The Wilson Mooney, Almost Eighteen Book Trailer is Here!

Well it is finally time to unveil the book trailer for Wilson Mooney, Almost Eighteen. 

BUT FIRST...I want to say how grateful I am to all of the people who have supported me, helped me, pulled me off the floor when I was ready to give up.  Without naming names, (because I didn't ask permission to write their names on my blog) but you know who you are; it is you who I am grateful for. My friends, family, and followers of my blog, you are the people who make the journey to being published worth it. It is my hope that once my novels are out to the world, others will see what you saw! Thank you from the deepest and most gracious part of my heart...

ENJOY!

My debut novel, Wilson Mooney, Almost Eighteen was inspired by my insatiable crave to ignite, in my readers, memories and feelings of the first time they were spellbound by passionate new love. Tastily portrayed encounters and emotionally charged dialogue rightfully fuel the relationship between the complex; yet inexperienced Wilson and the guy of her dreams. The matrix of this love story will escort you through Wilson’s delicate and intimate journey of new discoveries, a lost family, and her first forbidden love.

Wilson Mooney, Almost Eighteen, a novel by Gretchen de la O. Book cover designed by Eunice Ortegón. Images used in this video production are licensed by DepositPhotos.com and 123rt.com. Music, My Deadly Romance, licensed by JewelBeat.com. 

It’s All in Our Interpretation

A car swerves and hits another car, spins out the back tire pops, and it rolls over several times before it slides to a stop in the middle of the street.  A group of three people saw the whole thing and guess what?  When you asked what happened, you’re going to get three different variations of the same accident.

Witness One:  Oh man, a Honda Odyssey was changing lanes and a little Toyota Prius was in it’s blind spot so the Honda had to swerve to avoid hitting the Toyota.  The dude in the Honda over corrected, swerved back and sideswiped the Buick Skylark in the slow lane, when the Odyssey bounced off the Buick, it spun out, the right back tire popped and it tumbled end over end before it scraped to a stop in the fast lane.

Witness Two:  This jerk was drunk driving when he swerved and hit this old piece of crap car.  The drunk guys car rolled over and burst into flames.  

Witness Three:  This old lady in a van almost wrecked into a car in the fast lane, then the van swerved over and hit this classic Buick.  The van went airborne.  It had to have flipped five times before it crunched to a stop against the cement center divide. 

Three witnesses, three different stories, but which one is right?  We could assume that each of these witnesses have the facts right?  Well you know what happens when we assume.  You make an (ASS) out of (U) and (ME).  

But wait each one of these people stood in the same place and saw it from the same angle, and at the same time.  What happened to their stories?  (I’ll tell you)

They each interpreted what they saw and made the story fit to their world or life.  They all had the ability to deduce what they saw, but then chose to tell the story their own way.

 

Did you know the same thing happens when we read a book?  Every book we read, we find a common thread that links our personal experiences to one of the characters.  It is just our nature.  It is the “something” that keeps you reading and projecting.  When I wrote Wilson Mooney, I had my own thoughts about Wilson, what type of person she was to me.   I felt I knew her flaws, strengths, weaknesses, and abilities like the back of my hand, yet when I had several people read it; they saw such a different character than I did.

 

How does that happen?  We all read the same manuscript and yet many of us saw her totally different.  Could it be that the little common thread that wove Wilson into our hearts also gave us the ability to connect with her at different levels?

 

Let me give you a little family background on Wilson’s character. Wilson never knew her father; her mother dumped her at her grandparents’ house at the ripe young age of eight, and never came back.  Wilson’s grandparents made the decision to send her to a prestigious boarding school in Northern California.  Ten years later, still in boarding school, both of her grandparents die within six months of each other.  Wilson is alone in the world.  A month shy of her eighteenth birthday, she falls for her government teacher.  And the rest, as they say, is history…  (Okay if I said more, I would give away the story)

With this tiny bit of information you might see her as a victim or broken, yet when writing the story of Wilson, I never “thought” of her as a victim.  To me she was a young woman who has had some tragic events in her life that has molded and shaped her into the person she was.  Sure I could empathize with her feelings of abandonment and the anger she must have felt towards her mother.  I could relate to the excitement and first love she has for Max or the pain she embodied when she was confronted with the reality of her family life.  Fear, exhilaration, anxiety and pleasure- all end up being the cars that belong to her, on the roller-coaster of her life.  And thank God, because what a boring story if she wasn’t multifaceted.

