| Interview with James Bow |
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 started writing stories very early, but I started reading stories for people outside my family when I was
fourteen. I wrote fan fiction -- stories that were set in the universe of a book or a television show
that one enjoys; in my case, it was "Doctor Who." My first story was enjoyed by other "Doctor Who" fans,
which inspired me to write more. This sparked a fifteen year career in writing "Doctor Who" fan fiction and
editing fan-produced "Doctor Who" magazines. It was a hobby that I enjoyed doing, more than the
career I was training myself for.
Can you tell us a little bit about your road to publishing?
In 2001, I decided that I was going to write stories in my own universe, and the mark of success in doing
was being published -- it's a lofty goal, but one that I thought worth trying for even if the odds were
against me. So as I started writing the story that would become The Unwritten Girl, I looked around for
publishers who might be interested.
The first publisher I sent to was Random House. Actually, I sent the manuscript to them in December
2001 as part of their Delacorte Press Contest for Young Adult Writers, a contest which is open only to
people submitting full manuscripts, who haven't been published before. This is the ONLY way, outside of
an agent, that you can get unsolicited manuscripts into Random House. I didn't expect to win, but the
deadline really helped focus me and got me to finish the first draft of my story. And when rejection came
the following March, I had already lined up a few other publishers that I was going to try for.
I'd heard all of the stories about the number of times a number of classics had been rejected before they
were accepted; Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time" rejected by publishers for ten years, J.K.
Rowling's "Harry Potter" rejected twelve times, so I was prepared for a long process, and I was
encouraged by the nature of the rejections I received. They took some time before they came back and,
rather than a pink slip, I sometimes got a letter. This told me that I hadn't been rejected outright, and that
I had turned some heads and that there was still a chance.
The closest I came was on my fourth try when Maggie DeVries, editor of Orca Book Publishers,
expressed an interest in seeing the full manuscript (I'd sent her just the first three chapters and a
synopsis). Unfortunately, in the end, she had to turn me down, but what was important was that she told
me why. Her suggestions were incorporated into revisions of my book which made things much stronger,
even though this was followed by another four rejections.
I'd probably still be sending copies to publishers if I hadn't been lucky enough to run into an author, who
was running an online critique group (I'd been constantly revising the story to improve it). After reading
my story and hearing about my eighth rejection, she told me to send her the first chapter and synopsis
and she'd pass it onto her editor at Dundurn Books. He liked it enough to ask to see the whole thing and,
after reading the manuscript over, agreed to publish it.
The Unwritten Girl came out in May 2006, a delightful finish to a nearly five-year-long process.
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?
Fathom Five is the sequel to The Unwritten Girl. The first book's protagonists, Rosemary Watson and
Peter McAllister, are a little older (15) and more mature, and have to deal with a group of sirens who
come and tell orphaned Peter that he is actually a changeling. There's a bit of romance and a bit of
horror in the mix, but the chemistry and the humour of the first book remains.
I'd started writing Fathom Five after I sent off The Unwritten Girl in December 2001. I know people say
that it isn't wise to write a sequel to a story that you don't know will sell (if the first book doesn't sell, you'll
be hard-pressed to sell the second unless you render it a stand alone), but although The Unwritten Girl
was finished, the story of Peter and Rosemary wasn't. I wanted to see where it went, and over the next
two years, I finished no less than two sequels.
I hope I don't jinx things by talking about this when it hasn't yet been scheduled for release, but the third
book in the series is called The Young City and features Peter and Rosemary at 18. Fathom Five is at
the printers now and will be released at the end of April.
What, or who, has been the greatest inspiration for your stories?
Many of my ideas come from other books that I've read or television shows I've enjoyed. Stories were a
big part of my life through childhood, and it's their magic I want to recapture when I write. Some ideas
have been borne out of Doctor Who episodes, others from books by such authors as Madeleine L'Engle.
