Author: Michael

This week’s FIVE ON FRIDAY guest is Alexandria LaFaye, a multi-talented and award winning author, who not only possesses an uncanny sense of direction but can also pull off a fine Scottish brogue. Alexandria’s awards and honors for her works are too numerous to mention, even for cyberspace, so visit her website www.alafaye.com and see for yourself. And welcome Alexandra to FIVE ON FRIDAY.

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When did you know that you first wanted to be a writer?

I was a geek’s geek. The kind of kid who wore funny clothes (so I dressed myself, so what?), talked to myself (why not, no one else would), and told stories no matter what I was doing (eating, doing art, self-entertainment is highly underrated). As a result, I was not well liked in my small town school in Roberts, WI. I figured I was a pretty good person, so the problem was that the kids in my class didn’t know me, so I wanted to do something that would make all the kids want to get to know me. My big plan at 8 years old was to find a world record I could break. I didn’t find one. But I did find Dorothy Straight who published a novel when she was six. I figured, if a six year old can do it, an 8 year old can, right? Well, it took me twenty more years, but I finally published my first novel The Year of the Sawdust Man in 1998.

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What book or writer/artist do you feel influenced you the most?

Anyone who knows me can tell you, picking “just one” of anything is near to impossible for me– I own over 500 movies, nearly 4,000 books and my house is filled with photographs of at least four generations of my extended family. So I’d have to say– I try to learn from every book I read. Still, I am particularly impressed by the writing of folks like Toni Morrison, Truman Capote, Patricia McLachlan, Gary Soto, Cynthia Rylant, Naomi Shihab Nye, Tim O’Brien, Flannery O’Connor, Han Nolan– to just start the list.

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What book or books are you currently reading or have recently read that you’d recommend to others?

I Am the Messenger is wonderful– unique writing style, unusual premise, and compelling characters –the ending is a little quick, but it has a powerful message.

I’m currently reading The Shadow Thieves by Ann Ursu– a wonderful reality based fantasy novel with an excellent wry, narrative voice. I can’t wait to see where the adventure within leads me.

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If you could offer one piece of advice to aspiring writers, what would it be?

Back to that choosing just one problem I have again, so I’m going to cheat and offer three–

1. To be a great writer/artist, you have to be an excellent reader of text or images. So read anything and everything and study how the writer/illustrator pulled it off.

2. To be an excellent writer/artist, you have to practice, practice, practice! Whether it’s drafting a story or sketching on a canvas, all artists have to go through multiple drafts. In writing, revision is a huge part of the process that you should enjoy vs. fear.

3. Never give up. People may say you can’t do it, but you should believe in the gifts God gave you and keep going.

So my advice is read, write, and never give up!

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Can you share with us your next project or any information about the next book you’re working on?

I have two projects in the hopper and several on the writing desk. I’ll soon be doing the audio recording to my newest novel Water Steps for Full Cast Audio and I couldn’t be more thrilled about the opportunity. My next novel Death Came Walking is finished and going into production at Milkweed Editions. It will be out next spring with the re-release of my third novel Nissa’s Place (the sequel to The Year of the Sawdust Man). Death Came Walking is a WWI era novel about a girl facing the death of her mother and the haunting possibility of seeing those who have passed on before they journey into the next world. I love supernatural novels, so next I’m venturing into a contemporary ghost story called Spirit 66.

FIVE ON FRIDAY is pleased to welcome Marc Tyler Nobleman, who hails from the uniquely named Cors Cob, CT. (Care to explain that one Marc?). He is the author of more than 70 books (I’m tired just thinking about it). His latest book is a fascinating look into the creators of Superman. If you’re a regular visitor to this website you know what a comics geek I am, and BOYS OF STEEL: the Creators of Superman is a book you should have on your shelf.

Please visit Marc at his website noblemania.blogspot.com.

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When did you know that you first wanted to be a writer/illustrator?

