When I see Cora Carmack’s name. I’m on it. Ready to read it. Ready to devour it. Ready to live it. I’m going to be very honest. When I saw that the main focus was centered around football. I shied away just a pinch. Football what do I know about football. Give me NASCAR, give me Jeff Gordon and I’m all on it. But I knew that Cora would weave a story so well, that it wouldn't matter that I had limited interest in the sport. By the end I had much interest in Dallas and Carson. Is it hard enough starting your first year of college. Maybe. Try adding on top of all the new transitions, being the daughter of the football coach for the university. Dallas, has it a little rough, but her spunky personality and character assist her in handling all that the role throws out at her. Just when she thinks it can’t get any worse, it does, but in steps Carson ready to fill the void. Keeping important factors about themselves from one another adds yet another layer of sticky situations that they must get through.
This book is filled with frustration, life choices, love, disappointments and new beginnings. All themes that I love to read. Although I thought the story began a bit slow for me, it quickly picked up pace and moved right along. I couldn't put it down! Cora’s story lines always hook the reader in, with believable characters and refuse to let go even when you've reached the last page. Readers will be in for a treat, as Cora tells the back story of All Lined Up and how it came to be. Cora’s novels are always great reads to capture!
Cora Carmack is a twenty-something writer who likes to write about twenty-something characters. She's done a multitude of things in her life-- boring jobs (like working retail), Fun jobs (like working in a theatre), stressful jobs (like teaching), and dream jobs (like writing). She enjoys placing her characters in the most awkward situations possible, and then trying to help them get a boyfriend out of it. Awkward people need love, too. Her first book, LOSING IT, is a New York Times and USA Today bestseller.
Interview with Cora
The age of young adult writing and the addition of the New
Adult Category has changed writing and novels tremendously over the years.
Teens and young adults are more captivated with deeper in depth story lines
that go far beyond the classics we once knew.
Is there a classic that you will never forget and why?
Well, considering I have a tattoo inspired by it, I’m fairly
certain I’ll never forget The Awakening by Kate Chopin. In many ways, it’s a
coming of age story that not about a teenager. It’s about a woman who is
already married, already has children, and realizes that she’s never really
known who she is or what she wanted. I read it as a teenager, but it was the
beginning of my own awakening, of my own realizations that my life needed to be
about what I wanted, not what others wanted for me.
What point in your life did you realize that you wanted to
be a writer?
I do believe I was in Kindergarten the first time I said I
wanted to be an author. I wrote that down on an assignment for a teacher when I
graduated Kindergarten. That same teacher gave me the assignment when I
graduated from high school at eighteen. It said I wanted to be an author, but
also an actor, ballerina, teacher, an archaeologist, and the President of the
United States. Gotta dream big, right? But the first time I began seriously
considering writing as a career was my freshman year in college.
Lastly, what do you find as inspiration for your writing?
Oh gosh, everything. From music to art to movies to other
people or places. When I see or experience something that I find particularly
beautiful or captivating, I’ve always felt this itch to share it with the
world. But it was that first year in college when that itch became something I
couldn’t ignore. There was this one spot on the drive between my university and
my hometown (a spot that provided some inspiration for a scene in FAKING IT),
and for whatever reason that stretch of Texas countryside always got to me. But
I wasn’t an artist who could capture the beauty I saw with paint or pencils. I
had no knowledge or equipment for photography. I was an actor, but I couldn’t
exactly act out a sunset. But I did have words. That was something I knew how
to do. And from that moment on, it became the way that I expressed my view of
the world— the things I saw and felt and knew that I thought were important or
entertaining enough to share with others. I think that’s all inspiration is,
really. Taking the pieces of the world that capture our attention and giving
them new life in stories of our own.
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