Interview: Jamie Baywood - Getting Rooted in New Zealand

 

Everyone, give a warm welcome to Jamie Baywood, debut author of Getting Rooted in New Zealand!

Hi, Jamie! How does it feel to have your book out in the world?

Publishing my story was one the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done. I barely slept the first half of the year worrying what people would think of my book. I am just now starting to go on book talk tours throughout the United Kingdom and being interviewed. Since publication, I’ve mostly been working on networking and marketing. I haven’t told my family that I’ve written or published a book. They think I’m just living in the UK working on a MA in Design studying book covers. It’s been an interesting dance trying to promote the book and attempting to stay anonymous. 

That is the coolest thing I've ever heard! Imagine if they do find the book one day and suggest that you read it because they loved it so much? So, wait, did you always know that you wanted to be a professional writer or is this something new? 

My education is in fine arts. I had a lot of art shows in California and New Zealand and even managed an art collective in Auckland. I was bored with the fine art scene. Everything has already been done before in painting, but I am the only person that can tell my own story. Writing feels like a more honest form of art than any other method I’ve tried. While I was in New Zealand I meet a director named Thomas Sainsbury, he asked me what I was doing in New Zealand. My everyday stories made him laugh and he asked me to write a monologue for him. I had never done anything like that before. I was shocked by the adrenaline rush that came with storytelling and making people laugh. 

The stories made people laugh so I decided to organize the stories into a book and publish in the hopes to make others laugh too. 

I think those are the best kinds of stories, the ones who bring joy to others. So far, who or what has influenced your writing? 

Traveling alone and being celibate for a year was how Elizabeth Gilbert found her husband in Eat, Pray, Love. I probably took it too literally like an instructions manual, but it worked for me. I also enjoyed reading Area Code 212 by Tama Janowitz, The Buddha, Geoff and Me by Edward Canfor-Dumas, and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins.

Is there anything you must have when you sit down and write? Coffee, Music, Cookies? 

Coffee.

What sparked the idea for Getting Rooted in New Zealand? 

I’m from California. In my mid-twenties, I had bad dating experiences in California and a dream to live abroad. I read in a tour book that New Zealand’s population had 100,000 fewer men than women. I wanted to have some me time and an adventure. New Zealand seemed like a good place to do so. I kept finding myself in unbelievable bizarre situations that I had difficulty processing. I wrote them down and shared them with others to verify I wasn’t losing my mind that these things were really happening. In New Zealand, I wrote and performed a monologue based on my real experiences contained in the book. After the show I talked to members of the audience that didn’t believe my story was true.

I think it's amazing that you decided to share your experiences with the whole world. What is your favorite scene from Getting Rooted in New Zealand? 

“Just like “biscuits,” the word “rooting” has a completely different meaning in New Zealand than it does in California.” (Page 55)

I had a lot of culture shock moments, learning the Kiwi slang definition of rooting inspired the title of my book. One night I was brushing my teeth with my flatmate Liam and I said, 'I'm really excited to live in this house because I have been traveling a lot and I just need to settle down, stop travelling and get rooted.'

He started choking on his toothbrush and asked me if I was hitting on him. 

This next question would be real people you met. If you could spend an afternoon with one of your characters, who would it be, and what would you do for fun? 

I keep in touch with most of the people I met in New Zealand. Some of my dearest friends in the world are in New Zealand. Although it is technically not home to me or my Scottish husband, it feels like home to us as a couple because that is where we met. We have been feeling homesick for New Zealand and really miss our friends there. My friend Natalie in New Zealand who I made an art collective with recently had a beautiful baby girl named Iris. I would love to spend the day with them and meet Iris. New Zealand has amazing beaches, I’d love to go to Piha and relax at the beach with Natalie and Iris. 

Describe Getting Rooted in New Zealand in five words or less. 

Funny travel memoir or unintentional true love story. 

Anything else you'd like to say to your fans and future readers? 

I am sincerely appreciative of everyone that has read Getting Rooted in New Zealand. I’m absolutely grateful that readers are enjoying the book and reviewing it positively. I love making people laugh. I hope you enjoy Getting Rooted in New Zealand!

Thank you for stopping by Amy's Book Den!