You get ideas by seeing where other authors have gone before, but also by identifying paths they've not
followed. For instance, I admit that one of the inspirations for The Unwritten Girl comes from Madeleine
L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time" and its many sequels. I was re-reading the book back in 2001 and getting
caught up by both the wonderful worlds Meg and Calvin visited, but also by the characters of Meg and
Calvin themselves, and their obvious chemistry. Then I read "A Wind in the Door" and I could see the
chemistry deepening, to the point where they were obviously on the verge of falling in love (obvious,
probably, to everybody but them). I looked forward to more sequels exploring this relationship, and I
found to my disappointment that the next novel in the series, "A Swiftly Tilting Planet", features Meg and
Calvin at 24, married and expecting their first child. It was a good book in all other respects, but I still felt
that Madeleine missed a few steps.
I suspected that if I wanted to see a relationship like Meg and Calvin's develop in all its steps, that I'd
have to write a set of stories around that relationship myself, and thus The Unwritten Girl was born. Other
ideas came into play as well, of course, as I charted my own path, but that was one of the first.
Let’s hear about your family, who I’m sure are thrilled to have a published author among them!
I am surrounded by family members who love books or write them. Both my parents were trained as
librarians, and my mother (Patricia Bow) has been writing and trying to break into the publishing industry
since I was quite young. She now has three books out ("The Spiral Maze", "The Bone Flute" and "The
Ruby Kingdom") and is working on more. They've both been very supportive of my writing, with my
mother proofreading and offering lots of suggestions. She allowed me to return the favour and read over
and offer suggestions on her work, so it really felt like a collaboration of equals, which encouraged me to
keep going.
My wife, Erin Noteboom, is an award winning poet. She and I met on the Internet back in 1994 when I
submitted one of my fan fiction stories to one of the Internet newsgroups. We became penpals and we
fell in love, and we've been supporting each others' writing ever since. She has two books of poetry out,
"Ghost Maps: Poems for Carl Hruska" and "Seal Up the Thunder". A journal about her pregnancy and the
first year of our daughter Vivian, entitled "The Mongoose Diaries", will be coming out later this spring.
These books are in a very different genre, but she's working on a young adult novel herself.
"The Ruby Kingdom" and its sequels are being published by the same publisher as The Unwritten Girl,
so there's a strong likelihood that there will be some marketing of the mother-son "team". My mother, Erin
and I have already been profiled in the local media as a "writing family", which unfairly downplays the
contributions of my father, who has been wholly supportive to the lot of us.
Now for some fun facts. What’s your greatest comfort food?
I eat too much comfort food, I find. But I think the one dish that stands out for me is a breakfast with
scrambled eggs, bacon and toast served at a restaurant. Those warm breakfasts sure beat cereal and
they speak of lazy weekend mornings where we don't have to worry about work or school. And the
restaurant setting is even better because it was so special when it happened back when I was young, the
fond memories are quite strong.
What are the first three things you do when you wake up in the morning?
Feed the cat.
Bring Vivian to her mother.
Make coffee.
Sad that I can just rhyme that off, isn't it?
If I came to your house and looked in your closet/attic/basement, what’s the one thing that would surprise
me the most?
Probably that anybody can move around down there. In some ways, I can be a very fastidious person -- I
_hate_ it when people leave food out. I was also trained as an urban planner and I like to plan things out.
But when it comes to storing things, things get cluttered pretty quickly.
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?
I'd be blue so I could be in the sky and watch over everything.
Who is your favorite cartoon character? Which cartoon character is most like you?
I enjoy watching "Kim Possible". Part of it is a professional curiosity, since the cartoon caters to the
market I'm interested in, but I was also impressed by how the writers of this Disney cartoon gave the
crime fighting teen hero a distinctive personality and made her grow as a character. There is some
similarity between Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable and Rosemary Watson and Peter McAllister, except
that Rosemary and Peter don't face supervillains.
As for which cartoon character is most like me; my first guess would be a neater, (slightly) less oblivious
version of Fry from Futurama. I'm just an average guy operating a bit out of his depth. But then, I think
that describes most of us. Every kid is told to think about what they want to be when they grow up. What
the grown ups don't tell them is that you _never_ grow up. The world is just as frightening and wondrous
when you're 35 or 50 as when you are 10. Here am I, with a published book and a young daughter, and
I'm still wondering when I get to feel grown up. I suspect "grown up" is an illusion -- a shell you pull
around yourself for the benefit of people younger than yourself.
