Truth Be Told |
| Interview with Bestselling Author Melissa de la Cruz Posted: 15 Jun 2011 05:04 PM PDT Hi Melissa, thank you so much for joining us here on Truth Be Told for an interview. It is an honor to feature such an established author as yourself! I recently finished reading Witches of East End and I am very excited to not only share the review but to also share some fun facts!
 Wife, mother, shopper, procrastinator, hand-holder, worrier, the friend most likely to throw you a surprise party. Where did the idea for Witches of East End come from and why did you decide to pursue that idea versus some other possible ideas you may have had at that time? My audience was growing up, and I thought it would be fun to write about a family of witches, something different, not set in high school, I wanted to write about the relationships between sisters, and with a strong but complicated mother. I very much wanted to write a story that had elements of Norse mythology which is my favorite mythology from childhood. How did you decide which powers would go to which characters? It just grew organically from their natures, since Freya's young and sexy and a bartender, it made sense she could make love potions, Joanna's the mother figure, with the most fearsome power and again, it seemed just natural that she would be able to raise the dead. Ingrid was a bit harder, but I liked the irony that she could see the future and was the goddess of the hearth and home and yet was a spinster for centuries. What was the biggest difference and biggest difficulty in writing fiction geared towards an older audience? It was just a mental block really, this whole notion that there IS a difference. I don't think there is any difference other than a marketing one. But as for storytelling goes, I think YA is more exacting – the story has to move, or the kids will get bored, which is death for your story. In the adult world, I think you can sort of linger in the moment and the environment a little more. But that's the reason so many adults are reading YA – for the fast-paced exciting storytelling.  Yes I did. I made sure all the herbs were edible and there were real medicinal or historical references to their use. Who is your favorite character and why? Probably Ingrid, as she's most like me, although there's a lot of me in Freya too, I definitely went through a wild-child phase, and I wanted to write about motherhood, so Joanna is my voice as well. Where any of this book's characters inspired by someone you knew in real life? Did any traits of people you know get mixed into some of the characters? No. They're all from my imagination. What are some things you need to have near you when writing? Gum. A desk. That's it. I need the gum to ward off the panic, I used to smoke while I wrote, which was a huge crutch. Now I chew gum. Did you find it hard writing about a whole new set of characters versus your Blue Bloods characters? No, it was fun to discover a new world and new relationships. As a writer, it's always fun to explore new things, it keeps your work fresh. What can we expect to see from you in the future (next few years)? The sequel to Witches of East End comes out next summer and I'm in the middle of writing that now. I'm also launching several new series, including the Wolf Pact series, which is a proper Blue Bloods spinoff in that a main character from Blue Bloods is getting her own story: Bliss Llewellyn. My husband and I are co-writing that. It comes out next fall (Fall 2012), and then the seventh and final novel in the first cycle of the Blue Bloods comes out January 2013. I'm doing a second cycle of Blue Bloods, but not sure when that will begin yet. I also have another fantasy series with my husband, called The Other Land Chronicles, the first book Frozen, comes out in 2013. Lastly, is there anything you can tell Truth Be Told readers that you haven't told anyone else? The fact can be about the book, Witches of East End, or just about you. How funny! My life is pretty much an open book, I don't think I have any more secrets to share. Maybe that it was always my secret desire to work as a bartender or a waitress in college—it always seemed like such a great way to meet guys. But of course I ended up working at a library. Thank you again for taking the time to stop by and I hope your adult debut goes as well, if not better than your YA series. Aw thanks! That's very sweet.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
|
No comments:
Post a Comment