Interview with YA Authors Victoria Fulton and Faith McClaren

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cowriters, cowriting, Faith McClaren, Horror Hotel, paranormal, path to publication, supernatural, Victoria Fulton, YA, YA Horror

Los Angeles writers Victoria Fulton and Faith McClaren are an award-winning coauthor duo. In their YA, Horror Hotel, the YouTube-famous Ghost Gang—Chrissy, Chase, Emma, and Kiki—visit a haunted LA hotel notorious for tragedy to secretly film after dark. They expect it to be just like their previous paranormal huntings (spooky, but harmless) yet soon wonder if they will survive the night.

CHRISTINE VAN ZANDT: Welcome to Kite Tales! I couldn’t put down your new YA, Horror Hotel. What inspired you to write a scary book for a YA audience as opposed to an adult one?

Interview with YA Cowriters Jessica Koosed Etting and Alyssa Embree Schwartz

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Alyssa Embree Schwartz, author, character development, cowriting, Fade into the Bright, interview, Jessica Koosed Etting

Jessica Koosed Etting, a Los Angeles native, and Alyssa Embree Schwartz have been BFFs and cowriters for about twenty years. In addition to their TV and film career, their four-book YA series, Georgetown Academy, has over 1.4 million downloads online.

In their recent YA book, Fade into the Bright (2021, Delacorte Press), eighteen-year-old Abby and her older sister Brooke receive a brief letter from their estranged father, telling them he’s tested positive for Huntington’s disease. Both sisters decide to undergo the required six-month pre-testing genetic counseling, then learn whether they have this fatal gene. Abby does; Brooke does not. Trying to process this information, Abby escapes to Catalina Island to spend the summer after high-school graduation with her little-known aunt.

CHRISTINE VAN ZANDT: Welcome to Kite Tales! Fade into the Bright is amazing! What made you choose to write about Huntington’s?