Guest Post: Danielle Weiler on Past Mistakes + Giveaway!

  Today I have the pleasure of having Danielle Weiler, the author of Friendship on Fire, stop by the blog today. I had asked Danielle to do a guest post about some of the wrong decisions she made as a teen and how, if any, influence that had on her creating Daisy, the main character of her story. Danielle has generously offered to do a giveaway. Please check the bottom of this post for more information on how to enter. Take it away, Danielle!

  Daisy as a character is the closest ‘person’ I’ve ever written about that was like me and my experiences as a teen. I drew on my memories of living in a coastal city where high school beach parties/bon-fires were weekly and we had a rival private school across the road from us – but the difference was, we weren’t private, we were public.

  I never had a best guy friend like Roman so he was a mixture of people that I’ve come across over the years and I just loved his nature. Without divulging too much personal information, of course, I had a few friends who backstabbed me and/or changed as we got into our senior year of school. Similarly, girls who I thought were enemies became friends or we at least agreed not to have issues anymore.

Like Daisy, I worked at McDonalds with my brothers, which was really fun. I have 5 older brothers so Daisy’s brothers were a mixture of all of them without any one being too distinguishable. I especially wanted to bring out the theme of irrational protectiveness because that’s how my brothers treated me over every little thing! My parents were always supportive and we were close knit. In many YA books (and even ones that I’ve written) the parents are not present or are messed up and project it onto the kids so I wanted my first novel to have a stable family to help Daisy when she makes her mistakes.

Nate – well, he was a mixture of every charming, gorgeous, well-spoken, insistent boy I dated/knew/wished would notice me/was attracted to/was scared of as a 17-year-old. I do feel sorry for him in many ways but I can understand why readers hate him. You’ll have to read for yourself to find out the specs!

   All teenagers with any working hormones have struggled with distractions from the opposite sex while trying to juggle study and work. Most teenagers have experimented with drinking and feeling pressured to do things they aren’t necessarily comfortable with or ready for. I wanted Daisy to be realistic and not have all the answers at first. How could she? Hindsight is a wonderful thing. As adults, we are who we are today because of being shaped by our experiences as teens. I hope people who read this book forgive themselves in their time of learning, and also laugh at some of the things they said/did/fell for. 

   Thanks for stopping by today, Danielle! I'm sure we can all agree that hindsight is 20/20.

GIVEAWAY

Danielle has generously offered to giveaway two (2) ebooks in PDF format to two (2) lucky winners. To enter this giveaway, simply leave your name/alias along with your email address so I can contact you if you win. This giveaway is open to ALL email addresses. The giveaway will end on Friday, APRIL 20th at 11 PM EST. The winner will be selected by Random.org and announced on the blog on Saturday, APRIL 21st. Good Luck!