Author Interviews – Page 8 – Lyndsey Hall

Interview: Fairy tale retelling author Sky Sommers

What a beautiful bank holiday weekend we just had here in the UK! The sun was out, the BBQs were lit, the gin and tonics were flowing. I hope you had a good one, wherever you are.

Did you catch my cover reveal last week? If you missed it, pop over now to see the stunning new cover for my short story collection, Fair Tales, which will be free to my email subscribers!

This week, I’ve been chatting to the wonderfully whimsical Sky Sommers about her current projects and upcoming releases. Read on to see what we discussed…

Hi Sky, it’s such a pleasure to speak to you! Tell us a little about yourself.

Sky is a pen name since I’ve written other kinds of fiction (law books) under my real name, I couldn’t in all honesty confuse people. I’m from Tallinn, Estonia and while I’ve lived in Finland and the UK, I moved back in 2008 to be closer to the Nordic sea. If I hadn’t I’d never have met my husband, he would never have had kid number 5 with me (yup, we have 5 kids between us with 4:1 in his corner) and I’d probably still be working crazy hours. As it happens, I’m an entrepreneur who works part-time for a large client as a legal adviser and 4 days out of 7 I can do what I want – write, study, read (lots!) and play with legos. I help others publish their books (cookbooks or fiction) and I do love my garden, but otherwise I’m boring, no hobbies or pets.

Boring?! I wholeheartedly disagree, your life sounds lovely and full. I’ve written and published a couple of business books, but luckily it was ghost writing for my employer so I haven’t had to come up with a pen name! When did you start writing and what were your first stories like?

I started writing a diary at age 12, like most people, I guess. In the noughties, I dabbled in short stories and when one of them got to page 80 and I realised, Toto, we’re not in Kansas no more, that’s when I ventured into novels. That sci-fi novel is still unpublished, by the way, but I have hopes that I can muster it this year.

That’s funny, I went the opposite way, I started out with novels and have recently gotten into short stories. What are your favourite books to read?

Fairytales, any kind. Favourite rom-com book is Jenny Crusie’s Bet Me. Fave book that always makes me think and turns tropes on their head with sarky humour is Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. That and Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren.

Fave tropes – happily ever after, coz what’s someone’s happy might be another’s nightmare, right?

So true! I haven’t read The Master and Margarita, but I did read Goethe’s Faust at Uni, I did European Studies and my lit class was always fascinating. I’ve always loved stories that rework and reimagine old myths and legends. That’s why so much of my writing is inspired by folklore.

Can you tell us a little about your first published book, and your most recent release?

First published book was about ancient Goddesses running amok in the present day, scrambling to get their lost powers back (Goddesses: Hubble, Bubble, Toil and Trouble) and yes, the name is a twist on the line of the witches in the cursed play.

My most recent release is Embers: Beastly Curses, a retelling of Red Riding Hood, where Red is a 5yo boy and his parents are trying to rekindle their lost love despite the wolf-curse.

I love that nod to Shakespeare, I actually saw the Scottish play a few years ago at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon and it was phenomenal. Well, until the alarm started going off on my phone and I was sitting there thinking “Who’s phone is that? So rude!” until I realised it was mine.

Embers sounds right up my alley, Red Riding Hood is one of my absolute favourite stories. Where do you find inspiration for your characters or settings?

Real life, coz that is stranger than fiction, trust me. Also, I wouldn’t trust me with stuff as frequently hilarious dialogues I overhear or participate in end up in my books.

So, trust you, but don’t trust you. Got it. Would you consider yourself a plotter, pantser or plantser?

Plantser. I used to start writing from some place in the book and just build things around, a bit from the end, a bit from the beginning, a dialogue there, a snippet here. With the Cinders-Embers-Ash trilogy I learnt to plan out the storyline for characters and then iterate storylines in a more organised way, which has shortened the writing time considerably. But I still dabble with dialogue here, description there. Descriptions sometimes even at ARC stage as I’m hopeless with those.

I don’t believe a book can ever be finished, we just get it as close as we can and then send it out into the world. There are things I’d still like to change in The Fair Queen and it’s been published for almost a year! What are you working on right now?

Ash: Crooked Fates, the 3rd book in the Magic Mirrors Saga comes out on 21 June. It’s a retelling of The Wizard of Oz where most of the book is the story of 17yo Ellie on her way to Emerald City to meet Oz and the rest is Oz and Ellie’s mom patching up their relationship in parallel. All this with a healthy dose of humour and I’ve even managed to work in some fight scenes. I will be rewriting it based on beta readers’ comments in May and getting ARC copies out to readers in the middle of June.

