Between Lost & Found - Chapter 6

The Dracorlla woman slinked into the castle. The castle seemed to be

a living thing, changing with each new master. The castle was thick and white, the walls glistened like the trails left behind snails. It shone with its own light. The spires and turrets were like broad spiraling pillars that held up the sky. 

The forest stopped short of the castle, the land being cleared of it for hundreds of meters around on every side. The queen did not like the forest. She said that it was too dark, and things hid in the shadows within it.

The Dracorlla woman stalked the castle’s halls heading towards the main throne room. For her people’s sake, she served this queen, but only in body, not in heart. She paused before entering. She looked at her reflection in the castle walls, the abundant candlelight made her reflection move before her. She checked her hair, making sure it was neat and tidy. She brushed the road dust off her glossy green scales. The queen did not like anything or anyone to look untidy.

A Troat, the small goblin-like creatures that basically ran the castle and had done so since the beginning of time, ran out of the throne room chased by a scattering of silverware. 
The Troat, dressed in little more than rags, looked up at the Dracorlla woman with her large frightened eyes. 

‘L … Lady Kavain,’ the Troat said, bowing. Kavain recognized her voice. 

‘Dorv, so … she’s in a good mood today?’ said the Dracorlla woman.

‘And clean that up! The light that fire immediately!’ screeched the queen from inside the throne room.

‘I … I …’ stuttered Dorv.

‘Go on.’ Kavain kindly dismissed the Troat who scurried back inside to grab the scattered silverware. She did so as quickly as possible but had to duck a flying knife that landed in the wall above her head with a twang. Dorv then ran past Kavain, bowing first and then scampering away.

The Dracorlla woman named Kavain, first of her name, pulled her back up straight. She cracked her long neck and wrapped her tail around one of her legs to keep it out of the way of possible flying objects. Then she entered the throne room.

The queen sat on her throne as God would sit atop the clouds, she stared down at the servants that still scampered about her feet, heads down. Her bones looked too big for her skin, too sharp, her mouth too large. She had more teeth in her mouth than Kavain, and that was saying something, but they didn’t all fit. It was like all her pointy, little teeth seemed to be fighting each other to get out in front, breaking each other in the process. Her eyes had become sunken in her face and the skin around them receded. Her skin had taken on a grayish pallor, like that of a putrid corpse. And when the queen moved, which wasn’t much, she scuttled like an insect, her joints no longer working like they once had. This is what happened to humans when they came to Evermeer. Eventually.  

The throne itself was made of an opalite stone that shone with trapped rainbows in the bright chamber. A Troat servant mussed about the hearth of one of the many fires, but this one was unlit, something Kavain rarely saw.

The queen shielded her eyes with her hands and turned her back on the unlit fire. She peeked out from behind them for a moment and noticed Kavain walking into the room.

‘Ah, Dragon lady, thank the light you’re here,’ said the queen, clicking and pointing her fingers towards the unlit fire.

Kavain gritted her teeth and bit her tongue at the slur. Dragon. 

‘Your Grace,’ she said with a graceful flourishing bow. 

‘Get out of the way!’ screeched the queen to the Troat still trying to light the fire with a candle and kindling. Another piece of silverware, this time a fork, whizzed past Kavain and struck the Troat in the back. He winced and shouted in pain and backed away.

Kavain placed a hand on his shoulder as she passed. ‘You might want to move … and perhaps stop giving her things to throw,’ whispered the Dracorlla woman.

The Troat gave her a curt smile and rushed off.

‘Well, c’mon. We haven’t got all day!’ screamed the queen. Nothing she ever said was quiet.

Kavain fixed up the pile of sticks and logs so the fire would keep easily, then she opened her mouth and lungs. Fire roared from her mouth in a great rolling wave of orange and blue. And for a moment she thought of turning the fire’s fury on the hideous queen that sat behind her. But another human would soon take her place. They always did. One would skulk up from the Wastes to take the throne. 

Sometimes, it is better the devil you know than the one you don’t.

