Exclusive Interview with Stacey Kade (Author of the Ghost and the Goth Series)

After falling in love with our guilty pleasure book The Ghost and the Goth and obtaining a copy of Queen of the Dead (the sequel) we quickly sent out a few questions for Stacey to answer!

RTR: What is your guilty pleasure?

Stacey: Curling up on the couch and watching Supernatural reruns. I've already seen all of them, and most of them more than once!

RTR: If you could have lunch with anyone, alive or dead, who would it be and why?

Stacey: Well, I'm certainly not going to pass up the opportunity to have lunch with someone who was dead, that's a pretty rare opportunity! :) And for the purposes of this question, I'm assuming that he or she will have been reincarnated and therefore able to enjoy lunch rather than being a ghost and/or a corpse because that would be a little...ewww. :)

In that case, I'm going to choose Jane Austen, assuming she'd be willing to dine with me. She is one of my favorite authors and based on the letters she left behind (the ones that her sister, Cassandra, did not destroy for privacy reasons) she was awesomely funny--sarcastic and sharp. Though my guess is she'd probably make fun of what I was wearing.

RTR: Super-Spies or Bow-Ties?

Stacey: Um, Super-Spies? I think?

RTR: What advice would you give to aspiring authors?

Stacey: Read as much as you can, and read what you love.

--Keep writing. Make yourself get to the end of the draft. Writing is revising (I didn't make that up. It's a quote, but I can't remember from who!)

--Write to entertain yourself first.

RTR:  What're your top five favorite songs on your iPod?

Stacey: Oooh. They change all the time, but at the moment:

How Soon Is Now? by T.A.T.U (It's a cover of The Smiths song. Some of you will recognize it as the Charmed theme song.)
Piece of Me by Britney Spears
If I Die Young by The Band Perry
E.T. by Katy Perry
Jar of Hearts by Christina Perri

RTR: If you could be a superhero, what would your name be and what power would you have?
Stacey: Oh, I so wouldn't want to be a superhero. So much responsibility! And impossible choices. How do you choose how to save if you can't save everyone and most likely, you wouldn't be able to do that? That kind of thing would keep me up at night!

But that being said, I'd like the power to stop time. Just freeze everyone and everything in place. As far as a name, is Time-Stopper too obvious? :) Has a nice allusion to "Crime Stopper." Or maybe something cool like Alarmyst or something, lol. You know, alarm, like alarm clock...oh, never mind. It's a good thing I'm not responsible for naming superheros! 

RTR: If you had Will's power would you consider it a gift or a curse?

Stacey: That's a tough one. I'm not sure it's ever just one or another, you know? I think every gift, no matter what it is, comes with downsides. Now, granted, those downsides may not ever outweigh the overall benefit of the gift, but there are likely moments when it feels as though they do. So, I would say gift. But I also think at Will's age, I would have definitely said curse. :)

RTR: How do you come up with all the different ghost characters (personalities, deaths, etc.)?

Stacey: I have no idea! :) They were a lot of fun, though. Um, my mom would probably say I was always a fairly morbid kid, so figuring out the various deaths wasn't all that difficult. As for their personalities, I just wanted them to seem as real and alive, so to speak, as the breathing characters in the book. Oh, and they had to be troublesome. :) That was key. But I felt that was pretty realistic, given that they'd been trapped for months or years in the in-between place without much hope of ever getting to the light.

RTR: Who do you relate to most in your books?
Stacey: Of the two main characters, Will. Definitely. But there are pieces of me in Alona, too. Her desire to control things to the nth degree and getting upset when they don't go the way she planned--that is very much me. 

RTR: Which book did you have more fun writing, The Ghost and the Goth or Queen of the Dead? Why?

Stacey: I'm not sure I can compare the two experiences. They were so completely different. I wrote G&G on a whim, just to see if I could do it and had a total blast in doing so. With Queen of the Dead, it was harder because I was worried about being consistent with the previous book while still providing a new story. But I learned so much with the rewrites on Queen of the Dead. That was its own kind of fun and a confidence-builder, if that makes sense.

RTR:  How did you come up with the ideas that The Order of the Guardianship are centered around?

Stacey: I'm a huge fan of Ghostbusters? :) Just kidding (though I totally am a fan--I challenge anyone to a quoting contest with that movie.) I knew that for the world in the books to be realistic, there couldn't be just one attitude toward ghosts. Not everyone could be concerned with getting the ghosts into their afterlife. There had to be people looking at it from the other side, seeing ghosts as something frightening and harmful to those who are still living. 

Great answers! Thanks for the interview, Stacey!