My publisher told me it's hitting stores Jan 8, so I'm trying to get bookstores around me and my old high school to buy a few copies. I don't know where exactly it will be distributed, though. Not yet. It's on amazon.com, borders.com, barnesandnoble.com, and publishamerica.com among other smaller online book dealers.
hmm, that's a question I need to really rehearse my answer for. A lot of me is in it, if that makes sense. I think an author's personality comes out in any book.
No, no one in my life is really inspiration for the main characters, but the supporting ones. The grandpa in it is loosely based on mine, etc.
To tie it back to POTC, Jack kind of weaned me away from really brooding, dark and disturbed "heroes," like the Phantom of the Opera and those. It was so refreshing to see a hero who wasn't self-obsessed and wasn't afraid to laugh at himself. It just seemed more real and I tried to put that into my characters. It's too exhausting to be deep and brooding all the time.
I don't know what it was. It was something else besides the obvious crush I have on Jack. ha ha ha. Jack just seemed so much more realistic than other things I was into because of his humor. He makes fun of himself quite a bit and all it does is show a confidence about him. He may not be confident about everything (love life), but he has a confidence in himself, that he can accomplish most things if he is smart enough. It was just the marriage of competence/intelligence and the excellent clumsiness/erring sides of him that made him a character I wish I'd written up.