Hey peeps! I've got a guest today. Say Hello to Jessica Arnold~
It’s so nice to have you visit my blog, Jessica. Can you tell me a little about your writing journey? How you got to this point?
Great to be here! The first word that I can think of to describe my writing journey is loooonnnnggggg. Writing, querying, revising, submitting, and editing (and editing and editing) The Looking Glass has taken several years! I was fortunate enough to sign with a great agent, Carrie Pestritto, who has believed in this book from the beginning and worked tirelessly to help make it happen. Getting to this point has required persistence, patience (read: “gritting my teeth and waiting despite my impatience”), and a touch of insanity. But it’s been an amazing journey and well worth all the effort.
The Looking Glass looks awesome. Can you give me an idea what it’s about?
The Looking Glass is about Alice, a fourteen-year-old girl who is visiting a “haunted” hotel with her family. After hitting her head on the bottom of the pool, Alice wakes up in the hotel lobby with no clue how she got there. And, when she happens to glance into a mirror, she sees her body being rushed to the hospital. Trapped, alone, and only able to see the real hotel through the mirrors, Alice realizes that the place she’s in is nothing more than a copy, and she herself is no better. The real Alice is in a coma.
As Alice explores her prison, she realizes that the hotel she’s stuck in isn’t an exact copy of the modern one. Everything here is older, and everywhere there are portraits of the same woman—an actress named Elizabeth Blackwell. When Alice discovers Elizabeth’s bloodstained diary, she finds herself delving into the hotel’s horrifying history, a never explained murder, and a curse from the 1800s that might still be intact. And if Alice can’t find a way to break the curse before it’s too late, her real body, still comatose in the hospital, will die.
The book has such a beautiful cover. How did it come to be and what it does it represent?
The cover IS amazing. Thankfully I didn’t have much to do with the actual design. My publisher asked me how I imagined my cover, and I came up with something about mirrors and glass and … probably not the most illustrative ideas. When I received a mock-up of this design, I was over the moon in love with it. I think of the cover as the starting scene of the book—Alice unconscious in the pool, just fallen under the curse that puts her life in jeopardy.Do you have any particular themes in your writing that you love?
In The Looking Glass, I worked in particular with the theme of reflection. Mirrors are major players in the story—and play a huge part in deciding the fate of both Elizabeth and Alice. Beyond just mirrors, the accuracies and distortions in the way we perceive ourselves is one of my favourite concepts to explore. What “flaws” do we endlessly obsess over? And what aspects of ourselves do we try to ignore?
Is there anything else you’d like readers to know about you or The Looking Glass?
My website is www.iamjessicaarnold.com and I tweet @jess_s_arnold. I love digital friends, so feel free to say hi!
Thank you so much for stopping by my blog, Jessica. Good luck with the tour!
Thanks for having me! It’s a pleasure!
~~~
Find the diary, break the curse, step through The Looking Glass!
Fifteen-year-old Alice Montgomery wakes up in the lobby of the B&B where she has been vacationing with her family to a startling discovery: no one can see or hear her. The cheap desk lights have been replaced with gas lamps and the linoleum floor with hardwood and rich Oriental carpeting. Someone has replaced the artwork with eerie paintings of Elizabeth Blackwell, the insane actress and rumored witch who killed herself at the hotel in the 1880s. Alice watches from behind the looking glass where she is haunted by Elizabeth Blackwell. Trapped in the 19th-century version of the hotel, Alice must figure out a way to break Elizabeth’s curse—with the help of Elizabeth's old diary and Tony, the son of a ghost hunter who is investigating the haunted B&B— before she becomes the inn's next victim.
ABOUT JESSICA ARNOLD:
Jessica Arnold writes YA, codes ebooks, and is currently a graduate student in publishing at Emerson College in Boston. She spends most of her time in class or work or slogging through the homework swamp. If she has a spare moment, she’s always up for a round of Boggle. Given the opportunity, Jessica will pontificate at length on the virtues of the serial comma, when and where to use an en dash, and why the semicolon is the best punctuation mark pretty much ever.
Author Links: Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads
Giveaway Information: (OPEN INT.) – Winner will be drawn May 9, 2014
· Four (4) winners will receive an ebook copy of The Looking Glass by Jessica Arnold (INT)
· One (1) winner will receive an ebook copy of The Looking Glass by Jessica Arnold AND a $10 Amazon Gift Card or B&N Gift Card – Winner’s Choice (INT)
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