Ohana Reads: Blog Tour: Mirage by Tracy Clark

Hello and welcome to the Mirage by Tracy Clark Blog Tour! Today I have for you a brief interview with the author herself, as well as a giveaway for you to enter! I hope you enjoy, and good luck with the giveaway!

Mirage by Tracy Clark

Release Date: July 5th, 2016

Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers

Format: Hardcover, 272 pages

Description from GoodReads:

Seventeen-year-old Ryan Poitier Sharpe is a gutsy, outgoing girl who spends her summer days hurling herself out of planes at her parents’ skydiving center in the Mojave Desert. Fiercely independent and willing to take risks, she challenges those around her to live life fully. But after a brush with death, Ryan is severely altered—she’s not the same thrill-seeking girl she once was and seems to be teetering on the edge of psychosis. As her relationships crumble and her life unravels, Ryan must fight the girl she’s become—or lose herself forever—in this eerie and atmospheric thriller.

Your first published book was a YA fantasy, Mirage is a YA thriller, how did it feel to change things up? What did you have to change or do while writing Mirage that you did when writing The Light Key Trilogy?

I wrote MIRAGE in the summer of 2013 while I was editing book one (SCINTILLATE) and drafting the next book in The Light Key Trilogy. Though one is fantasy/paranormal and one is a thriller, they’re both set in contemporary worlds and they both had elements of danger and mystery so, surprisingly, there wasn’t a huge change-up in my writing. What I found more challenging, was hopping back and forth between my different characters and their individual voices. Cora and Ryan are VERY different from one another.

Something about me: I’ve never been good at taking advice. Hear that drum? No? That’s because it’s in my head and it’s MY drum and I’m a dancing fool! One piece of advice I’ve received from published friends is that I should stick to one genre, develop a readership, and feed that readership what they expect from me. Not bad business advice, but I’m not sure it’s the best creative advice.

I don’t like being told to get in my box and stay in it.

The thing is; I need to feel a quickening about an idea in order to commit to it. I need the idea to light me up and make me stutter rambling sentences to my besties as I try to explain just how freaking bitchen/wonderful/rockin this new idea is. I cannot make myself write an entire book in a particular genre just because I’ve been published in that genre before. I know that might make me less marketable.

Or… or maybe it makes me more interesting. I don’t know. . .

All I truly know is that writers are creative creatures and to deny the lovely idea-bouquet that drops in my lap for the sake of marketing is to stomp all over that bouquet. Sad to have crushed petals of creativity under my boots.

Since I began writing I’ve written full novels in these YA genres: Fantasy, contemporary, dystopian, paranormal, thriller, and historical. I can’t regret any of those efforts for what they’ve taught me and for the joy I had in writing them. I’m a writer because I love it and I’d rather spend time on projects that I’m fired up about regardless of genre. After all this, it shouldn’t surprise you that I have an idea for a YA sci-fi and an adult romance series. *sniffs bouquet* ☺

Tracy Clark is a young-adult writer because she believes teens deserve to know how much they matter and that regardless of what they’re going through, they aren’t alone. In other words, she writes books for her teen self.

She grew up a “Valley Girl” in Southern California but now lives in her home state of Nevada, in a small town at the base of the Sierra Foothills. Her two children teach her the art of distraction and are a continuous source of great dialogue.

Tracy was the recipient of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) Work in Progress Grant. A two-time participant in the prestigious Nevada SCBWI Mentor Program. Tracy is a private pilot, an irredeemable dreamer, and a spicy-chocolate connoisseur.