of things make you laugh in books?

A bit of dialogue that zings. A deadpan delivery. A delightful turn of phrase. In one of my favorite short stories by Brady Udall, from his collection LETTING LOOSE THE HOUNDS, there's a young boy who says of his sister, "My sister didn't know a Bible from the menu at Denny's." That's funny.


What do you do to unwind and relax?

Not always the easiest thing to do when you have five cats…let's see, I watch movies with my wife, read comic books.


Have you ever considered anyone as a mentor?

I was fortunate to have earned my MFA when Barry Hannah, the great southern short-story writer, was alive and teaching at Ole Miss. He was my mentor, a good man, a literary giant. His advice was simple and brilliant: "Beginning. Middle. End. Thrill us." That's my mantra.


Will you have a new book coming out soon?

I'm presently working on the second book in Ruth's story. It's called LUNE DE FAIM, and it's about family, belonging, things Ruth hasn't really had in her life, things she's hungry for -- even if she is a monster. We're all God's creatures -- humans, werewolves -- and we all get lonely.


Where can we find your books?

Amazon, Barnes and Noble, the iBookstore, all the usual e-places. Right now, there's only the one: RUTH DE LUNE, for 99 pennies. But hopefully there'll be more soon.


If you could leave your readers with one bit of wisdom, what would you want it to be?

I don't know that I'm qualified to dispense wisdom to anyone, but I have found that the best way to get through life as a writer is by being nice to people. I've always thought that writers should be the most humble, grateful people in the world -- particularly those who manage to find an audience that likes them.

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http://www.amazon.com/Ruth-de-Lune-eb...

Ruth De Lune


Sixteen-year-old Ruth Walker deals with monsters like most high school losers: she pretends they don't exist—from the prettier, slimmer girls who write nasty things about her on the bathroom walls to the boys who tape dirty drawings to her locker door.

But some monsters can't be ignored, and there are worse things in the world than high school, a lesson Ruth learns when she and a young boy are savaged one night by a terrifying creature in the woods behind the school.

Now, a sinister transformation has begun in Ruth, and dark dreams are calling her into the mountains west of town, where her life as she has always known it will almost certainly come to an end, her fate forever changed by the light of a full moon.