Book Highlight - Fresco by Patti Larsen

I was lucky enough to score a copy of Fresco in exchange for an honest review. If you'd like to read my thoughts, you can check out the review here... but in a nutshell - I loved the book. One of the best things about it though, was that it was written by an author I really look up to. I have been monitoring her progress since getting into the indie world and I am completely inspired by her. She is one of the indie authors I want to mirror my career on, so it is my absolute pleasure to have her visiting YAlicious today.

Patti is here to tell us how she first met Fresco - the MC of her Diamond City Trilogy. Welcome to YAlicious, Patti.

I teach a class called Get Your Book Done—not focused on how to write, but more so on how to structure writing. The breakdown of what makes a good story, how a book is built from the beginning of act one through the wrap up of act three. I adore teaching, sharing my method with anyone who wants to learn it.

Part of the process when I teach is walking my students through an idea for a book so they can see it evolve in front of them. While I was preparing one of my classes, I started that process myself as an exercise to remind myself what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it.

An image came to me, of a blonde young man in a denim jacket, standing in a back alley over a girl high on drugs. As he crouched over her, he told me his name was Fresco.

Yes, I hear voices. Crazy, I know. I know! Still. I had to listen. So, I took my own advice, pulled out a onepage, or breakdown sheet of the basic plot, and filled in what I knew.

From that came an amazing trilogy about love, loss, addiction and redemption told through Fresco’s eyes. I find it so amazing how ideas come, usually when I least expect, and take me along for such an emotional ride.

And while I had someone ask me once why I’d named him Fresco (with a wrinkle of her nose as though she disapproved), I smiled and told her I didn’t.

Fresco, like all of my characters, named himself.

When you read the book, you will soon see, that Fresco is the perfect name for the book and this character.

If you'd like to connect with Patti online, you can follow the links below:

Website

Facebook

Twitter

Amazon Author Page

Goodreads Author Page

About the Author: Patti Larsen is an award-winning middle grade and young adult author with a passion for the paranormal. Her YA thriller series, The Hunted, is available now. Book one of that series, RUN, is a recent recipient of the 2012 PEI Book Awards for Fiction. Ten books of her very popular Hayle Coven Novels, beginning with Family Magic, are also out now. Her YA steampunk series, Blood and Gold, can be found on Amazon, along with her YA paranormal novel, Best Friends Forever, The Diamond City Trilogy and the Clone Chronicles. Her middle grade novel, The Ghost Boy of MacKenzie House (Acorn Press), is available now. She is a full time writer and a part time teacher of her Get Your Book Done program. Patti lives on the East Coast of Canada with her very patient husband and four massive cats.