Thank you for the question! I am a plotter, but my characters are all pantsers. I know where we're headed when I start out. I have a map and everything. But we never end up there. We always go someplace unexpected. As to making the characters endearing, they're all imaginary friends who have been with me a lifetime. My job is just to create a place for them to live out their lives. :-)
Fantasy. Kids love to visit make-believe worlds, and doing so helps them imagine things outside their own realm of experience. Fantasy allows children to escape their troubles for a while, to imagine new possibilities for themselves and work out complex moral questions in a safe environment.
Yes. A reader recently asked this question, and I was surprised it was evident to anyone. But she's right. Yes, indirectly, "Shadow Runner" is about cancer, my battle with it. Ada is a better version of me. The book is YA fiction, Victorian, Fantasy, but yes it is a metaphor for my own journey. I doubt most readers will pick that up. You'd have to know my history... And even then...
I've been writing since I can remember. What inspired me to keep going was teachers... a lot of them. The most common compliment I got in school was, "You really should consider a career as a writer."
I love being a fly on the wall. I've been in a couple of situations where I was incognito, listening to readers discuss my work. I enjoyed that, tremendously. I got to write myself some notes about things I might improve based on what I heard. And, of course, it's wonderful to hear a reader say they connect with a story or the characters. I do not enjoy being recognized. I wish I could show up to signings wearing a mask. LOL! I'm just not comfortable being in the spotlight.
That first book was the hardest: overcoming the fear of failure, of putting my work out there for critique... But success breeds more success. Now the stories beg to be told and shared. Before, they just begged to be told, but they were content to live in my desk drawer.