Jamie Baywood grew up in Petaluma, California. In 2010, she made the most impulsive decision of her life by moving to New Zealand. Getting Rooted in New Zealand is her first book about her experiences living there. Jamie is now married and living happily ever after in the United Kingdom. She is working on her second book.

Author Links:
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Getting Rooted in New Zealand

Author: Jamie Baywood

Publication: April 2013

Buy: Amazon ♥ B&N ♥ TBD 

Overview 

Craving change and lacking logic, at 26, Jamie, a cute and quirky Californian, impulsively moves to New Zealand to avoid dating after reading that the country's population has 100,000 fewer men. In her journal, she captures a hysterically honest look at herself, her past and her new wonderfully weird world filled with curious characters and slapstick situations in unbelievably bizarre jobs. It takes a zany jaunt to the end of the Earth and a serendipitous meeting with a fellow traveler before Jamie learns what it really means to get rooted. 

Waiting on Wednesday (114)

Hosted at Breaking the Spine.

Crash Into You

(Pushing the Limits 3)

Katie McGarry

November 27 2013

Goodreads 

The girl with straight As, designer clothes and the perfect life-that's who people expect Rachel Young to be. So the private-school junior keeps secrets from her wealthy parents and overbearing brothers...and she's just added two more to the list. One involves racing strangers down dark country roads in her Mustang GT. The other? Seventeen-year-old Isaiah Walker-a guy she has no business even talking to. But when the foster kid with the tattoos and intense gray eyes comes to her rescue, she can't get him out of her mind. 

Isaiah has secrets, too. About where he lives, and how he really feels about Rachel. The last thing he needs is to get tangled up with a rich girl who wants to slum it on the south side for kicks-no matter how angelic she might look. 

But when their shared love of street racing puts both their lives in jeopardy, they have six weeks to come up with a way out. Six weeks to discover just how far they'll go to save each other.

Why am I waiting for it?

Cars, Illegal Races, and Romance. NEED. NOW. And can I just say that the cover is killer. I’ll probably get the paperback version instead of ebook just to have that cover on my bookshelf.

Book Tour: No Angel by Helen Keeble (Interview)

No Angel
Author: Helen Keeble
Published: HarperTeen
Publication: October 8th 2013
Genres: YA Paranormal
Buy: Amazon ♥ B&N ♥ TBD

Overview

Rafael Angelos just got handed the greatest gift any teenage boy could ever dream of. Upon arriving at his new boarding school for senior year, he discovered that he is the ONLY male student. But what should have been a godsend isn’t exactly heaven on Earth.

Raffi’s about to learn that St. Mary’s is actually a hub for demons-and that he was summoned to the school by someone expecting him to save the day. Raffi knows he’s no angel-but it’s pretty hard to deny that there’s some higher plan at work when he wakes up one morning to discover a glowing circle around his head.

Helen Talks About Writing

1. Your first book, Fang Girl, was a paranormal comedy about a vampire fan girl who becomes a real vampire. Is No Angel a sequel? 

No, they’re completely unrelated – no characters from Fang Girl show up in No Angel. There isn’t any mention of vampires in No Angel, and Fang Girl didn’t have any angels or demons in it, so the jury is out as to whether they’re even set in the same world. (Even I haven’t quite made up my mind on that one) 

However, for those who enjoyed Fang Girl, I can promise that No Angel has the same sense of humor, including affectionate mockery of ridiculous paranormal romance tropes! Basically, what I do to vampires in Fang Girl, I do to angels in No Angel. 

2. What was the hardest part of writing No Angel? 

Working to a deadline! Because I had a two-book contract with HarperTeen (the first being Fang Girl), I actually had a deadline for No Angel before I’d written a single word, or even worked out what the story was going to be about! A very different experience from slowly writing Fang Girl in spare hours over the course of several years, with no-one but myself caring whether or not it was ever finished… 

3. How did you become a writer? 

The short answer is that I wrote a lot of stuff, and eventually got good enough (and lucky enough) to find someone that would pay me for it. 

