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Ask the Author: Courtney M. Privett
Answered Questions (4)
Courtney M. Privett
Despite the narcolepsy, I don't sleep much when I'm writing. I tend to write in energetic bursts with a lot of sleepy downtime in between drafts. I wrote my first five books before I had kids, and I definitely had more dedicated writing time back then. Now I sneak in writing time when I can... during naps, while the eldest is at school, after the kids go to bed, and sometimes I sneak off to the library for a couple hours on the weekend. I look forward to the day I can say I have eleven published novels, but for now I have eight published, one that will be in the next year, a story in an anthology, and an in-progress short story collection. That still feels like a lot, but I've been writing for over twelve years, so maybe it's reasonable.
Thanks for your question! Sorry it took me a little while to answer it, but I haven't been online much this month due to holidays and birthdays.
Thanks for your question! Sorry it took me a little while to answer it, but I haven't been online much this month due to holidays and birthdays.
Courtney M. Privett
I don't suffer from writer's block as much as lack of motivation to write out my ideas. Sometimes a story needs to simmer in my mind for a while before it's ready to be written, so in the meantime I follow other creative pursuits. I sew, crochet, paint, do random crafts, or simply read until my eyes can't take it anymore. Doing another activity often leads to a cascade of creativity that helps me get through stories with an ending but no beginning or awkward transition chapters.
Courtney M. Privett
Arrow of Entropy floated around my head for years, but I had to finish the books that came before it first or it wouldn't make any sense. By the time I started writing it, the idea was so developed in my head that the words fell from my fingers and bled across my screen. I finished the first draft in a short and furious seven weeks.
I always knew the story of the Aulors had to end somewhere. I have this certain character who I wanted to redeem, a complicated former villain who wasn't as horrible as he originally seemed, and Arrow of Entropy gave me the narrative for his redemption. I also wanted to play around with the concept of Oblivion, a phantom Elemental who had been whispered about since the very beginning of the Malora Octet. You'll finally get to meet Oblivion in this book.
Once I decided to make redemption a major theme of this book, I knew I had to develop a suitable narrator. All three books in the Emergence trilogy are written in first person, which gives a small and intimate glimpse into a sprawling world. I thought about writing this story in third person to give multiple perspectives, but that never felt right. This needed to be the story of one person living at what could be the end of time. Her personal struggles are juxtaposed upon a series of cosmic temblors, and I want the reader to see the events unfold through her eyes. Her name is Zella Thula, and I never set out to make her a "strong female character". I wanted her to be a real person with strengths and weaknesses, and I needed her to be a worthy protagonist for my ex-villain's deuteragonist.
Zella came to me as a manifestation of my own social anxiety, and then took on a life of her own. Even though she ends up being a well-trained warrior, that is not all she is. She is a daughter, a sister, eventually a wife and mother, a physicist, a musician, and a rabid reader, all while struggling with severe social anxiety and the challenges of being a half-blood in a still-segregated world. She is an innovator at the start of a technological revolution that will eventually see this world transition from epic fantasy into an entirely new genre, a transition that began when Arden, the narrator of Sand into Glass, began sharing his materials science discoveries with the world four centuries before Zella's birth.
I always knew the story of the Aulors had to end somewhere. I have this certain character who I wanted to redeem, a complicated former villain who wasn't as horrible as he originally seemed, and Arrow of Entropy gave me the narrative for his redemption. I also wanted to play around with the concept of Oblivion, a phantom Elemental who had been whispered about since the very beginning of the Malora Octet. You'll finally get to meet Oblivion in this book.
Once I decided to make redemption a major theme of this book, I knew I had to develop a suitable narrator. All three books in the Emergence trilogy are written in first person, which gives a small and intimate glimpse into a sprawling world. I thought about writing this story in third person to give multiple perspectives, but that never felt right. This needed to be the story of one person living at what could be the end of time. Her personal struggles are juxtaposed upon a series of cosmic temblors, and I want the reader to see the events unfold through her eyes. Her name is Zella Thula, and I never set out to make her a "strong female character". I wanted her to be a real person with strengths and weaknesses, and I needed her to be a worthy protagonist for my ex-villain's deuteragonist.
Zella came to me as a manifestation of my own social anxiety, and then took on a life of her own. Even though she ends up being a well-trained warrior, that is not all she is. She is a daughter, a sister, eventually a wife and mother, a physicist, a musician, and a rabid reader, all while struggling with severe social anxiety and the challenges of being a half-blood in a still-segregated world. She is an innovator at the start of a technological revolution that will eventually see this world transition from epic fantasy into an entirely new genre, a transition that began when Arden, the narrator of Sand into Glass, began sharing his materials science discoveries with the world four centuries before Zella's birth.
Courtney M. Privett
I'm finishing up final edits on Arrow of Entropy, the final book of the Malora Octet. I'm also writing a collection of short stories told by minor characters (and one major character) from the octet. These will help expand some of the back stories and histories that didn't fit into the series, but the characters still demanded that I give them a little attention. My next major project is still in the concept stage. I'm planning on switching up genres for a little while to write a horror novel set in the forests of Northeastern Michigan in the mid-to-late 1990s. I think I won't be able to dive into the writing part of it until it's a little less sunny, so I may turn it into a NaNoWriMo project.
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