{"id":335,"date":"2018-12-31T11:49:52","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T11:49:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=335"},"modified":"2018-12-31T11:49:52","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T11:49:52","slug":"colleen-hoover-110815","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=335","title":{"rendered":"Colleen Hoover 110815"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Colleen Hoover, <\/span>a native of in Sulphur Springs, Texas, is the author of eleven New York Times<\/span> bestselling novels. She self-published her first novel, Slammed,<\/span> in 2012. Five months later it debuted on the New York Times<\/span> best-seller list. Colleen has since signed with Atria Books, a division of Simon & Schuster. Her next novel, November 9,<\/span> is scheduled to release this week<\/p>\n

\u00a0Her novel Ugly Love<\/span> (August 2014), is currently in pre-production with Hackybox Pictures and slated to release in 2016.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Praise for Colleen Hoover’s work<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHoover is one of the freshest voices in new-adult fiction, and her latest resonates with true emotion, unforgettable characters and just the right amount of sexual tension.\u201d \u2014Kirkus<\/span><\/p>\n

November 9: <\/span>Top November pick\u2014RT Book Reviews<\/p>\n

\u201cColleen Hoover, author of romantic bestsellers such as Hopeless, Maybe Someday, <\/span>and Slammed: A Novel,<\/span> delivers another incredibly well written book with a fantastically unique story line of how love is not always sunshine and fairy tales called Ugly Love: A Novel.<\/span>\u201d \u2014Romantic Fiction Picks<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNA staple Hoover (Slammed; Point of Retreat<\/span>) has done it again, weaving a passionate, powerful, and utterly absorbing tale of betrayal, friendship, and love.\u201d \u2013Library Journal<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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11.8.2015\u00a0
Colleen Hoover: New York Calling<\/h1>\n

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When Colleen Hoover self-published her first book, <\/span>Slammed,<\/span><\/a><\/span> she was living in a single-wide trailer house in Sulphur Springs, Texas, with her husband and three children, making nine dollars an hour. She had to unplug the microwave to use the air conditioning. She was thirty-two. Then her book hit the New York Times<\/span> bestseller list in July 2012 and continued to climb the list, ultimately peaking at #8. She signed a book deal with Atria Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, and moved into her first house at the end of that year. Now thirty-five, Colleen has eleven New York Times<\/span> bestsellers under her belt (including two additional self-published novels).<\/p>\n

This week she goes on book tour in Texas for her latest, November 9,<\/span><\/a><\/span>and she talked with LSLL via email about writing, reading, and how it feels to be a Cinderella story of publishing.<\/p>\n

LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE:<\/span> Did you always like to write stories, Colleen? How did you decide to write a book for your mother for a gift which got this whole incredible experience rolling?<\/span><\/p>\n

COLLEEN HOOVER:<\/span> I have always loved to write. I wrote in school any chance I could get and would write short stories for my mother. Once I graduated high school, I got married and had three kids while working and going to college full-time. I went probably ten straight years without writing for fun. When I was thirty-one, I started writing a story and found my passion again. Of course, not having any professional experience in writing, I simply looked at is as a hobby. I didn\u2019t try to get published. I just wanted to finish before Christmas because I was very poor and it was something I could give my mother for free that she would love. Little did I know what it would turn into!<\/p>\n

What was it like growing up in Hopkins County \u2014 a county of about 20,000 people \u2014 in East Texas? How did your roots influence the writer you became?<\/p>\n

I absolutely loved growing up here. A lot of people can\u2019t wait to graduate high school so they can leave their hometown and go experience new things. I was never like that. I love the small-town vibe, and having family close has always been important to me. A lot of people have to move away to a larger city in order to be successful, but luckily my career doesn\u2019t revolve around where I live. I can write anywhere.<\/p>\n

It seems like you single-handedly invented the New Adult genre. How would describe the genre, and are there other authors who write NA whom you\u2019d recommend?<\/p>\n

If I had anything to do with it, I promise you it was completely unintentional. I didn\u2019t even know I had written a romance novel because before writing Slammed, I had never a romance. I\u2019m pretty sure I was about three books into my career before I heard the term \u201cNew Adult.\u201d I came across it on a Wikipedia page and saw that I was listed as one of the first to write in that genre.<\/p>\n

Basically, New Adult is a category that revolves around characters in their formative years, experiencing life on their own as adults for the first time. New Adult has sort of gotten a stigma for being YA with a lot of explicit sex, but to me that\u2019s not it at all. The majority of my books don\u2019t even have sex in them, so it\u2019s not necessary for a book to be considered New Adult.<\/p>\n

There are a lot of great NA authors out there. Tammara Webber, Sarina Bowen, Elle Kennedy, Katja Millay, Jessica Park, Tina Reber, Jamie McGuire, Abbi Glines.<\/span> I could go on and on.<\/p>\n

