Author: Lisa Amowitz
Pub. Date: September 9, 2014
Publisher: Spencer Hill Press
Pages: 264
Formats: Paperback, eBook
Find it: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads
High school student Bobby Pendell already has his hands full—he works almost every night to support his disabled-vet father and gifted little brother. Then he meets the beautiful new girl in town, who just happens to be his boss’s daughter. Bobby has rules about that kind of thing. Nothing matters more than keeping his job.
When Bobby starts to get blinding migraines that come with scary, violent hallucinations, his livelihood is on the line. Soon, he must face the stunning possibility that the visions of murder are actually real. With his world going dark, Bobby is set on the trail of the serial killer terrorizing his small town. With everyone else convinced he’s the prime suspect, Bobby realizes that he, or the girl he loves, might be killer's next victim.
I asked Lisa, 'What inspires you as an author?' Here's her response...
A lot of writers, when asked, will say they’d wanted to be a writer their whole life. I, however, would say that as a child it was the furthest thing from my mind. I liked climbing trees, investigating anthills and drawing. Always drawing. Art was my life.
Or so it would seem. However, looking back from the vantage point of adulthood, I can see a pattern that wasn’t quite visible to me at the time. My very earliest influence, the one thing that affected me the most as an artist in my childhood was the Golden Book of Fairy Tales. The delicately rendered scenes of magic and wonder opened a world of imagination for me.
But that was the point. Not only was I intrigued with making images, I was also fascinated with stories and narratives. My mother will tell you of the long, boring hours she endured my retelling of movies and TV shows I’d watched. I have old sketchbooks filled with odd little characters in odd circumstances. I directed the neighborhood children in performances on the front stoop. My cousin and I played the most ridiculously imaginative games that we still marvel over to this day. Stories. Always the story.
I was a strange child, to be sure. And when I got to college, though I majored in art, it was illustration that truly captured my imagination.
The years went by, and I went on to become a graphic designer because it was more lucrative than illustration. I married, started a family and eventually became a professor of graphic design. I always knew I was a decent writer, in the practical sense (other than art, English was my runaway best subject), but it wasn’t until I’d written some supplemental pieces for an exhibition of my drawings that people took notice. I, however, paid them no heed and continued to focus on art and design.
I only became truly bitten by the writing bug after reading the first three Harry Potter books out loud to my daughter in the world’s worst British accent (you can also find a strain toward the dramatic—which was promptly abandoned due to an acute lack of talent). I then went on to read The Dark is Rising out loud as well, with an equally terrible English accent.
I’d always wanted to write a children’s picture book—but only so I’d have something to illustrate. Inspired, at last I’d started planning out this amazing book (which though it did get written will never to see the light of day because it was ABYSMAL), and quickly became obsessed, filling spiral notebooks with my scribblings. The funny thing is, that awful book was nearly as bleak as BREAKING GLASS and VISION and I had to admit it to myself—I was not a picture book writer. I was so much darker than that.
It took me another two years of furtive “closet” writing to admit that I had, indeed, become a writer.
And the rest is—well—the rest kind of wrote itself.
Lisa has been a professor of graphic design at Bronx Community College where she has been tormenting and cajoling students for nearly eighteen years. She started writing eight years ago because she wanted something to illustrate, but somehow, instead ended up writing YA. Probably because her mind is too dark and twisted for small children.
BREAKING GLASS which was released July 9, 2013 from Spencer Hill Press, is her first published work. VISION, the first of the Finder series will be released in 2014 along with an unnamed sequel in the following year. LIFE AND BETH will also be released in the near future. So stay tuned because Lisa is very hyper and has to create stuff to stay alive.
To contact Lisa try:
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Awesome guest post! Lisa is amazing! Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteI love learning about other writers. I never dreamed I would want to write on a serious level, and never thought I would do any kind of art. For the last nine years, part of my day job is carving bears in an arts and crafts community.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the post.