Interviu Sarah Prineas III

Today we have an exclusive interview with our wonderful children’s author, Sarah Prineas.
Sarah is the author of the Magic Thief series, a series which has sold all across the world. The trilogy features Conn, a young street thief who steals a wizard’s magic stone and changes his fortunes forever. Quercus are delighted to be publishing Sarah’s next trilogy, starting with Winterling in 2012.

Parul Bavishi: Firstly, and importantly, I heard you hurt your leg while playing football. Are you better? Has the enforced rest also enforced more writing?
Sarah Prineas: I am much better, thank you! Old ladies like me should never play soccer against teenagers, that’s for sure. But after three weeks of crutches and continuing rehab, I’m hobbling around pretty well now. Sadly, being stuck on the couch didn’t mean I got any more writing done, though I did get caught up on my email and this online word game that I’m addicted to…
Parul Bavishi: The third in the Magic Thief trilogy has now been published. How does it feel?
Sarah Prineas: If it were the last Magic Thief book, I’d feel terribly sad about it, but I couldn’t bear to say goodbye to the characters yet, so I wrote a fourth book about Conn and Nevery and that bad baby dragon, Pip.
Parul Bavishi: What’s next on the cards for you?
Sarah Prineas: Well, aside from the fourth Magic Thief book, there’s this new book that still doesn’t have a title. I’ve been calling it ‘The Crow Book‘. It’s about a girl named Fer who travels to a magical land where she has to discover who she truly is while putting right a terrible wrong. She’s helped by a tricksy puck-boy named Spook and a wild horse named Phouka. It’s very different from the Magic Thief books, but I hope readers will like it just as much.
Parul Bavishi: You’re a fast writer. What’s the fastest time you’ve completed a book?
Sarah Prineas: Let’s see. I wrote the first Magic Thief book in about four months, but that doesn’t count revisions. The first draft of the Crow book took about that long, too, but revisions always take longer.
Parul Bavishi: Has it been easy working with multiple editors all over the world?
Sarah Prineas: Only my US editor actually edits my work and gets the books fit for publishing, and I don’t usually work directly with overseas editors (except for my lovely editor at Quercus, of course!). The more interesting thing is working with translators. Some of them are terrific, and really get the spirit of the book.
For example, the Italian translator emailed to ask about my character Rowan Forestal’s name. In Italian, ‘Rowan’ is ‘Sorbo,’ and as the translator said, ‘Sorbo is not a good name for a girl!’ Instead she named Rowan ‘Rosselva’, which she said meant ‘red forest,’ an excellent name for a red-haired girl.
Parul Bavishi: Have you ever considered writing adult books or are you firmly enamoured by the children’s writing world?
Sarah Prineas: Somehow my writerly voice and vision match up much better with children’s books. Maybe someday I’ll discover that I have an adult book in me. Who knows!
Parul Bavishi: Do you find the audience in England differs from the US audience?
Sarah Prineas: Yes, I do! It seems to me that kid readers in England like darker stories than US readers do. Also, I find that the plots in English children’s books are often a bit more complex than in US books. Both of these things, in my opinion, make UK children’s books interesting and exciting.
Parul Bavishi: One of my favourite characters in The Magic Thief is Benet, a thug who bakes. Tell me about how he evolved.
Sarah Prineas: Benet was such a surprise to me. When I started writing The Magic Thief, Benet was only going to be a tough guy – a bodyguard. Then I started thinking about what bodyguards do. They knock heads together, yes, but they also look after people. So Benet started looking after Conn and Nevery in other ways: by baking them biscuits and knitting sweaters.
By the end, this sort-of unimportant thug character had grown to become one of the most important characters in the book, and the real center of Conn’s new family.
Parul Bavishi: You’re quite linked to the UK knitting community, how did this happen?
Sarah Prineas: Oh, it was funny how that happened. In the back of the Magic Thief books are extras, like recipes and tips about swordfighting, that kind of thing.
My US editor suggested that we put a knitting pattern in the back of the third book, The Magic Thief: Found. I’m on the social networking site Twitter, so I tweeted a question: ‘does anybody have a free knitting pattern for a scarf that I could use?’ Somehow a knitter found this tweet and wrote back that she would design a pattern of the scarf that Benet knits for Conn in book three.
And she did! It’s beautiful, with a keyhole design, and it’s knitted in gray yarn so it’s perfect for a thief lurking in the shadows. As it turns out, the knitter-twitter is a sort-of godmother of knitters, and is part of Knit the City, which does secret knitting projects all over London.
Parul Bavishi: Were your family surprised by how quickly your writing career took off?
Sarah Prineas: It probably didn’t seem quick to them! I’d been writing for eight years before my first book was published, ever since my son was a tiny baby. But things did happen quickly once The Magic Thief started getting out into the world, and things changed a lot for us. Now that I’m working at home as a writer, instead of at a full-time day-job, I have a lot more time to spend with my family, except when I’m traveling to promote the books.
Parul Bavishi: Do they all read your books?
Sarah Prineas: They do! Or I read the books out loud to my kids as I’m writing them.
Parul Bavishi: An oldie but a goodie – what is your advice for aspiring writers?
Sarah Prineas: I have three pieces of advice for writers. Don’t worry, this won’t take long.
One. Write and read a lot.
Two. Finish what you start.
Three. NEVER SURRENDER.
(Maybe I should explain number three a bit more. Writing is hard, and seeing your work rejected is hard, but if you really want to make a go of it as a writer…well…)
Parul Bavishi: Is there anything you’d like to add about your book, your lovely UK publisher or what you’d like for dinner?
Sarah Prineas: My lovely UK publisher just took three more books from me, which I’m particularly delighted about!! I could also tell the funny story about the UK and US covers (below left and below right, respectively). At first, I didn’t like the UK cover at all, and I fussed about it, but I’m glad my Quercus editor went ahead with it because every single time I show the book covers to a bunch of kid readers, either here in the US or in the UK, they like the UK cover a lot more.

