A: I love playing with my dog, Oskar. Taking him on adventures is a lot of fun. I enjoy planning game nights with friends. We make food and play board games. It’s so much fun. Also, I love reading, going to the theater (movies/plays), and traveling. I volunteer at my church and help where I can. I also like watching my favorite shows on TV. I live close to my day job, which means I can go home at lunch. So my lunch dates with my coworker and beta reader are a big highlight during my work week. We spend our time watching Korean TV dramas and chitchatting.
Q: What’s the hardest part about editing?
A: Finding and replacing the malapropisms within the text. They’re more difficult to spot than other errors because usually it is a real word sitting in the place of the correct word choice. Spellcheck won’t find it. Many readers will also skip over the malapropisms without seeing them, either because they don’t know better, or they do, and their mind replaced the word with the correct word instantly as they read the passage. Even after editing the book, I would still find malapropisms.
For example in the original text of Zaria Fierce and the Secret of Gloomwood Forest one of the characters said to another, “So we’re at a bypass then?” The real word is impasse (the point where progress is halted due to disagreements, lack of comprise, and physical barriers), not bypass (a road around a place, a reroute or detour to avoid something). As you can see, the words have two very different meanings and the sentence meaning changes depending on which one is used. The contextual clues would allow you to deduce what I really meant as the author, but it’s far better if I fix the malapropisms before you get your hands on the book. 🙂
Drawing – Keira Gillett’s Zaria Fierce
Does this count as fan art if I drew it? LOL I have no idea. Here’s a quick doodle of Zaria Fierce walking on the scrollwork bridge:
Be sure to click on the artwork category to explore more art – official pieces by the illustrator and fan art.
Q: What do you see as your greatest success in life?
A: That my family and I are close. I think those ties are so important and are worth preserving.
Q: Do you have a motto that you live by?
A: The Golden Rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Q: Choose one author, living or dead, that you would like to have dinner with.
A: Only one? How about one each instead? Living – J. K. Rowling. Dead – Jane Austen.
Q: What’s your biggest pet peeve at the moment?
A: Watching HGTV shows and seeing beige and subway tiles used in design. I can’t stand either one. I can’t stand beige because it’s so bland that there is nothing inspiring about it. Beige (and denim blue carpet) reads government building to me. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I have worked and gone to school in beige environments. I don’t want it at home. Give me gray as a neutral any day of the week. I think it’s prettier. I loathe subway tiles because they are the exact same material as the tiles being replaced (because they feel old and outdated… so why get the same look again?) The only difference I can see is shape and color – from square to rectangle, from beige to white. Both trends read old and dirty to me… and government building. Don’t deny it. Now that I’ve pointed it out you feel the same, right?
Q: Where did you experience writer’s block in your book?
A: Probably wherever the story gets really clever. For instance, two moments that stick out to me in book one are when Zaria and her friends are imprisoned in Trolgar and what happens when Zaria, Olaf, and the Wild Hunt are on the scene for the delivery of the quest object. In the first, I had to answer how do they escape? It came by realizing how the room was already described. The solution was right there! For the second moment, I always knew there had to be a reason the mountain-trolls and the river-troll didn’t get along but would keep their distance. It couldn’t be just magic. I was reading the news when the idea of politics came to me as the solution. Sometimes the answer is in your face, you simply must step back and give your work a little space. Writer’s block to me is the inability to see the forest for the trees or the trees for the forest. Some space and a fresh look can make the big and small pictures appear.
Q: How do you stay organized?
A: For Zaria Fierce and the Secret of Gloomwood Forest I was about halfway through the first draft when it became clear to me I needed to utilize a timeline. I stopped writing immediately and opened a new document and then I read from the beginning. I sorted out the days and events I had already done and then kept the document handy for future events. That time I hadn’t made a mistake, but I could have, and it became a real time-saver later.
Q: Do you have any tricks for staying focused?
A: Yes, give yourself a deadline or end goal. You’re going to want to meet it and possibly exceed it. There’s lots of wonderful stories about writers who have finished a book in mere days, or completed massive amounts of prose for the annual National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo.) What works for you?
Q: What makes a good idea for a book?
A: How you write it. Do you think it through? Look for the ways to enhance a story or world? Do you research? Do you plot? Do you allow for spontaneity? Writing is personal and it is fluid. What works for you is not what works for someone else be it either in the telling or the reading of it. Faults aren’t always bad. You can embrace them and run amok and produce something very fine indeed. Not everyone will get it, but some will love you for it. A perfectly engineered book is also delightful. When every thread is wrapped up to perfection and an author makes it appear effortless (which it can be…sometimes…) it is beautiful and deeply satisfying. Just be passionate about your topic or story and the rest will follow.
Q: Before you begin to write, what do you do?
A: I queue my book playlist, and find a song to start the day or hit shuffle. Sometimes I reread the last scene, but if I do reread, I only allow myself to make nominal changes to it before continuing. Editing, as I’ve heard, is the biggest time suck to your writing process if you let it rule you before its time comes. I’m careful to not do too much of it until the book’s first draft is done.
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