Interview with acclaimed fantasy author, Marianne DePierres!

 JB: Marianne, how does it make you feel to be a popular, successful author?

MDP: I acknowledge my achievements (e.g. 15 books published etc, some awards received) but I don’t consider myself either of those things, and really, those kinds of tags can make you a little bit crazy. I write what I want, help the people I can along the way, and let the rest take care of itself.

JB: Considering the present state of technology, what do you think the future of storytelling will be?

MDP: I honestly don’t know exactly where it will go other than to say ‘electronic’ will rule eventually. After that … who knows?? I do believe, however, that the art of storytelling will never disappear. The human race needs it to make sense of their existence. Without stories we would devolve.

JB: The Burn Bright book is very original. Do you feel pressure to create in-vogue storylines that fit in with popular culture?

MDP: Thank you. And absolutely not. This was a story that took seven years to write. I didn’t even know if it was YA until I finished the first draft. The story came to me and I went with it. Never had a second thought for what was around in the marketplace. 

JB: So, in your creative process, do you prefer to use word processors or write by hand?

MDP: I loathe handwriting. My fine motor coordination isn’t great and I have a very awkward pen grip. I don’t think I would ever have finished a novel if WP’s hadn’t been invented!

JB: I know just what you mean! So, how have you found working with a publishing house? In general, do you think that publishers help writers to evolve?

MDP: I'd dread NOT working with a good publisher - the collaborate effort that goes into making your books better is quite remarkable. Good publishers rock.

Thank you, Marianne, for joining me at Dark Ink for the first of my Author Interviews! 

NANOWRIMO is coming!

Nanowrimo offers writers a challenge: to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. Whoa! That's huge. But I am going to take it on.

I'm writing a new novel, called DarkLight. It's an urban fantasy set in a modern world where demons and angels work together, hunting down members of their own kind who have gone astray.

My goal is to finish the first draft (or, at least 50,000 of the planned 70,000 words) by the end of November.

I'm running NANOWRIMO with my Year 10 and 11 Writers' group as well, and hopefully we'll be able to publish their work online. What a thrill!

US Blog Post!

To celebrate Mammon's November paperback release in the US, I was invited to contribute a post on banned books to the website of E. Kristin Anderson, author and poet who runs The Hate-Mongering Tart. Every year, Anderson joins in the celebrations for Banned Books Week. It was awesome to write about such a rebellious topic!

Read my post on Banned Books at the Hate-Mongering Tart HERE

Sharing what I learned at the CYA Conference 2012

It's incredible really, how much I learned in such a short space of time. We flew in to Brisbane on Friday night, negotiated the roads with the phone's navigator on the blink (4G, my backside!) and attended the conference on Saturday before flying out again at 5.30pm.

In the morning, we listened to Isobelle Carmody speak for a short time about sensory writing before doing what all good teachers should: involving her students in hands-on writing activities. She passed around some mysterious bags of scented goodies and we wrote down the descriptive words that came to mind. We also had to jump out of our comfort zones and feel each other's faces, describing the contours, textures, etc. It turned out I was paired up with Isobelle's daughter, who was lovely.

With another YA author, Kaz Delaney, we explored the social media world (oh my freakin' God, there are so many sites out there that I didn't know about!) and how an author should be a brand, or a product - more so than her books. So, JB Thomas is a brand!

Paul Griffin, a YA author based in the US, (who writes incredible realistic fiction targeted towards at-risk youth) spoke about the importance of distribution. The question was: where does your book fit in? Schools? Libraries? Commercial fiction shelves of bookstores?

This was just in the morning - so much good stuff crammed in before we had our paper bag lunches (nice) and the afternoon's sessions, which were just as interesting.

I would strongly recommend that new authors attend these conferences. They're a great way to keep learning.

- JB xxx

I'm looking forward to attending the CYA Conference in Brisbane, Australia next weekend!
The conference website is http://web.me.com/qmsa/CYA/index.html.

Supanova Perth, June 23rd 2012

I had a great time at Supanova Perth. On Saturday, I hung out with the gals at the Random House stand, and on Sunday, the lovely Sandra Wigzell invited me to the Dymocks stand, where I was in the company of some very famous, talented authors! Pictured left to right: me, Duncan Lay, Juliet Marillier, Bevan McGuiness, Marianne DePierres, Matthew Reilly and Christopher Paolini. What a buzz!

Mammon for sale in paperback on Amazon UK and US from November, 2012!

AMAZON UK

AMAZON USA