Andrea Sisco Pike recently sold her first mystery novel to a publisher. The book is due out in 2009. But that's now all she's done. The Eden Prairie, Minn./Arizona writer also has another novel in the works.

Q: What is the name of your YA fantasy?
A: The working title is "Glitter and Gillyflowers: Memoirs of a Teenage Faerie Godmother in Training." However, in today's YA market, the title is not edgy enough and the Glitter and Gillyflowers (my favorite) is not going to stay. Actually we're currently doing a survey on new title possibilities.

Q: A little background on the YA fantasy?
A: A friend of mine, Kathleen Baldwin (she writes Romantic Comedies--about four for Kensington thus far) and I love YA and Middle Reader novels. We were lamenting the awful stuff being published. I mean sex, drugs and rock and roll to the extreme. We believe a lot of novels that are being published are exploiting young women. They're telling them it's okay to compromise their morals, their beliefs. It's almost a celebration of bad behavior. And it's under the guise of the authors/publishers saying 'well this is real life.'

Kat and I decided that girls were living 'real' life. How about books that celebrated all that is good in young women? Kat said I should write it. I said she should write it. We suddenly realized we both should write it. So we did.

Kat lives in Texas and I live between Minnesota and Arizona. We got together for a couple of days in Dallas and plotted the book. Then I (my imagination is a little wacky) did a fast draft. The agent representing Kat at the time was not thrilled with the direction of the book and we agreed that she would not rep us on this project.

What the discussion with the agent did was help Kat and I see that we really needed a bit more of a 'high concept.' Back to the drawing board and we ended up falling into Erinfae (Faerie land). I fast drafted the new book and Kat takes my ideas and fleshes them out and puts the meat on them. I think her job is the most difficult and she thinks mine is. I also am the person who will be doing all the promotion.

As a result of writing the YA book together, Kat suggested that since I'm such a fan of Middle Readers, I should take our heroine and write a companion series with her at a younger age. Maybe leaving Erinfae and meeting some young children on Earth and having adventures in Erinfae with them. I have a grand idea that starts at one of the Minneapolis lakes and have decided that several of my grandchildren will be my influences for the young children.

But then I laugh and wonder when I'll have the time to write another series. I've started my next Penelope Santucci mystery, I run Armchair Interviews, we're discussing the next YA and I have a number of grandchildren I spend time with, I travel a great deal and then there is my quilting... Oh, dear. When I retired 9 years ago, I had no idea how busy I would be. I need a 36-hour day to do all the exciting things I want to do.