That sounds fantastic, I’ve never read a Wizard of Oz retelling, but I adored Wicked when I went to see it on the stage. What one piece of advice would you give aspiring authors?

Write! Even if it’s 5 minutes, 35 minutes or shorthand dialogue notes on your phone while you’re stuck in a queue somewhere. And keep reading, your own genre and others – my writing has gotten better over time (I hope) because I read tons and pick up pointers of what to do better.

It sounds so simple, but you’re absolutely right, the shortest writing stint is better than no writing at all. I couldn’t live without the Notes app on my phone now, it’s full of snippets, ideas, titles and character names I’ve dreamed up over the years.

Thank you so much for chatting with me today, Sky! It’s been lovely getting to know you better and finding out about your writing process. Before you go, how can we find out more about you and your books?

Website: https://www.amazon.com/author/skysommers

Newsletter signup: https://storyoriginapp.com/giveaways/e1e0240a-3178-11eb-92dc-4330ce8a93ed

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sommers_sky/

Facebook page/group:  https://www.facebook.com/fairytalesgalore

Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/sky-sommers

Goodreads: Goodreads.com/skysommers and my personal Goodreads account: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/19939142-ilona-nurmela

Sky’s story Kiss the Frog will also be featured in Enchanted Waters: a magical collection of short stories, which comes out 16 July. Want to get your hands on an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review? Join our street team!

Happy reading folks!

Lyndsey

Interview: fantasy and myth-obsessed author Ben Lang

It’s been a good week in the Hall household, me and my husband both got our first dose of the vaccine! And we’ve seen a few friends and been for a couple of meals out, so it’s safe to say life is starting to return to normal, and it feels really nice.

This week I’ve been chatting with another fellow Brit, and a local boy at that – the myth-obsessed fantasy author Ben Lang.

Hi Ben! I’m so excited to chat to a fellow Notts-based author! Why don’t you start by telling us a little about yourself?

I am from London, but my family moved around while I was growing up so I spent a few years living in Beijing and a couple in Singapore. I live with a hamster called Zarniwoop (after the Hitchhiker’s guide character), and a human called Megan (name origin unknown).

I traveled to Singapore a few years ago and absolutely adored it! I’m so jealous you got to live there for a while. When did you start writing and who inspired or encouraged you?

I started having ideas for stories very young. My parents strongly encouraged it, especially my mum who helped me write many of them. Alice Ivinya and I have been friends for years and showed one another a lot of our early stuff. I was inspired by her example of getting some of her wonderful stories published, and she gave me the first encouragement to get something to a state to show people.

Alice is such a wonderful supporter and mentor, you’re so lucky to have her as a friend. And your parents sound so encouraging! What are your favourite books?

My favourite genres are science fiction and fantasy. My favourite book at the moment is probably Hyperion (Dan Simmons), but I have a wide range of things I really like. Growing up The Hobbit was my favourite for years, along with some Narnia. The Tombs of Atuan is probably my favourite short story.

I love The Chronicles of Narnia, and I need to read The Hobbit one of these days! Tell us about your upcoming release.

My first published story will be The Bridge, a short story appearing in a collection called Enchanted Waters. The story opens with a chance encounter between an elephant-riding preacher and a lonely young woman. The “vibe” is vaguely South-east Asian, although I cheated a little with one character who would be more at home in Camelot. I didn’t realise until more than a year after the story was finished, but it has a lot of elements in common with the Monkey King adventure involving the Golden Rays monastery.

That sounds fascinating, I’d love to read more fantasy stories set in or inspired by South East Asia. Where do you tend to find inspiration for your stories?

Obviously other books can be a good inspiration. Strangely I find the stories people tell at a dinner-table can be a good seed. These are often based on something strange that someone thinks is noteworthy. They are real, and therefore usually quite devoid of tropes and standard structures, but they are polished a little by the speaker. Really good seeds.

That’s genius! Like people watching on a much closer scale. Would you consider yourself a plotter, pantser or plantser?

Had to look these up! Certainly a pantser. When I sat down to write The Bridge I knew nothing about what was going to happen except that I wanted an elephant and that my first line was “They met at the edge of the river”. I didn’t know who either of the “they” were until I got to the next line. This worked out well for The Bridge and I think the “making it up as you go” technique has the nice side effect of making it feel like a spoken story.