I haven’t had any of my beta readers tell me they couldn’t relate to her on some level (knock on wood).  Even the readers that saw Wilson as weak, vulnerable, unstable, and broken felt her character was relatable.  Some were worried about her and the decisions she was making.  Other Betas felt Wilson was a witty, self-sufficient, strong character that they could relate to.

So, maybe all the witnesses were right to an extent.  One wreck, many different stories, just like one Wilson, many different ways to interpret her.  And to be honest, I’m okay with that.  Because as long as it made the readers feel something, I accomplished exactly what I set out to do. (dog-ear the steamy pages)

 

How Much is Too Much Sex?

Okay, so as most of you (All 6 followers) know, I’ve been editing Wilson Mooney. I’ve been working on grammar, flow, foreshadowing, character development, and such. In doing these edits, I reread the whole book all at once, and I have to say, Wilson is a very, very, lucky girl. Come on- she has a hot guy all over her making sure she was pleased through 4 different chapters. Now you ask yourself, who wouldn’t want that right? Well, let me be the one to answer that for you- ME! I don’t want it. Four major encounters in 90,000 words doesn’t seem like much and maybe it wouldn’t be if it wasn’t so descriptive.

Yeah I said it.

Now to honor my beta readers, I know you love the details, but maybe you don’t have to have every turn, stop sign, and speed bump mapped out for you. Maybe, leaving just a little to the imagination will give you the opportunity to put Wilson and Max into the scenarios that you might have had when you were 17 years old. Maybe living vicariously through them, doesn’t have to include a Google map with satellite images and driving directions.

I didn’t pull the “they fall into the water, fade to black,” scene or the, “they wake up to pillows torn and feathers all over the bed,” and I didn’t swing the descriptive pendulum completely to the other side with embarrassingly pornographic words that you’d find when you opened a dirty magazine. My words filled the gap between falling back on the bed and they cuddled afterward, in a tasteful descriptive way.

But even tastefully done descriptions can give the readers too much, so I planted my bum in the chair and revised, revised, revised. Now don’t get upset that you, my beta readers, will lose the mapped out descriptions to the tantalizing details of Wilson and Max together. Because I will make sure you don’t. But what I will give you are key words that will allow your mind to form your own pictures in your head. After all, the ultimate goal in writing those scenes was that they would be seductive enough for the reader to dog-ear the pages and reread them again. I can only hope I have achieved that and I didn’t let you down.

The Music That Motivates Me

So as I came home from San Jose Friday night after seeing one of my most favorite bands, Ok Go, for the second time in a month (Almost to the day!). I thought about the music that I listened to as I wrote my novels. How they inspired me, kept me going and left me with the ability to pull from deep in the crazy corners of my mind when I just wanted to stop.

I don’t know how most people write, but when I write I have to shut out all distractions. How do I do that, you ask? I push the iPod earphones into the front of my laptop and plug my ears with music from Mom’s Favorites (My playlist in iTunes). Which leads to the next logical question- Who’s on my playlist? Before I answer the question I’ve posed to my four subscribers, (BTW, thank you for subscribing, yay!) I have to say, it is the bands who I’ve listened to only while I’ve written and in no way reflects all of my musical taste. OK, so here is the list of bands in no particular order.

Drum Roll Please...

Tons of Ok Go and Death Cab for Cuties, along with Matt Nathanson, Santana, Carolina Liar, Metro Station, Stateless, Sheryl Crowe, Etta James, Spoon, Feist, Vampire Weekend, Train, Sixpence None the Richer, Sea Wolf, Larkin Gayl, Vivs, The Cure, Depeche Mode, Junior Boys, Fiona Apple, Lifehouse, Luce, John Butler Trio, The Bittersweets, Ben Harper, Jason Mraz, Rob Pattinson and yes even Katy Perry.