As it happens, it’s dinnertime here in Iowa. All of my family are vegetarians, so if somebody could bring me a juicy hamburger, that would be lovely, thanks.
Cheers!

sursa: http://www.quercusbooks.co.uk/blog/2010/09/09/interview-sarah-prineas/

Interviu Sarah Prineas II

What did you do to make the worlds and characters of Winterling different from those of The Magic Thief?
I didn’t really have to do anything; they are what they are. It’s all very intuitive for me, not craft-y. Conn’s voice never intruded on Fer’s story. There was one change that made a difference in the style, and that was the shift from the first person (Conn is the narrator of the Magic Thief books), to the third person. Writing in the third person allowed me to show a wider picture of the world. Stylistically, I got to flex my writing muscles a little more instead of being bound to one perspective.

I loved how Fer couldn’t really trust anything she saw. There’s a real sense that everything is not as it seems, keeping the reader wondering, in a good way, what was real and what was an illusion. Can you talk about some of the ways you accomplished that?
Even though the story is in the third person, it stays pretty close to Fer’s point of view, so the reader sees much of what she sees, and understands that other world as Fer understands it. If Fer doesn’t know what, exactly, she’s seeing, the reader doesn’t, either.
Those in power in that other land can use a “glamorie” to disguise themselves and their intentions–the illusions are a source of some of their power. Part of Fer’s arc is learning to see through the illusions to the truth of who or what people are.

Why did you decide that Fer is vegetarian?
Fer is very in tune with the land and its creatures, so it naturally followed that she and her grandmother don’t eat meat. Also it meant I got to make some vegetarian jokes in the book, because the puck character Rook is a committed carnivore. He really doesn’t get the point of vegetarianism. I mean, why eat roots and herbs and stuff when you could eat bunnies?

I’m very fond of the character Rook, who has such compelling internal and external conflict. And I love his name, which means both “a relative of the crow” and “to swindle or defraud.” Can you tell us a little about him and how he came about?
Rook was an incredibly fun character to write–and yes, the double meaning of his name is intentional. He’s also known as “Robin,” which is the name any puck gives to people he doesn’t know or trust. In Winterling Rook is pulled in two directions, trying to remain true to an oath that bound him to the “Lady” (who is evil), while his bond of friendship to Fer is growing. He can’t be true to both of them at the same time, and it makes him very cranky.
Rook is a puck, which in traditional fairy lore is a trickster character who can shift into a horse (to carry people into bogs and buck them off) or into a ferocious black dog. My pucks have a whole social structure (explored in a lot more depth in the second book), and because of their trickster natures they are outcast from the regular (fairy*) world.
*I should note that the word “fairy” is never used in the books; the people in that other world don’t think of themselves as fairies, though they know they’re not human.

What other books would you recommend to readers who enjoy THE MAGIC THIEF and WINTERLING?
Maybe Diana Wynne Jones, especially Howl’s Moving Castle. Another big inspiration for me is the animated film director Hiyao Miyazaki–his movie Spirited Away shares some themes with Winterling. I also recommend Anne Nesbet’s The Cabinet of Earths as a magical MG read.


