Kimberly, what is your favorite thing about THE SCATTERING?

My favorite thing about The Scattering is probably the way that Wylie’s personal journey dovetails with the action and adventure of the story. The Outliers trilogy looks at how the world might react if we discovered women possessed an ability—Heightened Emotional Intelligence— that men did not. But it is also the story of one girl trying to make sense of herself in the world, the way we all must do. It’s this push and pull between the broader and more intimate themes that I like the most about the way the book works.

How long or hard was your road to publication? How many books did you write before this one, and how many never got published?

Like many writers, my road to publication was extremely long and exceedingly bumpy. It took me over ten years and five completed novels before I ever sold one to a publisher. That first novel was Reconstructing Amelia, my first adult novel.

Was there an AHA! moment along your road to publication where something suddenly sank in and you felt you had the key to writing a novel? What was it?

For me, it was after I wrote a very early draft of Reconstructing Amelia—and again this is after several previous failed attempts to sell novels to a publisher—and my agent thought that one storyline in Amelia really needed to change. The novel has two alternating timelines and one was really weak at the time. More to the point, the two storylines never converged in that early draft.

Once I realized I needed to do that—and figured out how to do it—it was obvious to me that had been the problem in so many of my earlier, unsold manuscripts. It really was an “aha” moment for me in the most profound way.

What’s your writing ritual like? Do you listen to music? Work at home or at a coffee shop or the library, etc.?

I have a desk at the Brooklyn Writers Space and I write there every day from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. If I’m not on a deadline, I try to write only during weekdays, but that will go out the window if something is due. I wrote all my other books at a local coffee shop, but after a few years of spending eight hours a day there, it seemed time to make a change. As for what I listen to, it will depend what stage I am at. Usually, I need to edit with silence, but when I am drafting new material, playing music works best to keep the non-writing part of my brain from getting in the way.

What advice would you most like to pass along to other writers?

Get a great feedback group or partner. (A group is best if you can find one, if only because opinions vary.) Regardless, it’s impossible to improve in a vacuum. But you need thoughtful readers so that you can learn what is and what isn’t working. And be sure to find people who will be both honest and constructive. And they needn’t be writers themselves, only thoughtful readers. Anyone can tell you when they get bored or things stopped making sense.

What are you working on now?

I’ve just finished a draft of the third book in the Outliers trilogy, and I’m getting ready to start my next standalone adult mystery, but all the details on that are, so far, still under wraps!