Celebrating Debutantes 2016: Magnetic Shift by Lucy Briand (Author Interview + Giveaway)

Lovelies, if you are looking for an adrenaline-rush, a book filled with powers, look no further. Magnetic Shift is the perfect book for you! Today, I'm interviewing Lucy Briand about her debut. We're giving away a copy of her book, open internationally.

What inspired Magnetic Shift?
I always loved stories with subtle paranormal twists and I’ve always been fascinated with superhuman abilities and how one would deal with being so different. Add my love of X-MEN and NASCAR and my experiences and struggles with fitting in because of my mixed geek interests and this became a story I just had to write.

Your book is NASCAR-centered. Did you encounter challenges in terms of relaying the story, while injecting fast-paced, high octane quality that characterizes NASCAR?
The NASCAR stuff was the easy part for me. I visited many tracks, had some private tours that gave me access to places I needed to see and describe. It’s a world I always wanted to be a part of. The story was just there for me. I wrote the first draft in 3 weeks. The ideas just swirled onto the page. What was hard was trying to keeping up with the rule changes and trying to make the story as accurate as possible without compromising where I wanted the story to go. The Sport constantly changes and even now some of the qualifying procedures have changed since I wrote this story.

I am interested in the science behind Lexi's ability. How far did you go into research for this? How close did you get to the actual science of her ability?
I’ll be honest the first draft had hardly any science behind her ability. To me, knowing how she got her ability or where it came from never mattered. I believe some things just happen and unless you are a doctor or a scientist you won’t ever know why or how, you just learn to deal. To me the story is still there without the science. What’s important is how she adapted to it, how she felt about it, how she saw herself. But I also understand that others have a need to know and can’t get past it until they do. I think it was the hardest part for me to write. I’m not one for scientific research so I enlisted a lot of help from my hubs. The paranormal cannot always be explained but I think I got as close to the root as I could. :)

Tell us about Colton. How did you mold him as a character? Did you include stereotypes for racers or did you make him extra special?
Colton…he’s a mix of so many things…heck he even has mismatched eyes. He’s a mixture of the many professional drivers I’ve idolized and/or met over the years. Some stereotypes, some traits, some values and dreams. He’s also a little bit video game. I wrote the first full description of Colton while my hubs was playing Resident Evil on his PlayStation and somehow Colton turned out to closely resemble Leon Kennedy from the game. Go figure…lol

How different is the final version of Magnetic Shift from its first version?
Other than adding in the science behind Lexi’s ability and describing how she used it so that everyone could understand it the way I did, nothing major was changed. A few quirks were added, a few thoughts that were not needed were taken away and one specific scene needed a bit of a cool down but all in all it’s still the same story I hand wrote in my notebook while sitting on my front porch two summers ago.

Thank you, Lucy!

About the Author:

Lucy D. Briand lives in Ottawa, Canada with her comic book fanatic husband and her nonchalant Siamese cat. By day she works full time as a public servant for the Government of Canada, but by night her creative mind takes over and conjures up young adult gearhead romance stories with supernatural twists.
When not working, reading, writing, or watching way too much TV, Lucy likes to cosplay, attend ComicCons, go on road trips to Walt Disney World, and play ridiculous amounts of board games. She’s a geek to the core but is also a huge NASCAR Cup fan.
Lucy is represented by Brittany Booker Carter of The Booker Albert Literary Agency.

Find Lucy: Website | Facebook | Goodreads | Twitter

Book Description:

Paperback, 260 pages
Expected publication: March 15th 2016 by Spencer Hill Press

The ability to magnetize and manipulate metal with the flick of her wrist makes seventeen-year-old Lexi Adams a crack mechanic, but it’s a disaster in the making when her stepdad trades her skills to NASCAR team owner Dean Grant for an entire season’s worth of sponsorship ads.

Now Lexi has no other choice but to suck it up and hope she can keep her magnetic impulses under control—that is, until she runs into NASCAR’s hot new rookie, Colton Tayler.

When Carl Stacy, the ruthless team owner of the defending Cup Champion, discovers Lexi’s secret and plots to use it to ruin Dean’s race team for good, Lexi must either expose her ability to save Colton, risking Dean’s career and her own freedom in the process, or watch the only guy she’s ever fallen for race to his death.

Giveaway

Thanks Lucy for this giveaway!
What's up for grabs: Copy of Magnetic Shift
Scope: Open internationally


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Treat yourself to a complete #CelebratingDebutantes2016 experience. Click the image below for the full schedule and links to the posts!