Tell us a bit about yourself.
I was born in Tillsonburg, Ontario Canada. My dad was a doctor and ran a small practice there. When I was five, we moved to a mining town called Kirkland Lake in Northern Ontario, population 14,000. I lived there until Grade 10 when I moved to Toronto and stayed there until I got married and moved to California.
I now live in the San Francisco Bay Area with my husband, two children, and guinea pigs.
What other things have you written?
I wrote a short story that was published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, along with some articles for the local newspaper. I’m at work on another fantasy novel called, “Out of the Ashes”, as well as a series of sketches about life in Silicon Valley.
What is your work experience like?
I have a Master’s in English Literature from the University of Toronto, where I first explored the worlds of Myth and Magic. I also have a teaching degree and have taught English Literature at both the elementary and high school levels.
Tell us a bit about your family.
With a husband, 2 kids, and guinea pigs, finding time to write is always a challenge. I do most of my writing when the kids are at school and sometimes after they go to bed at night. Writing, while raising a family, is easy, once you learn how to survive without sleep! The important thing is to set goals (5 pages a day, or finish editing one chapter) and realize you won’t always have a block of 3 or 4 hours undisturbed to work. Snatch whatever time you have.
Were there any experiences in your early life that influenced your writing?
When I was a kid growing up in northern Ontario, Canada, my friends and I would roam through the woods on the outskirts of town. We’d come to a clearing, a dried-up lake, or abandoned mine shaft and pretend we’d discovered another planet or civilization. These adventures laid the groundwork for the undersea caverns my characters would later explore.
What’s Prisoners Under Glass about?
A thirteen-year-old girl named Rachel and her best friend Sam go on an odyssey into the caverns beneath the sea to rescue Rachel’s mother from an evil sea witch. Underneath that story is another one in which Rachel gets in touch with her own sense of personal power, and so does Sam, as they both learn to combat a tyrant who uses power to control and destroy others.
Why did you write this book?
I wanted to write the kind of book that grips your attention until the end, one with lots of action and adventure, but also one where you care about the characters. I wanted to take elements like myth, magic, adventure, humor, and colorful characters and weave them all together into a story that has plenty of trouble and danger but is always moving towards the light.
Describe your creative process writing this book.
I started out with an image of a glass gazing globe with a gondolier inside, wondering what would happen if he were really alive. Then a completely different image occurred to me: of a young girl planning the details of how she was going to run away from home, mainly to escape from her dad’s new wife. This led to several questions: What had happened to her mother? Why had her dad remarried? What was wrong with her new stepmother? Why did the girl want to run away? And how did this all fit in with the gondolier?
To answer these questions I had to back up. I made a series of story cards describing what had happened to the original mother, how she had disappeared–but not totally answering that question, leaving it a mystery that the girl would have to solve. I set down the actions she would have to take and the obstacles she would have to overcome in order to find out what happened to her mother and try to rescue her. Story cards helped here because I could juggle them around and play with the order of events.
Specifically, how did you conceive this idea: prisoners under glass?
I was intrigued by the expression “tourist trap” and wondered, if some evil person made a real, literal tourist trap (the human version of a mouse trap) what would it look like? I’ve also always loved glass gazing globes and liked to imagine what would happen if those tiny figures inside were real. Playing this game “What if” has led me to many stories. In this case I asked myself, what if there was a glass gazing globe that was literally a “tourist trap?” What would happen to the victims? Who would put them in there and who could help them get out? The answers to those questions became my story.
What were some of the challenges and highpoints you faced writing this book?
The main challenge was finding time to write it. Every time I sat down and entered this world, I was creating a highpoint. It was like watching a movie, and all I was doing was recording it. I didn’t really have writer’s block, because Rachel’s very strong need to find her mother propelled the story. I think if you set tough challenging goals that take time and character development to meet, then that is the motor that keeps your story going.
Is this book for young readers? Adults? Both? Who was your intended audience?
I didn’t have a particular audience in mind when I wrote this book. I wrote it as an adventure that would cross the age barrier. It may be listed in the “Juvenile Readers” or “Young Adult” section, because the main characters are teenagers, but I think people of all ages will find something to relate to. No matter what our age, everyone enjoys a good adventure.
It’s also a story about friendship, learning to trust again after having been betrayed, which is an issue that cuts across gender.