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?
I didn't travel much when I was young. When I visited Chicago to meet Erin face-to-face for the first time
(this was back in November 1995), it was my first time in the United States, and only the third time
outside the province of Ontario. Since then, I've visited more than a dozen states, gotten to know such
cities as Chicago, Omaha, Des Moines, Kansas City and Washington, and I've toured the Maritime
provinces of Canada with Erin. Travelling is surprisingly fun, if you can find some way to keep your
suitcases light, and I want to do more of it. My first priority is to see those parts of Canada that I've not
yet seen -- the western provinces in particular. I haven't seen proper mountains.
In terms of history, I'd probably lean towards visiting old railways or streetcar networks that have since
vanished from time. I haven't lost my interest in trains and public transit, and a fair chunk of that era
ended before I was born. So I'd want to ride the classic 20th Century Limited between New York and
Chicago, and go cross country on one of Union Pacific's transcontinentals.
So what’s your favorite type of music to listen to? Favorite musical artists? Do you listen to music while
you’re writing?
There are a number of artists and albums that I like. I find that female singers tend to dominate my
collection, but I'm not really into the really popular pop bands or singers these days. I like to take the road
less travelled, and tend to go with musicians that demand more out of their listeners in their lyrics, that
push the envelopes a little without crashing my ears. Among my favourite signers are Tori Amos, Jorane,
Kate Bush, and so on. I also like Pink Floyd, the Beatles and Clannad.
Sometimes music helps me in my writing, sometimes it doesn't. The Unwritten Girl doesn't have a
soundtrack attached to it in my head (save for a few selections of Pink Floyd's music), but "Fathom Five"
does, having been written at a time that I was getting to know the music of the Quebec singer Jorane.
The way she combines her voice and her cello into a decidedly alternative brand of music fit well with the
story I was writing, and some pieces became specifically associated with specific scenes in the novel.
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?
My favourite shows currently in production are Doctor Who, Battlestar Galactica and House. We've pulled
the plug on our cable television, however, and are relying on video tapes and DVDs for our fix, and for a
selection of educational entertainment for Vivian. It saves us money, is better for my young daughter,
and besides we found we were vegging out in front of the television too much and not writing.
My favourite movie of all time is "North by Northwest", and I would love to do a young adult novel that
evokes its themes someday. I love Peter Jackson's adaptation of the Lord of the Rings. I wish I could
have been the one to have written "The Iron Giant" as that movie is simply brilliant.
The last movie I saw in the theatre was Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. We can't really go to the
movies without leaving Vivian with her grandparents, and if we're going to have an outing that requires
babysitting, the movie is going to have to be really good in order to justify that and the $9 it costs to get
into the theatre. That said, we recently watched "Stranger Than Fiction" on DVD -- a movie we'd have
been quite happy to catch in the theatre.
You have the chance to give one piece of advice to your teen readers. What would it be?
My sister-in-law, Wendy Ewell, an artist, said this best. She once told Erin, "never buy anything you don't
love." She later amended this to, "never DO anything you don't love." People are changing their careers
more often these days -- up to seven times, a far cry from the old days when one job at one company
was enough to set you up for life. That sort of puts the lie to the suggestion that there is a hard and fast
point wherein you can call yourself "grown up", doesn't it?
You'll have a number of chances to reinvent yourself, and there will be times when the easy thing to do is
accept a menial job that pays the bills, or a career that you're not particularly interested in that you
continue on because of the money or the prestige. But we have less spare time these days to
concentrate on the things that we love. If you can make it work so that your job is in a field that you
_love_, even if it means a bit of a struggle to make ends meet, you will be much happier than if you
accept a job you don't care about that pays the bills.
One last question. What stories can we look forward to from you in the future?
Beyond Peter and Rosemary, there is a story I'm working on called The Night Girl. It's still in its early
stages, but it's about a young woman named Perpetua who goes to work as a secretary for an
employment agency that finds jobs for trolls and goblins. It's a comedy and a coming of age story, and I
think it's coming together well. We'll see what happens when I submit that to my publisher.
Again, thanks so much for joining us at TeensReadToo.com!
Thank you for this opportunity. I hope you found my answers interesting.
