Beth Fantaskey lives in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, with her husband, three daughters, and a menagerie that includes a dog, cat, hermit crab, immortal goldfish, and semi-tame cardinal named Robert. She is the author of the recently released middle-grade mystery Isabel Feeney, Star Reporter; YA mysteries Buzz Kill and Jekel Loves Hyde; as well as YA romances Jessica’s Guide to Dating on the Dark Side and Jessica Rules the Dark Side, all published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Writing as Bethany Blake, she has also penned two upcoming cozy mysteries for adults – Death by Chocolate Lab and Dial Meow for Murder – to be published by Kensington in 2017. She has been a member of MWA since 2011.
What made you decide to be an author?
I’ve been a writer for my entire professional life. I started right out of college, writing speeches for politicians. Then I freelanced for newspapers and magazines. But I would always walk through book stores, look at the novels and think, “That has to be the ultimate achievement for a writer.” So I started writing short stories for Woman’s World magazine, then worked my way up to a novel. It was a gradual progression.
Do you outline or fly by the seat of your pants?
I completely fly by the seat of my pants. I like to know where a story starts, and, in a general sense, where it ends. Everything else I call the “murky middle.” I recently spoke with high school students about my YA mystery Buzz Kill, and someone asked, “When did you decide who the killer was?” And I honestly couldn’t recall! I often go to bed with a cliffhanger waiting on my computer screen, and no idea how I’m going to resolve things.
What non-crime books do you enjoy reading?
There are non-crime books? Just kidding! I like to read classic novels, nonfiction accounts of polar exploration, and anything humorous. My copy of Fierce Pajamas, one of The New Yorker anthologies, is never far out of reach, and I am a huge fan of James Thurber.
How do you handle rejection or bad reviews?
I only read reviews that my editor sends me, and she screens out the bad stuff. There’s no sense in getting bogged down in the negative, when taste is so personal. Rejection by editors is tougher. I spent six months working on a novel that I loved, and it never did sell. That stung. But I went back to work and wrote my new middle grade mystery, Isabel Feeney, Star Reporter. I’m not the toughest person, but I’m pretty tenacious.
What advice would you give to beginning writers?
It goes back to rejection, and it’s actually advice I got from another author. I was at a writer’s conference, and there must’ve been 300 people crammed into a ballroom for one of the seminars. I was unpublished, and I said to my friend, “What are the odds I’ll succeed, out of all these people who have the same dream?” And she told me, “Half the people here will quit when they get their first rejection. Now you’re competing with 150 people. Half of those will quit when they get their second rejection…” And she whittled it down that way until I was the last person standing. So my advice is, write what you love. Then fight to be that last person standing – published book in hand.