| Interview with Alma Alexander |
First off, thanks so much for joining us for an up-close and personal interview for TeensReadToo.com! My
name is Jen, and I'll be your server toda...oh, wait, wrong job! Anyway, thanks so much for taking time out
of your writing schedule--which I'm sure is busy!--and answering a few questions for your readers and fans.
Let's get some of the typical interview questions out of the way first. When did you first know that you
wanted to be a writer?
I was ALWAYS a writer. I didn't so much wake up wanting to "be" one some day. Words and I were always
friends. But it was Lynne Reid Banks, who was invited to talk to our class one rainy night when I was fifteen
years old, who showed me that I wanted to be an AUTHOR, to do this for a living. She spoke about all the
aspects of the writer's life, warts and all -- she told us of the joys and of what it felt like to hold a finished
book, YOUR book, in your hands; she also spoke about the waiting, the rejections, the lonely slogs all by
yourself with only your computer for company, the deadlines, the dramas, the fears -- and yet she talked
about all of this with the light of angels in her eyes and it was clear that she would choose no other life. In
that moment I knew I wanted it to be mine, too.
Can you tell us a little bit about your road to publishing?
I won writing awards when still in high school -- but that's neither here nor there, really. A concatenation of
events led to my sending a story to London Magazine, a high-falutin' literary mag of impeccable reputation
in the UK, and managed to get the story printed in their 30th anniversary anthology; that led to my
short-lived first agent, and the sale of three short fantasy stories resembling the lush fairy tales of Oscar
Wilde to a reading program of an international educational publisher based in the UK ("The Dolphin's
Daughter and other stories"). That was in 1995, the year that I also published an autobiographical
non-fiction book ("Houses in Africa") about my childhood spent in several different countries in Africa.
In 1999 I co-wrote an email epistolary novel (I think it might have been amongst the first to use that format,
although others have appeared since) with the man I subsequently married, and moved to the States to be
with. In the meantime, a fantasy duology originally published in New Zealand (where I was living at the
time) was reprinted in the United States as "The Hidden Queen," and "Changer of Days." My major
success came with the novel "The Secrets of Jin-Shei," currently published in eleven languages across
the globe, and its successor "Embers of Heaven" (out in the UK since September, and already notching up
four foreign editions so far). The current project is the YA trilogy, "Worldweavers."
Tell us a little bit about either your latest or upcoming release. If you could only tell your readers one thing
about the story that had to convince us to buy the book, what would it be?
We've all had the experience, to some extent, of desperately trying to find ourselves in places where
others assumed we ought to be -- and only realising who we truly are when we look in places we never
expected to find treasure. That's what my protagonist does. Along the way she encounters wild magic,
weird elves, and Native American legends and archetypes -- and it's a bright and wonderful world.
Like many who write in the YA genre today, I can't but be aware of the fact that two of the biggest
elephants in the room, the Lemony Snicket books and the Harry Potter books, are either concluded or
about to be -- the Snicket books have already wound up their storyline, and I know that there will be a
huge vacuum left out there when book 7 of the Potter series is done. I thought I'd offer up a new heroine
for a new age, marry magic to computers, make our own world a strange and unexpected place.
What, or who, has been the greatest inspiration for your stories?
Too many writers to mention, given that I've been reading voraciously since I was four years old (that's
when I taught myself to read). All of them matter, even the ones I hated, because from them I learned what
I didn't want to do with my own work. Of non-writers, my grandfather let me cut my teeth on poetry before I
was able to lisp it correctly, and lit a love affair with words which has never died out and just burns brighter
every year. He's gone now, has been gone for over a decade, but every book I write owes a great and
lasting debt to his legacy to me.
Let's hear about your family, who I'm sure are thrilled to have a published author among them!
My parents are proud, but somewhat bewildered at my choice of genre! My husband has never been
anything but a rock of support and continues to be my first reader as well as my first-line editor, and my
fount of unending optimism when sometimes I succumb to the writing blues.
My cats, I think, would love me anyway, even if I didn't write for a living -- so long as the domestic service
was up to par (full food bowl, clean litter pans).
Now for some fun facts. What's your greatest comfort food?
Chocolate, of course.
What are the first three things you do when you wake up in the morning?
Drink a cup of coffee, without which I tend to be cranky in the extreme.
Hug my husband.
Hug my cats.
Wander downstairs to the office and check email, and then write.
If I came to your house and looked in your closet/attic/basement, what's the one thing that would surprise
me the most?
The fact that I could lead a normal existence in a house whose walls appear to be made of books, and
whose floors appear to spout spontaneously generating pillars of books whenever there's a space. And
the fact that if you asked me for a particular book I would be able to lay my hands on it instantly. (the
chaos -- it's not a bug, it's a feature).
