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| Only picture I managed to sneak with the very audible camera. |
I learnt a lot about building universes by actually building universes, by building characters and art for imaginary worlds. That was really helpful. I'm able to write fantasy worlds because I spend so long thinking about, dreaming about, fantasy worlds.
How she met Kami Garcia
I loved reading books about teenagers. My daughters had a teacher in school who also loved to read, and we became close. We looked around, and books in the classroom were always fantasy books. One day, we came up with an idea, and we sat down to write a book. In a way, it was a response to some of the books that were out there. So we sat down, and we came up with a story.
My family's from a really small town in the Western US, and Kami Garcia is from a really small town from the Southern US. We realised our family stories were quite similar so we invented this fictional town that were really a mix of our families. We set it in the south, because the southern US is an interesting area that's full of history, and it seemed like a place where magic could really still happen.
About Gatlin
It was a trading port town, similar to Singapore actually, a stopping point for ships that would come from Africa, traders coming from France, so there was a sort of mix of African-French and American culture there. There's a lot of supersition and magic... voodoo left from the Caribbean culture. There are all kinds of stories and it's interesting!
When I speak at libraries or schools in the south, it's a very different ambience because the people I was speaking to really believed in ghosts, and hauntings and supernatural things. It's always interesting to speak with our readers. Meantime, you have a lot of cultures coming together like that. Like here! It's a fascinating place to tell a story.
The writing process
[The readers, their children] would ask a lot of questions about what happened next, and the questions that they would ask us changed what happened next. For example, they kept asking about Link, and ask if he's coming back And I'd say "Yeah! He's coming back, just give me a minute." *writes* "And there he is!"
This book was written in a collaborative way for a group of teenagers, and I think that was one of the ways that I was able to work with a writing partner, because it wasn't really about us. It was about them.
About the Beautiful Creatures movie
They're just making it now. It's supposed to come out in 2013, in the spring. It'll be interesting to see what happens.
The Young Adult industry in the US
The people who write for teens in US are largely women, and they're more collaborative. It's much more a group environment. You can look on the backs of the books and find quotes from other authors because we want each other to succeed! And it's rare. There aren't a lot of industries that are like that.
Knowing Ally Condie, author of the MATCHED series
We became good friends because her family is from the same town that my family's from! So when I'm writing about Gatlin, she's always laughing because she knows where the real things are.
About the upcoming Icons series
The YA science fiction series, which is set 16 years after an alien invasion, follows a group of teenagers who become swept up in a resistance movement looking to unseat the extraterrestrials who've taken control of the planet.The writing is closer to THE HUNGER GAMES in terms of plots. Each book takes place on a different continent. The first takes place in the US. The second takes place in the general area of South East Asia.
Why South East Asia?
I'm really interested in the river concept in the south, the delta, where many rivers come together to make one river. I'm obsessed with this cultural flow, the way different belief systems and cultures come together.
The ending of Beautiful Chaos
The ending of our third book is somewhat controversial. Part of our commitment to this series is about consequences. I hate books where massive things that happen in real life would be devastating, and in books they just keep going [on carefree].
We've always said that the decision characters make must have consequences. And in the concept of the series, it's like pulling a thread where it unravels more and more. You have to see that happen.
The fourth and final Beautiful Creatures book
All I will say is that the fourth and final book - its only going to be four books. It'll come to a conclusion, and come out next October. All I can say is that you should just... keep reading.
Please credit LiyanaLand.com if you use excerpts from this.
3 comment(s):
Thanks so much for this sneak peek!!
No problem! :D
OK wow. I was THERE!!! :D that's such a cool coincidence :P LOL my dad was the one who asked the first question, so yeah :) Great recap! still need to do mine... :)