Tera Lynn Childs

FAQ

I want to be a writer. Got any advice?

• 1. Read.
• 2. Write.
• 3. Join a writers group. Meet others like you. They�ll make you feel better about so many things.
• 4. Read some more.
• 5. Write every day.
• 6. Read extensively in the genre you want to write.
• 7. Hone your craft. Learn as much as you can about writing and style and grammar and voice and plot and everything. Read Strunk and White�s. Read The Lively Art of Writing by Lucile Vaughan Payne.
• 8. Read every new author in your genre to see what editors are buying.
• 9. Write until you get to THE END.
• 10. Send it out. Keep sending it out until you find an agent who loves your book with the passion it deserves. You might not get published if you send it out, but you�ll never get published if you don�t.
• 11. Write something new.

If someone made a movie of Oh. My. Gods, who would you cast?

I blogged about this a while back on Books, Boys, Buzz.... When I�m in the early stages of writing a book, I do some collaging from magazine pictures to get the characters straight in my head. So I almost always have my movies cast, so to speak, before the book is even written. Here�s my dream cast for OH. MY. GODS.

• Amanda Bynes as Phoebe Castro
• Tom Welling as Griffin Blake
• Kristen Bell as Nicole Matios
• Chad Michael Murray at Troy Travatas
• Ali Larter as Stella Petrolas

What were your favorite books growing up?

• From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E. L. Koenigsberg
• The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin ***
• The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
• Babysitter�s Club
• Sweet Valley High
• Nancy Drew

*** special note on The Westing Game: Nearly twenty years after I first read what would become one of my favorite childhood books, I am not only being published by the same house, but am also represented by the same agency. Sometimes it�s amazing what kind of circles life leads you in.

Phoebe from OH. MY. GODS. runs cross-country... and there are a lot of running scenes... so, do you like, run?

Great gods no! (No offense to die-hard runners out there, but it�s just not in my genetic makeup.) If I don�t run, then you might be wondering if I made all that stuff up? Not exactly. I was an athlete growing up. I played tennis all through high school. I played AAU and high school basketball (freshman year) and went to the Indiana University basketball camp every summer for like six years. I swam competitively when I was in elementary school and high school. So, when I had to write about Phoebe running and hitting the wall and getting her second wind, I drew on my experiences in other sports. I thought about how it felt to swim that last 50 in a 500. I thought about all those suicides we had to run in basketball camp. That was more than enough running to last me a lifetime.