It’s hard for a guy who pays attention to detail to admit this, but I don’t remember! What I do remember is that my mom knew it first. I used to spend most of my creative time drawing; when I was in high school, my mom gently encouraged me to think about devoting some time to writing as well. In college, I intended to become a screenwriter, and indeed, right after graduation, wrote three that were never produced. I stumbled into writing books for children by working (in marketing) for a publisher that wanted to create an activity book based on a character the company had already published in picture book stories. That was in 1996.

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What book or writer/artist do you feel influenced you the most?

This may be another less than satisfying answer, but there was no one writer who influenced me. I was influenced by every book I ever liked, which includes lots of adventure, historical fiction, nonfiction, and of course picture books. Another huge influence on me was DC Comics comic books, particularly ones featuring Superman and Batman. And movies have also had a significant influence on the way I write. I think one of the most cleverly constructed stories I’ve experienced is Back to the Future. What a feat to take a premise which at first seems more than challenging to do tastefully and turn it into a story that works as comedy, adventure, romance, and suspense all at once.

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What book or books are you currently reading or have recently read that you’d recommend to others?

Most of what I read right now is research for projects I’m writing! But a few novels that I love are Life of Pi, Morality Play, Blindness, and The Time Traveler’s Wife. And I still am captivated by the seemingly simple yet wonderfully lyrical prose of Where the Wild Things Are every time I read it to my daughter.

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If you could offer one piece of advice to aspiring writers (or illustrators), what would it be?

Self-educate. Read lots of books, including books on the craft of writing. Pay constant attention to the types of books being published in the genre/format you want to write in. I think it makes sense to choose subjects that you are both passionate about and which have some commercial prospects. Finally, be bold in your storytelling. My film professor in college used to say it’s not enough to have a good story. You must have a “good story, well told.” That probably does not count as only one piece of advice, but it does all come back to self-educating.

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Can you share with us your next project or any information about the next book you’re working on?

Gladly! I have four nonfiction picture book manuscripts in various stages. Three are being shopped around, one I am still writing. All fill gaps in the market–none have been the subject of a picture book before, and three of the four have not been the subject of ANY trade book before. All are twentieth century stories and most have a pop culture bent. I am drawn to stories with an accessible angle but a mystery back-story. For example, everyone knows Superman but few know who created him, when, or why. That disconnect led to my latest book, and first picture book,  BOYS OF STEEL: the Creators of Superman. One of the four picture book manuscripts is a companion to Boys of Steel in a way. It’s about the creation of Batman, focusing on Bill Finger, the uncredited co-creator and original writer.

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Maine author Lea Wait is this week’s FIVE ON FRIDAY guest. Author of children’s books like Finest Kind as well as mystery novels for adults.

Visit Lea at her website leawait.com.

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1. When did you know that you first wanted to be a writer/illustrator?

When I was in second grade. I had just learned to read by myself, and I decided I would read every book in my school’s library. At every moment I could, I hid out there, starting, as I recall, with the shelf (a whole shelf!) of books on dinosaurs. About the seventh time my teacher had to search for me and bring me back to my classroom she took me by the hand, looked down at me sternly, and said, the memorable words, “Lea, when you grow up you can be a writer. You can spend all your time in a library. But you have to finish second grade first!” From that moment on I knew. I was going to be a writer.

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2. What book or writer/artist do you feel influenced you the most?

I have to answer this question in two ways. The book that most influenced my life was the classic, Little Women. I read that book literally dozens of times as a child. It was my escape; my comfort food. The way my world should have been. I wanted the March family to have been my family. In the book, as most readers remember, Jo wanted to be a writer, and when she grew up she wrote stories, and married Professor Bauer and they filled their home (which they called a school) with homeless boys. Well, I grew up and became a writer, and adopted four homeless girls, ages 8-10. I didn’t realize the connection until after I had done that! As a writer, I have to say Sarah, Plain and Tall, by Patricia MacLachlan, is one of the most perfect books I have ever read.

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3. What book or books are you currently reading or have recently read that you’d recommend to others?