What advice do you have for someone who wants to write middle grade fiction?
The best advice I can think of is to trust your readers. Tell the story that needs to be told and trust that they will take that story and make it meaningful.

What’s next?
Next up is The Summerkin, which is a companion novel to Winterling. It’ll be out in 2013. And after that, HarperCollins is going to publish a fourth Magic Thief book, though I don’t yet know when. And after that, I’ve got another book on my contract. It could be another in the Winterling world, or it could be something entirely new. We’ll see!

Thanks for stopping by, Sarah!
Thanks for hosting me!

sursa: http://www.fromthemixedupfiles.com/2012/02/interview-sarah-prineas-author-magic-thief-winterling/

Interviu Sarah Prineas

Get to know Sarah…

Sarah Prineas is the author of middle-grade fantasy novels The Magic Thief (HarperCollins, 2008), The Magic Thief: Lost (HarperCollins, 2009), and The Magic Thief: Found (HarperCollins 2010).  Foreign rights to the series have been sold in 19 languages, and audio versions are available in English, German, and Dutch.  On its release, The Magic Thief received three starred reviews, and was a Booksense Top Ten Pick for spring/summer 2008.  In addition, the book was a 2009 E.B. White Read-aloud Award honor book, was on the 2008 New York Public Library’s 100 Books for Reading and Sharing list, was a 2009 National Council of Teachers of English Notable Book in the Language Arts, was a Booklist Top Ten Debut Novels for Youth 2008, and was a 2008 Cybils Award finalist in the middle-grade fantasy category.  The Magic Thief  is on 13 state reading lists and is Beehive Award winning children’s novel of the year in Utah.  Forthcoming books from Harper Collins include Winterling (2012), its sequel, The Summerkin, and one yet-to-be-named book.  Sarah has a PhD in English literature and has taught classes at the University of Iowa and Cornell College.  Sarah lives in Iowa City with her mad scientist husband, two odd children, two perfectly normal cats, and the best dog in the world.

Let the conversation begin!

What is the best writing advice you’ve ever received?

The best writing advice was from my friend and fellow author Greg van Eekhout, who said, “NEVER SURRENDER!”  Writing is hard, and getting published is even harder, and you have to be determined to overcome the challenges.    

Daily word count? 

There’s never a set amount.  Sometimes I write 3000 words, and sometimes I write 0 words. I’m not a very disciplined writer.  But I’ve never missed a deadline! 

Outliner or a seat-of-the-pants? 

Oh, very much a pantser. The reason I wrote The Magic Thief was that I’d written the first chapter as a short story and I had no idea what was going to happen next.  I had to write the whole novel in order to find out! 

Ever let anyone read your work-in-progress?

Because I’m not a planner, I have to do a lot of rewriting and rearranging as I go, so nobody reads my work as I’m writing it.  Once it’s done I have a couple of trusted friends, all of whom are writers, read it over.  They’re great critiquers, so I revise according to their suggestions and then send the book to my agent, who is a brutal editor and sees everything before it goes to my actual editor at HarperCollins.    

What initially drew you to writing?

I started writing because babies are boring.  Really!  My family was living in Germany at the time, and I had a newborn. I didn’t speak very good German, and I was very lonely and bored.  So I started writing to have something to do while my baby napped (he was a very good napper), and something clicked.  I realized that writing was something I was meant to do–that I had to do. The boring baby is now eleven years old, and the second Magic Thief book is dedicated to him.  

sursa: http://authorturf.com/?p=2485

Retete

Reteta de chifle a lui Benet
2 cesti faina
1/2 lingurita sare
praf de copt
2 lingurite zahar
1/2 ceasca unt
2/3 ceasca lapte
Incalziti din timp cuptorul la 230 grade C. Amestecati ingredientele uscate la un loc intr-un vas. Faramitati untul. Amestecati bine si adaugati laptele. Framantati usor cu degetele pana ce amestecul capata consistenta moale - nu framantati prea tare, altfel chiflele vor iesi tari si turtite. Intindeti compozitia cu sucitorul pana se face subtire de un deget, si taiati in forme rotunde. Puneti-le in tava unsa cu ulei, la cuptor pana se rumenesc (intre 12-15 minute). Ideal de consumat calde, cu unt si miere.

Reteta lui Conn
Puneti in vas:
putina faina
un strop de apa
drojdie
un varf de sare
un bulgare de unt sau de untura
Se amesteca bine-bine cu o lingura de lemn. Daca e prea apos, se mai adauga faina si se mai amesteca. Fleosc in tigaie. Tigaie se pune pe jar sa se coaca un pic. Cel mai bine le mananci calde, cu unt si cu miere.

