Get A Little Pixy with GCC Member Carrie Jones

Well, if you haven’t read Carrie Jones’
NY Times best-seller, NEED, rush out and buy it right now so you’re all caught up and ready to read its sequel, CAPTIVATE. It just debuted this month through Bloomsbury USA and it had one of the prettiest covers ever! Check it out!

As always, here’s a little bit about her book to get you hooked:

In this NYT-Bestselling sequel to NEED, Zara and her friends knew they hadn't solved the pixie problem for good. Far from it. The king's needs grow deeper every day he's stuck in captivity, while his control over his people gets weaker. It's made him vulnerable. And now there's a new king in town.

A turf war is imminent, since the new pixie king, Astley, is moving in quickly. Nick nearly killed him in the woods on day one, but Zara came to his rescue. Astley swears that he and Zara are destined to be together, that he's one of the good guys. Nick isn't buying it, though Zara isn't as sure -- despite herself, she wants to trust the new king. But it's a lot more than her relationship with Nick that is at stake. It's her life -- and his.

Here’s what Carrie had to say:

Q: In AMOR AND SUMMER SECRETS, Mariana discovers a hidden family secret. Are you a good secret keeper?

Carrie: I am. If I let out my family secret…well, let’s just say I’d be in the tabloids. Plus, it’s not really mine to tell, you know? That’s the problem with knowing secrets they start weighing you down.

Q: What is the favorite place you ever traveled to, and what was the coolest thing you saw/did there?

Carrie: Oh man… I love to travel too, but I am so bad at picking favorites. I think Scotland is my favorite place and the coolest thing that happened there was I was staying in this castle. All night long I kept smelling this really strange perfume. I have a wicked nose and I’d literally follow the scent around the hotel room. Then the concierge person told me the next morning that the room was haunted. A kind of similar thing happened in Austin, Texas.

Although the coolest COOLEST thing was probably when I was swimming off the beach in Naples, Florida and all of a sudden a pod of dolphins were swimming all around me. That was beyond cool. I was the only one swimming because it was January and everyone else on the beach was 123 years old. It was probably THE most amazing thing that’s ever happened in my life.

Okay, I'm officially jealous of that dolphin story.

Q: I often tell the story of how a psychic once predicted that I would go on to write children’s books. Have you ever visited a psychic?

Carrie: When I was in high school my mom took me to a psychic fair in Salem, Mass and there were all these psychics sitting at tables. You had to sign up for a psychic. Most had long lines, but this one lady had no line at all. I felt so badly for her, so even though she was giving off this super evil vibe I went to her. She looked at me and said, “You will go crazy and be institutionalized before you’re 30.”

This was so not cool.

I basically just sat there for a minute, trying to be calm and then I left, but this really beautiful man with John Gorka brown eyes waved me over to his table and said, “Whatever she just told you is not true.”

And I was like, gulping back sobs and said, “It isn’t?”

“No,” he says. “She does that.”

And then he offered for me to come in his line for free. I liked his line a lot better. I got to be a reincarnated French noble woman who rode horses along the Seine, and all sorts of cool stuff. Sigh.

My infamous psychic was in Salem too. Oh, those wicked witches.
Q: My character Mariana spends her summer in Puerto Rico connecting with her father’s heritage. Have you ever researched your family tree?

Carrie: I have. My family tree goes back forever, past Charlemagne and Viking kings. It’s kind of daunting because seriously? How do you live up to Charlemagne?

Q: Where were you when you found out that your book was going to be published?

Carrie: Here is the story of my first book, which was TIPS ON HAVING A GAY (ex) BOYFRIEND. It’s more interesting, I think. The story about CAPTIVATE is on my publishers’ website for me. They have an awesome win-a-computer contest there too. You should totally enter.

It begins as all good things do with an email announcing the creation of Flux, an imprint of Llewellyn. Flux was accepting YA novels. Hhm? I thought to myself. I just wrote a YA novel. Sure, I hadn’t shown it to my advisor at Vermont College’s MFA in Writing Program. Sure, I hadn’t let ANYONE read it. Sure, I only just wrote it in the last month and it was rough, rough, rough. But I sent it in. I chugged out a cover letter. I found some stamps. I mailed it.

Here is what followed, taken from my livejournal entries.

Sweet Editor Man called me within a week of me mailing the manuscript. Seriously. It was wild.

The 30th, 2006

Okay. Here’s the big question of the day: Why am I so stupid?

I will work on the self esteem exercises tomorrow… but today! Today! Today I am allowed to realize the full extent of my idiotness. Here’s why.

I sent out some manuscript queries on Thursday. I get a phone call this morning, from a real live editor who says, “Um, is this C.C. Jones?”

“Yes,” I say while pouring out cat food. He then proceeds to tell me he got my query, wants to see more of my manuscript, but his email requesting it bounced back.

“Really?” I say. “That’s weird.”

“Let me tell you the address,” he says. “cjonese at…”

“Oh,” I say. “Oh. Oh. Oh.”

“What?” he says.

“There’s no e on the end of Jones.”

“I didn’t think so,” he says. I then apologize and berate myself for not even being able to spell my own last name! What an idiot. He gives me an email address. I send him the rest of the manuscript.

Yeah, that baby’s going somewhere. Not.

Although, he was kind and he did say, “It’s the manuscript I care about, not your inability to spell your own name.”

Thank you, Carrie! Now, everyone go out and buy books, lots and lots of books!