Here we are, about to head into our first NaNo weekend! Keep the energy up! To help get you through the weekends in November, we’ll feature a book every Friday that written during NaNoWriMo. These authors did you — so can you!
This week, we’re talking about Losing Faith by Denise Jaden. Losing Faith was written during NaNoWriMo 2007 and released by Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster in September 2010.
A terrible secret. A terrible fate.
When Brie’s sister, Faith, dies suddenly, Brie’s world falls apart. As she goes through the bizarre and
devastating process of mourning the sister she never understood and barely even liked, everything in her life seems to spiral farther and farther off course. Her parents are a mess, her friends don’t know how to
treat her, and her perfect boyfriend suddenly seems anything but.As Brie settles into her new normal, she encounters more questions than closure: Certain facts about the way Faith died just don’t line up. Brie soon uncovers a dark and twisted secret about Faith’s final night…a secret that puts her own life in danger.
Check out the book trailer:
Denise has some goodies on her website to check out:
Also, if you explore her website you can find “secret passages” to more fun information, including the original first page of Losing Faith written during NaNoWriMo 2007.
(HINT: Find the NaNoWriMo 2007 image and you’ll find the hidden “top secret” image and from there, you’ll find more hidden images to click.)
We were lucky enough to be able to ask Denise some questions. Here’s what she had to say:
1) NaNo is a large time committment. Did you give up any habits or vices to win NaNo?
Not really. The first year I warned my friends and family not to even talk to me during November. I’ve become much more relaxed since then. Now, I generally get up half an hour earlier, pound out a thousand words before I do anything else, and then fit another thousand in at some other point during the day.
2) What was your favorite part of NaNo?
It’s a huge accomplishment, and I love to know that I can do something that would normally take me a year (+) in a month if I really set my mind to it.
3) Did you outline ahead of time or make up the story as you went along? Or somewhere in the middle?
For NaNo, I have to outline ahead of time. That’s not to say I haven’t strayed from my outlines, but I at least have to have a clear idea of where I plan to go with the story before I start. Some days my muse doesn’t show herself, and on those days, it’s nice to have an outline to work from.
4) Tell us one funny thing that happened while you were writing Losing Faith during NaNo.
One thing people find quite interesting is that Tessa was not in my outline for Losing Faith. As I was writing, it felt like Brie was spending too much time alone. I wanted to bring an unlikely friend in for her. Tessa showed up and took over every scene she was in!
5) What happened after November? Did you shove the manuscript out of sight for a while or did you jump right into editing? Or did you have more writing to do?
I usually take December away from my NaNo manuscript and come back to it in January. I always have several manuscripts at various stages of revision, so I’ll go through one of those during December.
6) Your best piece of advice for other NaNo’ers?
It doesn’t have to be good. You’ll be surprised what you come up with and the directions your writing might take if you just push through and do the writing, even if you don’t feel like it. It’s only a month. What do you have to lose?
7) Do you still participate in NaNo? Are you this year?Yes! I’m planning to participate this year, but at the last minute, it seems like the project I was planning to work on still needs some outline tweaking. So I’m still a little up in the air of what exactly I will write, but I will definitely write!
You can find Losing Faith at Amazon (paperback and Kindle), Barnes and Noble (paperback and Nook), Books-A-Million (paperback and ebook), or your local book store.
Also look for Denise Jaden’s next book, Never Enough, coming in 2012.
For the comments: Have you read Losing Faith? Did you know it was a NaNo book? How’s the writing going? Are weekends easier or harder for you to keep up the momentum?
Novel Novice 
Great advice! I didn’t realize Losing Faith was a NANO novel. Don’t Breathe a Word is a half-nano novel (something like 30K words), and I’m bound and determined to do a whole NANO novel this time. I’m looking forward to Never Enough!