Everyone asks the question about "if you could be a tree, which tree would you be?," so I want to know: If
you could be a color, which color would it be, and why?
The colour of moonlight or snow. Because it is magical.
Who is your favorite cartoon character? Which cartoon character is most like you?
I used to LOVE Tom and Jerry when I was a kid. I still do. I also adore Calvin and Hobbes. As for which
one's most like me, I honestly couldn't say! I've never thought about it!
If you could beam yourself to anywhere in the world ("Beam me up, Scotty!"), during any time in history,
where and when would it be--and why?
Can I be boring in the extreme and ask to go back in time, ask for another hour in the company of my
grandparents? They've been gone for a long time, and yet I still miss them. I would love to hug my
grandmother one more time.
So what's your favorite type of music to listen to? Favorite musical artists? Do you listen to music while
you're writing?
Anything and everything -- perhaps the other thing that would surprise you in my house in the contents of
my CD rack which has everything from Dvorak and Rachmaninoff to soundtracks of dozens of movies and
shows to Meatloaf and the Eagles and Loreena McKennit.
See above. Depends on mood. Currently it's Bing Crosby and "White Christmas," but 'tis the season.
Yes, often, mostly soundtracks and classical music. I can't have words involved otherwise I get distracted.
Do you have any favorite T.V. shows? Movies you watch over and over again? What was the last movie
you saw at the theater?
Babylon 5, Judging Amy, and some unexpected things like My So-Called Life and the new show The Class.
Yes, I have movies I watch over and over again -- How the Grinch stole Christmas every Christmas Eve,
ET, Love Actually. Last movie I saw in the theater -- oh good grief, I can't even remember. But I'm going to
see Stranger than Fiction this weekend, so I suppose that will do.
You have the chance to give one piece of advice to your teen readers. What would it be?
Never let anyone bully you into being something you KNOW you are not. Only you can truly know who you
really are.
Oh, and read. A lot. <g>
One last question. What stories can we look forward to from you in the future?
Well, book two in the Worldweavers trilogy is coming out in early 2008, followed by book 3 in I guess early
2009 (not finalized yet) so there are a few more of those to go. After that, there's LOTS of other things in
the works. You can look forward to many strange new worlds and places to explore and people you can
call friends or take joy in their well-deserved downfall. More magic. Always more magic.
Again, thanks so much for joining us at TeensReadToo.com!
Thank you for the opportunity!
name is Jen, and I'll be your server toda...oh, wait, wrong job! Anyway, thanks so much for taking time out
of your writing schedule--which I'm sure is busy!--and answering a few questions for your readers and fans.
Let's get some of the typical interview questions out of the way first. When did you first know that you
wanted to be a writer?
I was ALWAYS a writer. I didn't so much wake up wanting to "be" one some day. Words and I were always
friends. But it was Lynne Reid Banks, who was invited to talk to our class one rainy night when I was fifteen
years old, who showed me that I wanted to be an AUTHOR, to do this for a living. She spoke about all the
aspects of the writer's life, warts and all -- she told us of the joys and of what it felt like to hold a finished
book, YOUR book, in your hands; she also spoke about the waiting, the rejections, the lonely slogs all by
yourself with only your computer for company, the deadlines, the dramas, the fears -- and yet she talked
about all of this with the light of angels in her eyes and it was clear that she would choose no other life. In
that moment I knew I wanted it to be mine, too.
Can you tell us a little bit about your road to publishing?
I won writing awards when still in high school -- but that's neither here nor there, really. A concatenation of
events led to my sending a story to London Magazine, a high-falutin' literary mag of impeccable reputation
in the UK, and managed to get the story printed in their 30th anniversary anthology; that led to my
short-lived first agent, and the sale of three short fantasy stories resembling the lush fairy tales of Oscar
Wilde to a reading program of an international educational publisher based in the UK ("The Dolphin's
Daughter and other stories"). That was in 1995, the year that I also published an autobiographical
non-fiction book ("Houses in Africa") about my childhood spent in several different countries in Africa.
In 1999 I co-wrote an email epistolary novel (I think it might have been amongst the first to use that format,
although others have appeared since) with the man I subsequently married, and moved to the States to be
with. In the meantime, a fantasy duology originally published in New Zealand (where I was living at the
time) was reprinted in the United States as "The Hidden Queen," and "Changer of Days." My major
success came with the novel "The Secrets of Jin-Shei," currently published in eleven languages across
the globe, and its successor "Embers of Heaven" (out in the UK since September, and already notching up
four foreign editions so far). The current project is the YA trilogy, "Worldweavers."
Tell us a little bit about either your latest or upcoming release. If you could only tell your readers one thing
about the story that had to convince us to buy the book, what would it be?
