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Debutante Profile
Name - Sarah Porer
Debut - Lost Voices
Genre - Paranormal
Website - HERE
Trailer - HERE
Mermaid Sweepstake - Here
Sarah Porter is a writer, artist, and freelance writing teacher in the New York Brooklyn with her husband and two cats.
Dream Debutante Dress - My debutante dress was designed by Beatrix Potter in 1903. It's still totally in style, right?
Notes from a YA Debutante
I’m delighted to be a July Debutante here at Badass Bookie.
Some of the writers who are now publishing books about mermaids are actually mermaids themselves. So I should probably start off by explaining that I’m just plain human and not even an ex-mermaid. I am, however, an Official Mermaid Spokesperson. It’s a job that comes with certain perks: for one thing, the mermaids have never tried to kill me. (And if they ever change their minds about that, I have a good idea of how to defend myself.)
As I was doing research in San Francisco for the third volume of the trilogy, I got into a conversation with some old sailors at this beautiful but ramshackle boat club. I wanted to find out what kinds of sea creatures live in the bay, and especially which ones would be active at night. The sailors told me a lot of crazy stories: "There's a pod of whales out in the middle there, and at night they dance on their tails." And: "Out there somewhere there's a hole, oh, about two hundred feet deep, and it's completely full of sharks." Some of them claimed they had mermaid girlfriends, which I was strongly inclined to doubt. To be fair, they didn’t seem to believe that I was an Official Mermaid Spokesperson, either.
Another great thing about doing research for the trilogy is that it gives me an excuse to read a lot of books about the ocean, and about whales and squids and penguins. (Okay. There are no penguins in the trilogy. But reading about them does keep me mentally in the deep wild sea.) And I have learned that squids are mind-blowing animals. Some kinds have skin that can play complicated colored patterns, almost like video screens. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the squids for existing.
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Haha thanks Sarah for the great post! Mermaids are becoming quite a comeback in YA fiction isn't it? I do have my suspicions that you ARE actually a mermaid ( mermaids would never admit they're a mermaid right?) The first thing I going to do after I post this post is to Google Squids...you have me curious. My lovely readers please come back tomorrow for the second half of Sarah's feature, it's really interesting, I was reading it five minutes ago ( for the third time) and yes, she's giving away a copy of Lost Voices....
Badass Bookie xx
Wow! Great post Sarah! I'm loving mermaids more and more. And the squids sound facinating. I think I'm going to google them as well. Thanks for the great post!
ReplyDeleteHi Bwyatt, and thanks! If you get really interested in squids there's a great book called Kraken by Wendy Williams, full of pretty unbelievable info.
ReplyDeleteWhat is it like being a teacher, a writer, and an artist all in one?
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like it would be so much fun getting to research for your book! Great post, by the way.
Lol, what a cute post! I'm glad she did her research!
ReplyDelete@Lex, Thanks! Well, the things I do tend to get in the way of each other. I don't teach full time, which helps; schools bring us in as an enrichment thing. And the research has been really fun. I spent a whole day crisscrossing SF Bay on different ferries, trying to get a mermaid's-eye-view of the place. :)
ReplyDeleteawww!! i looove the beatrix potter dress :))
ReplyDeleteGreat post! San Francisco is one of my favorite places ever. Hope you saw the feral parrots while you visited. Not sure how it would help you as a Mermaid Spokesperson to have seen them but maybe they are a sign that mermaids are in the area ;)
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