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/
sâmbătă, 5 ianuarie 2013
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/
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
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