THRIVE Blog Tour – Interview with Krista & Becca Ritchie + Giveaway

Title: Thrive 

Authors: Krista & Becca Ritchie 

Series: Addicted #2.5

Pub Date: July 18th, 2014

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Amazon: Purchase links not available until July 18^th

SUMMARY 

Two years will change them forever. 

When rumors spread like wildfire—like having three-ways with her boyfriend’s rock climbing brother—Lily Calloway spirals into a dark place. Her bedroom. Loren Hale is more confident and determined to keep their sex life private, even from their friends, and he helps Lily in the only way he knows how. But how much love is too much? 

Their lives are filmed, watched, and criticized. And through it all, Lily and Loren have to face enemies they never thought they’d see, demons they don’t know if they should bury, and setbacks they didn’t think they’d meet. Not this soon. 

And one rumor could be too much for them to handle. It will test their greatest limitations, and if they don’t hold onto each other, someone is going to drown. 

A full-length New Adult Romance that bridges the gap between the second and third books. Thrive must be read before Addicted After All if you have not read the Calloway Sisters spin-off

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One day in March I was sick in bed and deciding what to read next when I stumbled upon Addicted To  You and thought: Hm why not? Thus began my addiction! When I discovered this amazing series my faith in NA genre was restored. I can’t recommend this enough. The story about friendships and family with flawed, real and fun characters – everyone will find something to love. I sure did – hello Connor Cobalt. *wink*

I had some questions for our authors – Krista & Becca and they were very kind to answer them all.

1. How would you introduce your books to someone who hasn’t read them yet?

Krista: I’d probably just throw out our tagline. 9 Books. 6 Friends. 3 Couples. 1 Epic Series. It’s about friendships and family and finding love and yourself amidst outside forces. 

Becca: Or we’d talk about each couple: a sex addict and an alcoholic who are best friends and pretend to be in a relationship to hide their addictions. Also two pretentious, intelligent, overly confident honor students, who have love-hate banter and lofty ambitions. Then lastly an 18-yr-old fearless girl who’s the youngest of her family and a 25-year-old rock climber with hard exterior—it’s crazy, forbidden love that begins when she’s only 15, so yes very forbidden.

2. How long does it take you to write one book? Tell us about your writing process, do you edit for each other?

Krista: One of us is usually writing the first draft while the second person is editing the beginning portions of it, so it’s hard to say how long it takes us to solely just write a book without editing/revising/and polishing numerous times. The whole process takes us between 2-3 months. 

Becca: Yep, 2-3 months. Sometimes 4 months if we’re working on multiple projects at the same time. We both edit for each other because we’ll go in the book and sweep through it a few times. Sometimes it’s all in different pieces between each other before we put it together.

3.   Where do you get your daily inspiration?

Krista: TV is a huge inspiration. I love the way (good) shows are able to develop characters, intertwine multiple storylines while still balancing a central arc. 

Becca: Oh yeah, definitely television and movies. We’ve tried to give each book an arc so it feels like a complete “season” of television with all the conflicts tied up. Our favorite shows are very good at tying up arcs but still progressing relationships and developing them throughout the series.

4.   When you wrote the first book, Addicted To You, did you plan the sequels?

Krista: We had planned Ricochet, Addicted for Now, and Addicted After All. When we first wrote it, we knew it would be a series (most likely a trilogy) but we never saw it diverting into spin-off books until we finished Ricochet (which was also initially supposed to be just a novella). Thrive came about when we decided to write Kiss the Sky and Hothouse Flower. 

Becca: The more people started reading the books, the more we realized that we had the opportunity to expand the series to spin-offs and then Thrive, which weaves together a story through those spin-off books in Lily & Lo’s POVs. We would’ve had to stop the series much earlier if no one read them, and it’s really one of the gifts our readers have given us through this whole process. 

5.   When did you realize that writing is what you want to do?

Krista: I think we’ve wanted to write since we started. Like maybe ten or twelve? The issue was turning our hobby and passion into a career. It took a lot of work to improve our skills in order to get to that point. And we never really believed it would be our job. It was always a dream to us, not a reality. 

