Possession vs. Surrender

Elana Johnson is here!  

You're now the author of two published books. I'd love you to compare/contrast your writing and promoting experiences between Possession and Surrender.  

           What do you wish you knew when you were a debut author that you know now?  

This is such a hard question. I learned a lot of things about publishing Possession. I learned that it helps to have other people talk about your book. I learned that there are some things out of your control. I learned that some of the marketing things I did weren’t as effective as the time/money I put into them. 

I wish I could go back to that pre-release stage. We spend so much time waiting for our books to come out, but it’s the most precious time. Once your book comes out… It’s all about how it performs after that. And that kills some of the excitement. So I wish I knew to keep things in perspective, do what I could, and then move on.

What was better about writing Possession?  


There’s much more joy in writing your first book. Less pressure. More time to get it right. I didn’t experience as much joy in writing SURRENDER, and there was way more pressure and way less time to get it perfect. So that’s hard. Looking back, writing POSSESSION was definitely more fun.

What was better about writing Surrender?

I no longer had to worry as much as world-building. The society was already set in POSSESSION, and while SURRENDER takes place in another city, and I needed to establish setting, the whole world didn’t have to be conceived. It already had been. So that made writing SURRENDER much easier.

How is promotion different between the two books?


The pressure! With POSSESSION, I didn’t really know what would work and what wouldn’t. I did things because I wanted to do them. With SURRENDER, I went through a period of time where I seriously contemplated doing nothing. Maybe mentioning the book on release day. Then things changed, and I decided I did need to do some promotion for the book. And the pressure that brought! So much pressure.

Because, remember, now everything is about sales. How many copies are selling? How close is that bringing me to earning out? What else can I do to reach readers? Will they buy it if they only see the book once?

And on and on. There is intense pressure to promote SURRENDER, to ensure that it sells well enough to warrant a continued writing career.

General questions:

Surrender is a companion novel.  Which characters reappear in this book?




Okay, so readers will see Vi and Zenn and Jag again. Thane Myers also plays a heavy role in SURRENDER, just as he did in POSSESSION. Let’s see, who else is there? I think that’s it.

Do you prefer butterflies or hummingbirds?  Explain. 




It depends! I have some beautiful jewelry for each, and butterflies are definitely more common in almost everything craft-wise. I definitely prefer the butterfly cover over the hummingbird one, so maybe butterflies? Yeah, let’s go with that.

What are you writing now?

I just started working on a YA contemporary novel. It’s going well, but it’s much harder than I expected it to be.

What else do you have in the works that you want to tell us about?

So many things! I’m hoping I’ll get to unleash my YA sci fi on the world one day. As well as my YA fantasy… Oh! And I wrote a whole novel in verse. I’d love for that to get published too. So we’ll see. Hopefully, there are many upcoming things for me!

About SURRENDER: 

Raine has always been a good girl. She lives by the rules in Freedom. After all, they are her father’s rules: He’s the Director. It’s because of him that Raine is willing to use her talent—a power so dangerous, no one else is allowed to know about it. Not even her roommate, Vi.

All of that changes when Raine falls for Gunner. Raine’s got every reason in the world to stay away from Gunn, but she just can’t. Especially when she discovers his connection to Vi’s boyfriend, Zenn.

Raine has never known anyone as heavily brainwashed as Vi. Raine’s father expects her to spy on Vi and report back to him. But Raine is beginning to wonder what Vi knows that her father is so anxious to keep hidden, and what might happen if she helps Vi remember it. She’s even starting to suspect Vi’s secrets might involve Freedom’s newest prisoner, the rebel Jag Barque…. 

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