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 started writing stories very early, but I started reading stories for people outside my family when I was
fourteen. I wrote fan fiction -- stories that were set in the universe of a book or a television show
that one enjoys; in my case, it was "Doctor Who." My first story was enjoyed by other "Doctor Who" fans,
which inspired me to write more. This sparked a fifteen year career in writing "Doctor Who" fan fiction and
editing fan-produced "Doctor Who" magazines. It was a hobby that I enjoyed doing, more than the
career I was training myself for.
Can you tell us a little bit about your road to publishing?
In 2001, I decided that I was going to write stories in my own universe, and the mark of success in doing
was being published -- it's a lofty goal, but one that I thought worth trying for even if the odds were
against me. So as I started writing the story that would become The Unwritten Girl, I looked around for
publishers who might be interested.
The first publisher I sent to was Random House. Actually, I sent the manuscript to them in December
2001 as part of their Delacorte Press Contest for Young Adult Writers, a contest which is open only to
people submitting full manuscripts, who haven't been published before. This is the ONLY way, outside of
an agent, that you can get unsolicited manuscripts into Random House. I didn't expect to win, but the
deadline really helped focus me and got me to finish the first draft of my story. And when rejection came
the following March, I had already lined up a few other publishers that I was going to try for.
I'd heard all of the stories about the number of times a number of classics had been rejected before they
were accepted; Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time" rejected by publishers for ten years, J.K.
Rowling's "Harry Potter" rejected twelve times, so I was prepared for a long process, and I was
encouraged by the nature of the rejections I received. They took some time before they came back and,
rather than a pink slip, I sometimes got a letter. This told me that I hadn't been rejected outright, and that
I had turned some heads and that there was still a chance.
The closest I came was on my fourth try when Maggie DeVries, editor of Orca Book Publishers,
expressed an interest in seeing the full manuscript (I'd sent her just the first three chapters and a
synopsis). Unfortunately, in the end, she had to turn me down, but what was important was that she told
me why. Her suggestions were incorporated into revisions of my book which made things much stronger,
even though this was followed by another four rejections.
I'd probably still be sending copies to publishers if I hadn't been lucky enough to run into an author, who
was running an online critique group (I'd been constantly revising the story to improve it). After reading
my story and hearing about my eighth rejection, she told me to send her the first chapter and synopsis
and she'd pass it onto her editor at Dundurn Books. He liked it enough to ask to see the whole thing and,
after reading the manuscript over, agreed to publish it.
The Unwritten Girl came out in May 2006, a delightful finish to a nearly five-year-long process.
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?
Fathom Five is the sequel to The Unwritten Girl. The first book's protagonists, Rosemary Watson and
Peter McAllister, are a little older (15) and more mature, and have to deal with a group of sirens who
come and tell orphaned Peter that he is actually a changeling. There's a bit of romance and a bit of
horror in the mix, but the chemistry and the humour of the first book remains.
I'd started writing Fathom Five after I sent off The Unwritten Girl in December 2001. I know people say
that it isn't wise to write a sequel to a story that you don't know will sell (if the first book doesn't sell, you'll
be hard-pressed to sell the second unless you render it a stand alone), but although The Unwritten Girl
was finished, the story of Peter and Rosemary wasn't. I wanted to see where it went, and over the next
two years, I finished no less than two sequels.
I hope I don't jinx things by talking about this when it hasn't yet been scheduled for release, but the third
book in the series is called The Young City and features Peter and Rosemary at 18. Fathom Five is at
the printers now and will be released at the end of April.
What, or who, has been the greatest inspiration for your stories?
Many of my ideas come from other books that I've read or television shows I've enjoyed. Stories were a
big part of my life through childhood, and it's their magic I want to recapture when I write. Some ideas
have been borne out of Doctor Who episodes, others from books by such authors as Madeleine L'Engle.