She shut off the fire and turned back to the queen who unfurled herself from her hidden position. Kavain licked the residual flames from her lips with her forked tongue. The queen clapped her hands with happiness and Kavain smiled, but her smile soon faded we she realized that the queen was not smiling at her.

Kavain turned to see a Vulpex, a vixen if Kavain could judge correctly. She had a much more slender face than her male comrades and her coat was more orange than red. She was large, almost as large as the giant bear-dog that had threatened her when she was with the human girl. The vixen’s coat was ruffled and patches of down were missing from her wings. She had been in some kind of struggle. She also dragged a big black sack in her teeth.

The queen stood up from her throne, still clapping her hands with joy. ‘Elloware, my dearest! You bring me a present.’ She came down from her throne in her rickety manner, all backward gangly limbs and jittering movements.

Kavain couldn’t help the sneer that came to her face, but she tried to hide it by turning her face and readjusting a lock of her hair that had wriggled loose.

Elloware dumped the bag on the floor. ‘Yes, Your Grace,’ said the giant flying fox. 

‘Well, show me!’ commanded the queen.

Elloware bowed her head and began opening the bag with her mouth and wing tips. She peeled back the bag and out rolled a small creature, its four legs were crumpled in on its self like a dead spider and its downy coat shimmered with many colors, iridescent like the opalite stone throne. Its mane spread out on the floor, glistening like spun sunlight. 

Kavain couldn’t stop the gasp that came from her mouth. Likewise, the queen gasped too, but it was an entirely different sound.

‘A Ky …’ Kavain’s voice came out breathier than she expected. 

The creature that lay on the ground before them was an ancient thing, from an ancient clade of beings. But these were different to anything else left alive today. They were made mostly of light in the way other beings are made mostly of water.

The queen wriggled and clapped with cruel delight. Kavain scowled at her. There was a reason these beings were no longer around.

‘I’ll get the blade,’ said the queen creeping off.

Kavain knelt down next to this magical creature. It was horse-like in shape and when standing would’ve barely come up to her knees. ‘It’s just a child,’ she whispered.

Elloware gave her a sideways glance with a raised eyebrow. Kavain stood up to full height and brushed smooth her ruffled scales. 

‘Wake it,’ said the queen as she scuttled back to them.

Elloware roused the child Ky. It stretched out its little limbs, its hooves clacking on the cobble floor. Its big eyes blinked open and seeing the queen and the Vulpex above, it let out a cry. Elloware tried to hold it down and Kavain turned away to face the fire.

‘What’s its name?’ asked the queen.

‘Farla, Your Grace,’ said Elloware.

Kavain watched the beautiful flames dance as the screams of the child Ky rang out behind her. The flames reached up into the air as if they knew that something unholy and terrible was happening. There was the sickening thud of a blade striking flesh and sinking deep. The screams of the Ky became gurgled and the sound chilled Kavain’s blood beneath her scales. 

She heard the queen whisper the name of the Ky and there was a whooshing of air all around them.

Kavain squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to shed tears.

Then it was all over.

Kavain turned back before the queen could really notice that she had averted her gaze. But she still tried to hold her head high and not look directly at the body on the ground.

‘Would have worked better if it had been happy first, but beggars cannot be choosers. Get rid of it,’ commanded the queen with a wave of her bony hand. 

‘Yes, Your Grace,’ said Elloware with a slight bow and she put the creature back in her sack and began dragging it away. But not before glowering at Kavain.

It wasn’t that they disliked each other exactly, it was more of a mutual distaste for what they both did. Neither of them could believe that there would be another being that could stoop as low as they did, another that could stomach the queen’s dirty work. But they both knew that each had their reasons. And they were the same. Survival.

‘Do you have something for me?’ asked the queen, sitting once again on her throne. The queen now looked brighter, she radiated her own light atop her opalite throne. But to Kavain, she still looked like a dead thing. 

Kavain approached the throne again, minding the smear of shimmering blood across the floor. ‘If you consider information something, then yes, Your Grace,’ she said, the disgust was evident in her voice, but she knew the queen was too self-involved to notice.

