Hello and welcome to Master Adventures! Today our guest is the amazing Action-Adventure writer , author of the "Zombie Shark Highway Universe" on Wattpad's Fantastical Adventures Reading List.

When zombie sharks start attacking the shoreline it's up to Kayla, the sheriff's daughter, and local bad boy, Justin, to save the town.

Seventeen-year-old Kayla Girard follows the rules just like any good sheriff's daughter should. But when eight dead sharks wash up on the highway outside her remote coastal town, Justin, the town lowlife, drags Kayla out to the highway with him. When they arrive at the scene, the sharks are gone - and two of Justin's friends are found dead in their place. Suddenly it's up to Kayla and Justin to save the town from sharks that won't stay dead.

Action-Adventure, YES! Always, all the time. Whatever I write, there has to be action and adventure. And lots of it. It's never deliberate. I don't set out to write an "Action-Adventure". But everything I write always contains lots of both those things. But it also might be a comedy at the same time, or a horror, or a fantasy. Fantasy is probably my favorite genre to read and write in. Whether it's magic realism or high fantasy, the fantasy shelf at the book store and on Wattpad is where I linger the longest.

I don't think this will come as a surprise to anyone - but Sharknado and all those amazing shark disaster and creature disaster B movies. Flu Birds. Rampage. My absolute favorite was Avalanche Sharks. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. I really wanted to try to take that same sense of B movie silliness that isn't, inside its story world, aware it's silly, and bring it to book form. It was really just something fun I wanted to do. And I have been so blown away by how readers have responded to it.

I love Kayla for her bravery and authenticity. She's not trying to impress anyone. She is who she is and she's good with that. Unless Justin is around, then she can't help but second guess herself a bit. I love Justin for his kind heart and contradictions. He's the cool guy at school and has tons of friends, but he's very insecure and unsure in everything he does. But ultimately, he just wants to do the right thing, Neither of these characters are based on anyone specific, they're more a mish-mash of lots of people I've known in my life, not to mention bits and pieces of my own teenage self haha

Again, they are all mixes of different people and their different personality traits. Except, Maddie's gecko belly button ring was based on a real gecko belly button ring a friend of mine from high school got for Christmas. It was awesome.

I used to be a very proud "pantser", letting the story take me wherever it leads. But after a couple of disasters, I started getting tired of being panicked in the middle of the book. At some point in the middle, I always hit this wall where I either haven't set up the ending enough so I have to go back to the beginning and start over, or there's no ending in sight and the whole book feels aimless.

So I tried plotting. And found myself getting bored - I know how the story ends, I've planned it! - so I'd stop writing. Now, I like to do a combined plotter-pantser method. I plot three or four chapters out, including the emotional and story beats that will be important for the ending I have sort of vaguely planned for. And if the story veers off the plan, I don't fight it, because it's only three or four chapters! Once I get to the end of those chapters I can decide what to do next, whether that's to keep driving towards the planned ending, or head off in a new direction. But I like having a bit of a path to follow.

I've been asked this a few times and my advice is pretty consistently this - DON'T PANIC! Put the story away. And then go get really, really, really bored. Go for a long walk. A long drive. Better yet, a train ride. Eventually, I find my mind drifts into the story and I start figuring out how to solve the problems. Also reading. Pick out a new book. Or two. Or four. Reading stories by writers I love really inspires me and gets me excited to break through my own story's problems.

I had a lot of fun writing the scene where Justin comes to Kayla's grandfather's trailer. I just really liked trying to balance how they both feel about each other, how unsure they are about how the other one feels, and how they've been cornered together by the circumstances they find themselves in. They only really have each other, whether they like it or not. There's a lot going on emotionally, a lot of balls in the air, and it was fun as a writer to explore their relationship and how it grows or falls apart in that moment.

I've always had a special place in my heart for Maddie. She's so misunderstood.

Do I ever! I wrote two other stories in this universe, but with completely new characters in different locations, different monsters - Lava Cat Cruiseship and Unicorn Death Drive. I thought it would be fun to bring the characters from each of these monster stories together in a big final story where they try to bring the monster threat to an ultimate end. So Kayla and Justin are teaming up with Eidon and Celia from Lava Cat Cruiseship and Nat and Andre from Unicorn Death Drive in the final book: Mega Worm Apocalypse!!! I'm still working on it as we speak, but there are a few chapters up on my profile now!

About eight or nine months? It was a long time ago, but I remember being surprised at how fast I was writing, mostly because I was having so much fun. As for how long writing a book normally takes me? Ewf. It could be eight months, it could be eight years. All the ZSH universe books took about a year, but I have a book coming out in the fall that took me about six years to finish. It all depends on what the story needs from me!

Yes! So many. Some of my all-time faves are Given by , Belle Morte by , Running with Scissors by , and The Other Worlders by .

Anywhere and everywhere. It could be a specific location that inspires a story, or a situation in real life, or a tiny moment in a movie or a show, a book, that ignites an idea. More often lately, the inspiration for stories is coming from my emotions. And I think I have Covid to thank for that. So much time stuck inside, in my own head, sent me on an emotional roller coaster like it obviously did for so many of us. I found it really hard to work through and turned to stories to try and make sense of how I was feeling. It inspired some really different stuff from me. Still working on them.

I'd really love to have an opportunity to write for TV at some point! But my biggest goal is to write and illustrate my own graphic novel someday. Maybe even a Webtoon!

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Thank you so much for tuning in! I'm your host, and you have been reading Master Adventurers! Stay tuned for our next edition where we interview an adventurer with a passion for spy stories!