You get ideas by seeing where other authors have gone before, but also by identifying paths they've not
followed. For instance, I admit that one of the inspirations for The Unwritten Girl comes from Madeleine
L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time" and its many sequels. I was re-reading the book back in 2001 and getting
caught up by both the wonderful worlds Meg and Calvin visited, but also by the characters of Meg and
Calvin themselves, and their obvious chemistry. Then I read "A Wind in the Door" and I could see the
chemistry deepening, to the point where they were obviously on the verge of falling in love (obvious,
probably, to everybody but them). I looked forward to more sequels exploring this relationship, and I
found to my disappointment that the next novel in the series, "A Swiftly Tilting Planet", features Meg and
Calvin at 24, married and expecting their first child. It was a good book in all other respects, but I still felt
that Madeleine missed a few steps.
I suspected that if I wanted to see a relationship like Meg and Calvin's develop in all its steps, that I'd
have to write a set of stories around that relationship myself, and thus The Unwritten Girl was born. Other
ideas came into play as well, of course, as I charted my own path, but that was one of the first.
Let’s hear about your family, who I’m sure are thrilled to have a published author among them!
I am surrounded by family members who love books or write them. Both my parents were trained as
librarians, and my mother (Patricia Bow) has been writing and trying to break into the publishing industry
since I was quite young. She now has three books out ("The Spiral Maze", "The Bone Flute" and "The
Ruby Kingdom") and is working on more. They've both been very supportive of my writing, with my
mother proofreading and offering lots of suggestions. She allowed me to return the favour and read over
and offer suggestions on her work, so it really felt like a collaboration of equals, which encouraged me to
keep going.
My wife, Erin Noteboom, is an award winning poet. She and I met on the Internet back in 1994 when I
submitted one of my fan fiction stories to one of the Internet newsgroups. We became penpals and we
fell in love, and we've been supporting each others' writing ever since. She has two books of poetry out,
"Ghost Maps: Poems for Carl Hruska" and "Seal Up the Thunder". A journal about her pregnancy and the
first year of our daughter Vivian, entitled "The Mongoose Diaries", will be coming out later this spring.
These books are in a very different genre, but she's working on a young adult novel herself.
"The Ruby Kingdom" and its sequels are being published by the same publisher as The Unwritten Girl,
so there's a strong likelihood that there will be some marketing of the mother-son "team". My mother, Erin
and I have already been profiled in the local media as a "writing family", which unfairly downplays the
contributions of my father, who has been wholly supportive to the lot of us.
Now for some fun facts. What’s your greatest comfort food?
I eat too much comfort food, I find. But I think the one dish that stands out for me is a breakfast with
scrambled eggs, bacon and toast served at a restaurant. Those warm breakfasts sure beat cereal and
they speak of lazy weekend mornings where we don't have to worry about work or school. And the
restaurant setting is even better because it was so special when it happened back when I was young, the
fond memories are quite strong.
What are the first three things you do when you wake up in the morning?
Feed the cat.
Bring Vivian to her mother.
Make coffee.
Sad that I can just rhyme that off, isn't it?
If I came to your house and looked in your closet/attic/basement, what’s the one thing that would surprise
me the most?
Probably that anybody can move around down there. In some ways, I can be a very fastidious person -- I
_hate_ it when people leave food out. I was also trained as an urban planner and I like to plan things out.
But when it comes to storing things, things get cluttered pretty quickly.
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?
I'd be blue so I could be in the sky and watch over everything.
Who is your favorite cartoon character? Which cartoon character is most like you?
I enjoy watching "Kim Possible". Part of it is a professional curiosity, since the cartoon caters to the
market I'm interested in, but I was also impressed by how the writers of this Disney cartoon gave the
crime fighting teen hero a distinctive personality and made her grow as a character. There is some
similarity between Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable and Rosemary Watson and Peter McAllister, except
that Rosemary and Peter don't face supervillains.
As for which cartoon character is most like me; my first guess would be a neater, (slightly) less oblivious
version of Fry from Futurama. I'm just an average guy operating a bit out of his depth. But then, I think
that describes most of us. Every kid is told to think about what they want to be when they grow up. What
the grown ups don't tell them is that you _never_ grow up. The world is just as frightening and wondrous
when you're 35 or 50 as when you are 10. Here am I, with a published book and a young daughter, and
I'm still wondering when I get to feel grown up. I suspect "grown up" is an illusion -- a shell you pull
around yourself for the benefit of people younger than yourself.
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?