Oh — these are hard questions! A picture book by Doreer Rappaport: Eleanor, Quiet No More, about Eleanor Roosevelt. Laurie Halse Anderson’s Chains. Cynthia Lord’s Rules. Stephanie Tolan’s Surving the Applewhites. Patricia McCormick’s Sold. Anything by Richard Peck — I went back and read his early books, too. I write for adults as well as for children, but I believe some of the very best literature being written today is written for young people.

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4. If you could offer one piece of advice to aspiring writers (or illustrators), what would it be?

Read. Keep reading. Read everything you can for the age group you want to write for. And don’t just read the classics. Check The Horn Book and Publishers Weekly and School Library Journal and Kirkus for the latest reviews and read what is being published now. And before you submit anything you’ve written, find a critique group and listen to what people who are not your best friend or your spouse or your children have to say about your manuscript.

Publishing is a business; if you want to publish, you have to be able to distance yourself from your manuscript, and critique groups help you to do that, and point out ways you can polish and improve your work before you send it out into the world.

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5. Can you share with us your next project or any information about the next book you’re working on?

I’ve just finished a book about a brother and sister, new immigrants from Scotland, who are caught up in the American Revolution in 1777. Although my historical novels have always featured fictional protagonists and real minor characters and settings, this is the first book in which I’ve taken on major events in American history, and therefore had to keep to a pre-set timeline for my story. It was exciting and challenging to do that, and to balance stories set both at home and with the militia and then the Continental Army. I’m looking forward to editing it and, if there’s interest, to continuing my characters’ stories into another book. After all, the Revolution didn’t end in December of 1777!

Veda Boyd Jones is our guest this week on FIVE ON FRIDAY. Veda has written more than forty books and over 300 articles for magazines such as Cricket, Highlights and Writer’s Digest. She has also taught creative writing and currently teaches for the Institute for Children’s Literature.

She can be visited on the web at www.vedaboydjones.com.

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When did you know that you first wanted to be a writer?

I was an editor of the newspaper in high school, and I really liked working on the paper (and especially seeing my name in the byline). In junior college I was co-editor of the paper, but when I went on to school, writing dropped out of my life. It wasn’t until I was married with kids that I needed something for myself and turned back to writing.  Writing time was only at nap time, but it was enough for me to realize how much I missed writing.

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What book or writer do you feel influenced you the most?

A friend and writer Joan Banks influenced me greatly. I met her after I’d written one unsold manuscript and was working on another. She was the first writer I met, and she read my stuff. She told me, “You wrote every word the first time, and you have to go back and look at every word again in revision to make sure it’s the right one.”  I didn’t realize I could fix things. I hadn’t been revising.  Once I learned that, my work began to sell.

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What book or books are you currently reading or have recently read that you’d recommend to others?

I’m reading The Book Thief right now for one of my book clubs. I belong to two, and reading books that others have chosen (and sometimes I recommend) has really widened my life. Many are books I would never have picked up, but I’ve learned there’s value in all types of books.

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If you could offer one piece of advice to aspiring writers, what would it be?

You can fix your writing. If the theme isn’t strong enough, emphasize it more. If one character isn’t well developed, add layers to her personality. Revision is the key to good writing.

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Can you share with us your next project or any information about the next book you’re working on?

My current project takes place in Washington, D.C.  I went there last month to look the place over for the flavor of our nation’s capitol. I don’t want to say more than that or I may jinx it. 🙂

This week FIVE ON FRIDAY features Vicki Pettersson (yes that’s right, two t’s and two s’s) the superstar author of the Urban Fantasy Zodiac novels. Her newest book City of Souls is on sale this week and in it her heroine Joanna Archer, who has barely survived her latest encounter with the forces of the Dark Zodiac, must venture into a strange new shadow world. Where every friend could be an enemy and every breath could be her last. And best of all, the action takes place in Las Vegas. What could be better than that?

(An important note for readers: I write children’s books. Some of the authors who are interviewed in my FIVE ON FRIDAY feature write books for adults. Please remember that the idea behind FIVE ON FRIDAY is to give readers an insight into writing and the creative process. So if you are a parent, teacher or librarian please make note that not all of the books mentioned or featured here may be age appropriate for all of your children, students or patrons. And once again, thanks for visiting!)