My goal was to create a strong female character as well as a close male friend to create a balance of male and female energy in the book. So even though the main character is a girl, boys will find plenty to relate to, not just in Rachel’s quest, but in her best friend, Sam.
What books and authors inspired or influenced you in this book?
Ovid’s METAMORPHOSES–I was fascinated by his tales of transformation. Throughout the book, characters turn into pebbles, trees, fish, monsters. The basic theme of the book is that life itself is metamorphosis, we are all in a period of transition–from childhood to adulthood, innocence to experience.
Joseph Campbell’s THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES. This book explains the basic structure of any good adventure novel: the reluctant hero answering the call to adventure in a troubled land, leaving home, venturing into a new place, meeting friends and allies along the way, overcoming obstacles, achieving his goal, winning his prize and returning home, restoring order/peace/prosperity to the land. Any story that follows this basic structure will strike a chord with the reader because it’s also the story of our own lives. We’re all on a quest of one kind or another that involves achieving our goals, overcoming our obstacles, and living happily ever after.
Shakespeare–the evil witches in MACBETH provided inspiration for my sea witches.
JK Rowling. I loved the HARRY POTTER books and wanted to have a strong element of magic in mine as well.
Jules Verne’s, A JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH–I wanted to combine his idea of an underground odyssey with a strong female protagonist preparing for a final battle with an evil sea witch.
What books and authors inspired or influenced you as a writer?
I always loved the sound of words, and once I discovered Shakespeare, my fate was sealed. He’s also a master of character creation and plot development, at least in his tragedies, where there’s always some kind of villainy afoot. But above all, he’s an artist with words. He can paint pictures that make Rembrandt look like a doodler.
Stephen King is adept at creating believable characters and realistic dialogue. I wish he’d write more “juvenile reader” books like Stand By Me which reminded me of my own childhood–kids in the woods having adventures.
Charles Dickens is a genius at creating secondary characters. From him I learned to try to make every character memorable, even the minor ones.
Dan Brown’s DA VINCI CODE and ANGELS AND DEMONS held my attention until the end. I like page turners and he delivers. His scenes are short and punchy and spur you on through cliff-hanger chapter endings. From him I learned to make every scene and chapter count and to keep ratcheting up the suspense.
There are numerous mythological allusions in your book. For instance, you allude to THE ODYSSEY. What other myths did you incorporate into your book and why?
The Sirens from ODYSSEUS–Odysseus has his men strap him to the mast to avoid being lured overboard by the mesmerizing song of the sea sirens. Rachel experiences her own version of this when she is tempted to follow the sweet scent of roses and the sea that would have led her into the acid waters. In contrast to Odysseus who relies on his men, Rachel, in the beginning, feels like she can go it alone. She struggles against those trying to help her which nearly results in her destruction.
Theseus and the Minotaur–Rachel draws strength from the captain’s stories such as the one in which Theseus finds his way out of the maze using a ball of string he unravels and then traces back. Rachel can relate and draw hope from this. If Theseus found a way out of the labyrinth with a piece of string, maybe her net can be of similar use. Whether it’s religion or mythology or magic, there are truths to be found in stories of strong, valiant heroes overcoming adversity and triumphing in the end.
Medusa–is the quintessential evil woman. She doesn’t just destroy people, she enjoys it, she lives to do it. I took that concept one step further with Lilah who literally feeds on the fear and suffering she causes in others.
Circe and Calypso–Circe changed sailors into pigs and captured Odysseus, and Calypso cast a spell over him that made him her “prisoner of love”. These two women were models for Lilah who changes her minions into wolverines and sharks, and makes Rachel’s father fall in love with her.
When the captain “reports” back from the island he’s on with Lizelle, there’s another faint echo of Calypso who kept Odysseus on an island for seven years.
Odysseus–This idea of the long journey by water, has always intrigued me: the uncharted territory, stormy seas full of dangers, monsters– all obstacles we must overcome, and that, if they don’t kill us, make us stronger. The Odyssey is the quintessential myth for our own lives. Every life is a story full of adventures, quests, and crises that can make us stronger in the end.
Why do you believe mythology is important?
Myths are the ultimate “classics”, stories that ring true, that speak to the imagination, no matter what period of history you’re living in. When you call on myths and use them to inspire, inform, and create your characters, you’re making the reader relate on the deepest, most basic level. These stories are part of who we are, of who we have always been: heroes of our own lives conquering villains, achieving goals, transforming the world around us, and in turn being transformed by it.
