The Crossroads Blog Tour (Day 8)

Welcome to day 8 of The Crossroads Blog Tour and today I'm featuring Linda Joy Singleton, author of the Dead Girl trilogy - Dead Girl Walking (2008), Dead Girl Dancing (2009) and Dead Girl in Love (2009). She has also written The Seer books amongst others. Whilst I have not read the books yet, I'm definitely interested in the concept of jumping into another person's body and have had this in my mind for a long time. If you're interested, you can check out the Goodreads description of Dead Girl Walking here.


How did you come up with the idea for Dead Girl Walking and how many books will there be in the series?

DEAD GIRL is a trilogy, so that’s three books plus there a short story on my website called SABINE MEETS DEAD GIRL. The idea came over 20 years ago, and it was going to be a light romance about a middle-school girl who is out riding her bike when she sees a cat stuck on a pole and falls while trying to save the cat—then nearly dying herself and going to the light where she meets her grandmother and makes a wrong turn into a popular girl’s body. I only wrote 3 chapters and a synopsis back then and then rewrote off/on over the years. The original title was TURN LEFT AT THE MILKY WAY (and if you’ve read the book, you know Amber who has a bad sense of direction turned right). I came up with the body-switching idea in 1988 and it was published in 2008.


Are you writing anything else at the moment or have any ideas in the pipeline? Will they be paranormal in nature?

I have a spin-off coming out some time in 2011 with Flux which I hope starts a new series called GOTH GIRL mysteries. The book is a spin-off from THE SEER, starring snarky Goth Thorn and her psychic finding ability leads her to a grave and also into the arms of a mysterious masked guy. I’m hoping to write a second book with Thorn. If not, there’s a futuristic book I’d like to write.


About your writing style, are you a pantser or an outliner? What would your one bit of writing advice be?

I am a dedicated outliner. I actually like synopses, too. I consider an outline like a map, and when embarking on a long journey (writing a book) it’s much easier to find my destination (The End) with a map (synopsis.)


What’s your favourite thing about Halloween?

My best friend and I share a birthday near Halloween. So it’s always been a favourite holiday. My family always has a party where we dress up in costumes, dance, have cake walk (for candy) and celebrate birthdays.


Favourite scary movie?
I’m old-school here and prefer less graphic scary movies like those by Alfred Hitchcock. I also liked the first few movies by M. Night Shamalan. I scare easily and can’t stand people getting killed violently on screen.


If you could be any supernatural creature, what would you be and why?

Well I like being human so I can’t pick a unicorn, although I think they’re cool. So I’d make up a super-heroine who wears a glittery pink cape and has super long red hair and goes around magically turning sadness into smiles. Or maybe a “book fairy” who matches everyone a book they’d love to read.


Thank you to Linda for for answering my questions! To find out more about Linda and her books, you can visit her website here.

Each day of The Crossroads Tour, a new question will be revealed on The Crossroad Blog Tour main page and each day the answer to that question will be found within one of the 16 different blog posts by Crossroads Tour authors. Your job is to get the question, read the blog posts, and collect all 16 answers by the end of the tour, on Halloween. Click here to get today's question and links.