Kristin
Alexandre was raised in Dayton, Ohio where she worked as a feature
columnist for The Dayton Journal Herald and the Kettering Oakwood Times.
She has written two previous books: Nuncio and the Gypsy Girl in the Gilded Age, a graphic novel that was featured at the 2011 NY City Comic Con; and Find a Great Guy: Now and Forever.Alexandre was a co-founder of Earth Day 1970 and worked on staff with House Beautiful Magazine and as a contributor to Town & Country Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor and The Daily News. Her celebrity luncheon series for the Chairman of Ammirati & Puris Advertising at The New York Yacht Club was acclaimed, and she has also worked as a co-host and producer of Enough Is Enough a syndicated talk show for WLIW-TV, a PBS affiliate in NYC. Alexandre has worked as a publicist for The Economic Development Association of Puerto Rico and Champion International U.S. Plywood. She is a NJ Board Member of The Humane Society of America and resides in Delray Beach, Fl. and Nantucket , Ma. with her husband DeWitt.
Her latest book is the new adult fiction, Gem City Gypsy.
You can visit Kristin’s website at:
http://www.gemcitygypsy.com/
Q: Thank you for this interview, Kristin. Can you tell us what your latest book, (Gem City Gypsy), is all about?“Gem City Gypsy” tells the story of Neci Stans, a beautiful, ambitious gypsy teenager who survives the sinking of the Lusitania, the murder of her mentor and makes her way home to the U.S. to face a war and the KKK. It is a story of redemption and personal discovery with romance and suspense as well.Q: Can you tell us a little about your main and supporting characters?
Neci Stans is a teenager but she believes that she can rise above her station and her circumstances and live the “beautiful” life. She is gifted and beautiful and endowed with the gift of knowing how to “read” animals.Q: Do you tend to base your characters on real people or are they totally from your imagination?
Neci is based on real people and real history.Q: Are you consciously aware of the plot before you begin a novel, or do you discover it as you write?
First I create my characters and then they start writing their own stories.Q: Does the setting play a major part in the development of your story?
Yes. My setting is Dayton, Ohio- my hometown and also the home of great inventors and innovators like Charles Kettering (the self starter) and The Wright Brothers (the inventor of the airplane.) Dayton was a beautiful, bustling and powerful industrial town in 1917.Q: Open the book to page 69. What is happening?
On Page 69 Neci is falsely arrested for murder. Her new friends have her released from prison.Q: Can you give us one of your best excerpts?
“Marlene Schiller fumed the rest of the way home. She knew why Ezra didn’t want to come over, and it was all about the beautiful girl he’d met on the train. Neci Star. Right, It was that dirty little Gypsy girl, Neci Stans. She could put on the finest of dresses, and paint her nails with 24-karat gold, and she would still be nothing more than Gypsy trash.”Q: Have you suffered from writer’s block and what do you do to get back on track?
No. I write every day.Q: What would you do with an extra hour today if you could do anything you wanted?
Bike.Q: Which already published book do you wish that you had written and why?
Twilight!Q: What kind of advice would you give other fiction authors regarding getting their books out there?
Keep writing every day.