Clarissa Johal: Tangled Tuesday-My Writing Process Blog Tour: #amwriting #paranormal #gothichorror

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Tangled Tuesday-My Writing Process Blog Tour: #amwriting #paranormal #gothichorror

I was invited to join in on the My Writing Process Blog Tour by the lovely fantasy writer, Carol Browne. Please take a peek at her blog as she writes good stories.







What are you currently working on? 

I was just offered a contract by Permuted Press for my paranormal horror novel, VOICES. I’ll keep readers posted on a release date for that on my website. I’m working on another paranormal gothic horror, THE ISLAND. I expect to be done with that by the end of the year.

How does your work differ from others of its genre? 

I write gothic horror and paranormal. I've had several reviewers say that my story lines are new and different, which makes me very happy to hear! I don't do romance, which seems to define paranormal these days, and I don't do gore and extreme violence, the calling card of many horror novels. So there you go.

Why do you write what you do? 

I write what the characters tell me to write. I'm at their mercy, so to speak. I was pulled into the paranormal genre by accident. The characters of Lucas and Cronan (from BETWEEN) came to me with complete back story while I was working on a YA fantasy series. They wouldn't go away and they didn't belong in young adult fantasy literature. So, I stopped working on the series and started on BETWEEN, a story of the paranormal. My novel STRUCK followed, as did VOICES and THE ISLAND, which I'm working on now. I don't think I'll go back to writing YA fantasy. I've been pulled into the Otherworld permanently and the ideas come faster than I can write them down.

How does your writing process work?

At the risk of sounding odder than a writer should, characters will pop into my head and start telling me their story. Some appear in my dreams, some just hit me full-force and I'll start writing. It usually takes me a month of furious writing time to finish the first draft, and a year to do edits and research to get the details right. 

Thank you for stopping by! I've tagged these two authors to continue the tour. If they don't have their writing process post up now, they will very soon. Meanwhile, please take a look at their blogs...

Annie Anthony
H.L Carpenter
Holly Rutan

4 comments:

HL Carpenter said...

Thanks for tagging us, Clarissa! We'll have our post up later this week.

So glad you have another contract! Looking forward to the next book.

Clarissa Johal, Author said...

Looking forward to reading your post. I don't know how you write as a duo, I don't think I could do that!

Heather R. Holden said...

Ooh, how exciting about Voices! Looking forward to learning more about that in the future. :)

Also, I'm a huge fan of horror, but not the gory kind, so I think it's cool how your own stories don't include that kind of thing!

And you definitely don't sound odd to me at all, since characters pop into my head all the time, too! ;)

Clarissa Johal, Author said...

Oh good, Heather! I'm not the only one, then :)