Every Thursday as we countdown to Swear by Nina Malkin, we’ll be bringing you part of our Q&A with her — including our questions, YOUR questions & some flash questions. Here is the fourth & final installment before Swear hits stores on Tuesday:
Reader Question: Do you make everything up or do you use real people and places for your books? — Rosemary
SWOON, the town, is actually based on a Connecticut town one of my best friends lived in for a while, and I totally jacked her house for Dice! As far as characters, I’ve never consciously used someone from my life for my fiction. That said, reality has a way of sneaking into fantasy — the conscious and the subconscious are cool like that — so people who know me and know my stuff have occasionally pointed out that a character is “just like So-and-So.”
Reader Question: Will you be doing a tour or being a guest author anywhere? — Lisa H
You mean beyond this awesome presence on Novel Novice? (All hail Novel Novice!) Jump on Parajunkee’s View on 9/22 to find Sinclair Youngblood Powers competing in the Supernatural Smackdown. Plus, I recently got hooked up with three other writers also published by Simon Pulse, and we’re going to try to guest-blog and do contests with each other in the coming months. They are Kristi Cook, author of Haven, Kelly Keaton of Darkness Becomes Her fame, and Christine Johnson, creator of Claire du Lune and its just-released sequel, Nocturne — check them out. Still, I confess I’m just not the hugest presence in the Blog-o-Sphere, so if there’s a site you love that you’d like to see me on, let me know and I’ll reach out.
Novel Novice Question: As with SWOON, you definitely dive into some very cool legends/folklore/etc. for your story. Tell us a bit about the ones featured in SWEAR and what sort of research you did while writing!
In some ways, SWEAR is much more of a traditional ghost story than SWOON. There’s a creepy old house full of restive spirits—some fun and some purely malevolent, and some complicated and sad and unfortunate. Early Hampford, for example, had me delving into the Roaring Twenties. Fun, fun, fun! Then, as Dice accepts that she can no longer avoid her power and begins to embrace it, there was a whole other avenue of research into the mythology of various cultures. Only honestly? I’d rather make stuff up than research, one reason why Edgar Allan Crow is one of my favorite characters in SWEAR!
Flash Question: Secret talent?
I wish I had a cool oral talent, like a whistle they could hear in China or tying the cherry stem in a knot, but I can’t even roll my tongue (a genetic flaw, sadly). However, I can fit my entire fist in my mouth.
Thanks again to Nina for answering all our questions over the last four weeks! Be sure to check out Swear in stores on Tuesday!
Novel Novice 
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