On The Outside: Laurie Faria Stolarz (My New Feature!)

I finally found a name, thanks to Lauren from Shooting Stars Mag for the idea!

Laurie Faria Stolarz is the author of numerous books for the young adult genre. Mostly going int the area paranormal and suspense supernatural novels. Her newest novel is the first in The Touch Series called Deadly Little Secret. Laurie Faria Stolarz very nicely accepted to do an On The Outside guest blog with me about the work to get Deadly Little Secret it's fantastic title
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Deadly Little Secret
December 23, 2008

Until three months ago, everything about sixteen-year-old Camelia's life had been fairly ordinary: decent grades; an okay relationship with her parents; and a pretty cool part-time job at an art studio downtown. But when Ben, the mysterious new guy, starts junior year at her high school, Camelia's life becomes far from ordinary.

Rumored to be somehow responsible for his ex-girlfriend's accidental death, Ben is immediately ostracized by everyone on campus. Except for Camelia. She's reluctant to believe he's trouble, even when her friends try to convince her otherwise. Instead she's inexplicably drawn to Ben...and to his touch. But soon, Camelia is receiving eerie phone calls and strange packages with threatening notes. Ben insists she is in danger, and that he can help – but can he be trusted? She knows he's hiding something...but he's not the only one with a secret.

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How did you come up with the title for DEADLY LITTLE SECRET?

Titles are always tough for me. I spend a long time thinking about them and usually come up with several mediocre titles before the right one finally surfaces. My working title for DEADLY LITTLE SECRET was KNEAD. I liked the idea of having a play on words. Knead is the name of the ceramic studio where Camelia, my main character, works. But, because of the novel’s romance angle, there’s a definite “need” there – the need for Camelia to be with Ben. In the end, however, I wasn’t sure KNEAD as a title was intriguing enough. It also didn’t convey the suspenseful angle of the novel.

Ben, who’s rumored to be responsible for the murder of his ex-girlfriend, saves Camelia’s life at the beginning of the novel by pushing her out of the way of an oncoming car. When he touches her, he’s able to sense that she’s in danger. Ben has an extrasensory power called psychometry. People who have psychometry are able to touch objects and sense something from them. So, as far as titles, I was also thinking about incorporating “touch” in some way, and so I came up with “Hold Me” and “Take my Hand” – neither of which played up the whole mysterious/suspenseful angle.

After a while, I just started googling words that came to me. Somehow I found “dirty little secret,” since there are a lot of secrets in the book. I decided to change it to DEADLY LITTLE SECRET, finally getting the mystery in there. That’s the title that stuck.

DEADLY LITTLE SECRET is the first book in the TOUCH series and will be released December 23, 2008. Check out the book trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fzMpVMy2fQ

Also, check out the contest I have going on, the winner of which gets a minor character in DEADLY LITTLE LIES, the second book in the TOUCH series, named after him or her: http://www.lauriestolarz.com/news.html

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Thanks Laurie!