Becca: About 10 or 12 sounds right. I finished my first novel at 12. It was nothing good, but I wrote it start to finish. It ended up being about 70,000 words. We’ve loved writing for so long, and in college, we tried so hard to get picked up by an agent, but it was one of those things you dream about. We didn’t know if it would ever come to pass, but we knew we had to at least try. But no matter how hard we worked, it never happened. We were about to move on (we were literally in our last month of college), but then we decided to self-publish instead. And now here we are, six books in, so incredibly grateful. Self-publishing was the best decision we’ve ever made. We did eventually get an agent, and it’s surreal that we spent so many years querying with rejection after rejection and in a moment’s time, without really seeking it out, it happened. 

6.  Is it sometimes difficult to write in pair and have you ever or plan to write separately? Now you both write NA, do you have other genre preferences?

Krista: I absolutely LOVE writing with Becca. I know she can probably write without me. She’s super amazing like that. But I wouldn’t want to ever write without her. I love our writing discussions too much. It makes the process so much easier and fun when someone is equally invested in your work (even when you only have like a skeleton of an idea). We both love YA , so in the future we’d definitely love to write some young adult stories, but right now we’re focusing on NA.

Becca: I wouldn’t want to write without Krista, and don’t let her fool you, she’s just as amazing! She’s so good at humor. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve laughed out loud when I read scenes she worked on. Krista is definitely right that it helps so much when someone is so equally invested in the story as you are. If we were writing separately, our attentions would be split, and I love that we’re both committed to bettering the same books with equal passion. 

7.    What do your friends and family think about the books?

Krista: They’re all incredibly supportive! Most of the women in our family have read the books and they loved them. Having their support has really meant the world to us. 

Becca: Really supportive! I couldn’t ask for a better set of family and friends :) 

8.    How do you feel about your fans?

Krista: We honestly have the best fans ever. I never expected readers to fall in love with our books and characters as much as they did. The best compliment is whenever someone tells us they recommended their book to a friend, family member, etc. It’s incredible. And that support and love for our series drives us to keep writing. Oh, and Becca and I constantly pinch each other, just to make sure we’re not dreaming. 

Becca: I seriously adore every single fan so much. Being able to talk to everyone about our books is the best part of writing. Hands down. The support just means the world to us.

9.    How do you decide what goes into the books, do you sometimes disagree on where do you want the story to go? 

Krista: We disagree all the time! But we’ll talk it out with one another until we land on the best version of the story we can get. Sometimes it means scraping thousands of words, but at the end of the day we both have to be 100% confident that book is the best one it can be. 

Becca: What Krista said. I think it makes for a better book in the end when we disagree. We start talking and it’ll open new ideas and let us get even deeper into the characters’ minds.

10.    Do you have plans to write something other than the ADDICTED series? Any new ideas?

Krista: Yep! We have a standalone nearly done and then our new series called the Like Us series is all plotted. 

Becca: The standalone should come out before the Like Us series, but we’ll see what happens! We’re going to focus on more standalones and then have the Like Us series be our next series after this one. But that may change depending on where a standalone goes, but for now, that’s the plan.

11.     What personal characteristics of yours did you give to your characters. I mean, how much of Becca and Krista do we see in Lily, Rose, etc.?

Krista: Oh! I love this question. For Becca, I think that Lily’s love for comic books is something that matches her own love. And definitely Daisy’s super bubbly personality. Becca is like a huge ball of light that will blind you (especially if she just drank Red Bull). 

Becca: Aw, thanks, and yes, beware of me when I drink Red Bull. The world moves at a much faster pace on caffeine! Krista is laid-back like Daisy (kinda like Poppy too) but she’s sooo smart, so she has a lot of Rose in her. And she doesn’t take crap from guys either, so they have to be a strong mix of confident and intelligent or else they’ll be bulldozed by her wit. 

12.     Connor Cobalt is my favorite character. Rose too. Even if they weren't a couple they'd be my favorites still – individually. Will we see more of their past (flashbacks or something) in the books?