The queen huffed like an insolent child. ‘Information.’ She said the world like one would say cat vomit or rotting flesh or moist. She leaned back in her throne lazily, bored to death already. ‘You could’ve at least brought me something to drink or a gift or something. C’mon then, out with it.’
Kavain almost considered not telling the queen what she had come all this way to tell her, but she was there for a reason. Besides, what did she care what she did with the girl? She was only a human.

‘There is a girl. A human girl,’ started Kavain.

‘So, there are lots of humans in the Wastes. What do I care?’ said the queen, picking something out of her teeth with a skeletal finger. 

‘This girl can … sing,’ Kavain said.

The queen stopped what she was doing and looked at Kavain with her dark, goggle eyes. ‘Sing?’ The queen let out a howl of laughter that made Kavain feel physically ill. ‘Has it really been that many years?’

‘I guess so, your Grace,’ said Kavain. 

‘Are you sure it is the one?’ said the queen.

‘Certain, I saw the trees bend myself,’ said Kavain.

‘So … the prophecy is true … alright. Bring her to me,’ said the queen with a dismissive wave of her hand.

‘… Her whole body or just her head?’ Kavain asked.

The queen smiled her shark’s grin. ‘Bring her to me alive.’

Between Lost & Found - Chapter 3

She awoke to the gentle splatter of rain on her face. For a second she thought that the roof in the orphanage was leaking again, but then she felt the grass beneath her and the aching in her feet and she remembered what she had done.

She opened her eyes to the new day and found herself in a place that was very unfamiliar. The sky was a clear, deep purple-pink, like that of a glass marble. It seemed so close that she might reach out and dip her fingers into it. She sat up and looked around. She was in a forest, dense and thick with trees and shrubs and ferns. Everything shone with a kind of silvery sheen as if it had been freshly polished.

Insects of all shapes, sizes and colours flittered around the trees and the girl stared at them in wonder. Little pink orbs of light like tiny balls of cotton candy floated around. The girl stood up to get a better look at them. A group of them came down from the tree she had slept under, they circled the girl’s head gracefully, more floating than flying. But she could see them no more clearly up close, but they made a sweet twinkling sound as they moved. The cluster of them got closer to her face, tickling like feathers on her skin, making the girl giggle. They swirled around her once, twice and then they were off.

Then she remembered the black shape, the dog. Was it a dream? The girl had never been much of a dreamer. Daydreamer yes, but night dreamer, not so much.

The girl began walking. The ground in this place was soft like moss below her feet. She looked down and saw that with each footfall the moss sent shimmers of glittering green light off in all directions like glowing roots stretching from her feet. 

‘What is this strange place?’ she thought. She could hear birds singing in the trees and pink light trickled through the canopy from an unseen sun, like water through holes in a roof, making the soft rain glisten like tiny captive rainbows. Was this the end of the rainbow? For surely this place was magical.

Giant pink and brown mushrooms as big as chairs sprouted up from a patch of ground where trees had not grown and light streamed through, warming the mushrooms’ backs. The girl was hungry. And she remembered being told to never eat the red mushrooms, for they were poison, but no one ever warned her about giant pink and brown ones.
She carefully knelt down on the mossy ground next to a particularly fat mushroom and grabbed at its top. She tried to break a piece off when suddenly the mushroom moved. Its shape changed, it unfurled into a stout little man with a bulbous head and a nose to match. His skin was the same colour the mushroom had been. 

‘Oi!’ said the little man. ‘Whatchu doin’? Wakin me up from me sleepin’?’

The girl had fallen back on her rump in surprise. ‘Oh! I … I’m sorry. I thought you were a …’

‘You thought wrong, human girl! Go on, git! Go to the Wastes with the other humans!’ the little mushroom man waddled over to another of the mushrooms and ratted on its hood. ‘C’mon boys! Time to be gettin’ off.’ He turned and glared at the girl. ‘The humans are out.’ 

The group of mushroom men all unfurled themselves, stretching and yawning in the rainbow shower. Then they all simply toddled off, some of them giving her evil stares over their rotund shoulders.
The girl sat on her rump a while longer as she watched the group of mushroom men retreat. She had never seen such creatures or been told about them. Also, she had never been called a human before. She knew she was a human, but in a world dominated by them, it was never really pointed out. And what were the Wastes? Should she go there? It didn’t sound like the sort of place she wanted to go.