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When did you know that you first wanted to be a writer?

I’d always scribbled, but it was mostly journaling or magpie-ing (Look! It’s a verb!) thoughts and ideas, situations, or descriptions of people I thought were unique or funny (and, believe me, there’s no dearth of those in Vegas!). It wasn’t until New Year’s Day of my twenty-sixth year that I thought, ‘I’m going to write a book.’ And that was it. I started it that day and have been obsessed every day since. I’m very all or nothing about my obsessions.

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What book or writer/artist do you feel influenced you the most?

Undoubtedly, Diana Gabaldon. I started out writing historical fiction, and about a year into it I found Outlander, and discovered Diana had made a virtual home for herself on the web (In Compuserve’s Writer’s Forum). That essentially became my writing school. A former professor, she was extremely accessible to unpublished writers, openly answering questions about her series and her writing process. She has a gift for being able to break down the writing process, in particular what she does and why, and explain it to the neophyte so that one feels it’s actually possible, with work, to attain that skill level, too. Perhaps most importantly she also showed, day in and day out, what it was to be a working writer. I saw what she was doing, work-wise, and began to emulate it. Between her complex words and plots, her love for the work and skillful prose, and her belief in herself, she unwittingly taught me how to work. My gratitude and admiration for that woman is endless.

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What book or books are you currently reading or have recently read that you’d recommend to others?

The books that have most recently blown me away were Janet Fitch’s Paint it Black, Joe Hill’s Heart-Shaped Box, Theresa Schweigel’s Officer Down, and Dennis Lehane’s The Given Day. I’m currently finishing up Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers and Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love (a book I initially resisted precisely because it was so popular; boy, am I glad I got over that!).

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If you could offer one piece of advice to aspiring writers, what would it be?

Read, read, read.
Write, write, write.
Don’t stop.
If it’s hard, that means you’re doing it right.
And did I mention, don’t stop? Don’t ever stop.

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Can you share with us your next project or any information about the next book you’re working on?

I’m finishing up the fifth book in the Signs of the Zodiac series, to be released summer 2010. I’ve also just completed a short story for an urban fantasy anthology called Dark and Stormy Knights, edited by PN Elrod, also out next year. There are some amazing authors in that project, and I’m excited to be working alongside them.

Our FIVE ON FRIDAY guest this week is Brenda Seabrooke. Brenda is the author of numerous children’s books, including Cemetery Street, which is a Mystery Writers of America 2009 Edgar Award Nominee for Best Children’s Mystery. You can visit Brenda at her website: childrensbookguild.org

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When did you know that you first wanted to be a writer?
At the age of 4 when I found out that they didn’t just appear, that somebody wrote those wonderful, magic things called books!

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What book or writer do you feel influenced you the most?
I don’t think any one book influenced me but I did read my way through the complete works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allen Poe starting at age 10. Before that I read all of Dr. Doolittle and the Walter R. Brookes series about Freddy the Pig.

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What book or books are you currently reading or have recently read that you’d recommend to others?
I am currently reading How Oliver Olson Changed the World by Claudia Mills.

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If you could offer one piece of advice to aspiring writers, what would it be?
Read books in the field you want to write in. When I taught writing I was so amazed at the number of people who wanted to write for children but only read popular adult writers.

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Can you share with us your next project or any information about the next book you’re working on?
I’ve just sent in the galleys for Wolf Pie, a transition book just past easy readers but before novels. (Clarion, 2010) It’s a different direction for me, a humorous book about the antics of the Pygg Brothers and Wilfong Wolf.

Claudia Mills is our FIVE ON FRIDAY guest this week. Claudia is the delightful author of several hilarious and touching chapter books including the Gus and Grandpa and West Creek Middle School Series and also knows that everything is up to date in Kansas City.

Visit Claudia at www.claudiamillsauthor.com

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When did you know that you first wanted to be a writer?