The longer answer is that I’ve always written for my own amusement, but never let anyone read it until I went to university and started writing fanfic based on a role-playing game called Legend of the Five Rings. It was a rather unusual fanfic community, because people generally used the game’s setting but invented their own original characters rather than writing stories about pre-existing characters (like Harry Potter or Twilight fanfic tends to do). It gave me a lot of practice in inventing imaginary people! I then slowly drifted into writing completely original stories, and was eventually lucky enough to be able to sell some to magazines. After a few successes with short stories, and in a fit of pique at the prevalence of both Twighlight-inspired novels in bookstores and Twilight-bashing articles in newspapers, I decided to try writing a novel… and that was Fang Girl! 

So now, somewhat to my bemusement, I seem to have become a YA comedy author. I still blink at my own books sitting on my bookcase, amazed that they are really real. 

4. Are you a full-time writer? 

I wish! No, like most writers I have a day job – I’m an industrial software engineer. It is a very awesome career (where else do you get to play with oil rigs and nuclear power plants) but does mean I have to squeeze my writings into the evenings. I have a bad habit of forgetting to go to bed, so I’ll often be typing away at my laptop well into the small hours of the morning. 

5. Fun fact about writing No Angel? 

In order to keep track of where all my characters were at different times in the school day, I made timetables for them in Google Calendar… and then forgot to delete the calendars after I'd finished the book. I was greatly puzzled when Google started bombarding me with reminders to get to my history class. 

6. Are you a pantser (just sit down and write) or a plotter (outline everything first)? 

I used to be a total pantser (the first draft of Fang Girl was written in a month, for NaNoWriMo), but these days I’m more of a plotter. It’s something of a necessity when working to a deadline, with an editor who wants to make sure you’ve actually got a plan, and are not just going to kill all the characters in the last chapter out of despair. 

7. What do you do when you’re not writing? 

Apart from the day job, sleeping, and taking care of my family? I read everything I can get my hands on, especially fantasy and science fiction books. I’m also very into board games of all descriptions, from light family fun like Survive! and Kingdon Builder through to heavy strategic games like Tzol’kin or Puerto Rico. In any spare moments, I like to dabble in crafts – I recently learned to knit dolls and dolls’ clothes, and am now experimenting with making jewelry out of resin and plastic. If only there were more hours in the day! 

8. What books make you laugh out loud? 

I love Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books. They’re an amazing blend of so many different types of comedy: parody, political satire, character-driven, situational, wordplay, puns… even slapstick! He’s a master of messing with reader expectation to comic effect. I think my very favorite example of this in the entire series is the character in Thief of Time who’s dialogue is all “----ing” this and “----ing” that… but late in the book we find out (spoiler alert, look away now!) that all he’s doing is pausing and saying “ing”. Genius! 

Other writers I can consistently rely on to make me giggle are Sarah Rees Brennan (though she’ll make you laugh in one paragraph and stomp on your heart in the next) and Louis McMaster Bujold (who also manages to mix high emotional stakes with very witty characters). I’m also very fond of the classic P. G. Wodehouse stories, although some of them have, erm, really not aged very well (why hello there, casual racism). 

9. Can you tell us a bit about what you’re working on now? 

I'm currently writing a YA dystopian comedy. No, really. If anything is ripe for a parody, it’s the whole “THE GOVERNMENT CONTROLS X AND Y IS BANNED!!” genre! The working title is Escaping Utopia, and it's set in an idyllic far-future society where there is no war or crime as everyone’s needs are perfectly fulfilled by government-issued androids called Soulmates. Unfortunately for one 16 year old boy, his brand-new Soulmate tries to kill him on sight. Hijinks ensue! 

The story also features a grumpy girl revolutionary hacker, a ridiculous number of huge planet-shaking conspiracies, and a bubblegum-pink battle robot named Candi who just wants to be loved. Let’s just say I’m having a lot of fun with this one!

Helen Keeble is not, and never has been, a vampire. She has however been a teenager. She grew up partly in America and partly in England, which has left her with an unidentifiable accent and a fondness for peanut butter crackers washed down with a nice cup of tea. She now lives in West Sussex, England, with her husband, daughter, two cats, and a variable number of fish. To the best of her knowledge, none of the fish are undead.

Her first novel, a YA vampire comedy called FANG GIRL, is out 11th Sept 2012, from HarperTeen. She also has another YA paranormal comedy novel (provisionally titled NO ANGEL) scheduled for Sept 2013.

Author Links:
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