She got back up and continued walking. There was no discernible trail in the woods. It was just an overgrown entanglement of vines and ferns and trees and the girl began to wonder how in the world she had gotten there. She remembered before this point, but it was not as if there was a yesterday and the day before that. There was only before and now. 

She must’ve gotten lost while running, but could you get so lost that you simply found yourself in another place, another world entirely? For surely that was what this place was, another world. 
Before now, the only memories she had were of the orphanage. It was a dull place, it lacked luster. The orphanage world looked washed out as if seen through a dirty window. This new world was exactly opposite. The colours popped out at her, each one of them was so vibrant it was like the colour itself had life. The light was so bright it warmed her deep inside.

Despite the beauty of this new world, she walked ahead more cautiously this time. Something told her that she shouldn’t take things for granted, she shouldn’t assume anything in this strange new place.

She walked for an unknown amount of time. Time seemed to be different there. She had always gauged time by the shadows that crept across the dirty wooden floors, but here, there didn’t seem to be any shadows. The light coming from above didn’t change.

Every now and then there would be things that seemed out of place. A broken statue of tiny naked human babies sat dirtying amongst the growth of flowering ivy vines. A group of animals that seemed similar to deer except their necks were far too long and thin, the stag’s antlers appeared to made of trees with flower buds about to bloom and leaves twinkling wet with raindrops. For a moment, she thought she saw what appeared to be a woman, but she was covered in green scales and had a face that appeared more dragon than lady, but as quick as the girl saw the dragon lady she was gone.

Eventually, the girl came to a grove of trees that hung heavy with plump fruit. The fruit was all different, each tree carried several different shape and colour fruits, none of which the girl had ever seen. Not that she had the chance to eat much fruit at the orphanage.

The thing about hunger is that after a while you stop feeling it. In the beginning, you feel it like someone had taken a part of you away. It can be painful, but after years of feeling hungry for food, it goes away. The hunger for other things becomes stronger. But now, seeing all this ripe glistening fruit just hanging there she felt hungry.

She sat back and watched for a while. There were creatures climbing the trees. They looked like cat-sized rats, but with squat smiling faces. Some climbed the trees while others waited down below. The ones up in the tree picked out the red fruit and threw it down to the ones waiting below. 

Quietly, the girl crept up to the tree and tried to reach for the fruit, but she could not reach, she was far too small. 

The emptiness in her tummy grew as she looked at the fat fruit that was just out of her reach and she tried to jump. As she went into the air she felt her fingertips brush the fruit but still she couldn’t reach and she fell back to the ground with a loud thud, landing first on her sore feet and then on her backside.

The smiling creatures all startled and scurried away from the trees. The girl looked around, shocked for a moment before tears stung her eyes. That old familiar emptiness felt heavy inside her, like a paperweight on her heart. She put her hands to her face to hide her tears and sat there underneath the tree with fruit that was just out of her reach.

Then, she felt something fall into her lap. She peeled away her bandaged hands to see a big red fruit in her lap and one of the smiling creatures standing before her.

She stared at the creature and then down at the fruit and then back to the creature. The creature crept close to her and pushed the fruit towards her again. 

The girl couldn’t help the smile that came to her face as she nodded at the creature and picked up the red fruit. 

‘Thank you,’ she said to the creature and nodded again. 
The creature returned the gesture.

The fruit was soft and warm from the sun’s rays. The outside was slightly fuzzy but it was as red as blood.

She put the fruit to her lips and bit into it. Juice filled her mouth and spilled down her chin. The sweetness was like nothing she had tasted before. Tangy and syrupy. It tasted the same way that the colours looked. Vibrant and opposite to anything she had ever experienced at the orphanage.

The creatures began to crowd around her. They chattered amongst themselves and smiled and ate fruit. 

She ate until she could eat no more. Her belly full, her heart overflowing, she leaned back on the tree and drifted off to sleep.
She was home.


I hope you are enjoying the story. If you have any comments feel free to leave them. 