Myths are the stories that bind us together in a world where things are constantly falling apart. They are a way of dealing with the monsters inside us (of self-doubt, worry, fear). When we defeat them, we grow stronger.
Rachel must deal with her fear of heights and her fear of getting close to others, Sam with his own feelings of inferiority compared to his mother. The captain is afraid of the sea; he’s fighting his own survivor-guilt demons, haunted by the deaths of his shipmates at the hands of the sea witch. As they progress through the caverns and overcome all the demons and monsters that challenge them, inside and out, they all grow stronger until they are ready to face the ultimate enemy, Lilah herself. Myths tell us that such things are possible. Myths unite us with stories we can all relate to and in some way participate in. They help make sense of the world around us on a spiritual, emotional, and psychological level, as we battle our own demons, plan and embark on our own quests and adventures, and strive to keep our own fires burning against the dark.
How did you create and develop this wonderful plot and the interconnected subplots?
It’s a synthesis of all I’ve ever learned about myth and magic, as well as all my childhood expeditions. It’s a tribute to the childhood I had in a small town on the edge of a forest where our adventures were limited only by our imaginations. I could have stayed with Rachel’s story, but I felt I had to flesh Lilah out as a character or risk having her lapse into melodrama. The best way to avoid that was to adopt her perspective and tell the story from her side as well. That required a subplot. I also wanted to create a strong contrast between her quest (to expand her souvenir business all over the world) and Rachel’s (to prevent Lilah from succeeding).
Captain Winteler was going to be along for much of the story so I wanted the reader to understand his background as well, and I wanted to tie it in with Lilah’s, making many of his crewmembers her victims, to give him sufficient motivation to help Rachel. Creating subplots helped me connect all the different perspectives in the story.
Your characters reveal challenges that many young people, and adults, can relate to — the self-absorbed Justine, Sam who is overshadowed by his talented mom. Can you discuss how and why you came to depict these issues?
Through my own kids’ lives, and through my experiences as a high school and elementary teacher, I’ve encountered many of the same themes. Many girls let fashion magazines determine their identity. Instead of developing their own inner strengths and interests, they become obsessed, like Justine, with makeup, fashion, and how they come across to boys (although at least Justine is proud of excelling at Math). Considering all these topics in moderation is fine, but it’s the obsession that I object to. It drains their own power and hands it back to the boys. The boys aren’t ready yet to know what to do with it! You don’t generally see boys’ magazines revealing secrets of how to attract girls, as if that were their only purpose in life. Boys’ magazines are generally about things outside themselves: video games, cars, sports. I wanted Rachel to be a blend of strength and self-determination, a character who knows her own mind (most of the time), has her own interests, and even if she isn’t drop-dead gorgeous is still attractive to boys.
With regard to Sam and his lack of confidence in the beginning, self-confidence is often one of the last things to develop in kids. There’s so much competition, so much pressure to excel and achieve. It’s a world market now and if you’re not a child prodigy, or even if you are, the competition can be intimidating. I wanted to send a Ms. Frizzle message to kids about taking chances, making mistakes–trying out that song you wrote, heading off for an adventure, knowing the odds are against you, because that’s what makes life fun and worth living.
You have a wonderful ear for dialect and the phrases and expressions your characters use evoke the vernacular of many teens today. As a result, your characters are plausible and teens (and parents) can relate. Is this because you have teenage children and have taught?
Yes, but it’s also because I think I never grew up beyond being a teen myself!
What advice would you give aspiring writers about writing dialogue and using dialect?
Be a good eavesdropper, when you’re standing in a movie theatre line or post office, or sitting in a restaurant, listen to how other people are interacting.
Write a journal entry in the voice of the character you’re creating about something they really want, like, or hate. This will help you practice using that character’s voice and motivation.
Think about the “characters” in your own life, how do they talk? Short, snappy to the point? Rambling? Do they moan a lot or brag? Complain about or celebrate life? Do they have pet phrases? Are they optimistic or cynical? Do they have a quick temper?
Once you pick out a few of their characteristics, you can draw on them to add realism to your dialogue. Be careful not to overdo any one feature, as it can start sounding repetitive and clichéd.
Your protagonist has the evil stepmother and experiences the abandonment and quest to find her lost mom. Is this a key theme in all of your writing or is it just a theme in this book? Why is this issue important to you personally?
