Straight No Chaser...Jen Barnes
When I heard about Jennifer Lynn Barnes' new series, The Squad, about a bunch of kick-butt cheerleaders, I thought she'd been following me and my cheer squad around. Then I realized the cheerleaders in Jen's book are spy-type, government operatives, take no prisoners sort of chicks.
Sweet!
The premise for The Squad is so cool that it's bound to be one of those overnight success series. So I thought I'd better catch up with Jen before she becomes too famous to talk to me.
Which cliché best describes you as an author?
The cliché I get stuck with the most is the "teen writer"- even though I'm not a teenager anymore! If I was picking an archetype that really described me, though, it would be something more along the lines of the absent-minded professor- I'm always forgetting things and getting caught up in story ideas and plots and thereby losing track of what's going on in the real world.
Stereotypes
Complete this sentence: I'm a total….from my BLANK to my BLANK, I could write the book on being BLANK
I'm a total television junkie. From the art of being able to quote Buffy with little to no provocation to yearly participation in E! Online's Save One Show, I could write the book on TV obsessions.
Pop Culture References
Using either television, film or literary references, give us the one or two sentence pitch you'd give film agents:
I've always described The Squad as Charlie's Angels meets Bring It On- with occasional shades of Veronica Mars.
If you did an informercial for your book, who would be the perfect celeb to serve as the pitch guy or gal? And why?
Since I have Veronica Mars on the mind, I'm going to go with Kristen Bell, primarily because she's awesome, but also because I feel like she really fits with the feel of the books- and the theme that it's dangerous to underestimate someone based on how they may first appear.
Stalkerazzi
Complete this sentence: It's a good thing I'm not a stalker or else INSERT NAME OF CELEB MINOR OR MAJOR would be in trouble because
It's a good thing I'm not a stalker or else Jared Padalecki would be in trouble, because I'd put my super-spy skills to use and see if he's really as nice (and tall!) as he seems.
History Lesson
A lot of times, authors start a book with one concept in mind (especially us pantsters) and end up with a totally different story. For your most current book tell us where you story started and ultimately ended.
For this series, I really started first with a concept- secret agents who double as cheerleaders, and then with a character- a girl who considers herself the anti-cheerleader. From there, the books pretty much wrote themselves! I think Toby developed more of a relationship with the other girls on the Squad than I first realized she was going to, and her little brother ended up playing a much bigger role in the series than I had planned… oooohhhhh, and there's also a lot more romance than I anticipated up front. Really, though, these books are the only ones I've written that, for the most part, ended up very, very similar to how I'd imagined them being.
You're on a desert island with a cell phone. Miraculously it has two bars and enough battery life to make one three minute call. Who do you call?
I'd call my parents, because (a) we talk every day and we're really close, and (b) they might actually be able to get me off the desert island.
If someone were deserted on an island and came across your book washed ashore, what's the one thing they'd take from it and want to share with the world once they got back to civilization?
Hopefully, they'd come away from the book completed distracted from the fact that they were stuck on a desert island! These books are meant to be fun in the extreme, and the DIS (Desert Island Scenario) seems to be a pretty good test of that. Beyond that, I think the reader would probably walk away thinking that maybe cheerleaders- and woman and anyone else who they might underestimate- might just be more than they're given credit for being.
Sweet!
The premise for The Squad is so cool that it's bound to be one of those overnight success series. So I thought I'd better catch up with Jen before she becomes too famous to talk to me.
Which cliché best describes you as an author?
The cliché I get stuck with the most is the "teen writer"- even though I'm not a teenager anymore! If I was picking an archetype that really described me, though, it would be something more along the lines of the absent-minded professor- I'm always forgetting things and getting caught up in story ideas and plots and thereby losing track of what's going on in the real world.
Stereotypes
Complete this sentence: I'm a total….from my BLANK to my BLANK, I could write the book on being BLANK
I'm a total television junkie. From the art of being able to quote Buffy with little to no provocation to yearly participation in E! Online's Save One Show, I could write the book on TV obsessions.
Pop Culture References
Using either television, film or literary references, give us the one or two sentence pitch you'd give film agents:
I've always described The Squad as Charlie's Angels meets Bring It On- with occasional shades of Veronica Mars.
If you did an informercial for your book, who would be the perfect celeb to serve as the pitch guy or gal? And why?
Since I have Veronica Mars on the mind, I'm going to go with Kristen Bell, primarily because she's awesome, but also because I feel like she really fits with the feel of the books- and the theme that it's dangerous to underestimate someone based on how they may first appear.
Stalkerazzi
Complete this sentence: It's a good thing I'm not a stalker or else INSERT NAME OF CELEB MINOR OR MAJOR would be in trouble because
It's a good thing I'm not a stalker or else Jared Padalecki would be in trouble, because I'd put my super-spy skills to use and see if he's really as nice (and tall!) as he seems.
History Lesson
A lot of times, authors start a book with one concept in mind (especially us pantsters) and end up with a totally different story. For your most current book tell us where you story started and ultimately ended.
For this series, I really started first with a concept- secret agents who double as cheerleaders, and then with a character- a girl who considers herself the anti-cheerleader. From there, the books pretty much wrote themselves! I think Toby developed more of a relationship with the other girls on the Squad than I first realized she was going to, and her little brother ended up playing a much bigger role in the series than I had planned… oooohhhhh, and there's also a lot more romance than I anticipated up front. Really, though, these books are the only ones I've written that, for the most part, ended up very, very similar to how I'd imagined them being.
You're on a desert island with a cell phone. Miraculously it has two bars and enough battery life to make one three minute call. Who do you call?
I'd call my parents, because (a) we talk every day and we're really close, and (b) they might actually be able to get me off the desert island.
If someone were deserted on an island and came across your book washed ashore, what's the one thing they'd take from it and want to share with the world once they got back to civilization?
Hopefully, they'd come away from the book completed distracted from the fact that they were stuck on a desert island! These books are meant to be fun in the extreme, and the DIS (Desert Island Scenario) seems to be a pretty good test of that. Beyond that, I think the reader would probably walk away thinking that maybe cheerleaders- and woman and anyone else who they might underestimate- might just be more than they're given credit for being.
posted by Paula at 3:32 PM
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