The next chapter will be posted in a week.

Hugs AMC
xxx

The Darkest Part of the Forest Review

Title: The Darkest Part of the Forest

Goodreads rating: 3.93 stars (11,383 reviews)

Genre: YA, Fantasy

Author: Holly Black

Pages: 324

Publisher: Little, Brown Books & Hachette Australia

Formats: Paper back, eBook/Kindle, Audiobook

Imagine you live in a small town and in said town there was a tourist attraction. Local businesses thrive on selling souvenirs and for generations the local kids have held parties at this attraction. Tourists travel from far away to gawk and take selfies in front of the attraction. Now imagine that this “attraction” is not a monument or a big banana, but a horned boy that has been locked away in a crystal coffin in the middles of the woods for as long as the town has existed. This is the town of Fairfold where our story is set.

“Once, there was a girl who vowed she would save everyone in the world, but forgot herself.” 
― Holly Black, The Darkest Part of the Forest.

Hazel and her brother love the horned prince and when he is suddenly no longer there; his casket is smashed and there is no trace of him to be found; they decide to find him. That they need to find him, protect him. But they don’t understand what it is exactly that they will be protecting him from.

With a central message that runs deeper than just what lies at face-value, it is a story that is guaranteed to capture you and drag you into its dark pages. 

The Darkest Part of the Forest is a beautifully constructed novel. Filled with darkness and a creep factor of ten. Holly Black has really out done herself this time. This novel is so easy to fall into. It will make you believe in faeries once again.

Back into the Fae - a conversation with Holly Black the Faerie Queen

On the drive to Hachette Publishing in Sydney, I was skittish to say the least.

We read books and admire the authors that write them, so strongly, so fiercely, that in our heads the magic of celebrity takes over and makes them out to be otherworldly beings. But as one of my good friends said to me while I was mid-panic attack that morning, “Holly Black has two hands and two feet. She is a person like you and me.”

Although, when Holly walked into the room I was beginning to doubt my friend. With her turquoise pixie-cut hair and plum stained lips, Mrs Black looked as if she could have stepped right out of one of her books. A woman made of ink and pages and magic.

Straight away Holly asked, “Are you okay?”

Whoops. My anxiety was showing. Better tuck that back in Adelise.

“I’m just nervous,” I replied.

She laughed a little and smiled a warm generous smile. “You can’t be nervous!” she said. “… Don’t be nervous.”

We were taken back to a far room in the depths of Hachette’s office space where it was dark bar the lights of the traffic crawling across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, shimmering red and white like strung up Christmas lights. It was a beautiful view and the perfect place to sit with someone that had never been to Australia before.

I got straight to it and asked the all-important question that every Aussie fan is wondering. “Have you tried Vegemite or Tim Tams yet?”

She said no but assured me that she had been given a big box of Tim Tams to try.

Ashleigh from Hachette walked in and turned on the lights and handed Holly a coffee. I rather sheepishly passed Holly a small package with the famous Aussie Choky Bickies inside. “Oh! This is great,” said Holly, to my delight. “You can teach me to do the thing,” referring of course to the Tim Tam Slam.

Holly’s latest book, The Darkest Part of the Forest is, in short, about a horned boy in an unbreakable crystal coffin and the celebrity that entails in our modern world. About how we put famous people up on these pedestals and how easy it is to forget that you don’t really know who they are because we only see them through glass. But when the glass is no longer there we can see them for who they really are. Human.

Or in the case of the horned boy in The Darkest Part of the Forest. Dangerous.

How long did it take you to write The Darkest Part of the Forest

and can you explain a little bit about your process?

It took me about a year and a half. It was a very difficult book for me to write. There were a couple of different structural puzzles in it. I spent a lot of that year and a half really panicked and writing and ripping out what I wrote.

I try to write about a thousand words a day. My goal for next year is to try and figure out how to get that to two thousand words a day. I feel like I could be faster.

I’m a very nervous and uncomfortable first drafter and I’m a very quick editor. I really love “big” editing stuff, like ripping out a chapter and redoing it. I love making big changes. That is the times where I feel confident, where I enjoy doing it and I’m really fast. But just getting that first draft is like a plotting slog because I have this great idea for a book in my head and as I am writing it I can just feel the fact that I am not getting it to where it needs to be.  

