Postcard For Reader

Final Friday Interview - Mandy Hubbard

The perfect pair of shoes, one slip and fall, and you're sent back in time... sounds crazy, right?

Mandy Hubbard's debut novel, Prada and Prejudice - in which the main character Callie experiences just that - hit stores this past June and has since become a New York Times bestseller. Even Abigail Breslin (actress in My Sister's Keeper) loves it! And, of course, we all love Mandy Hubbard herself...

Quick - you have to live the life of either Callie in Prada and Prejudice or Elizabeth from Pride and Prejudice. Which do you choose and why?
Oh, dang! That is one tough question. I really ♥ Mr. Darcy, too. But I think I’ll go with Callie. *ducks to avoid flying objects.*.

I really love Elizabeth and think it would be amazing to be her, but with me and my twenty-first century brain, I’m not sure I could pull it off. Mr. Darcy would probably run screaming from the room.

At least Callie gets to assert her modern sensibilities while in 1815!

It's that time of year. Sale time! You make a mad dash through your house, get to the store- and, as you're in line, realize that you have left your credit card at home. What do you do!? (Because you can't possibly leave those gorgeous shoes where just anybody can take them.)
You totally know I’ve done this like, a zillion times, right? I would just hide the heels somewhere, go to the bank and get cash (I do have my ID, right?) and run back to buy them before someone else discovers them. ;-)

On that note - your favorite pair of shoes.
I hate to be totally lame, but I really love my tan-and-white camo converse. I have a few pairs of heels that are way cute, but I’ll put them on with the intention of wearing them to work, and I always end up taking them off and choosing flats before I even get out the door.

I only have two pairs that I’ll actually wear all day, and they’re both plain black. NOTHING like Callie’s fiery red stilettos!

What inspired you to write Prada and Prejudice? And why the name Callie?
I love the era, but I also love books where the heroines talk and act more like I do. So I combined the two into my dream book. As for Callie’s name, I honestly don’t remember. With my characters I tend to pick whatever random name comes to mind when I’m typing the story, and on occasion I use find and replace if I decide I don’t like the name, but usually it stays the same.

For my next YA, the three main girls are all named after my cousins, simply because they were the easiest names to think of!

What's your favorite online website and why? We all know you use Twitter, of course, but that can't possibly be it. Can it?
Oh, Twitter, how I ♥ thee… Also, I will assume that YAHOO!, which I use for email, doesn’t count. (Because it’s not YAHOO I want, its just the email—I am obsessed with email.) Let’s eliminate all the networking sites—facebook, twitter, livejournal, yahoo… if we do that my fav site is probably the message boards at verlakay.com. Oh crap, that’s probably networking too, huh? What am I, some big network monger?

Okay how about plain old Nascar.com. God I’m lame.

If you could take one fictional character and do anything with/to them, who and what would you do? (If your answer is Edward Cullen, I automatically lose respect for you. Unless it's to desparklify him.)
Just so you know, if I had chosen Edward, I’d totally scrub him with a brillo pad just to see if the glitter comes off. So we’re in the clear there.

Can I make out with Mr. Darcy? Pre-Elizabeth, of course. I don’t like cheaters. (FYI, there is TOTALLY a book in which this happens—it’s also a time travel, and it is HYSTERICAL. It’s called Seducing Mr. Darcy by Gwyn Cready.)

It must be difficult to write a whole spiffeh shiny book. What's the hardest part?
Oh, don’t worry, I don’t write shiny books. I write really crappy books. But then I revise, revise, revise…until they start turning shiny. That’s the hard part—knowing when it’s done, and not stopping until then. SO much work, but SO worth it.

YOU HAVE NEW BOOKS COMING OUT! Can we get some details?
My next release is DRIVEN, a romance novella for Harlequin due out June 2010. It’s about a twenty year old female mechanic named Mia. She’s the only girl in NASCAR who works under the hood, and she falls for a pit crew member on a rival team. She’s afraid that once the other guys find out about it, it’s going to overshadow her work, so she’s trying really hard to keep it under wraps.

After that, (tentatively scheduled for August 2010), I have my YA, which is currently (subject to change) titled YOU WISH. The details are top secret, but suffice to say it’s another high concept romantic comedy, and I hope it’ll appeal to readers of Prada and Prejudice.

Thanks for stoppin' by, Mandy! Catch Mandy at her website [link] or on Twitter [link]!

Curious as to who will be visiting WORD in September? Well, guess what - it's Tony DiTerlizzi, co-creator of The Spiderwick Chronicles!