Q: What were you doing when you found out that your NaNo-novel made it to the Amazon Breakthrough Novelist Semifinals?
C.P. Dotson: I was actually asleep. My husband checked the site around 2 AM and woke me up with the news. My response was, "That's freaking hilarious." I didn't expect Thirst to make the first cut, let alone make the semifinals.
Lisa Koosis: I work from home, so I was at my desk getting ready to start the day. Since the Quarter-finalist notifications hadn’t arrived until late on the day they’d been promised, I wasn’t really expecting an early announcement for the semis. I decided to head over to the ABNA online forums anyway, just to see if anyone had yet received a notification, and was surprised to find a post with a link to the Semifinalist announcement. At that point, having not received an email, I figured I hadn’t made the cut. Then I opened the list, and got a really nice surprise: my name and novel as part of the top 100.
Q: What is the novel about?
C.P. Dotson: A vampire, Annie, and her therapist. Annie's had some relationship problems, and while she needs her therapist to help her through her depression, she also struggles with the desire to eat him.
Lisa Koosis: Heart of the City is my 2007 NaNo-novel. It’s essentially a science-gone-wrong, end-of-the-world story. The novel follows Eva and Charlie, two survivors of a world decimated by the Phoenix particle, Charlie’s own creation.
This was never actually supposed to be a novel. It started out as an extremely short story for a contest, the theme of which was post-apocalypse. It never really worked as a short story though. My critique partner at the time told me that she saw the premise much more suited to a novel than a 2000-word short. I shrugged it off at the time, but it was September, so already I’d started to think about the upcoming NaNoWriMo. By November 1st I’d decided to go for it, and Heart of the City was born.
Q: How much revision and editing did you do before submitting this manuscript to the contest?
C.P. Dotson: I spent December and part of January revising. I cut some scenes and added others, smoothed rough patches of prose. Thirst didn't need as much of a total rewrite as some of my other stories, but I think my six weeks of editing helped make it a better book.
Lisa Koosis: I found out about this year’s ABNA competition back in November, so I knew I had two solid months to work on revision. I worked on the edits pretty much every day for those two months. Mostly it involved cleaning up the writing and fleshing out a scene here and there. Otherwise, Heart of the City remains pretty much the novel it was on November 30, 2007 after another whirlwind NaNoWriMo.
Anna Scott Graham has also advanced from the Quarterfinals to the Semis!
You can learn more about her novel here, and read her 2008 Daily Q&A here.
C. P. Dotson lives and works in South Korea, a country sadly lacking in vampires.
Lisa Koosis has been a compulsive NaNoWriMo participant since 2003, with six completed novel manuscripts to show for it. Her short stories have appeared in a number of publications, including Susurrus Press’s Neverlands and Otherwheres anthology, Murky Depths, Not One of Us, and Meadowhawk Press’s Touched by Wonder anthology. She lives in New York with her husband and two misbehaved cats.