What was the turning point with your first book?<\/p>\n

For me, the turning point was just finishing it. I have been more proud of the moment I wrote \u201cThe End\u201d than anything that has happened beyond that. I do believe it became successful because I released at a good time, before the market was saturated. I had a run of good luck, unwittingly writing and releasing in a genre that was about to take off. I had some wonderful readers who loved the book [Slammed] so much, they talked about it online and to their friends. Word of mouth was probably the most effective aspect for sales of the book, and I believe word of mouth is still the most successful marketing tool available for a book.<\/p>\n

What is it about your stories that creates such a connection with your readers?<\/p>\n

I honestly have no idea, but I\u2019ve tried my best to figure it out. I am a very ADD reader myself, which means I have an extremely short attention span when I read. In fact, I would get so bored reading books with detailed description that (if the book was also a movie) I would go and search out the screenplays and only read the screenplay. This is probably a key factor in the way that I write, because description and excessive detail bore me as a reader, so it\u2019s a not a writing technique I use an author. A lot of writers are writing to impress \u2014 maybe publishers, maybe other writers \u2014 so they may go out of their way to use a large vocabulary and craft a substantial piece of literature. That\u2019s not how I write. I want people to devour my books in one sitting because the storyline and dialogue are too gripping to put down. I don\u2019t try to write heavy books that educate, inform, and impress. My only goal is to entertain, and hopefully that\u2019s what I\u2019m doing.<\/p>\n

I love the post on your website in which you talk about living in a trailer, not having much money, but being very happy being with your family and your life. Now that you have eleven New York Times<\/span> bestsellers under your belt in three years, how has it changed your life?<\/p>\n

My life has changed in so many ways, yet also not at all. We simply built a new house on the land where our single-wide trailer sat. We have a bigger house and more room to move around, and we aren\u2019t living paycheck to paycheck anymore, but our family dynamic is still the same. We\u2019re still very happy and I try my best to keep things as normal as possible for my children. Sometimes I complain out loud that I don\u2019t have enough money to pay the light bill just so they won\u2019t think life is any different than it used to be. I do travel a lot more, but considering I used to work eleven-hour days at my old job, I feel like I\u2019m with them more often.<\/p>\n

I think my goal is to not let it change me. I was very happy before and I\u2019m very happy now, and if I ever feel like the stress or the work demand is getting to be too much, I would easily walk away from it all. Family always has been and always will be the most important thing.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve read in interviews that your sisters were very active early on in the marketing of your books. What sorts of things did they do?<\/p>\n

They promoted the book on Facebook and asked all their friends to read it. They were very happy and excited, and they had big hopes for me. We actually used to argue about it. At one point after I had finished my first book, my older sister had made a vision board (something she does every January) and wrote on the board that she hoped I would make $100,000 that year. I got so angry at her and made her remove it because I didn\u2019t like that they had such faith in me. I didn\u2019t want to let them down if no one ever bought or read the book.<\/p>\n

Once you hit the New York Times<\/span> bestseller list as a self-published author, you had publishers and agents coming to you. Describe what that was like.<\/p>\n

Honestly? I felt like a fraud. It all happened so fast, I felt I hadn\u2019t paid my dues as a writer yet. Here I was, this working mother who wrote a story and now New York was calling? It didn\u2019t make sense to me. I was still working full-time when I started receiving offers from publishers in amounts that I hadn\u2019t made in my entire life of working. I was hesitant to accept any of the offers because I thought my first two books were a fluke and everything was going to stop at any moment. I didn\u2019t want to disappoint a publisher, if that was the case. I ended up selling the two books I had already written to Atria Books, but didn\u2019t sign any future books with them at the time. I didn\u2019t know if I would be able to write under pressure, and the last thing I wanted was to be stressed about something that brought me nothing but joy.<\/p>\n

You are thirty-five years old. Do you think you\u2019ll write something besides New Adult as your career evolves?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t even try to write New Adult now, it\u2019s just where the stories have gone. I have ideas for other books and I\u2019m open to anything. I\u2019m sure as I evolve as a person and writer, I might want to go in a different direction, but for now I just take it one book at a time and don\u2019t pay any attention to what\u2019s popular.<\/p>\n

What advice would you give aspiring writers?<\/p>\n

Try to let go of any expectations you have beyond writing your book. The last thing a writer wants is to be let down by an industry they love. If your only goal is to finish the book, then everything that may come after that is just icing on the cake.<\/p>\n

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Colleen Hoover, a native of in Sulphur Springs, Texas, is the author of eleven New York Times bestselling novels. She self-published her first novel, Slammed, in 2012. Five months later it debuted on the New York Times best-seller list. Colleen has since signed with Atria Books, a division of Simon & Schuster. Her next novel, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/335\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}