Paula Morris Interview and Giveaway

Author of DARK SOULS, is stopping by the blog today for an interview. Thanks for answering my questions, Paula!

1. What got you interested in writing?
Reading. I loved reading stories, and escaping through books to other places and times. Soon I wanted to try my hand at writing my own.

2. What is your favorite place to write?
I write wherever I can. At my little desk in our spare room, looking out over Glasgow. In the reading room of the British Library in London (if I’m researching-as-I-write, which is usually the case.) In airport lounges, more often than I’d like. I wrote most of my second novel at a café selling bubble tea. I’ve written sitting at other people’s dining room tables – three at least – in the US and New Zealand. On a deck in Tulum in Mexico: that was DARK SOULS, and I had to write long-hand in a notebook, because I didn’t take my laptop.

3. What is your favorite YA novel?
Probably How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff. And though it’s not strictly speaking a YA book, I love The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾

4. What is your writing schedule?
I don’t really have one. I just try to write when I can make the time. I’m not very good at writing in the morning – too many other things competing for my time and attention, especially work-related emails. I’m more of an afternoon-into-evening writer. If I have a deadline, though, I write all the time.

5. What is your favorite genre to read?
I’m not sure if I think about genres. A lot of the books I read are realist fiction, I guess.

6. Describe Dark Souls in three words.
Mystery. Secrets. Ghosts.

7. Do any of your characters resemble people you know? Or even yourself?
My protagonists are often much braver than I am, and much less lazy. Some of my friends would LIKE to make thinly veiled appearances in my books, but I resist this. They’re too silly. They’d be implausible as characters. I think of my characters as people with their own things going on, rather than shadows of the living.

8. Do you have any plans for a sequel to Dark Souls?
I’d quite like to do one, actually. There’s a hint in the novel’s epilogue of where that might be set … But first I have to finish the sequel to RUINED!

Dark Souls by Paula Morris
August 1, 2011
Scholastic

Miranda Tennant arrives in York with a terrible, tragic secret. She is eager to lose herself amid the quaint cobblestones, hoping she won't run into the countless ghosts who supposedly roam the city. . . .

Then she meets Nick, an intense, dark-eyed boy who knows all of York's hidden places and histories. Miranda wonders if Nick is falling for her, but she is distracted by another boy -- one even more handsome and mysterious than Nick. He lives in the house across from Miranda and seems desperate to send her some sort of message. Could this boy be one of York's haunted souls?

Soon, Miranda realizes that something dangerous -- and deadly -- is being planned. And she may have to face the darkest part of herself in order to unravel the mystery -- and find redemption.

Paula Morris and her publisher Scholastic have generously offered up a finished copy of DARK SOULS for one lucky U.S. reader. All you have to do is leave a comment with a way to contact you to enter. The only rule is that this giveaway is U.S. only. This giveaway will go from today until October 3 at 12:01 am.