Krista: We’re going to try to fit a flashback of their first date and maybe some other in Fuel the Fire, but we can’t promise anything—because it may be sacrificed to the editing gods in the end. But…We know for sure that if their first date isn’t included in the book, we’ll provide it as bonus material. 

Becca: I ditto what Krista says, and I’ll add that they’ll still be a huge part of Addicted After All, and very likely Long Way Down, even if we’re not in their POVs. 

13.     How do you feel about negative reviews?

Krista: We used to read them a lot when we first published Addicted to You. We saw them as constructive criticism and used them as tools to mold the rest of the series. Now, we don’t read them at all. We’re just so deep into the series that we have everything planned and any criticism is more likely to shake our confidence than improve the story. And I was a YA Book Blogger for two years before we published Addicted to You, so I’ve written my fair share of negative reviews. I definitely understand them, even the snarky ones (which can sometimes be the most amusing). Not everyone will like our books, which is fine with us. 

Becca: I love how Krista phrased that and I concur one-hundred percent. We’re so deep into the series, so most likely someone’s negative response may be about something that’ll develop in the next book or the next one. And a lot of times we can’t really change what they dislike by this time, so it’s better to just steer clear of negative reviews, pat each other on the back and keep going.

14.     Your favorite books and authors? (Any good books you’d like to recommend us?)

Krista: If you like contemporary romance and read YA, you have not lived until you’ve read Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins. This book is like finding sunshine in a cupcake. So much love. 

Becca: We have a whole list of YA recs at our old blog. The Sexy Sunday books are ones read by another blogger, not us. The rest are our recs, and we love all of them and would recommend each one. We have them separated into genre. The Morganville Vampire series by Rachel Caine is so good and the protagonist is 16, set in college (she’s smart and skipped grades) She falls in love with a college guy, who she happens to room with in this house off campus (one of my all-time favorite couples). It’s my favorite vampire series.

15.     Your proudest achievement (in terms of writing)?

Krista: Finishing Kiss the Sky. We honestly didn’t know if that book could even be written. We asked ourselves for weeks if we made a mistake by biting off such a challenge. But when we finished it, it was the best feeling in the world. Thrive was almost just as satisfying too. 

Becca; I agree. Finishing Kiss the Sky and completing Thrive too. So challenging, but we found the best story with Thrive and it’s one we’re so in love with. It’s one of the most euphoric feelings, realizing that this is the right story after sooo much struggle and loving it the most. It brought us to tears with both books.

16.     Your favorite social media site?

Krista: My favorite would be Twitter. It’s a bit harder for me now that we share a Twitter account (even though I love our joint account!). I feel torn between going on my personal account and using our joint one. It can get a little confusing if we’re both having conversations on the KBRitchie. But Twitter has always been my favorite. Pinterest and Tumblr are probably close seconds. 

Becca: I’m the same way. I love Twitter, and I think the joint twitter account was a good idea, but I rarely go on my personal account now. Tumblr would be my second, and then probably Pinterest. I feel like I never do Facebook justice. I’m like a FB newbie all the time, and Krista is FB-phobic. I love chatting to fans on FB though, and it’s probably the most important social media of the bunch. 

17.      I don’t know should I ask this (*wink*), but of all three couples which one is your favorite?

Krista: We went a step further and actually ranked our favorite couples on one of the posts for the Thrive Tour lol! It was definitely hard to choose, but Lily and Lo are my favorite. 

Becca: Ooh, yeah we do answer this during the tour! I’ll be secretive and not say just yet (unless the post has already been posted, then you prob already know my answer) ;)

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AUTHOR BIOS

Krista & Becca Ritchie are identical twins. They write New Adult books that make you cringe, gasp, and go ooh-la-la. (If you do that sort of thing.) They are currently working on the spin-offs and final books in the Addicted series. Connect with them on twitter and their website: kbritchie.com

AUTHOR LINKS

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***GIVEAWAY TIME***

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xoxo,

Beatrix