It is a recurrent theme. I lost my dad when I was 10–he was a brilliant doctor before he had a brain hemorrhage that virtually destroyed his ability to think/communicate. He was like that for a year before he died. This was my first and most profound experience with loss. During the time my dad was ill, my mother had to leave us in the care of a succession of nannies–some were better than others, but one in particular had dark flashing eyes, a temper that could boil water. This was the seed of Lilah.
You have created a strong female protagonist who partners with her best friend, Sam, but some readers might wonder: How come the women are so evil? How would you respond?
Why does nobody ever ask of other books, how come the men are so evil? Do men have a monopoly on evil? I think evil is not gender specific. It gushes up from the netherworld like lava spilling on everything in its path, male or female. And not all the women are evil. Justine may be superficial but she’s not evil. Ms. Krinkle is a minor character and odd, but good and very helpful to Rachel. And Rachel is the main character and will grow up to be very stong, powerful, and good.
How did you arrive at the names of your characters?
“Lilah” comes from the Arabic for “Night” and Lilah is a creature of the night and the dark. The name “Lilah” is also a derivative of “Delilah,” the name of the woman who enslaved Samson by cutting off the hair that was the source of his strength in the Old Testament. She was all about duplicity, smiling on the outside, plotting and scheming on the inside and stealing the power away from her man, the way Lilah did with Joe. Delilah did it with scissors, Lilah used an enchanted business card.
“Odeta” comes from “Odessa,” an organization set up to help Nazi SS agents flee the country and fan out to different parts of the world. It’s the clandestine spread of evil. And that’s what Odeta is all about.
“Sam” means “to hear” or “listen”. Sam is a good listener, he understands Rachel and stands by her. It’s also a good, steady, solid name.
“Justine” sounds fancy to me, and Justine is a fancy kind of character.
What about Rachel’s name.
Rachel Carson (1907-1964) was a writer and ecologist back in the days when most women stayed at home, raising children. She had a very strong mission in life: to protect the world and all its living creatures. She had a passionate love of the sea, wrote several lyrical nonfiction books about it. She was a woman ahead of her time, courageously speaking out against pesticide companies that were damaging the environment. Her courage, passion, artistic nature, and independence were all qualities that influenced me in choosing this name for my main character. “Rachel” also means, “one with purity”, a good name for a heroine.
You challenge stereotypes in your scene about Rachel’s rebuttal to her history teacher when he discusses Custer’s Last Stand. How can writers unsettle stereotypes without perpetuating them?
You can poke fun at characters who hold these stereotypes by exaggerating their flaws. If they’re laughable, buffoonish, (like Mr. Dowd), they may be entertaining to watch, but not necessarily the kind of role models readers would want to imitate.
Another way writers can challenge stereotypes effectively is by having their characters speak out against existing ones and suggest alternate views, as Rachel does with her teacher. It doesn’t always work and you sometimes get shot down in flames, or ignored, but it’s vital to try. That’s where progress lies: in creating characters that go beyond the stereotypes, reaching down into deeper levels. The first and most shallow level is stereotype. If you keep on digging, eventually you’ll make it to myth.
You interweave magic and fantasy beautifully in your book. Can you elaborate on the sea witches?
In the old days, sea witches were thought to control the weather and ocean tides, and sailors would appeal to them to keep their journey safe. Sea magic is a kind of gray area, not light or dark magic but somewhere in between, difficult and dangerous to play with for the novice wizard because of the unpredictable nature of Nature. There’s not a whole lot of material about sea witches which is why I chose them, so I could create my own mythology around them.
Odeta is a minor, but important, character. Her story and her relationship with Lilah and, for that matter, Lilah’s own relationship with her mother make them both sympathetic evil characters. Why is it important to create sympathy for your evil characters?
Even evil people suffer. It’s through their suffering that their humanity is revealed which creates a link we can relate to. Otherwise they become stereotypes, cardboard characters, the kind featured in melodrama. With Lilah and Odeta, I made their relationship with their mothers conflicted to give them a depth beyond just filling the role of “bad guy”. The purpose here is to draw the readers in, make them care and keep them involved. Showing one character suffering at the hands of another, whether that character is good or evil, is a way to create sympathy. It makes the bad guy more believable, more well-rounded, more human, and thus easier to relate to. On the other hand, even good people have a dark side.