I was swimming in this pond near my house and it was really cold and I know that if you go in and you stay there, your body adjusts and you can swim. And some of my friends were getting in and then they would get cold and they would get out. But then they would want to get in again, then they would get cold and get out again. And I looked at them and thought, “that’s how I write! That’s my first drafting process.” I start drafting. I find it painful. I stop. I do something else. I come back and try it again. What I need to do is figure out how to be the person to live in the discomfort long enough to be able to be okay with it... 

What was the thing that sparked your love of the Fae?
Brian Froud and Alan Lee’s book Faeries. My mum is a painter and she

had it in the house when I was nine or ten. And it is obviously not a kid’s book and it is kind of terrifying. I remember just paging again and again and again through the illustrations and reading all the little bits of weird folklore and strange facts. That is the thing that set me on the path of reading more folklore and seeking out books with faeries in them. 

Do you ever miss your characters or think about them? Particularly when writing standalone novel.
Absolutely. There is a lot of great things about writing standalones. You can plot out the whole thing right there. You get to put everything in, you don’t have to save anything for the way back cause there is no way back. This is it! But the downside is that, I really feel like by the end of a first book in a series that is when your characters cement. And then over the course of editing a standalone you get to know those characters and then you’re like “Great to meet you. Goodbye!” and that is really hard. 
One of the reasons why I just sold a series is because I was actually starting to feel that I just didn’t want to meet any new people! I want to meet some people that can hang around for a while and that can be here for more than a single book. 
There are definitely people [characters] that I would like to go back and find out what they are doing and there are others that I feel like “Okay, you guys are fine.” One of the interesting things about going back is how easy it is, in a way that writing something new isn’t easy, because you just remember what it is like to write those people and you know who they are and what their stuff is and you just don’t know that going into a first book. One of the things that messed me up with The Darkest Part of the Forest was that I felt that Hazel had a secret but I didn’t know what it was.

What is your favourite part of writing, besides editing?
It is fun to make something up right? Like you do when you’re a kid and you’re playing with dolls and you’re making up a story. You get to tell the story that you wish that someone had written, something that you want to read. You get to make up the story that is customised for your very specific tastes.

Can you give me a bit of a rundown on your process?
Sure, but it is stupid and terrible! Anyone reading this please don’t do what I do!
I often have a couple of things I want to do. Maybe I have a character or a premise. With The Darkest Part of the Forest I knew that I wanted to tell a story of a town called Fairfold in which they believed in faeries and that there were faeries around there and there was this sleeping prince in a glass coffin. They were a tourist stop. Kids would go out and party by the coffin. That is what I knew about the town. And I knew that I wanted to tell the story of a brother and sister and I wanted them to be in love with this sleeping prince.
Then I write a little bit to figure out more and to let the characters breathe and to see how they would behave and to see if I liked the way that they behaved. Then I start to try and plan it out and then I’ll write a little bit more. I’ll try to talk it out with friends, ask them if this sounds good and what they think should happen. Then I will go off and write a chapter and then go back and edit it extensively and then write another chapter. Then I will go back and edit the chapter before, then I’ll write a third chapter and then go back again to the first chapter to edit … it is such a terrible process, but it is often what I will do. And by the time I am done, I’ll have incredibly polished early chapters that descend into complete incomprehensibility.

