Hey Book Nerds and welcome back to my blog! I am super excited for this post and am thrilled to share it with all of you! I was recently contacted by adult author, Tiffany McDaniel to do an author interview and promote her book. And I definitely couldn’t resist! Her book sounds phenomenal and she is such a sweet author. So now without further ado, let’s get straight into this interview!
Q: How did you get into writing?
Tiffany: Writing is the earliest thing I remember doing as a child without being told to do so. It was something I was drawn to do, an urge to write stories, read stories, and to live with stories. As a child, I started out writing poetry, short stories, and plays. I began the novelist’s journey at eighteen when I wrote my first novel
Q: Have you always been a reader? Did reading influence your love for writing?
Tiffany: I was introduced to reading just about from birth by my mother who would read nightly to me, as she did to my sisters as well. Reading was something that was established in my house as being important and meaningful to one’s evolution and education. Every night I would go into my closet where the books were kept and choose a large stack for my mother to read to me. When I was old enough to read myself I gravitated toward the R.L. Stine Goosebumps and Fear Street series during my coming-of-age. To answer the second part of your question, I wouldn’t say reading influenced my writing. Writing was and has always been an innate desire. For me, reading falls second to writing.
Q: Tell us a bit about your book. Genre, characters, plot, etc.
Tiffany: The Summer that Melted Everything is literary fiction, and could also be considered Midwest Literature. The story is about an eighty-four-year-old man named Fielding Bliss, who is looking back on his life during one summer in 1984 when he was thirteen-years-old and his father invited the devil to their small town called Breathed, Ohio. Who answers the invitation ends up being a boy in overalls and bruises. This boy’s arrival comes the first day of a hell-hot heat-wave that carries through the entire course of the summer. This is not just a story about the heat, but a story of everything that melted in that heat. Family, friendships, innocence, and even lives.
Q: Do you listen to music when you write? If so, do you have any favorite songs/playlists?
Tiffany: While I do have a suggested playlist of songs for the book that I give to book clubs, I don’t listen to music with lyrics as I’m writing because I find the lyrics compete with the words in my head. When I do listen to music while I’m writing it’s instrumental and nothing upbeat, but really music that would make you want to paint the walls black.
Q: Have you written any other books? Do you plan to?
Tiffany: I do have eight completed novels. I wrote my first novel when I was eighteen. I wouldn’t get a publishing contract until I was twenty-nine for The Summer that Melted Everything, which is my first published novel but my fifth or sixth novel written. For me it was an eleven year journey to publication full of rejection and perseverance. Publishing for the most part has been an uphill battle. That’s why I tell those who are aspiring for publication not to give up. It’s not something that happens overnight. It’s something you must work hard for. I hope to have my other eight novels published, but really that’s up to the publisher and up to the book sales of The Summer that Melted Everything. Readers really do determine an author’s career, which is why it’s so important for readers to begin that word-of-mouth and help to make sure an author continues to get published, because without reader support it can be harder for an author to convince the publisher to take on another book from them.
Q: What do you like to do in your free time? (when you’re not writing)
Tiffany: I love the outdoors so I enjoy spending time with nature and doing things such as gardening. I also enjoy baking and cooking. Art is a big part of my life and I like to work with all kinds of mediums from pastels and charcoals to paint and pencil. I also love film and anything to do with archaeology and the various sciences and studies of the universe.
Q: What are some of your favorite books?
Tiffany: Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury, We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, The Secret History by Donna Tartt, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. I also read lots of poetry. The poet, James Wright, is one of my favorite poets. His verse can hang the stars.
And that’s it for the interview! It was super fun and I really hope you enjoyed it! Now, I have a bit of information about Tiffany to share with all of you!
An Ohio native, Tiffany McDaniel’s writing is inspired by the rolling hills and buckeye woods of the land she knows. She is also a poet, playwright, screenwriter, and artist. She is the winner of the Not-the-Booker Prize for her debut novel, The Summer that Melted Everything, which was a Goodreads Choice Award double nominee.
Website link: CLICK HERE
About Her Book:
Fielding Bliss has never forgotten the summer of 1984: the year a heat wave scorched Breathed, Ohio. The year he became friends with the devil.
Sal seems to appear out of nowhere – a bruised and tattered thirteen-year-old boy claiming to be the devil himself answering an invitation. Fielding Bliss, the son of a local prosecutor, brings him home where he’s welcomed into the Bliss family, assuming he’s a runaway from a nearby farm town.
When word spreads that the devil has come to Breathed, not everyone is happy to welcome this self-proclaimed fallen angel. Murmurs follow him and tensions rise, along with the temperature as an unbearable heat wave rolls into town right along with him. As strange accidents start to occur, riled by the feverish heat, some in the town start to believe that Sal is exactly who he claims to be. While the Bliss family wrestle with their own personal demons, a fanatic drives the town to the brink of a catastrophe that will change this sleepy Ohio backwater forever.
Buy “The Summer That Melted Everything”: Amazon | Barnes And Noble | IndieBound
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Happy Reading
~Alaina
An Infinite Book World 