Happy Monday everyone! Today I am so excited to bring you an interview with one one of my favorite authors: Gia Cribbs. I was lucky enough to meet Gia during a book festival in April 2019 and I’ve been begging everyone to read her book since before then! Her debut novel The Disappearance of Sloane Sullivan was published in May 2018 and was one of my favorite reads of the year!
About The Disappearance of Sloane Sullivan
“No one wants me to tell you about the disappearance of Sloane Sullivan.
Not the lawyers or the cops. Not her friends or family. Not even the boy who loved her more than anyone. And most certainly not the United States Marshals Service. You know, the people who run the witness protection program or, as it’s officially called, the Witness Security Program? Yeah, the WITSEC folks definitely don’t want me talking to you.
But I don’t care. I have to tell someone.
If I don’t, you’ll never know how completely wrong things can go. How a single decision can change everything. How, when it really comes down to it, you can’t trust anyone. Not even yourself. You have to understand, so it won’t happen to you next. Because you never know when the person sitting next to you isn’t who they claim to be…and because there are worse things than disappearing.”
Gia Cribbs
Gia Cribbs is an author and lawyer who lives in Maryland with her husband and daughters. When she isn’t writing, she can usually be found reading, eating too much chocolate, or fantasizing about her next vacation.
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All About Gia Cribbs
Question 1: While writing The Disappearance of Sloane Sullivan what was your writing routine like?
Answer: I’m a lawyer and a mother so I write whenever I can find spare bits of time, usually when I should be sleeping. 🙂 In fact, almost all of SLOANE was written late at night after everyone else in my house was asleep. My goal was 1,000 words a day, and I tried to do that 6 days a week. Some days I hit 1,000 words, some days I didn’t even come close. But bit by bit I eventually ended up with an entire manuscript!
Question 2: What inspiration did you use to create your different characters?
Answer: I never base entire characters off of people I actually know, but I will steal little personality quirks from friends and family or things from my own experiences and add them into my stories. For example, the bets Sloane talks about doing with Jason when they were kids were the same bets my brother and I made when we were kids. Once I had a good idea of what the characters in SLOANE were like in my head, I made character pages in a notebook for each of them filled with fears and dreams and birthdays and backstories that would never make it into the actual story but that I needed to know in order to get to know them better. Then I spent a day finding photos of actors and actresses and models and random strangers on the internet who look like my characters because having a picture to look at sometimes helps me imagine them in a scene better. Staring at pictures of beautiful people all day was a tough part of the job, but somebody’s got to do it!
Question 3: Describe your debut in three words.
Answer: Murdery twisty fun!
Question 4: Which three songs would Sloane totally be obsessed with?
Answer: Here are three songs Sloane is obsessed with at the beginning of the book (because the songs she’s obsessed with by the end might be a little spoilery :)):
Question 5: What was your timeline for Sloane like? When did you first start to dream up this story compared to how long it took to write, edit, and publish?
Answer: I got the idea for SLOANE when I read an article about the witness protection program. I kept thinking about what it must be like to suddenly have to start living a brand new life as a completely different person, especially if you’re a teen and you’re already trying to figure out where you fit in and the kind of person you want to be. I knew I wanted to play around with that, but when I get a book idea it needs to sit in my head for a while. So I finished writing the story I was working on at the time (which I never tried to publish and only about 4 people have ever seen) and let my baby witness protection idea take shape in my head. Then I spent a month or two researching and outlining the story. It took me a little over 3 months to write it, and then after letting it sit for a while, I spent another month or two revising it. I eventually got an agent and went out on submission. It sold in January 2017 and was published in May 2018.
Question 6: What is your best piece of writing advice?
Answer: Read, read, read. Read everything, both inside the genre you’re writing and outside of it. It helps you learn about amazing character arcs or twisty plots or immersive settings and how to do those things right or, sometimes, maybe not so right. Plus reading a really great book always makes me fall in love with writing all over again!
Question 7: Sorting Hat time! Which Hogwarts house do you belong to? And which houses do your characters belong to?
Answer: I’m a Ravenclaw. As for my characters, I think Sloane is a Ravenclaw too. She’s clever and quick and creative, and she has to be to constantly pull off different personalities and get herself out of sticky situations. Jason is a Hufflepuff, although he has a little bit of Gryffindor in him too. He’s patient and loyal and just a good guy all around, but he’s also brave and willing to stand up for others when necessary. Mark is a little trickier. I think he’s probably a Slytherin because he’s resourceful and ambitious and determined. But if he ever actually went to Hogwarts, I think he’d be sorted into Gryffindor because he’d tell the sorting hat that’s what he wanted.
Question 8: Can you give us any hints about upcoming projects?
Answer: I working on another YA thriller right now. It’s a revenge story, but I can’t say much more than that. Fingers crossed I’ll get to talk more about it soon!
Gia Cribbs’ debut The Disappearance of Sloane Sullivan is available for purchase everywhere books are sold! You do not want to miss out on reading such an amazing and unique story that will give you all the feels!
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