Conversely, protagonists also need to have flaws, to be human. Moreover, flaws and conflicts between what the character wants and what the character needs are the basis for conflict and conflict is essential to good storytelling. What is Rachel’s key flaw?
Rachel’s main conflict is her desire to be left alone versus her need to become involved with others, because the magnitude of her task (overcoming the sea witches and freeing all the “prisoners under glass”) is such that no one person can accomplish it in isolation. But Rachel is afraid of getting too close to anyone. That is her key flaw. Sam is her best and pretty much her only friend. He tells her it took a long time for them to get to be friends because of this reticence on her part. It comes from having her mother torn away from her, followed by her father marrying a duplicitous woman who shuns Rachel. These rejections and disappointments created a sense of abandonment that has left her vulnerable, not wanting to get hurt again. Rachel tries to avoid getting hurt by not getting involved too deeply with anyone, not becoming a “prisoner of love” like her father. She has a cynical attitude towards love and calls it not only blind but deaf, dumb, and stupid. As she progresses through the story, she is forced to reach out to and learn to trust other people, and she ultimately ends up creating her own “extended” family in the form of her companions.
You have many humorous scenes. For instance, Rachel’s apology to Justine, for calling her a fish, is but one, out of many, examples. How and why is humor effective in your fiction?
Humor is a powerful tool for dealing with darkness, fear, tragedy, crisis. It diffuses tension. It softens the pain. It keeps the ghosts and demons at bay, a way of “whistling past the graveyard”. If you can laugh, it can’t be all that bad. Sam especially uses humor as a way of coping with his own fears.
You illustrate how each of the characters is on this joint quest, yet each also has his/her own personal quest to come to terms with his/her own fears (the Captain’s fear of adventure, the protagonist’s fear of heights, for example). Can you discuss this further?
My story is about this whole idea of the quest. I wanted to explore it from both sides: the surface side, the physical journey the characters go on to achieve their goal of freeing the prisoners, and then the level beneath the surface, the psychological side: ie, the quest each character undertakes in coming to terms with his or her own fears and inadequacies. The two quests are bound together, because it is only when the characters succeed in their individual quests that they evolve to the point where they are ready to complete the final quest that includes them all (ie., defeating Lilah and thus freeing the prisoners).
This book alludes to fairy tales (the evil step mother), Greek myths (Odysseus, Theseus, for instance) and other quest literature (The Wizard of Oz, Harry Potter). How did these and other works influence you?
I was raised on the original GRIMM’S FAIRY TALES. These are not stories for the faint of heart. In the original version of the Frog Prince, the frog gets turned back into a prince after the princess smashes him against a wall and he dribbles down it. In Cinderella, the evil stepsisters have their eyes pecked out by pigeons. I was horrified and spellbound. In University, my mythology professor would spin mesmerizing tales about Odysseus. I was fascinated by the idea of an ordinary person like Dorothy in THE WIZARD OF OZ, Harry in A JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH, and even Odysseus forced into an adventure wilder than anything they had ever imagined. I wanted to write one myself.
How do you see your novel charting new territory?
The concept of snow domes as “tourist traps” with their own tiny self-contained worlds I think is unique. And the world of sea witches is one that has not been fully explored yet. So there was lots of room for me to create a mythology around them.
Also putting a girl in charge of an undersea expedition that takes her group halfway around the world into a realm fraught with sea witches, to my knowledge, has never been done before.
Girls have come a long way in literature but there’s still room for growth. Two “archetypes” in the entertainment world are: Lara Croft who can knock a man into oblivion, and James Bond who routinely sweeps women off their feet. Always in the end, each of them goes home alone, and they most often work alone. The message here is that this kind of power carries a terrible price: loneliness, because no one can get very close to them for very long without dying.
Even in Harry Potter, it is generally Harry who in the darkest moments works alone. In the ORDER OF THE PHOENIX when he’s feeling ripped off about not getting the prefect badge, he argues with himself that he should have gotten it, because in the most crucial moments, his friends (Ron and Hermione) weren’t with him. “They didn’t fight Quirrell with me. They didn’t take on Riddle and the basilisk. They didn’t get rid of all those dementors the night Sirius escaped. They weren’t in that graveyard with me, the night Voldemort returned. I’ve definitely done more. I’ve done more than either of them (Ron or Hermione).” The message here is that when push comes to shove and even murder, you’re on your own. Hermione too, with her Muggle heritage and watered-down wizard blood is put in an inferior position relative to pure-blooded Harry.
