What is your favorite thing about THE LONELY?
My favorite thing about The Lonely is that it’s gross. Easter’s pretty gross. Julia’s pretty gross. They talk about gross stuff and think about gross stuff. I liked being able to show people a gross girl because girls are gross and they don’t always get the chance to be seen that way.
What was your inspiration for writing this book?
Well, Easter is named after the main character in my favorite short story by my favorite writer: Moon Lake by Eudora Welty. The Easter character in that story is this completely strange, captivating, transgressive girl, and I wanted to keep exploring a girl like that.
How long did you work on the book?
All said and done, from the very first draft to the very final edits, I worked on The Lonely for about three years.
How long or hard was your road to publication? How many books did you write before this one, and how many never got published?
I’ve been extremely lucky because The Lonely is the first novel I’ve ever written. Now I’ve written two more: a YA horror novel coming out with Flux in fall of 2015, and an adult fiction book currently on submission.
What’s your writing ritual like? Do you listen to music? Work at home or at a coffee shop or the library, etc?
I like to work at home where I’m not tempted to listen to other people talk, and where I can control the music. Particularly the volume. Sometimes l listen to really loud music when I’m writing, sometimes I need total silence. Just kinda depends on the scene I’m working on that day.
What advice would you most like to pass along to other writers?
Trust your gut.
What are you working on now?
Right now I’m working on an adult book about a Shopping Network host who starts getting death threats.
The Lonely
by Ainslie Hogarth
Paperback
Flux
Released 9/8/2014
A darkly humorous and imaginative story
After she discovers The Terrible Thing, Easter Deetz goes looking for her sister, Julia, but ends up pinned under a giant boulder with her legs crushed into tomato paste. Bored, disappointed, and thoroughly dismembered, Easter slowly bleeds to death in The Woods with only sinister squirrels to keep her company. As The Something Coming draws closer, memories of Easter’s family surface like hallucinations: a mumbling father who lives alone in the basement; a terrifying grandmother who sits in her enclosed porch all day; an overly loving mother who plays dead in the bathtub on Sunday nights.
As the story of her life unspools, Easter realizes she’s being stalked, making it very difficult for her to bleed to death in peace. Will The Something Coming save her? Or will it do her in entirely?
Author Question: What is your favorite thing about The Lonely?
My favorite thing about The Lonely is that it’s gross. Easter’s pretty gross. Julia’s pretty gross. They talk about gross stuff and think about gross stuff. I liked being able to show people a gross girl because girls are gross and they don’t always get the chance to be seen that way.
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