How do you go tackling family life and professional writing and keeping those two worlds balanced?
I have a two year old, so it’s new and I’m still trying to figure out how to do it. I think that one of the great advantages that I have as a writer that does this for a living is that I get to be home a lot. I get to make my own schedule, so we can go and do something, or I can get up with him in the middle of the night and I get to do all that stuff.
The disadvantages are that I travel. 
My son is adopted and obviously we knew that we were going to adopt him (there is some paper work involved!) but when we found out that we were going to have him, we had a call on a Tuesday and we had a baby by Friday. So, it was a lot of “oh my god, how am I gonna do this!” My husband stays home with him, so it was fine, but I was travelling a lot. And that is hard! It is hard because I miss them so much, it is hard to be away, but that is a problem that every parent has. 
I think the problem is working out when it works for you to write; when does it work for you to be home? A lot of the time I write at night … like, really late at night. So, if my son has any problems or if he needs anything in the middle of the night then I’m the one who is awake so I can go upstairs and sort him out, but I’m not sure if that is a sustainable system. It definitely makes you become more focused when you’re working. I can’t mess around on the internet as much.
I didn’t know what to expect when having a family but it is truly so much fun! And it is good for getting me out of my own head. There us so much about writing that forces you down into the deep recesses of your own feelings and your own desires and your own fears and getting yourself out of your own mind to focus on another person is so good. 

As a female writer and especially one that doesn’t hide behind a pseudonym have you ever felt discriminated against?
There are ways that we [women] are seen differently in the industry that are systemic. I don’t think that I personally have felt discriminated against, but mostly the way I have felt is the systemic sense that the work that I do is probably romance, or is not necessarily for boys or men, or is not necessarily serious in the way that it would be taken seriously if I were a man. And that is something that is very difficult to change because it is such a pervasive thing. Then there is writing for kids, so when I go into writing adult science fiction and fantasy I know people are going to take me less seriously yet again.
You can see the ways in which your work isn’t read the same.

I read online that you have a secret library! Is this true?
It’s true! It’s not so much a secret library as a hidden door. So when you come down the stairs to my basement there is a bookshelf and if you push the bookshelf you go into the library.

Have you thought any further into making a sequel to The Coldest Girl in Coldtown?
I have not only thought about it, I have actually outlined it. However, I think my publisher right not would like me to do these faerie books first. I was going to try to stick the Coldtown sequel in the middle of them, but they thought that seemed weird. So, two faerie books, Coldtown sequel and then third faerie book.

And then fit the Magisterium series in there somewhere too?
Oh yeah! We are actually finishing up the third book this week.

Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?
Read everything. Read in a lot of different genres. Read broadly. Read deeply. Write a lot. Revise a lot. 
It takes a long time to find your voice. So it is going to mean writing and writing and writing. And I think the thing that could help a lot of people, it may not help everyone but I know it helped me, is to find a critique partner. Someone who likes the same kind of writing as you. And someone who likes your writing and whose writing you like and keep each other honest. Keep each other on deadline. 
My first critique partner was Steve Berman and I don’t think I would’ve finished Tithe if it wasn’t for him. He made me … (Laughing) format it properly. He would say, “you said you were going to have the chapter finished this weekend. Where is it?” And not only that but being a reader of his work taught me to be better by seeing and learning to be a better critiquer. When I was a better critiquer of his work I was a better critiquer of my own. 
I think having that is motivating because it is easy to get pulled back into your regular life. Before you have a deadline that is enforceable by contract it is easy to just think “I’ll fit this in when I can.” Having a critique partner creates a feeling of obligation to another person of getting the work done. That person can tell you what’s good and what’s not.

Do you have any hobbies other than writing?
I like to do a little crafting. When the last few books came out I made some things to send out with the ARCs (Advanced Reading Copies). For some bloggers and reviewers I made a vampire hunting kit with little stakes that we hand carved and a little mirror to go out with Coldtown. And we made walnuts that we cut open and left a message inside them for The Darkest Part of the Forest. I like making little weird things. I’m not great necessarily, but I really enjoy it. 

What’s your favourite word?
Capricious.

What’s your least favourite word?
… Pus.

What sort of books turn you on?
I love when characters make a bad choice. I love a bad choice. I have a thing I call the “Ecstatic Fall.” It’s the moment where the character deliberately does the terrible thing. They just know it’s going to go badly, but they don’t care anymore. It is like a *#@! Me. *#@! You. *#@! Everything moment.

If your world, let’s say Fairfold, existed and you woke up there tomorrow morning, what would you do?
Go to the café. I’d go take a selfie! I’d buy some over price merchandise.

If you would like to hear the interview please comment below or contact me via social media and I will post it. 

Hugs

AMC xxx