Author Q & A (Part 1)

Thank you to everyone who took the time to post questions for the experimental Q&A last week! I had a lot of fun mulling over the questions and answering them. I had promised to post my replies tonight (Sunday), but so many good ones came in and, as I suspected, I have been very wordy in my replies. So…to avoid an overly long post, I have decided to break the questions up into a series of two or three posts.

The first four appear below in tonight’s edition—all great questions that focus on the writing of the book itself. If you asked a question and you don’t see it here yet, it will be posted here on the blog tomorrow and Tuesday (and all questions will eventually be added together here on the new Author Q&A page once all the posts have been made).

Thanks again to everyone for the really fun, thought provoking questions, it’s been great fun!

Part 1How long did it take you to write? You mentioned your original inspiration started with bedtime stories, who started the original story?

The actual writing of the story started five years ago at a slow but steady pace, but the last two years up until the book was published, was the most intense and focused once I made sure to dedicate serious time to it.

However, the story has been around almost my entire life—since I was somewhere between four and five years old. It started with my dad. He had written a piano piece for what he called the Tales of Henry when I was about four or five years old.

His original idea, the crux of the story, was the idea of two sisters, based on my sister and I, finding an abandoned wolfhound who they found they could empathically communicate with. From there once he told the original story, it became collaborative.

Around that time, I used to ride around with him when he was on his route collecting coins from and repairing the washing machines he owned and maintained within apartment complexes. It was during those commutes we would go back and forth telling stories and coming up with new ideas. We took his original idea and ran with it, thinking about what kind of adventures would come of that situation.

I used to gaze into our smallish 1/4 acre backyard with three stately maple trees and several smaller trees and would pretend it was the forest. When our own dogs, Cherry and Princess (both rescues that came with those names!) would go outside I would pretend they were Henry’s friends, who I could talk to. When it rained, the back portion of the yard would flood just enough that I would envision the river. Eventually we populated the forest with other animals.

I am certain that because my dad wrote music for the Tales of Henry—particularly because the very nature of music is so visceral and memorable—it cemented the story in our minds. And it helped it become almost a kind of family folklore; my aunts and uncles and other family members and friends knew about it, too. Henry just was.

Fast forward to decades later when my and my sister’s own children learned about Henry and listened to the music of Henry, and they began to contribute to the adventures with their own ideas. We, along with my dad, now three generations deep, would come up with new plot lines and characters together.

Eventually one of my kids asked if it was a real story, as in, did it exist as a book? When I said no, they asked why not? That’s when I decided it needed to become one. By profession I am a graphic designer, and my passion just happens to be long document and book interior design. So at that point I decided I needed to get this all down into a book, for all of us. And as I got more serious about seeing it through, I figured if I was going to take the time to make it into a book for our family, we might as well share it with the rest of the world. But it still took another 10 years before I began outlining some of the ideas taken from all of these years of brainstorming.

The story changed A LOT in the final years. As a little aside to illustrate how much, the very first incarnation on paper—a quick draft of a scene written perhaps 15 years ago when my kids were about 4 and 6—involved the sisters (who had different names then), Henry, Mister Squirrel, Pipe the bear, and the other animals…at a tea party! (oof!)

Do the characters represent anyone in your family?

Tillie and Elinora started out being modeled after my (younger) sister Adrienne and I in my dad’s eyes, but after we had kids, they began to take on some of their personalities as well though it wasn’t a one to one character/person ratio. So yes, and no.

Elinora is a lot like me, a little more careful and cautious in some regards, and Tillie is more adventurous, like my sister is in some ways. But traits were exaggerated and of course not exactly us, as so many other influences came into play to shape their characters.

In the end, I wanted Elinora and Tillie to be polar opposites—Elinora so overly cautious and having difficulties making decision because of it, and Tillie so extremely impulsive and daring that she winds up in some sort of trouble, so that they each need to each learn how temper and find a balance within themselves to order be effective in accomplishing things. That was their personal arcs for book one.

And all of the main characters, especially the main six—Elinora and Tillie, as well as Lina, Graham, Jamie, and Alister—have within them, bits of my family members (immediate and extended alike) taken and mixed up to create six new, unique individuals.

Did you find anything in particularly challenging along the way of writing the book?

Dealing with the length and scope of a full length novel for the first time was definitely a big challenge.

As someone who has always written shorter length pieces—short stories, content for zines and collaborative creative writing publications and blogs as well as professionally writing copy for fundraising letters, publications, etc.—I was more versed in the short and sweet.

So finding a way to organize the story that made sense to me was difficult at first. Especially when big changes were made, as the plot shifted and developed over time, over countless discussions, it was a lot to learn how to deal with. The story was spoken word initially, so getting that all down on paper and organizing it was a challenge, too.

But I’ve learned a lot about how I like to work through that, and I have clear ideas how I am going about organizing the writing of the next book.

I’m now somewhere between what some like to call a pantser and a plotter, vs. being a full-on pantser, which is what I used to think I was (or was).

What was your biggest inspiration for writing a book?

Probably one of the biggest inspirations would be coming from the vast amount of children’s and young adult programming and movies I consume. I watched, of course, as a kid, and then again intensely with my kids when they were younger. When they got older and began going to see movies like Oculus while I instead slipped excitedly into the theater next door by myself to see Kung Fu Panda 3…it became apparent I will obviously never outgrow kids movies and shows. We still laugh about that one.

But really all three of us are kids at heart and we still obsessively watch Hayao Miyazaki, Studio Ghibli and Studio Ponoc films, as well as shows like Avatar the Last Airbender, Korra, The Dragon Prince, She-Ra, and most recently they got me watching and becoming a fan of My Hero Academia. I’m also a life-long Star Wars fan, and an enthusiast of so many other films, cartoons, and fandoms in those genres.

So I think it’s my obsession with these types of shows and love for middle grade novels that motivated me to make our own, and helped me understand a little of what makes a middle grade story be captivating to all age groups, and also inspired me to create something within this genre.

That, and almost daily hikes on a trail with a version of Ole Warty and a river to help imagine things!

To be continued tomorrow…