I didn't travel much when I was young. When I visited Chicago to meet Erin face-to-face for the first time
(this was back in November 1995), it was my first time in the United States, and only the third time
outside the province of Ontario. Since then, I've visited more than a dozen states, gotten to know such
cities as Chicago, Omaha, Des Moines, Kansas City and Washington, and I've toured the Maritime
provinces of Canada with Erin. Travelling is surprisingly fun, if you can find some way to keep your
suitcases light, and I want to do more of it. My first priority is to see those parts of Canada that I've not
yet seen -- the western provinces in particular. I haven't seen proper mountains.
In terms of history, I'd probably lean towards visiting old railways or streetcar networks that have since
vanished from time. I haven't lost my interest in trains and public transit, and a fair chunk of that era
ended before I was born. So I'd want to ride the classic 20th Century Limited between New York and
Chicago, and go cross country on one of Union Pacific's transcontinentals.
So what’s your favorite type of music to listen to? Favorite musical artists? Do you listen to music while
you’re writing?
There are a number of artists and albums that I like. I find that female singers tend to dominate my
collection, but I'm not really into the really popular pop bands or singers these days. I like to take the road
less travelled, and tend to go with musicians that demand more out of their listeners in their lyrics, that
push the envelopes a little without crashing my ears. Among my favourite signers are Tori Amos, Jorane,
Kate Bush, and so on. I also like Pink Floyd, the Beatles and Clannad.
Sometimes music helps me in my writing, sometimes it doesn't. The Unwritten Girl doesn't have a
soundtrack attached to it in my head (save for a few selections of Pink Floyd's music), but "Fathom Five"
does, having been written at a time that I was getting to know the music of the Quebec singer Jorane.
The way she combines her voice and her cello into a decidedly alternative brand of music fit well with the
story I was writing, and some pieces became specifically associated with specific scenes in the novel.
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?
My favourite shows currently in production are Doctor Who, Battlestar Galactica and House. We've pulled
the plug on our cable television, however, and are relying on video tapes and DVDs for our fix, and for a
selection of educational entertainment for Vivian. It saves us money, is better for my young daughter,
and besides we found we were vegging out in front of the television too much and not writing.
My favourite movie of all time is "North by Northwest", and I would love to do a young adult novel that
evokes its themes someday. I love Peter Jackson's adaptation of the Lord of the Rings. I wish I could
have been the one to have written "The Iron Giant" as that movie is simply brilliant.
The last movie I saw in the theatre was Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. We can't really go to the
movies without leaving Vivian with her grandparents, and if we're going to have an outing that requires
babysitting, the movie is going to have to be really good in order to justify that and the $9 it costs to get
into the theatre. That said, we recently watched "Stranger Than Fiction" on DVD -- a movie we'd have
been quite happy to catch in the theatre.
You have the chance to give one piece of advice to your teen readers. What would it be?
My sister-in-law, Wendy Ewell, an artist, said this best. She once told Erin, "never buy anything you don't
love." She later amended this to, "never DO anything you don't love." People are changing their careers
more often these days -- up to seven times, a far cry from the old days when one job at one company
was enough to set you up for life. That sort of puts the lie to the suggestion that there is a hard and fast
point wherein you can call yourself "grown up", doesn't it?
You'll have a number of chances to reinvent yourself, and there will be times when the easy thing to do is
accept a menial job that pays the bills, or a career that you're not particularly interested in that you
continue on because of the money or the prestige. But we have less spare time these days to
concentrate on the things that we love. If you can make it work so that your job is in a field that you
_love_, even if it means a bit of a struggle to make ends meet, you will be much happier than if you
accept a job you don't care about that pays the bills.
One last question. What stories can we look forward to from you in the future?
Beyond Peter and Rosemary, there is a story I'm working on called The Night Girl. It's still in its early
stages, but it's about a young woman named Perpetua who goes to work as a secretary for an
employment agency that finds jobs for trolls and goblins. It's a comedy and a coming of age story, and I
think it's coming together well. We'll see what happens when I submit that to my publisher.
Again, thanks so much for joining us at TeensReadToo.com!
Thank you for this opportunity. I hope you found my answers interesting.