I heard very little of the rest of that panel, having been forcefully introduced to my own next protagonist – Thea Winthrop, the failed Double Seventh (seventh child of two seventh children), supposed to be the most magical creature in her world… and someone who could do no magic at all. Not “The Boy Who Lived”. The Girl Who Couldn’t.
Until she learned more about herself, her world, her instincts, her abilities.
Along the way she meets the ancient Anasazi Indians, the vanished tribe of the American South-west; the Alphiri, an Elf-like race with the avaricious souls of Star Trek’s Ferengi; a handful of avatars from the legends and mythology of America’ s First Nations; and, in the third book, Nikola Tesla.
I never expected to have so much FUN writing these books. Yes, they are often pointed, sometimes painful – failures happen and are not glossed over, they are there for a reason and Thea needs to learn from them; mistakes are made and their results have to be lived with in the aftermath; there are some dark choices that need to be made – but they are leavened with a touch of humor and if not precisely a happy ending then certainly a sense of closure. I believe the trilogy, as a whole, paints an honest picture of a girl who is doing her growing up before the reader’s eyes – not certain of where she is ultimately headed, but aware of the fact that there is in fact a destination waiting for her, if only she can find her way there, one step at a time.
How would you describe your creative process while writing? Stream-of-consciousness, or do you write outlines?
I NEVER write outlines – at best, I write occasional notes to myself, often in freakish shorthand that even I sometimes find hard to decipher later. I find that the minute I write the story down as an outline it’s kind of “done” in my head, written, out of my system, and I find it hard to muster up the enthusiasm to go back and write the REAL story afterward. There is also the fact that I all too frequently find out what’s about to happen next even as I am typing the scene on the computer screen, with my characters choosing that moment to reveal the next development to me. I am an immensely organic writer whose method pretty much involves pushing a story seed into what I hope is fertile ground, watering it well, and seeing what grows. Cabbage or sequoia, I have no way of knowing until the first words push their way out of the earth and show me their shape.
Article comments