Y is for Yellow: An Interview with OA Blogger Jaime Olin #AtoZChallenge

Operation Awesome's #AtoZChallenge theme for 2018 is... 

OA to Z! We'll be correlating our usual posts with the challenge letters, plus, each weekend, you'll get a chance to get to know one of our bloggers better.

Hi Readers! I'm your final OA blogger interview. I'm Jaime Olin, and I post the synopsis critiques, the Dear OAbby column, and various other posts.  

1- What's your passion in life? 

Would it be cliched to say reading and writing? Let me generalize a bit more and say 'words.' I don't think in numbers, pictures, or symbols. I have always thought in words. This means that, aside from being a bookworm and a writer, I'm also a crossword puzzle fiend and am my trivia team's go-to person for word games.

2- Would you share a picture with us of Yellow Flowers? 

Of course! I picked this one because yellow's always been my favorite color, and yellow flowers never fail to make me happy.

3- What are three of your short-term goals? 

(1) To finish writing this dual-perspective, time-hopping novel I started last month (I'd like to finish a draft by the end of the summer). It's a tough book, structurally, and finishing it will be a big accomplishment!

(2) To write synopses for the 4-5 ideas I've got rolling around my head so I can pick one of them and hit the ground running when I finish my current manuscript.

(3) To, once and for all, determine definitively when to use colons, semi-colons, and m-dashes!

4- What tip can you share to improve someone's writing craft? 

READ! Read in your genre, read outside your genre, read non-fiction, read magazine articles, read cereal boxes. As humans, we really do learn by osmosis sometimes, and the more we read good writing, the more we become better writers ourselves.

5- What is one question or discussion topic which you would like the readers of this interview to answer or remark on in the comments? 

Now that we're four months into the year, how are you doing on your New Year's writing resolutions?

Jaime Olin writes YA contemporary novels, and she’s represented by Jordan Hamessley of New Leaf Literary. She blogs weekly about writing and the publication process at the Operation Awesome website, and has acted as a mentor in the last two rounds of Author Mentor Match. Jaime grew up in South Florida, found her Xanadu in San Diego, then somehow ended up in Dallas instead, where she continually borrows from Texas geography and culture for her books’ settings and characters. Jaime is also a lawyer, an animal welfare advocate, a New York Times crossword puzzle aficionado, and a die-hard proponent of the Oxford comma. Beware: She’s never met a pun she didn’t like.

Twitter (@jkolin27)

Website (www.jaimeolin.com)