Name: Nicole M. Wolverton
Novel Title: A Misfortune of Lake Monsters Genre: young adult horror/speculative Release Date: July 2, 2024 Website/Platform Name: www.nicolewolverton.com Contact Information: [email protected] 1. Can you give me a brief overview of your novel? A fun compliment I received early on about A Misfortune of Lake Monsters is that it is like Jaws and Clown In a Cornfield had a baby in the Welcome To Night Vale podcast. The gist: A high school senior is trapped in a future she doesn’t want when her family taps her to take over their generations-old legacy of secretly impersonating her rural town’s (very fake) lake monster—but when she discovers a very real lake monster with a taste for human flesh, she must reveal the well-guarded secret to her friends in a bid to save the town. 2. What inspired you to write it? The spark for A Misfortune of Lake Monsters initially happened when I was a kid, doing my least favorite household chore: washing dishes. There’s a small lake about a mile behind my childhood home, so I’d stand at the sink, developing dishpan hands, daydreaming about what might lurk below the water. Hey, it was a small town without much to do, and washing dishes is boring! Quite a few years later, as an adult the idea resurfaced—and at the time I had been reading a lot about cryptid theory, and the full concept for the plot snapped into place. 3. Tell me about the main characters in your book. What makes them unique or relatable? Lemon Ziegler, elected to be the new lake monster impersonator, and Troy Ramirez, one of her best friends who just happens to be in love with her and struggling with his own future, are the main characters in A Misfortune of Lake Monsters. Lemon wants so much out of her life—something more than what she thinks small town living can give her. That really resonates with me. I grew up in a small town (Lemon’s town of Devil’s Elbow is very loosely based on my own hometown) and never felt like I fit… and I was determined to leave as soon as I could to find a place where I could be more myself (and I did). But more than that, she has the incredible weight on her shoulders of what her family expects of her—both in terms of fulfilling the family legacy but also expectations around gender. Troy also faces gender expectations and pressure around his future but in a very different way. Whether you’re a teenager or an adult, I think we all struggle to find ways to have what we want in the face of what others think we should do or be. 4. What themes or messages do you hope readers take away from your novel? I hope what is coming across is that you absolutely can find a way to get what you want and be who you really are, and do better for yourself than the limit of the expectations put upon you by others. There are also themes of toxic masculinity, environmentalism, and friendship that I hope very loudly come through. 5. How did you approach the writing process for this book? The same way I approach everything: with aggressive organization. I am a full-on plotter when it comes to novels. I might get an idea and free-flow write the opening scene or first chapter, but then I immediately feel compelled to plot out the entire story, start to finish. The popular term is zero drafting: basically telling yourself the bones of a story. From there I focus on fleshing out characters and setting, rearrange pieces of the plot, etc... only then do I start writing. Of course, in the case of A Misfortune of Lake Monsters, there was a research component thrown into the mix before I felt comfortable plotting. I wanted to know more about cryptids, about existing lake monster legends, and I even made a visit to Loch Ness in Scotland so I could have a good visual about what a lake of that size looks like, how the water moves, how the trees shadow the shoreline—and I took a boat out on the loch to look for Nessie… so Ziegler’s Ferry Tours owes its existence to cruise and tour business that operates at Loch Ness. 6. Do you have any writing rituals or habits that you follow? I used to just write wherever I could, but like a lot of people during the earliest parts of the COVID-19 pandemic, I worked from home—and while my dining room table is a fine place to work, I converted my guest room into a home office… and swiftly filled it with a range of strange and spooky art. I’ve found that having oddball things around me is inspiring and motivating, so I do the bulk of my writing in my home office. My “Lake Monsters of America” poster is directly visible over the left of my dual monitor set-up! Other favorite things in my office: a 3D, anatomically correct, and very life-like heart that appears to be dripping with fresh, glistening blood and a plastic anatomical model with removeable internal organs. Hey, the rituals of horror writers are usually a little strange! 7. Were there any challenges you faced while writing this novel? How did you overcome them? I love to write dialogue, so to give myself an extra challenge I imbued Ike Zieger—Lemon’s grandfather—with a very particular way of speaking. Ike’s speech patterns are modeled on my own grandfather, who was a farmer for most of his life in the rural Pennsylvania town where I grew up. My grandfather was very quiet but very opinionated, so Ike also had to be a man of strong opinions that were mostly left unvoiced until he felt it necessary—but there’s also a specific cadence to the words and as well as an accent and word choice that took me a while to get right. It was a lot of reading it aloud, tweaking, reading it aloud, tweaking, putting it away for a few weeks and then reading it again until it felt good. It was also a little spending time with my grandfather again, which was pretty strange and really fun. 8. What advice do you have for aspiring authors who are working on their first book? The difference between a published author and an unpublished author is that the published author never gave up. What people like to read—and what those in the position to acquire your work like—is subjective. There are all sorts of reasons why your work might not get picked up, and it often has more to do with external forces than with the quality of your work… so keep trying, keep writing, keep querying, keep submitting. That said, writers should never truly be satisfied with their own work. I don’t know a single good writer who believes that anything they write is gold and that there’s not room for one more tweak, one more editorial pass, one more revision. We should strive for perfection but also have enough sense to recognize when something is ready to be queried and submitted. 9. Can you share any upcoming projects or future plans in the world of writing and literature? I have two short stories acquired for anthologies in 2025, as well as two creative nonfiction works that are slated for publication either later this year or early next year. I’m always tinkering with a next novel, as well—and the one I’m currently working on, another young adult horror manuscript—is quite dark and, strangely, set entirely in a grocery store. During my undergrad years I took a course called The City and Detective Fiction, and one thing that has always stuck with me is a discussion the class had about locked-room mysteries. I loved the idea of everything happening in a single, locked-down location, so I’m adapting it to horror in my own way. I’m having a great time with it and hope it finds a good publication home! 10. Is there a particular moment or review from a reader that stands out to you and made your journey as an author more meaningful? Last spring I was finishing up a masters degree in horror and storytelling, and I was lucky enough to, as my final class, take a course taught by the very fabulous young adult speculative writer Nova Ren Suma. I’ve read all her books and think she’s an incredible writer. Nova is simply good people, too, and she’s very supportive and kind—and so when it came time to solicit author blurbs for A Misfortune of Lake Monsters, I was so grateful when she agreed to give the book a read and offer advance praise. Having her be part of the process of bringing A Misfortune of Lake Monsters into the world means a great deal to me since she was also such an integral part of earning my masters degree. 11. Finally, if there's one thing you'd like your readers to remember about you and your work, what would it be? There’s a reason the logo on my website includes the words, “fear enthusiast. writer. strange bird.” I’m always absolutely in for fear and strangeness—and I mostly write about the horror of isolated spaces in rural or suburban settings… and I write what I know…. or at least what terrifies me! 😊
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