I love the Harry Potter books and I like the concept of a young boy struggling to move out from under the thumb of tyranny (first the Dursleys, then Voldemort) into a position of power. But I feel the books take a dark turn as the series progresses and, while I wanted plenty of danger and trouble in my own story, I didn’t want it to be so dark. Not to take anything away from JK Rowling. She’s wonderful!
However, I have a different message which involves the next evolutionary stage of the hero. Together we are so much more powerful than any one of us alone. It’s true of characters, it’s true of people, it’s true of nations. I wanted to create a story with a strong female protagonist who becomes even stronger (as opposed to being overshadowed) when united with a best friend who is male, and other companions, because, while there is safety in numbers, there’s also strength, and love, and balance.
When I was back in Toronto this summer there was a young man down at “The Beaches” creating rock sculptures. He would take rocks of all sizes and shapes and balance them on their tips, one on top of the other. Sometimes it would take him thirty minutes to get one rock to balance. But in the end he would get even the most apparently incompatible pieces to cooperate. When someone knocked one of his sculptures down, it didn’t bother him. He said it just proved, “Beauty is transient.” Crowds would gather to see him at work and to witness the end result. When people would ask him why he did it, he’d reply that a life lived well is all about balance. And when you lose that perspective, that’s when things fall apart.
I’m aiming for the same effect in my writing: to balance light and dark imagery, good and bad characters, tragedy and comedy, myth and magic, solo performance and group, male and female. I think if the whole idea of balance could be projected into the world it would be a better place.
In the beginning of my story, all the characters’ lives are out of balance. Rachel has just lost her mother. She’s feeling alienated from her classmates and betrayed by a world which has stolen her mother and forced a new and nasty woman into her life. Sam is being raised by a succession of nannies. He’s a brilliant musician with no faith in himself because he’s never been fully acknowledged by his highly successful mother.
Together, Sam and Rachel go on an adventure in which Sam helps Rachel learn to trust and embrace relationships with other people, and Rachel encourages Sam to take risks with his music. To me, stories are about the balance of the world as the characters know it being thrown off and then restored in the end, through the characters’ efforts. To create balance you have to take opposites and make them work together to create a whole larger than the sum of its parts. That’s what happens when Rachel and Sam and their friends all work together to lift the mermaid and throw the net over Lilah. In each case, they end up doing together what couldn’t be accomplished alone.
So in one sense my book is about female power: Rachel learning to develop and get in touch with her own sense of personal power. It’s also about male power with Sam learning to develop his own sense of personal power, as well. And finally, it’s about male and female entering into a relationship on equal terms in a spirit of cooperation, to overcome obstacles that lead them back out to the light and restore balance to their world.
When did you first start writing fiction?
When I was in elementary school I wrote poems and stories which the teachers always made me read to the class.
Do you have a writing routine? If so, then what is it?
I write whenever the house is quiet, generally when the kids are at school or in bed for the night.
How do you maintain momentum in your writing routine?
I look for a good story, one that really interests me, one that I have to write in order to find out what happens. Then it becomes a kind of game, a fun escape, not a thing I have to do.
Do you write on a computer, by hand, both?
I do all my writing on a computer (except for the story cards) since it’s so easy to change and I do a lot of editing.
How long did it take you to write this book?
Two years.
How many revisions did you do?
A lot. I started by revising big broad things like character traits and main events, then gradually reduced it down to changing sentence structure, adding a line here and there to clarify, and finally to punctuation.
What was the most difficult scene to write and why?
The climax. Because here was what everything was leading up to–the newfound strengths of Rachel and her friends, just how evil and powerful Lilah could be, the transformations of all the characters in one scene, the ultimate battle and defeat; it was a lot to keep track of, a lot to balance in one chapter.
What other works are you writing?
Another fantasy and a series of sketches on Life in Silicon Valley.
Will this book become a series?
Anything’s possible! I think Rachel will have many more adventures.
What advice would you give writers just starting out?
Be willing to make sacrifices for your writing. Like Ms. Frizzle from The Magic School Bus says, “Take chances, make mistakes!” You have to dig down through a lot of dirt before you get to the treasures. Read everything you can get your hands on. Go to writers conferences, join a writers group. Get feedback on your writing. Find out what you’re passionate about and use that energy to give life to your writing. Above all never give up!