Blog Stop and Interview: Andrea Janes

Praise for Glamour:

“Glamour is pure fun! Characters crackle with humor and unexpected adventure, compel with heart and interest, and live off the page in a delightfully witchy world.”
— Leanna Renee Hieber, bestselling author of the Strangely Beautiful saga

“An exciting and fast paced story, with a wicked-witted heroine that’s simply quite adorable.”
— Katie M John, author of The Knight Trilogy

“Filled with magic and sharp wit. I can’t wait to see what Andrea Janes brings us next!”

—       Rebecca Roland, author of Shards of History

Summary:
Townie. That’s what eighteen-year-old Christina Sundy is. All year round she lives in a one-stoplight town on Cape Cod and when summer comes she spends her days scooping ice cream for rich tourists, who she hates. So when one of them takes a job in the ice cream shop alongside her, she’s pissed. Why does a blonde and perky Harvard-bound rich girl like Reese Manning want to scoop ice cream anyway?

Something else weird is happening to Christina: tiny blue sparks seem to be shooting off her fingers. It isn’t long before she realizes the truth about herself — she’s actually a powerful hereditary witch. But her newfound powers are too intense for her to handle and, in a moment of rage, she accidentally zaps Reese into another dimension.

So that no one will notice that the rich girl has disappeared, Christina casts a disguising spell, or “glamour,” and lives Reese’s life while she tries to find a retrieval spell. But as the retrieval spell proves harder than anticipated, and as she goes about living Reese’s life without anyone on the outside noticing the switch, Christina realizes that there’s nothing to stop her from making the glamour permanent… except, of course, her fellow witches, a 16th century demon, and, just maybe, her own conscience.

Interview:

Which authors inspire you the most?

I love the dark domesticity of Shirley Jackson, she’s definitely one of my favorites.

When did you first know you wanted to write?

I have wanted to be a writer since I was six, so basically I can’t remember why or remember a time when there was ever any other idea in my mind.

How did you get the inspiration for your novel?

GLAMOUR, was in a large part inspired by some of the friendships I’ve been lucky enough to have in my life. All friendships are subject to the wax and wane of the natural course of time. It’s also partly inspired by trips to New England summer towns, which are seriously filled with more ice cream shops than you can shake a stick at. I’m a big fan of beaches and beach towns. I’ve also always been really interested in witches for some reason.

So throw witches, water, New England, and nostalgia into a blender, and you get GLAMOUR.

I was also really inspired by John Updike’s The Witches of Eastwick, which is less about three women throwing themselves at a man and much more about female friendship that you would think. Here are the beautiful last lines from the novel:

"The witches are gone, vanished; we were just an interval in their lives, and they in ours.
But ... rumors of the days when they were solid among us, gorgeous and doing evil, have flavored the name of the town in the mouths of others, and for those of us who live here have left something oblong and invisible and exciting we do not understand. We meet it turning the corner where Hemlock meets Oak; it is there when we walk the beach in off-season and the Atlantic in its blackness mirrors the dense packed gray of the clouds: a scandal, life like smoke rising twisted into legend."

What is your favorite part about being an author?

I like making up stories, watching them grow. Creating characters, giving them little lives and personalities, watching them run around like little sea monkeys.

What is your least favorite part about being an author?

Very intricate plotting is hard work for me. My least favorite things though, hands down, are sitting still for hours at a time, and working forever and ever without pay.

Could you write a bit about what your publication process was like?

GLAMOUR took a long, roundabout journey. In 2004, I wrote a screenplay called SCOOPs, with Reese as the main character. It wasn’t very good, so I put it away for a few years and then when I was ready, re-wrote it with Christina as the main character. It was at that point I decided to make them have magic witch powers to spice things up. The screenplay was now pretty good, but who in their right mind would buy it? An indie movie with two female leads and lots of costly special effects? That’s a hard sell. So then I re-wrote it as a novel. At some point I also adapted it into a short story, because why not? So it took ten years and four different forms before it became what it was.

Do you have any upcoming projects?

Yes, I’m currently writing a horror novel about a haunted condo in Rockaway Beach Queens.

Glamour is available in trade paperback and ebook via
Amazon
Barnesandnoble
Kobo 
OmniLit 
 Ingram, and other online retailers.

Andrea Janes writes horror, dark comedy, thrillers, and historical slapstick. She is the author of Boroughs of the Dead: New York City Ghost Stories<http://boroughsofthedead.com/homepage/#shop>. She is also a licensed NYC tour guide, and offers a variety of ghostly tours around the city. Her many obsessions include New York City history, old photographs, Mabel Normand, all things nautical, and beer. She maintains a personal blog over at Spinster Aunt<http://bourbonandtea.blogspot.com/>, where she discusses these obsessions in more detail than is probably healthy.
World Weaver Press is a publisher of fantasy, paranormal, and science fiction, dedicated to producing quality works. As a small press, World Weaver seeks to publish books that engage the mind and ensnare the story-loving soul.