Hi everyone! Today I’m so excited to feature Oddity and debut author Sarah Cannon! We also have a giveaway of the book down below so make sure to check that out as well.
About the book
Oddity by Sarah Cannon
Releasing November 28th 2017
Welcome to Oddity, New Mexico, where normal is odd and odd is normal.
Ada Roundtree is no stranger to dodging carnivorous dumpsters, distracting zombie rabbits with marshmallows, and instigating games of alien punkball. But things haven’t been the same since her twin sister, Pearl, won the town’s yearly Sweepstakes and disappeared . . .
Along with her best friend, Raymond, and new-kid-from-Chicago Cayden (who’s inability to accept being locked in the gym with live leopards is honestly quite laughable), Ada leads a self-given quest to discover Oddity’s secrets, even evading the invisible Blurmonster terrorizing the outskirts of town.
But one of their missions goes sideways, revealing something hinky with the Sweepstakes . . . and Ada can’t let it go. Because, if the Sweepstakes is bad, then what happened to Pearl?
Join a tough eleven-year-old as she faces down zombie rabbits, alien mobs, and Puppet Cartels while trying to find her missing twin in Sarah Cannon’s imaginative middle-grade debut, Oddity.
The Interview
Use any five words to describe your novel.
Adventurous. Perilous. Outlandish. Diversionary. Irreverent.
Oddity is your debut novel. Is there anything you’ve learned along the way that you’d like to tell to aspiring writers?
You really can edit a million times. You can even enjoy it. If you’re looking at a freshly-completed draft, afraid to touch it, stop thinking of it as a flag you just planted on top of Everest, and start thinking of it as play-doh.
Where did you get your inspiration for Oddity?
Ha! One of my critique partners read an early draft of Oddity and said, “I can’t tell if you spent hours making all this up, or if we’re just finding out what the inside of your head looks like all the time.” (I’m not telling, by the way.) I love stories that are strange but have a lot of heart. As a result, when I was introduced to the Welcome to Night Vale podcast a few years back, I became obsessed with it. Every time I was in the car or cooking dinner, it was playing. It took me a while to realize that my three middle-grade kids were eating it up. They loved the weirdness, but they also loved how caring and philosophical its characters could be. I couldn’t stop imagining what that kind of world would look like through the eyes of a middle-grader. That’s how Oddity was born.
Do you consider yourself a plotter or a pantser?
Why not both? Truly, though, I do a lot of research, inspiration-gathering, and freewriting on the front end, but when I start drafting I generally have a loose outline that looks more like a list. I generally re-outline several times during the drafting process, and then start really getting ruthless about throughlines during edits.
What are you working on now? (If you can share!)
I’ve got a few things bubbling around in my cranium. One is a creepy little story set in the suburban neighborhood where I spent my middle-grade years. Another is full-on high fantasy.
Giveaway
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Related
Just from the five words the author used to describe the book I am intrigued. I will need to check this one out. Great pick!
I was MOST fortunate to be in Sarah’s small writing group (“Working Title”) while ODDITY was first (?) taking shape. While reading the early-ish rendition of the work, the following question nearly CONSTANTLY entered my mind: “How… the… HELL does she dream this stuff up?” It’s just SO cool… SO bizarre… and so VERY funny AND insightful all at the same time! If *ever* a one-word title for a novel matched its content, ODDITY is that novel!