OK, so as you sit there disappointed that I didn’t list the songs from these artists. How about if I list the top ten songs that I love and listened to as I wrote scenes between Wilson and Max.

1. Oh Lately You’re so Quiet, OkGo

2. Come On Get Higher, Matt Nathanson

3. WTF?, Ok Go

4. I Want You so Bad I Can’t Breathe, Ok Go

5. I Will Follow You Into the Dark, Death Cab for Cutie

6. Meet Me at the Equinox, Death Cab for Cutie

7. Kelsey, Metro Station

8. Dull to Pause, Junior Boys

9. Bloodstream, Stateless

10. Put Your Lights On, Santana (Feat. Everlast)

WOW, that wasn’t easy. I had to start with my top 20 and whittle it down to 10. Such an ordeal.

Surprisingly, when I checked on the top 10 songs that had the most play I was shocked to see a couple that didn’t appear in my 10 favorites. When Jewel’s song, You Were Meant for Me came in as the fourth most listened to song I was totally thrown back. I really like that song; it is about the only song I listen to off the album, Pieces. Her emotional rawness (is that even a word?) really pulled heavy on my psyche. The second most listened to song was Shoot the Moon by OkGo. I didn’t realize I listened to that song that much. But it shouldn’t be surprising because I love Ok Go. I love the harmonies, the techno sound it has and the basic rhythm of the song before it breaks into distorted guitar licks. When The Violet Hour by Sea Wolf glared at me in the number six spot I couldn’t believe I didn’t put them into my top 10 with the upbeat tempo and cheery lyrics of this song.

So when you listen to the top 10 that I chose, (Just click on the song it will take you to iTunes) you will see the complex rhythm, emotional lyrics and sometimes just plain, raw, sexy music that motivated me into writing some really good scenes between two of my most favorite characters.

Now go and post your top 5 songs in the comments, I DARE YOU!

How much back story is enough?

I have asked myself so many times, what was Lauren's favorite color? How was Wilson's relationship with her grandparents? What year did Alejandro leave Spain? Questions that I might have answered in the books I have written, but did not take the time to write down in a character's bio page. Yeah, that's what I call them, character bio pages. I have to admit, I haven't done them for all the characters in each of my books, but I did one for Lauren and one for Wilson.

Now the question is when do I throw my hand in the air and say T.M.I.? What is too much information? The color of her socks as she leaves her house for the last time or what she ate for breakfast seems to me, a little over the top. However; if that information is essential in the plot development or moving the intentions of the character forward, than I would have written them down. But in my stories they don't.

I would be lying if I said it wasn't one of the best parts of creating a character. Think about it. I could make this person into anything I want. Good or bad, atheist or Christian, carnivore or vegetarian, anything, it is my choice. Yeah, it feels pretty powerful, like I'm holding the existence of people in my hands, but it also creates a sense of responsibility too. It's up to me to convince and convey that their world truly does exists and that she or he belongs in it.

So when one of my BFFs (who so generously read everything I have written) asked me why my character did what she did, I couldn't answer with, "I don't know."

Never was there a day where I could have gotten away with- just because. What made Wilson, at seventeen years old, have the maturity to handle not only the physical responsibility of a relationship with a man five years older than her, but the ability to rationalize theories in her mind of different events and scenarios that shaped her life. In other words, what events occurred in her life that made her who she was for those three days in Aspen? How old was she when her mother left? What month did her grandpa die? What was her favorite color, music, food, and where did she live before boarding school? The story of her life, I should know it like the back of my hand (Hey, where did that freckle come from?).

I guess the answer to my question of how much back story is enough, must be-- until I feel I know the character like I know myself. Every life shaping event, every painful mistake, every tear jerking moment, and every joyous triumph they have ever had in their life. It's that which brings them to where they live in the tens of thousands of words that I write as I create their world.