I think I always knew. Writing was what I loved, and what I was good at (not math! Not P.E.!). I wrote poetry, stories, and plays all through elementary school, and in eighth grade, I wrote my first book, an autobiographical account of my life, called T Is for Tarzan (my nickname in those days was Tarzan). It was the sensation of the junior high (partly because everybody was in it, with none of the names changed). That was my first real taste of success as a writer.

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What book or writer/artist do you feel influenced you the most?

Definitely Maud Hart Lovelace, who wrote the marvelous Betsy-Tacy series, written in the 1940s and 1950s about the author’s own childhood growing up in Minnesota at the turn of the last century. I consider Betsy and Tacy Go Downtown to be the finest novel in the English language. It was the proudest moment of my writing life when I had a book signing at Tacy’s house in Mankato, Minnesota, now maintained as a museum by the Betsy-Tacy Society.

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What book or books are you currently reading or have recently read that you’re recommend to others?

Carol Lynch Williams’s The Chosen One, out this spring from St. Martin’s Press, is a stunning and amazing young adult novel about a girl growing up in a polygamous community. I also loved Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larson, a beautiful story of a 16-year-old homesteading by herself on the Montana plains.

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If you could offer one piece of advice to aspiring writers, what would it be?

Luxuriate in your love of it. The more you let yourself love writing, and make room in your life for your love of it, the better a writer you will become.

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Can you share with us your next project or any information about the next book you’re working on?

My brand-new chapter book, How Oliver Olson Changed the World, just came out this spring from Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Oliver has very controlling, “helicopter” parents who hover over him, help him excessively with homework, and refuse to let him attend the long-awaited third grade space sleepover. But things start to change for Oliver when he and his classmate Crystal team up to make a protest diorama on behalf of Pluto, upset that poor Pluto has been kicked out of the solar system. If Oliver can advocate so effectively for Pluto, maybe, just maybe, he can start standing up for himself. I love writing third-grade chapter books! I love everything about them: the peppy pacing, adorable format, humor and sweetness. They are the best!

This week our FIVE ON FRIDAY guest is award-winning author Mary Downing Hahn. Mary is the author of nearly two dozen books including Wait Till Helen Comes and Stepping on the Cracks. Mary’s books usually combine elements of suspense and supernatural and keep you reading long into the night! Mary can be visited on the web at www.childrensbookguild.org/hahn.html.

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When did you know that you first wanted to be a writer?

I began life wanting to be an artist, but when I was about thirteen, I began thinking about being a writer and illustrator of children’s books. Years later, my first novel, The Sara Summer, was published, and I discovered I was a writer, not an illustrator.

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What book or writer/artist do you feel influenced you the most?

Like many writers, my choice is Catcher in the Rye. I was sixteen when my best friend and I discovered the novel at a beach house. I’ve never forgotten the thrill of reading about a real teenager, flawed, unsure, and thoroughly human.

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What book or books are you currently reading or have recently read that you’d recommend to others?

One of my current favorites is Out Stealing Horses, the only book in recent years that I’ve read twice.

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If you could offer one piece of advice to aspiring writers (or illustrators), what would it be?

Read, read, and read some more. Write, write, and write some more. Keep your eyes and ears open for story ideas — you never know when inspiration will strike.

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Can you share with us your next project or any information about the next book you’re working on?

My new book, Closed for the Season, will be published this June. It’s a mystery featuring two boys who try to solve a murder and find the money the victim may have stolen. Their quest leads them into danger in the form of some of the town’s local thugs. Several scenes occur in a spooky amusement park that’s been closed for many seasons. Called The Magic Forest in my novel, it’s based on a closed park not far from my home in Maryland. After sneaking through the fence to take pictures, I was inspired to use the park in a book — a truly scary place.

My current project is a Victorian ghost story set in England. Tentatively called Here, There, and Everywhere, It features Florence, an orphan, who comes to stay with her great aunt and uncle in an old house in the country. Her sickly cousin James is also staying there, but he is too ill for company. Florence soon realizes the little boy is afraid of something — could it be the mysterious and menacing presence she senses watching from the shadows?