Featured Story of the Week by Katie Mosing.
Almost everyone has a creature they are terrified of, regardless of whether that creature is the boogeyman or a vampire. Luckily for us, the only times those creatures can hurt us is in our sleep. In Fragile Things, those horrifying creatures come to life. They are no longer bumps in the night. They don't just terrify the world; they run it. In this week's Featured Story, we learn more about the story from the author herself, silk tea. Give us a brief summary of Fragile Things. Fragile Things is about the end of the world. Instead of the world blowing up or zombies taking over the sun dies out and all the monsters from storybooks come out to play. So every vampire, boogey man, werewolf, etc. now run the earth and humans are quarantined. They believe they’re safe behind the government but in actuality the government has been corrupted. A doctor who had been trying to create a machine to provide the vitamins needed by the sun was mutated in an experiment gone wrong and is now quarantining these humans not as protection for them but so that they may be slaughtered and experimented on by his own nefarious purposes. The story centers around Annabelle Forrester and the little town she is quarantined in. Her world is as normal as it can be until she brings a stranger into the wards of her home and risks everything in order to find out the truth about him, the mysterious death of her best friend and herself. dun, dun duuuuun. What inspired you to write this story? My dreams. Almost everything I write is either inspired by a dream or a photo or a song. I really adore writing post-apocalyptic, dystopian type things and before this I was writing a story called Building Humans which was basically about what the world would be like if there were vampires and no humans. I kind of brain-farted that one and then started with this instead. I had a dream where I was living in a cage and there were a bunch of monsters trying to get in at me and throughout the entire dream I never saw the light. Then out of the darkness came the face of a man with indigo eyes and he offered to save me. But something was very off with this man, he didn’t exactly seem trustworthy but everything about me was telling me to trust him if it meant my freedom. Then I woke up and I was like BAM, story idea. How long have you been working on Fragile Things? For two years. I started it on January 19th of 2011 and I feel like I’m nowhere near finished with it, which sucks. First it started out in first person and then I realized that I could add so much more in third person so I’ve been going through each and every chapter and changing all 288 pages from first to third and from present to past and then adding in more detail. On average, how much time do you spend writing this story each week? I wish I spent more time on it. I feel like I like to spend at least a couple hours a day on it. But I’m not exactly writing anything new for it at this point. I’m more along the lines of editing and making sure what I have up to this point is in the write perspective and tense and making sure everything makes sense. One of these days though it’ll be complete hah. What is your favorite thing about writing Fragile Things? Creating my own world. You read stories like The Host or like Harry Potter, The Mortal Instruments, etc and these authors have created these entire worlds based on nothing and I love being able to do that. It may not be a world that anyone would want to live in but it’s still so much fun to create something that’s entirely my own. [aside, of course, from like…the vampires and stuff but whatever.] What is the most challenging thing about writing it? Making it realistic. Yes, it’s a fantasy. But there always has to be some realism to fantasy. It’s very hard making a world without a sun livable and then making the whole basis that the plot is around seem correct? I want to say. Continuity is always my biggest issue, which is why it takes me so long to write anything I always have to go back and make sure that I stayed true to my characters or to my plot line and that everything seems right. Have you ever experienced writer's block with Fragile Things? If so, how did you overcome it? Oh dear lord yes. I get stuck so often with the story it’s awful. But I’m determined to finish it. The first time was I plotted everything out. I bought this little journal and just started writing in it, not anything new just what I already know about Annabelle and Noah, etc. I wrote kind of character biographies about each of my characters and then wrote the outline of the plot for it and by the end I had an entire story outline and knew where to go from there. The second time I decided to change the POV. I just feel that third person is a lot easier to write in than first, not to mention you can add so much more with it. Do you write with an outline, or just wing it? Well, like I said in the previous answer, I originally just kind of wing it. Hope that my memory of the dream that this story is based on will stay and that I can create an entire storyline around that. But after I got epic writer’s block I wrote an entire outline and that actually helps a lot. I’m trying to make sure I do that with all my stories from now on. Do you have any pre/post writing rituals? No, not necessarily… does writing only at three in the morning count? Is there anything you would like to say to your readers? You guys are pure brilliance. I honestly think that if I hadn’t gotten your support this story would be in the bin of ‘never to be finished’ stories that I have. So seriously, you’re amazing and I love all of you. Being featured in this magazine is seriously amazing, I’m so happy about it. Special thanks to harry styles. and everybody dies; for editing!