Winging it this way was a bit of a revelation as everything else I had tried previously was more planned, and a lot worse. I have tried the “know nothing” tactic a few more times and learned it doesn’t always work out as well, although its generally better than planning for me. Recent attempts have been a hybrid.

I find a hybrid to be the best way for me too, I do love to plot and plan but I also leave room for a bit of discovery writing along the way. What are you working on right now?

I have half a short-story about a tortoise which is looking for a second act. I also have one about some cowboys that kind of spirals into nowhere because winging it didn’t pan out – I would like to fix it at some point although maybe it belongs on the dead heap.

Never delete anything! You never know when a scene or snippet from an old trashed story will be the perfect addition to your new WIP. What one piece of advice would you give aspiring authors?

Try writing a short story with no plan.

I had been revising my fantasy novel for years and it was by that point built on foundations laid when I was a decade less able. It was overburdened with stuff, was never actually going to be finished and was certainly never going to tie together. Plus, whenever I sat down to work on it I knew where things had to go, but somehow characters would say and do things I hadn’t planned and I had to either abandon the plan or not use the new text.

Writing something short gives you more freedom from plans and a better chance of finishing it. Once you have one finished thing you can show people and that adds momentum to write another.

That’s great advice, free writing can be so good for creativity, and I’ve definitely found writing short stories to be a totally different challenge to novel writing.

Thank you so much for speaking to me today, Ben, it’s been so much fun! How can we find out more about you and your books?

Check out my Amazon page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ben-Lang/e/B08RXHZPSH?ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vu00_tkin_p1_i5

Ben’s story The Bridge will be included in Enchanted Waters alongside my short story Daughter of the Selkie King, coming out 16 July. Another one of Ben’s brilliant short stories, A Junk Out of Cinderbar, is going to members of the EW street team as a thank you for joining and agreeing to support our anthology with reviews and social media posts. Interested in joining?

Click here to join the Enchanted Waters street team!

Lyndsey

Interview: YA fantasy and fairytale retelling author Alice Ivinya

Well, May has been wild here in the UK. From glorious sunshine, to torrential downpours in the span of minutes. We’re also within spitting distance of restrictions lifting, but another outbreak of a different variant in some cities is threatening our chance of freedom yet again. But things could be worse, and I’m still looking forward to being able to hug my dad again on Father’s Day, even if it’s been a little longer than expected.

This week, I had the absolute privilege of talking to Alice Ivinya, the USA Today bestselling author of Feathers of Snow and Silent Melody, as well as several other captivating fantasy and fairytale inspired novels for young adults. As a fellow Brit, Alice knows all about our crazy Spring weather!

Read on to see what we chatted about (aside from the weather, of course).

Alice Ivinya | Fantasy and Fairytales
USA Today Bestselling Author

Hi Alice! It’s so lovely to speak to you, thanks for joining me. Why don’t you tell us a little about yourself?

I live in wet and soggy Bristol, UK, with my husband, toddler and dog (oh and an immortal goldfish). I have loved fantasy all my life. My favourite authors are Brandon Sanderson, Holly Black, Amy Harmon and Robert Jordan. When I’m not off gallivanting in other worlds, you can normally find me climbing trees with my young son, working as a small animal vet, hanging out with my church family, or walking the best dog in the world.

Wow, that sounds perfect – fantasy books, animals and family time, what more could you want? How old were you when you started writing, and who encouraged you?

I have written stories for as long as I can remember. My first book series was about a group of kids who ran away from home and became rulers of all the sharks in the sea. Worryingly they all got married at the age of 12-14, but that was old to my 8 year old self!

I wrote my first full length novel at 11. It was about a magician’s apprentice who was bad at magic.

Throughout my teenage years I wrote epic fantasy after epic fantasy that my poor parents had to read, even when they went over 200,000 words! As a child I was badly dyslexic and struggled with sentence structure and spelling to the extent that many of my early stories were illegible until I typed them up. It took me much longer than all the other children in my class to both write and type, but I just loved to write and have never been able to stop telling stories. Slowly, with the support of my parents and teachers, I developed techniques to get around my dyslexia and now it never holds me back.

I now have ten published full length books and four short stories.

That’s incredible, and so inspiring. It’s amazing that you’ve managed to overcome so many obstacles to become a bestselling author of more than ten published works so far. I want to be like you when I grow up! Do you have any favourite book tropes?

I love most tropes in fantasy as long as they’re not too depressing when delivered (I need all dark books to have a healthy dose of sarcastic humour!)! I love detailed, magical worlds and characters that make me see the world in a different way. I particularly like enemies to lovers, arranged marriage, and rags to riches.

