Welcome to my stop on the Addicted to You blog tour hosted by YA Bound Book Tours. Click HERE to see the full blog tour schedule!
Addicted to You (Addicted #1)
by Krista Ritchie, Becca Ritchie
Release Date: 07/01/13
Summary from Goodreads:
No one would suspect shy Lily Calloway’s biggest secret. While everyone is dancing at college bars, Lily stays in the bathroom. To get laid. Her compulsion leads her to one-night stands, steamy hookups and events she shamefully regrets. The only person who knows her secret happens to have one of his own.
Loren Hale’s best friend is his bottle of bourbon. Lily comes at a close second. For three years, they’ve pretended to be in a real relationship, hiding their addictions from their families. They’ve mastered the art of concealing flasks and random guys that filter in and out of their apartment.
But when they go on a family boat trip, surrounded by open seas and limited male bodies in sight, Lily’s confronted with a big fear. Only one guy onboard can fill her addiction, and she’s sworn off going there with Loren Hale ever again.
Now the only person who can truly help her can barely help himself.
**This is a New Adult book recommended for readers 18 and up**
Available from:
Addicted to You: How we name our characters… by Becca Ritchie
So even though I have a co-author, Krista has delegated me the sole voice of this post. Addicted to You is a New Adult contemporary romance. There is not a magical world, a wardrobe portal, or furry little creatures to be named after desserts and pies. Talking about how we name our characters probably sounds like a snooze-fest compared to J.K. Rowling’s origin for Luna Lovegood or Neville Longbottom.
The simple answer could just be that we went on a baby name website (which I have done before—multiple times) but this book was a little interesting. We didn’t use an A-Z name website for help. And maybe it’s fitting that our process was a little strange considering the subject matter of our New Adult novel: a love story between a sex addict and an alcoholic to the highest-dysfunctional-degree.
We’ll break down four names for you and the background of how they arose and why they were chosen for Addicted to You.
Lily Calloway (plus her sisters: Rose, Poppy, and Daisy): Starting with Lily. When I published my first book in high school, I tried desperately to choose a name that had no affiliation to anyone I knew. I thought that would be extremely awkward if I met them in the hallway and they happened to be the love interest to the main girl—or they were the main girl. We don’t know any “Lilys” that we can grab lunch with and that can tell the difference between us with a single look (we’re identical twins), but one of our good blogger friends is named Lili. Is this a coincidence? Yes. Completely. How’d we choose it? We have a bank of names we always use for our main characters in “concept books” that may literally reach ten pages and then die. Lily Calloway is one of them. Her sisters came about because in our high school there was a girl named Poppy. Her sisters were all named after flowers. We thought it was genius and hilarious at the same time, so we adopted it and picked flowery names for Lily’s three sisters.
Loren Hale: We have a problem. We really like gender-bending names. I love Ryan for a girl, and when Krista threw out the idea of Loren, we had to do it. One of the hottest (and coolest) names we’ve ever heard is Kelly Severide from NBC’s Chicago Fire. The masculine last name makes the first one really powerful. We knew we wanted an “L” name for the alliteration—saying Lo and Lily sounds funny on the tongue and reads well. We’re amused easily. In our very first version of Addicted to You, we named him Jake Stayzor because that was the male lead we always used with Lily in the “concept books” that could have been about aliens or an apocalypse. It did not work. At all. And we’ve finally put that name to rest. We’ll never use Jake Stazyor in anything. I think we’ve killed it for good.
Ryke Meadows: So this was a little harder. We wanted an off-the-wall name. Something that was slightly absurd but wasn’t too goofy. We came up with Ryke, which is strong and hard like the character (and it means “kingdom”), but the last name softens him just a little. One of the very first things I ever wrote as a kid involved two brothers with the last name Meadows—and I not-so creatively titled the work The Meadow Stories.
Connor Cobalt: This is a funny one. We had to find a pretentious name like the character—and the way he’s introduced, well, it involves his name. So naturally we needed something that sounds better together than alone. Saying Connor Cobalt is much more fun than plain Connor. Don’t you think?
That’s it. Thanks for having us on the blog! And for anyone willing to spend time with two very flawed and dysfunctional people—to see whether they can make it work—check out Addicted to You by Krista Ritchie and me (Becca Ritchie).
Becca Ritchie is a carnivore of pop culture, television, film and of course YA and NA books. While in college, she worked at The CW television network and put her vampiric knowledge to good use, blogging about hit series and swooning over actors’ abs. When she’s not blogging, she writes novels and has teamed up with her twin sister for their New Adult novel ADDICTED TO YOU. Available July of 2013.
Krista Ritchie is the mind behind popular trading website YA Book Exchange and created Nawanda Files, a book blog that also features books into movies news. When not pouring over entertainment news and the newest releases, she spends her time conducting research in a genetics lab. She’s happy to join forces with her sister, harnessing their twin powers to produce the first in a New Adult series.
Becca’s Links:
Krista’s Links:
***GIVEAWAY***
$25 Amazon Gift Card and Signed Paperback of Addicted to You. Open Internationally!
1 comments:
I just finished this book for the tour, and this post is really cool, finding out where the names of those characters came from. I'm always curious how authors name their characters. Connor Cobalt - definitely pretentious sounding for a pretentious character, lol!
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