SUNNY: BLOG TOUR - DEATH, DOOM, AND DETENTION BY DARYNDA JONES

It's a Blog Tour! 

Welcome to a stop on the Death, Doom, and Detention Blog Tour.  Have a seat and enjoy my interview with the author, Darynda Jones.  Afterward, stay tuned for a chance to win a copy of Death, Doom, and Detention. Don't forget to scroll down (way down) to enter.

Please welcome the ever-awesome, Darynda Jones!

1.      Hello, Darynda!  Could you please tell us where  Death, Doom, and Detention picks up after Death and the the Girl Next Door?

Sure thing! And thanks for having me, Sunny!

DDD basically picks up with Lorelei trying to come to terms with her powers. They are growing stronger and she is fighting for control. She is seeing things she doesn’t want to see and experiencing things on a completely visceral level. The visions are not just pictures in her mind but a conscious reliving of the actions and events of those around her, whomever she touches, and she is doing her damnedest just to make it through the day. In the meantime, something else has come to Riley’s Switch. Half of the student body is behaving abnormally and some have expressed a desire to see Lorelei dead. So she is coping with all that and the fact that her grandparents have forbade her from seeing Jared. They have asked him, as an honorable being, to keep his distance, and so he has. It’s left Lorelei a hot mess, and when she envisions a tragic shooting at school that involves the death of her favorite teacher, and possibly herself, she has wonders if she is just losing her mind or if her visions are more real than she ever imagined.

2.      How long did you spend writing Death, Doom, and Detention?

Well, I spent probably a week or so on the outline. I’m a big plotter. Writing the book itself took a while. For the first time ever I wrote, scrapped, rewrote, re-scrapped, and rewrote again. I’ve never started and restarted a manuscript like that before, but I couldn't quite get the internal conflict down. Then I met with my editor at a conference and she made a suggestion and a lightbulb went off in my head. The manuscript was rewritten and finished a few weeks later. That woman is a genius. So what normally takes me a couple of months took probably closer to four or five with DDD. It was crazy.

3.      How much of a book have you ever completely erased before finishing the final draft?

Funny you should ask, LOL. Until DDD, not a lot. I always save my deleted scenes. You never know when they’ll come in handy. Normally my deleted scenes come to around 20 or so pages. With DDD, I think I had almost 100 pages of scrapped material. Again, not something I normally do.

4.      Do the names for the characters come first or do your characters scream their names? Do you think names are particularly important to your readers?

I think names are terribly important. Sometimes names come to me pretty easily, but for some reason, my heroines get named and renamed over and over. Lorelei’s name was changed probably 6 or 7 times before settling on it. Cameron was changed a few times too.

5.      Will Cameron find love?

Yep! :)

6.      What do you love about Lorelei?

I think I love her strength and honesty. She is special but she has no intention of taking advantage of that fact. Now if it were up to Brooklyn . . .

7.      What was your high school experience like and was there a “Mean Girl” club?

I had a pretty good high school experience. Besides my freshman year which was quite the challenge, I loved it, even though I was thrilled to graduate and get out of there. And I encountered the occasional mean girl. I just kind of did my own thing, lived in my own little world. I liked most everyone and got along well with my classmates. But even with all that, I did have a few close calls as far as fights were concerned. Does anyone escape high school uncathed? I wonder sometimes.

8.      What were your favourite books as a teenager?

I found romance novels pretty quickly as a teen. I loved Kathleen E. Woodiwiss, Johanna Lindsey, and Judith McNaught. They were my true loves.

9.      The Charley Davidson series has been published around the world, have the rights to the  Darklight series sold outside the US?

Strangely enough, no. I’ve had so many people asking, so maybe they will some day.

10.   What can readers expect next from you?

Well, right now I’m working on the last in the Darklight Trilogy, Death and the Girl He Loves. It comes out in October, I believe. And Fifth Grave Past the Light, the fifth installment of the Charley Davidson series, comes out July 9th.

Thank you so much for having me!

The Book Blurb 

The normal part of Lorelei MacAlister’s life didn’t just slip away quietly the day Jared Kovach came to town. Nope. The normal part of her life shattered. It exploded. It burst into a gazillion shards of fleeting light.

It went out with a bang.

Goodbye normal.

Hello dark and eerie.

While her best friend, Brooklyn, is focusing all of her energy on helping Lorelei hone her abilities, Lorelei is dealing with the reality that Satan’s second in command has taken up residence inside her body. Oh, and the fact that she has a crush on the Angel of Death. But what a beautiful death it is. If those weren’t bad enough, something sinister has come to town and it wants nothing more than to hear Lorelei’s dying breath as it strangles it out of her. Thank goodness the gang has a supernatural champion. But what happens when the only being who can save them switches sides midstream? How can a group of misfits capture one of the most powerful beings ever created? And will they find out how to bring Jared back to them before it’s too late?

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