Enemies to lovers is my number one favourite trope too, and I completely agree about dark books needing humour to balance it out. Tell us a little about your most recent release.

My most recent release was Feathers of Snow, a fairytale retelling of The Goose Girl. It is young adult, high fantasy with an arranged marriage troupe. All my writing is young adult and clean. Here is the blurb:

In Brianna’s new world of ice and snow, the coldest things by far are the eyes of her betrothed…

Brianna bears a deadly secret: she’s not the princess she is pretending to be. If the prince finds out, her life will be forfeit and her country plunged into war.

But there is more to the icy prince than meets the eye, and Brianna slowly unravels the secrets of his dark past while surviving in a strange culture.

However her goodness and wit will only get her so far. Terrifying beasts stalk the border and a murderer is at work in the town. They know the truth of Brianna’s identity and will stop at nothing to destroy all she has fought for.

That sounds absolutely captivating, and I can’t wait for book two, Feathers of Blood! Where do you find inspiration for your characters?

I have no idea. My characters sit in my head and tell me what they’re like and what to write. However, I am often inspired by people with perceived disabilities and try to reflect that in my writing.

It’s wonderful how diverse and inclusive your stories are, you’ve given a voice to so many people and let them see themselves in a book for possibly the first time. I especially love Violet in The Flawed Princess and the representation of club foot, it’s not something I’ve ever seen in a fictional character before, but we absolutely need to see more differently-abled people in stories. Do you consider yourself a plotter, pantser or plantser?

I’m a plantser, though it depends on the book. Sometimes I get a very clear idea of the plot all the way through, sometimes I have only a vague idea of where it is going. I normally write key scenes first that I can feel down to my bones, then link them together.

I was following a plan for the last bit of Enchanted Melody which is what I’m writing at the moment. Then, whoosh, a dragon appeared! Now I have to plan everything around the dragon haha!

Those pesky dragons do manage to sneak up on you don’t they! I’m probably a plantser too, I love plotting, but at some point you have to put the post-its down and start writing and see what comes out! What are you working on right now?

I am working on four projects currently:

1.) Enchanted Melody which is the sequel to my Pied Piper retelling, Silent Melody. I am currently writing the last bit of the first draft ready to send it to my developmental editor. Out June.

2.) Feathers of Blood. So much angst in this one! I’ve planned it out and written a lot of the key scenes, but need to start fleshing it out. Out September.

3.) Girls of Might and Magic anthology. I have had my short story accepted into this amazing anthology aiming to increase diversity in fantasy. Mine is about a girl with a stutter in an Asian-inspired fantasy world. I am currently waiting for the publisher’s edits to come back for my story.

4.) Enchanted Waters. I’m so excited to be part of this short story anthology featuring Heartless Melody, the prequel to Silent Melody. Every story features mythical water creatures and I’m working alongside some incredibly talented authors! All the proceeds are going to support ocean conservation.

Gosh, you’re a busy bee! I’m so excited for all your upcoming releases, especially Enchanted Waters! Before you go, what one piece of advice would you give aspiring authors?

My advice to authors who want to write fantasy is to read loads in your subgenre and keep writing. Never give up! Get as many fantasy lovers to read it as you can before you try to publish. Also start simple and master simple concepts in shorter books before your epic 12 book masterpiece!

Thank you so much for chatting with me Alice, it’s been so lovely getting to know you better and hearing about your projects and upcoming releases! Where can we find out more about you and your books?

Website:   https://www.alicegent.com

Newsletter signup: https://sendfox.com/AliceIvinya

Instagram: @aliceivinya.author

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/sarahsfootsteps/

Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/AliceIvinya/

Follow me on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/19442133.Alice_Ivinya

Follow me on bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/profile/alice-ivinya

If your TBR hasn’t doubled in size just from reading about Alice Ivinya’s stories, then I’m not sure we can be friends. If you’ve never read anything by Alice, I highly recommend heading straight over to Amazon and downloading a couple to your Kindle to dip your toe into, you will not regret it, I can guarantee!

Enchanted Waters will be out on 16 July and includes two wonderful stories by Alice (I’ve read them, they’re completely different styles, but both gripping and gorgeous), as well as my story Daughter of the Selkie King, so it’s a great place to try out new authors you may not have heard of before.

For just $2.99, you get ten beautiful fantasy tales, and you’ll be supporting Oceana, a nonprofit working to protect our ocean’s and marine life. There’s literally no downside!

Happy reading folks!

Lyndsey