Alfabetul Runic din Wellmet

Ghidul persoanelor si locurilor importante din Wellmet

OAMENI

        Benet – Un tip care inspira mai degraba teama, dar pasionat de cusut, gatit si de curatenie. Nasul i-a fost spart de atatea ori, incat e turtit de tot. Daca ar transformat intr-un animal salbatic,ar fi urs. Parul sateen scurt si ii sta in sus ca niste tepi. Nu e prea placut sa dai de el pe o alee intunecata, dar te-ai linge pe degete dupa ce ai gusta di chiflele facute de el.

        Connwaer – Parul negru, ciufulit, ii umbreste ochii albastrii. Cea mai mare parte a vietii a fost vagabond, asa ca era mereu atent in jur si foarte precaut. In acelasi timp e foarte practric si sincer pana-n maduva oaselor. Slab, dar robust si puternic. Pe buze cu un vesnic zambet ager, ironic (de unde si coada de pisica). Conn nu stie cati ani are; ar putea avea orice varsta, undeva intre doisprezece si paisprezece ani. E un prieten devotat, extraordinar, dar sa ai mare grija sa nu ai ceva de valoare prin buzunare, caci are degetele tare agile si lipicioase ...

         Nevery Flinglas -  inalt, carunt, cu barba lunga, sura, sparncene stufoase le fel de carunte, ochi negri vii, patrunzatori. Putin cam nerebdator, duparacios si deseori incruntat, dar dincolo de toate astea are o inima mare (dar nu ar recunoaste-o in ruptul capului!). Misterios si posibil foarte periculos, Nevery era un vrajitor greu de intuit, dar un bun prieten.

         Pettivox – Foarte inalt si cu umeri largi, parul si barba albe , dinti foarte albi si buze rosii. El era maestrul ingamfatului Keeston. Amandoi ii erau antipatici lui Conn.

          
             Rowan Forestal – O fata inaltuta, zvelta, de vreo cincisprezece ani, cu parul roscat scurt si ochii cenusii. E teribil de inteligenta, cu un simt al umorului deosebit, cand nu inteapa. Era fiica Ducesei. E foarte interesata sa invete totul despre sabii.

         Ducesa – Willa Forestal e mama lui Rowan si seamana amandoua foarte bine. O femeie care are responsabilitati, si se vede. E foarte inteligenta, dar cu mult mai putin simt al umorului decat fica sa. Ducesa stapaneste peste Coasta de Rasarit a orasului Wellmet si nu agreeaza magia, desi intelege ca este indispensabila supravietuirii orasului.

Harta tinutului

      Harta orasului Wellmet

 

        

LOCURI

         Academia – Construita pe o insula din mijlocul raului ce desparte Coasta de Apus de cea de Rasarit, Academia este o scoala pentru studentii din familiile bogate, care pot deveni vrajitori ai orasului. Conn este inscris aici dupa ce devine ucenicul lui Nevery.






          Palatul zorilor – Casa ducesei si a lui Rowan. Palatul este o cladire imensa, dreptunghiulara, dar sculptata cu o multime de decoratii exterioare care o fac atractiva.

         Casa umbrelor – Resedinta Lordului Crowe. Aceasta cladire in forma de fortareata e apasatoare, cu ferestrele ei inguste si un labirint subteran nesfarsit. Aceasta era pazita de gardieni matahalosi. Cine intra neinvitat era garantat mort.

       

             Inima apelor – Resedinta din strabuni a lui Nevery. Partea de mijloc a fost aruncata in aer de insusi Nevery, in timpul unui experiment, cu douazeci de ani in urma.

         Consiliul Magistrilor – Centrul de putere al vrajitorilor care controleaza si pazesc magia din Wellmet. E o cladire mare, impozanta, cenusie, pe o insula intarita cu un brau de piatra, un zid gros care se ridica din apa.

Sarah Prineas

      

      Autoarea locuieste in Iowa City si lucreaza la Universitatea Statului Iowa, fiind coordonatorul programului de burse. A studiat limba engleza si preda seminarii de literatura fantasy si science fiction. Este casatorita cu fizicianul John Prineas si este mare colectionara de dragoni de jucarie. Hotul Vrajitor este prima ei carte pentru copii.
     Am gasit si blogul personal al autoarei : http://sarah-prineas.com/ . Sper sa va placa si distractie placuta!