Get to know Patricia

If you could be any item on Mexican restaurant menu, what would you be and why?

I would be a quesadilla, because anything with cheese as a main ingredient is awesome.

If you were an item of clothing what would you be and why?

I would totally be my chunky black and white high heeled sneakers from when I was in middle school. They were funky and weird and no one but me thought they were the coolest thing ever, but I thought they were so cool that I was actually ok with that.

When's your birthday?

December 1

What quote inspires you most?

"Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead."
-- Louisa May Alcott
 

What's a pet peeve you have?

Cliffhanger endings. I’m ok with books that don’t share every little detail, but I like each book (even in a series) to have its own specific story arc. I am NOT a fan of endings where “someone was just hit by a bus, will they live or die? Find out next book…” Similarly, I have issues with vague endings, my husband tells me it’s so that people can imagine what happened for themselves. But I have to imagine ending for my own stories, I want to know how the author imagines the ending (the more detailed the better!)

Something about you that no one would know just by looking at you?
That I am addicted to buying notebooks. I don’t even write long-hand very often, but if I see a cute notebook I can’t NOT buy it… I have PILES of them. (And I love each and every one of them!) 

Who's your favorite princess and why?

(I’m going to assume we’re talking Disney, since they have the best princesses I know of…) Definitely, Belle. I was beyond excited as a little kid to find a beautiful brunette princess who had an insane love of reading. (Side note: Just bought the DVD and there’s this new scene in it where she’s encouraging the Beast to read to her… it’s adorable.) :)

Why do you want to write within the YA genre?

Because I love it. It seems like a simple answer but it’s true. In YA I have found more books that I ADORE in a year than I found in other genres in years of reading. YA has the capacity to be fun, magical, dark, edgy, and anything and everything in between. It’s also a time of “firsts” which I love to read and reminisce about, though I’m perfectly happy to be done with many of my own!

Which YA book character are you most like? Explain.

I can’t think of anyone that I would compare myself to as an adult, but when remembering myself as a teen I think I was a lot like Belly from Jenny Han’s Summer series. I saw a lot of my own coming-of-age feelings in those books. 

Plotter or Panster?

Plotter. No, pantser. No… I don’t know? I find that if I plot too intensely then I get bored and don’t want to write the story anymore, but if I just wing it with no plotting, I get off track and end up wandering around in words that don’t belong in my story. It changes from project to project, generally I am going to try one until it doesn’t work and then try the other. At the end of the day, I think that in most cases it will be a combination of both. 

What do you like to do when you get stuck while writing to help work through it?

Call or email my writer friends. When I get to a point where I feel like I’ve backed myself in a corner I tend to call one of my friends to lament about the situation and more often than not through talking it out (and their spectacular insights and questions) I end up figuring out where to go from there. Also dance breaks, lots of dance breaks.

Was there a specific book you read that inspired you to start writing? 

I don’t know if there was a specific book, but when reading anything by Sarah Addison Allen (The Peach Keeper) and Tracey Chevalier (The Virgin Blue) I always want to capture the intense feelings and how wrapped up I get in those stories in my own work. Both authors have a specific, though indescribable, magical element in their work that I haven’t found much of in YA, so it inspires me to try to create it within my own projects.

What is your single most favorite thing (feel free to be as vague as you like) about you're current WIP?

The boy(S).

What book from childhood do you most wish you had written? What book from the past year?

From childhood: Eight Cousins/Rose in Bloom by Louisa May Alcott.

From the past year: The Near Witch by Victoria Schwab

 

Two truths and one lie about yourself. 

I spent at LEAST 3 years of my elementary/secondary education in each: public, private, and homeschooling.

I am the oldest of 6, five girls and one boy.

Earnest Hemmingway’s The Old Man and the Sea is my favorite book.