We've all had the experience, to some extent, of desperately trying to find ourselves in places where
others assumed we ought to be -- and only realising who we truly are when we look in places we never
expected to find treasure. That's what my protagonist does. Along the way she encounters wild magic,
weird elves, and Native American legends and archetypes -- and it's a bright and wonderful world.
Like many who write in the YA genre today, I can't but be aware of the fact that two of the biggest
elephants in the room, the Lemony Snicket books and the Harry Potter books, are either concluded or
about to be -- the Snicket books have already wound up their storyline, and I know that there will be a
huge vacuum left out there when book 7 of the Potter series is done. I thought I'd offer up a new heroine
for a new age, marry magic to computers, make our own world a strange and unexpected place.
What, or who, has been the greatest inspiration for your stories?
Too many writers to mention, given that I've been reading voraciously since I was four years old (that's
when I taught myself to read). All of them matter, even the ones I hated, because from them I learned what
I didn't want to do with my own work. Of non-writers, my grandfather let me cut my teeth on poetry before I
was able to lisp it correctly, and lit a love affair with words which has never died out and just burns brighter
every year. He's gone now, has been gone for over a decade, but every book I write owes a great and
lasting debt to his legacy to me.
Let's hear about your family, who I'm sure are thrilled to have a published author among them!
My parents are proud, but somewhat bewildered at my choice of genre! My husband has never been
anything but a rock of support and continues to be my first reader as well as my first-line editor, and my
fount of unending optimism when sometimes I succumb to the writing blues.
My cats, I think, would love me anyway, even if I didn't write for a living -- so long as the domestic service
was up to par (full food bowl, clean litter pans).
Now for some fun facts. What's your greatest comfort food?
Chocolate, of course.
What are the first three things you do when you wake up in the morning?
Drink a cup of coffee, without which I tend to be cranky in the extreme.
Hug my husband.
Hug my cats.
Wander downstairs to the office and check email, and then write.
If I came to your house and looked in your closet/attic/basement, what's the one thing that would surprise
me the most?
The fact that I could lead a normal existence in a house whose walls appear to be made of books, and
whose floors appear to spout spontaneously generating pillars of books whenever there's a space. And
the fact that if you asked me for a particular book I would be able to lay my hands on it instantly. (the
chaos -- it's not a bug, it's a feature).
Everyone asks the question about "if you could be a tree, which tree would you be?," so I want to know: If
you could be a color, which color would it be, and why?
The colour of moonlight or snow. Because it is magical.
Who is your favorite cartoon character? Which cartoon character is most like you?
I used to LOVE Tom and Jerry when I was a kid. I still do. I also adore Calvin and Hobbes. As for which
one's most like me, I honestly couldn't say! I've never thought about it!
If you could beam yourself to anywhere in the world ("Beam me up, Scotty!"), during any time in history,
where and when would it be--and why?
Can I be boring in the extreme and ask to go back in time, ask for another hour in the company of my
grandparents? They've been gone for a long time, and yet I still miss them. I would love to hug my
grandmother one more time.
So what's your favorite type of music to listen to? Favorite musical artists? Do you listen to music while
you're writing?
Anything and everything -- perhaps the other thing that would surprise you in my house in the contents of
my CD rack which has everything from Dvorak and Rachmaninoff to soundtracks of dozens of movies and
shows to Meatloaf and the Eagles and Loreena McKennit.
See above. Depends on mood. Currently it's Bing Crosby and "White Christmas," but 'tis the season.
Yes, often, mostly soundtracks and classical music. I can't have words involved otherwise I get distracted.
Do you have any favorite T.V. shows? Movies you watch over and over again? What was the last movie
you saw at the theater?
Babylon 5, Judging Amy, and some unexpected things like My So-Called Life and the new show The Class.
Yes, I have movies I watch over and over again -- How the Grinch stole Christmas every Christmas Eve,
ET, Love Actually. Last movie I saw in the theater -- oh good grief, I can't even remember. But I'm going to
see Stranger than Fiction this weekend, so I suppose that will do.
You have the chance to give one piece of advice to your teen readers. What would it be?
Never let anyone bully you into being something you KNOW you are not. Only you can truly know who you
really are.
Oh, and read. A lot. <g>
One last question. What stories can we look forward to from you in the future?
Well, book two in the Worldweavers trilogy is coming out in early 2008, followed by book 3 in I guess early
2009 (not finalized yet) so there are a few more of those to go. After that, there's LOTS of other things in
the works. You can look forward to many strange new worlds and places to explore and people you can
call friends or take joy in their well-deserved downfall. More magic. Always more magic.
Again, thanks so much for joining us at TeensReadToo.com!
Thank you for the opportunity!
