Justine Manzano 
Hi all! Welcome to the next leg of Sucker Literary’s Blog Hop, being held in honor of the release of Volume 3 of Sucker Literary available tomorrow! 
I was tagged in this hop by the lovely Kacey Vanderkarr. Kacey is a young adult author. She dabbles in fantasy, romance, and sci-fi, complete with faeries, alternate realities, and the occasional plasma gun. She’s known to be annoyingly optimistic and listen to music at the highest decibel. Kacey is the president of the Flint Area Writers and the Social Media Director for Sucker Literary. When she’s not writing, she coaches winterguard, and works as a sonographer. Kacey lives in Michigan, with her husband, son, and crazy cats. Reflection Pond is available in paperback and digital for Kindle and Nook. Antithesis and First Shift are available from Inkspell Publishing. “How to Fall”, a short story, will appear in the volume of Sucker Literary that we are here to promote.
You can follow Kacey at any of the links below: Blog/Twitter/Facebook/Goodreads
As part of the blog hop, each of us are answering some questions on our current works in progress, while also telling you about the next three writers to post in the hop, and giving you a bit of information on what you can expect from them soon. Please find my answers below, and please stay tuned to learn about the three awesome YA writers posting on their blogs next week!
1) What am I working on?
I never work on just one thing at a time, but my primary focus at the moment is my rewrite of The Order of the Key. Order or OK as I like to call it in my notes to myself and my hubby/beta reader, is Book 1 of my Paranormal Romance Urban Fantasy series, Keys & Guardians.
The book begins when Jacklyn discovers that she is the long lost member of The Order of the Key, a group that hunts interdimensional creatures. As she is trained by them, she becomes the prime weapon in a war between the group’s brutal leader, Lavinia, and her idealistic son, Kyp.
2) How does my work differ from other works in its genre?
Irreverence and reverence. Jacklyn is a pop culture lover and she both mocks and loves the other heroes of her genre. The story attempts to break genre walls and just be a good tale of a physically strong female character and her somewhat emotionally stunted male lead. And by emotionally stunted, I don’t mean that he can’t say he loves her. I mean that he’s a little crazy, a complete emotional mess. In that way, the major flaws in the leads don’t show up often in leads. Jacklyn, while staunchly independent and a physical powerhouse, is brash, prideful and green enough to cause a good majority of her own problems. These are not your perfect super heroes – which would be the point.
3) Why do I write what I do?
Because I have to? It’s not so much a choice as a compulsion. I used to avoid writing anything with a romantic slant at all – they always felt cheesy to me. The truth is, I’m a romantic at heart, but I knew how other people saw those types of story and so I didn’t feel like a “Serious Writer”™ if I was writing romance. But I never ended up having much interest in writing stories without at least a thread of romance in it. But that isn’t to say I only stick to one genre. My romances play themselves out with backdrops of interdimensional monsters, imaginary friends and real world tragedy. So romance is really the only common thread in my stories. Other than that, I use whatever genre best serves the purpose of the story.
4) How does my writing process work?
Ain’t that a can of worms? Well, at any given time I’m shopping out a story, revising another, writing another, and outlining another. So there’s much juggling. But if we’re talking about a story from conception to submission? My stories usually start as the germ of an idea for a theme or a character that comes to me unbidden at some random time (9 times out of ten, while I’m washing dishes or taking a shower). After I write down that germ of an idea, I begin to brainstorm to find what kind of stories and plots will best serve that seed of an idea. With copious amounts of music playing in the background, I then begin to build on those scraps in the form of an outline. Even when I start writing, I continue brainstorming – if I come up with a new idea that would need to be mentioned earlier, I write in and make it cleaner in the rewrite. Long pieces and short pieces differ here. Short pieces go off to my beta reader/hubby immediately. Longer pieces go to him chapter by chapter, so at times I am making corrections or edits in one chapter as I work on writing a future one. I make all edits that I agree with and reread. Most times, I end up with a full rewrite necessary. Others, I end up simple needing to tweak (rare!). Then, it’s time to tap some outside readers to look it over. Based on that I make another round of changes – hopefully not a ton because that will likely require another rewrite. And then, I start submitting it to places – usually around the time I start feeling like I’ll throw up if I read it again. And then, once it’s gone, I usually end up finding more things to fix, which becomes the “If I get rejected…” silver lining. And that is certainly the nature of the writing beast, isn’t it?
And now, check out the bloggers posting next week! You’ll want to hear what they have to say!
1
) Kip Wilson has a Ph.D. in German Literature and a passion for books, languages, and travel. She lives in Boston with her cute Spanish husband and mischievous twins, and is hard at work on several projects for young adults. She blogs at http://www.kipwilsonwrites.com and tweets at https://twitter.com/kiperoo.
2) Sonja Thomas, a recovering CPA, is a writer for children of all ages. Raised in Central Florida and transplanted to DC for 11 years, she now calls Portland, OR home. To stay sane she dances, doodles and plays with furry, four-legged friends. Her young adult short story ‘Mirror Image’ will appear this summer in the UK anthology ‘Dark Heart’ Volume 2. Visit her blog at http://www.bysonjathomas.com/.
And, finally,
3) ChristinaMercer, author of Award-Winning Tween/Teen FantasyARROW OF THE MISTand its sequel ARMS OF ANU, writes fiction for children and young adults. She was a Semi-Finalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Contest, took Writer’s Best of Show at the SCBWI California North/Central Regional Conference, and won an Honorable Mention in the 21st Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards. Christina enjoys life in the foothills of Northern California with her husband and sons, a pack of large dogs, and about 100,000 honeybees. For more about her and her writing visit www.christinamercer.com
Don’t forget to check out all of the above listed blogs next monday, and purchase Sucker Literary Volume 3, on sale tomorrow!