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Thank you everyone who came and joined me at the Melbourne Public Library for the author reading and book signing. I had so much fun sharing my book with you.

If you took pictures, I’d love to see them. You can e-mail your pictures to me at [email protected].

Here are the highlights of the event:

Watch Again

Before the event started, I shared a little bit about Eoghan Kerrigan’s artwork in the Zaria Fierce Trilogy (incomplete).

Below is the video of the reading (incomplete, we ran out of space right at the very end):

Listen Again

Below is the audio (complete, includes Q&A) from the reading:

If you loved hearing the book read, you should check out Michele Carpenter’s narration of the Zaria Fierce books on Audible. She does an amazing job. She even gave me some tips for my reading today. I love her voices and you will too!

Transcript of the the Q&A Session

Q: When you wrote the book, did you imagine it in your head?

A: I definitely imagined it in my head. I imagine it when I read too. (Background: That’s what puts you there.) It’s like a movie. I can even picture some particular actresses and actors who could play the kids. That would be fun. Did you see it as a movie? (Background: Yes.)

Q: When you started writing it, did you – because you said it was like a movie – did you have advances like when you finished book one and you kind of knew where it was going? Or did that happen as you were writing it?

A: A bit of both. When I started the trilogy, I knew where I wanted to end the first book, I knew where the second book would end, and I knew how the trilogy would end, but all the steps in between, all the adventure part – how they get from point A to point B – was a total blank. It kind of came to me as I was writing.

Q: Were there some scenes that you had to rewrite several times before you liked them?

A: Yes. The one with Olaf at the bridge was one of those. I wanted to get it right.

Q: What about getting to a point where you may not be certain whether or not you want to go down one road or another? Would you stop and consider each one of them – options – and then decide whether or not that’s going to be best for the next book or the third book?

A: It really only happened once and that was while writing the second book. I got about halfway through book two and it occurred to me that I could end the book one way and have it be like how I originally planned, or I could end it another way and send the trilogy off into a series and have it be completely different. I did a little bit of exploratory writing for both, and I ended up sticking with my first gut instinct of where to end the second book, but it was fun to explore.

Q: What about writer’s block? Is that a reality for you like most writers?

A: Yes and no. A lot of time writer’s block for me is just a point where I’m kind of stuck. Since I don’t know the adventure – like what happens from point A and point B – I’ll get to midway between A and B, and I’ll be like where am I going to go next?

One of those places is in the first book. The kids are trapped in an underground troll city and they’re stuck in a prison and they have no way out. I kind of wrote myself into this big box and I was like, what am I going to do? They’re stuck in a prison cell. They don’t have any tools. They don’t have chains. It’s just rock and dirt and a door.

I put it aside for a day, I did my own thing, by the time I came back to it I knew the answer and without giving it away, it’s a pretty good answer. (Background: That’s awesome.)

Q: What about kids? How did you know kids would be the focal point of the book – of the product?

A: For writing it as a kids story? (Background: Yes, thank you.) I think I just knew that it was going to be that way because it’s just like what I loved to read going up was fantasy with Harry Potter and Percy Jackson and all my favorite book series like Half Magic. There’s just so much mystery and fantasy and stuff involved. And, at the core of all these stories is kids finding their way in these worlds and becoming heroes and heroines. I kind of liked that as an idea.

Your Pictures – Thanks for sharing with me!

Thanks for watching, listening, and reading! I had so much fun and I can’t wait for the next one. Happy Readings!