Thanks for chatting with me, Ginger. I thought we could start the conversation talking about the obvious… WRITING.
When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?
GS: When I was in third or fourth grade, I did a book spotlight for our library’s local access cable channel. It was on Judy Blume’s Super Fudge series, which I was a huge fan of. A woman from the local paper came to interview me, and I thought she had a pretty cool job (because she had a very nice pen and this long, skinny notepad that she scribbled on while I talked). I thought maybe I could do something like that when I grew up. Fast forward a few years to pre-teen me. I was in a Goodwill with my grandmother and looking at the books, and I discovered a chapter book by Judy Blume titled “Forever.” We bought it for a quarter. I took it home and read it in a night, staying up and reading by the light of my digital clock. It was the first book I read for teens about teens that was authentic and real. I decided in that moment that I wanted to be those women, to write real stories, fact and fiction. I graduated with a journalism degree, worked for several papers and magazines, and when I finally conquered my fear of sharing my fiction, I made the switch and my life has been forever changed.
What comes first, the plot or characters?
GS: It is different for every story. For my Waiting series, my heroine, Nolan Lennox, came first. She was clear as day and guided every turn of all three books. The same happened for Wild Reckless and Owen Harper. I had this little boy in my head who witnessed something horrific and I just kept worrying about what that would do to him, and I imagined him growing up and carrying the weight of it all as a teenager. For other stories, though, like Cowboy, Villain, Damsel, Duel, the plot drove everything. That book more than any I’ve written, really. It’s twisty and strange, and the story itself is almost a character.
Where is your favorite place to write?
GS: Outside, either at a baseball field or on my back patio. There is something about the Arizona air, the breeze in the shade, the birds chirping. It all feeds my creativity.
Do you prefer writing in silence or to music?
GS: A little bit of both. Sometimes I just have to have quiet. Some scenes call for still concentration and I need to go there in my head and live in the scene and moment. Any sound can be distracting. I always use music to form my mood, though. I do a lot of my plotting to music while I walk, and I make a playlist for every book. I have a few go-to bands and musicians that feel like my voice, too. The National and Greg Laswell show up on a lot of my playlists.
How do you come up with the titles to your books?
GS: What a great question! More often than not, the title is the first thing that comes to me. Sometimes even before the characters. I usually have a faint idea of the plot in my head and words will start to form. Hold My Breath just felt like the perfect marriage for speed swimmers, and Memphis had the right feel for both a title and a character, and I don’t think my boxing book could be anything but that. The Hard Count came along with the plotting. Everything about my hero’s life was challenging—hard. But he was so good and so strong, and the hard count in football is one of those things that, when done well, is a game changer. Nico Medina, my main character in that book, is the exact type of quarterback and human who can change games.
