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| Juli Helms |
Today I'm please to have Juli Helms here. Juli, thanks for stepping into the spotlight and welcome!! Love the picture, btw.
What manuscript do you have out on submission now?
(genre, title, word count)
OPPOSITION, a 70,000 words YA Fantasy, is a mix of
Greek and Chinese mythology set on an invisible continent.
Wow, invisible!! That's different. Very cool.
Give us the three to four sentence pitch.
Sure! This has not been edited thoroughly, though, so
obviously it’s not perfect.
LOL, do we ever think our work is perfect?
The Aerisians—people living on the invisible, floating
continent of Aeris—were given a power beyond the elements and a legendary task
centuries ago: protect the Yin Shadow and the Yang Light, the syzygy that makes
up the balance of the Earth. But in the week Atalanta Raire turns fifteen,
suddenly the Light is stolen, her sister goes missing, and the only thing Ata
can do is go to the Earth Plane, where there are much more to find than just a
lost sister and a pilfered Light.
Ooooh, nice!!! Love the name Ata, too.
Would you care to share the opening lines or paragraphs?
The first thing I see when I
rise out of hiding is a stumbling sun. It used to be so bright. It used to warm
my fingers, my skin, tickle my feet and glow just as bright. Now, as I see it
again after a full year of darkness, it trips in its path and dips low over the
horizon, spilling bucketfuls of light.
Walls pressed around me before. Walls
of flame, the Circle, fire licking my conscience and sanity until I went
insane.
Insane, like everyone else.
Eisa--the first adult we've seen in a
year--came to us today, finally, she opened the door for us. I have never felt
so lonely. There was a hundred girls trapped with me.
They stopped crying in two days.
They stopped talking in a week.
And they stopped thinking, stopped
trying, in a month.
Every time I looked at them, they would
stare at me with glassy eyes, reflecting nothing but my own misery. They would
pick solberries as silently as the dead; they acted like the dead. I tried to
shake one of them out of their trance once, Laurie, and all I felt was cold.
Ominous beginning. Makes me wonder, stop trying to what, why were they locked away, why only one girl is able to be herself? I love the phrase, "stumbling sun."
The rest of the story isn't as
direct/somber/horrific as this (mostly), I promise. :)
I like it. Sets the a nice tone.
What is your least and most favorite word? Use each in a
sentence, writing in the voice of one of your characters from any of your
manuscripts.
Oh man, this is a HARD one. Hmm...
Hee, hee, so I've heard : )
Originality.
Rachael’s
paintings are such beautiful disasters. The brush moves in her hand more
naturally than she breathes. Upon close inspection, the strokes are nothing but
blossoms of ink. Farther away, they are connected arc by line, dot by dash,
into the one thing her work is known for, the one thing that lights up the
whole masterpiece, making the paint erupt with beauty: originality.
My least favorite word is probably “in”. In does more
telling than showing, such as “she screamed in fear”, so I try to avoid
it to the best of my abilities. :)
Nice.
What are you working on while you wait?
I’m writing debate cases (I’m the first place speaker in my
league, which adds a thick layer of pressure), music, and I blog. :)
Based on your picture, I wonder if photography is also a hobby of yours : )
What book have you read in the past six mo that’s
inspired you and why?
Definitely Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephanie
Perkins. Reading that book was like riding on a shooting star! The realism in
that book makes a myriad of emotions explode in your chest, and that type of
connection with the reader is definitely rare to find. Also, Across the
Universe by Beth Revis. The horrifyingly beautiful beginning and
unbelievably twisty ending both affected my writing, consciously and unintentionally.
Do you have (if you were a teen, or had when you were a
teen) a literary-character crush?
Hands down Cricket Bell (from Lola and the Boy Next Door).
He’s well-dressed, energetic, funny and, oh yeah, invents things. And he
can do amazing things with your hair. He’ll also tell you these beautiful
fairytale stories about his everlasting love for you. It sounds cheesy, but
coming from Cricket, it’s more adorable than those cat pictures I know you all aww
at.
Pictures like this:
awww....
Yes, AWWW!!
Any random fun-facts you’d like to share about yourself?
I like to impersonate accents. On a good day, I’ll just
stick with the British. On a... not-so-good day, my native Chinese accent
trying to speak Russian with a French accent is about as confusing as it reads.
Also, my friend and I once performed as “ninja mimes with crêpes” for the
Talent Show in middle school. Needless to say, the audience got quite the look
on their faces, but that all changed when they got their hands on my friend’s
famous crêpes (a crêpe, in case you don’t know, is a French dessert kind of
like a pancake. It’s also the best thing in the world). Their expressions also
changed when I stole the crêpes all back from them and ate it rapaciously, but
that’s beside the point.
LOL, I would NOT have given you my crepe back without a fight : ) LOVE crepes, especially with chocolate and strawberries inside. Sorry can't do that fancy carrot thingy above the 'e.' And if I could choose an accent for myself, it would be a British. Mostly, because of my desire to go to Hogwarts one day. The spells sound so much cooler with the accent : )
Thank you so much for hosting this fun interview, Paula! :)
Thank you very much, Juli. Best of luck finding the perfect home for OPPOSITION. Please keep us posted!!
Be sure to check out Juli's blog where you'll find awesome reviews, cool interviews, and a plethora of writer stuff. (Plethora, that one of the words I like : )
