Triple Threat Blog Tour - Top Ten Things Author Megan Miranda Loves About Hysteria

Welcome to our stop along the Bloomsbury Teens Triple Threat Blog Tour! I've (Jana) already participated in this tour on my own blog for Dance of Shadows, and am super excited to have Megan Miranda here today for a special guest post, Broke and Bookish style. Megan knows how much we love our top ten lists here, and has decided to participate with her own list on the top ten things she loves about her book! I'm petty sure she will inspire you to dash away from your computer and run to the nearest bookstore. Thanks for stopping by, Megan!

Top Ten Things Author Megan Miranda Loves About Hysteria

1. The first line. “My mother hid the knife block” was the prompt I gave myself to set the tone and get started. I had a very vague sense of the premise, but a pretty good idea of characters. Surprisingly, the line made it all the way through to the final draft.

2. The relationship between Mallory & Colleen. Colleen may have been my favorite character ever, and the bond between the two of them is the element I love most about the story.

3. The cover. Both the US and the UK versions. I adore them both. And even though they are very different, they both fit the story so well.

4. Reid. I like him a lot. So does Mallory.

5. The combining of past and present storylines. This wasn’t something I set out to do at the start of the book, but it became obvious that what had started out as a series of flashbacks was becoming a story of its own, and that both storylines would, eventually, intersect. I loved that moment when I realized how it would happen… and what it would mean.

6. Using familiar settings. I grew up in NJ and spent a lot of time at the shore each summer, which is where the story begins. But I also went to a boarding school (though not in NH, like this story, and my school was nothing like Monroe), and spent a lot of family vacations hiking in NH. I combined the two a bit (and upped the creep factor) to make the second setting.

7. There’s a reference to an Edgar Allan Poe story in the first chapter. I loved reading his stories when I was in high school, and there’s definitely an influence from it in here.

8. My favorite line of the book. Sometimes, when I’m writing, I randomly write a line where I stop and think, okay, that pretty much captures the story. Again, I was thrilled when it made it into the final draft. This is the line(s): 

“So I let him whisper in my ear and put his hands on my hips. And I listened to him list all the ways in which I was slowly killing him. None of which turned out to be the actual way that I killed him.”

9. Writing the “unknown” factor: I love elements that are unknown in books—where you’re unsure if something is really happening, in some paranormal way, or if it’s only happening in the character’s mind… and it was really fun to be on the writing-end of it this time.

10. The ending. Without giving anything away, I’m happy with where all the characters end up. And I hope others will be happy about it, too 


About the Author: Megan Miranda

Megan is a scientist - turned - teacher - turned - stay-at-home-mom - turned - writer. She is not nearly as indecisive as she sounds. She lives near Charlotte, North Carolina, where she volunteers as an MIT Educational Counselor, does the mom thing by day, and writes by night.

Her first novel, FRACTURE, was published in January 2012 by Walker/Bloomsbury. HYSTERIA, a YA psychological thriller, will be published in February 2013. VENGEANCE, a companion/sequel to FRACTURE, will follow in 2014.