Guest Post & Giveaway with Jessica Warman

Please help me welcome Jessica Warman, the author of one of my favorite YA books, Between to A Buckeye Girl Reads.She's here today talking about her favorite kinds of mysteries and giving away an ARC of her newest book, Beautiful Lies!             

When I was asked to write a guest post about the kind of mysteries I like to write, I got pretty excited.  I think I’m in the minority in the sense that I really like mysteries that remain somewhat unsolved.  If you’ve read Between, this might surprise you – the mystery wraps itself up pretty nicely in that one.  But my next book, Beautiful Lies, explores much more of a gray area.  It’s not that the mystery isn’t “solved” at the end – because it pretty much is – but it also leaves plenty of questions for the reader to ponder once they’ve finished the book. 

             

 When a mystery has a tidy resolution, it’s so much easier to put the story down and forget about it.  I like mysteries that leave the reader haunted by the possibilities.  Even if what happened seems obvious, I love it when there’s just the slightest hint (or more) of doubt, because that’s how things work so often in real life.  I want the stories I write to resonate with readers, to keep them thinking about the plot and characters long after they’ve finished the book.  I want them to be pretty sure they have it all figured out, while keeping things fuzzy enough that they can never be 100% sure.  It’s definitely more challenging to pull this off than a normal, straightforward, connect-the-dots puzzle, but the payoff is so great that I don’t think I’ll ever stop trying. 

           

 To give you a better sense of exactly what I’m talking about, here’s an amazing example of a real-life unsolved mystery that I think is creepy as all get out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyatlov_Pass_incident This is the kind of thing I’m talking about – there are so many possibilities, but it’s impossible for investigators to ever be 100% certain about their conclusions.  I made a huge effort to accomplish something similar with Beautiful Lies, and I cannot wait to see readers’ reactions.  I know it might frustrate some readers, and I understand why they might feel that way – but I think that, if they give themselves some time to hang out in that space of uncertainty, they might find that the possibilities are exciting precisely because there’s no way to ever be sure of their accuracy.  It’s the not knowing that can drive you nuts, but it can do so in the best way possible – at least, that’s my hope.  

Where to find Jessica: 

 Website

Twitter

To enter the giveaway to win an ARC of Beautiful Lies, just leave a blog comment and fill out the Rafflecopter stuff! Giveaway is open till July 9, 2012 @ 11pm est. Please be aware that this is  an Arc and it may take awhile to reach you and may be an ebook.

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Rachel and Alice are an extremely rare kind of identical twins—so identical that even their aunt and uncle, whom they’ve lived with since their parents passed away, can’t tell them apart. But the sisters are connected in a way that goes well beyond their surfaces: when one experiences pain, the other exhibits the exact same signs of distress. So when one twin mysteriously disappears, the other immediately knows something is wrong—especially when she starts experiencing serious physical traumas, despite the fact that nobody has touched her. As the search commences to find her sister, the twin left behind must rely on their intense bond to uncover the truth. But is there anyone around her she can trust, when everyone could be a suspect? And ultimately, can she even trust herself? Master storyteller Jessica Warman will keep readers guessing when everything they see—and everything they are told—suddenly becomes unreliable in this page-turning literary thriller