I can’t believe the first release day for the Once Upon a Prince series is finally here! Happy book birthday to The Unlucky Prince by Deborah Grace White!
If you didn’t get round to preordering, or you were holding out for a paperback, you can grab it here now:
To celebrate release day, I had a chat with the lovely Deborah, so keep reading to find out all about Deborah’s writing process and her upcoming releases!
Hi Deborah! It’s so nice to chat with you properly after a year of working together on OUAP. Why don’t you start by telling us a little bit about yourself?
I’m from Adelaide, in Australia, but I lived for some years of my childhood in California. I’ve loved stories as long as I can remember, and have always been an avid reader. After school, I studied to be a lawyer, which I really enjoyed, and I worked in that field for a few years before my husband and I decided to start a family. After our second child was born, I took a sidestep into writing, and properly got stuck into some stories I had in my mind. Now I get to have the best job ever—being at home with our three young kids while also writing the stories I love!
Wow, you’re a truly multi-talented woman! What made you choose fiction writing after a career in the law?
As I said, I’ve always loved reading, but when I was younger, the main type of writing I used to do was actually poetry. I tinkered with writing stories during my school years, but didn’t pursue it seriously. It was after I had kids that I had the headspace to actually give it a proper try, thanks to the change in routine from full time office work. My sister and father are also both published authors, so they were hugely encouraging and helpful in the practical details of self-publishing, which otherwise may well have defeated me!
That’s amazing! So, novel writing is the family business? I love that. What are your favourite books, as a reader?
Far too hard to choose! I have many old favorites, especially the historical romances (for want of a better category?) that I grew up on, including works by LM Montgomery, Louisa May Alcott, Jane Austen. I’ve also always loved fantasy, enjoying classic authors such as CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien since earliest memory, and loving growing up alongside the Harry Potter books.
In terms of more recent books, I really enjoy fantasy romance. I like clean but deeply engaging romance, I love adventure, danger, and intrigue, I like dragons and magic, and I always want a happily ever after! Some of the tropes I’m a sucker for are a good guard/princess romance, and a good childhood sweethearts separated until adulthood romance. I also love chosen one and lost heir tropes, even though I know they’re used to death! They still do it for me.
Me too, the chosen one trope will always be a favourite of mine, no matter how many iterations I read! And the guard and princess romance trope is absolute gold. Tell us a little bit about your debut novel and what inspired it.
My first published book was Heir of the Curse, Book One of The Kyona Chronicles. It’s a coming of age fantasy story about a pair of friends raised as closely as brothers who discover that one of them is the lost heir to the throne, and go on an adventure. Even though it was my first book, I still love these characters and this story!
The dragons were really fun to write, and one thing I really enjoyed about that book (and the whole Kyona series) was the crisscrossing timelines. The story of the main characters is interwoven with stories of the last of the great kings before the bloodline was lost some two hundred years earlier, and for me, those extra layers added a richness to the story that made it all the more enjoyable to write. I loved the book Holes by Louis Sachar when I was in school, and was inspired by how brilliantly timelines are woven together in that book to try my own version of it. Albeit in a substantially different genre.
My only regret in Heir of the Curse is not giving the romance a little bit more focus than I did. It took me a few books to fully recognize and acknowledge how important romance is to me in my stories! But it’s there, even if it’s not as central as it is in my later books. The follow up trilogy to The Kyona Chronicles, The Kyona Legacy, has the same world, the same dragons, the same interwoven timelines…but more focus on the romance.
It can definitely take a few books to really find your niche – I’m only one trilogy in and I’m still not sure I’ve found mine! I love the sound of the dual timelines in your first series, I’ll have to check it out. Where do you find inspiration for your stories, characters and settings?
In normal life, I suppose. People are people, and there’s constant inspiration around me for that. I also find it helpful to just enjoy other people’s creativity—be it books, movies/TV shows, music, whatever—to help inspire my own creativity. Not that I watch/read/listen to other art with any particular focus or pressure on it. I just enjoy it, and it sparks my own thoughts. I’ve also always loved travel. My husband and I took a year off life to backpack around the world before we had kids, and those experiences definitely help fuel both my stories and my settings.
A year of travelling pre kids sounds incredible! I’ve been lucky to travel lots throughout my life too, I studied Spanish at University and lived in Spain for a year, and you’re so right that those experiences and other cultures are such a good source of inspiration. Would you say your a plotter, pantser or plantser?
I think I’d have to say plantser! It’s not uncommon for me to dive in with no planning whatsoever, but once I get a little way in, I’ll stop and plan a few chapters, then go off-road again! And so on throughout the book.
I need a really good road map before I even start the engine! But I do love a good detour. What are you working on at the moment?
I’m actually just starting a new series! It’s a YA fantasy series set in the world of my fairy tale series The Singer Tales (although it’s not a fairy tale series itself). I also have lots of editing still to do on the two as-yet-unreleased books in The Singer Tales.
So, there’s lots to look forward to for fans of The Singer Tales! And your books in general. YA Fantasy is my favourite genre, so I’m excited for your new series! Before I let you go, what one piece of advice would you give aspiring authors?
If you love writing, keep doing it! The best way to get experience in writing is to keep writing. And also to find people willing to read and give you feedback, and to learn (believe me, I know it’s hard!) to take that feedback seriously and not personally, and actually let it improve your craft.
Such good advice, it can be really hard to receive feedback and constructive criticism in the beginning, but it’s such an important and necessary part of growing as a writer. Thank you so much for chatting with me today Deborah! And congratulations on the release of The Unlucky Prince. Where can we find you online and stay in touch?
My newsletter and my Facebook page are the best ways to keep up with what’s going on with my writing. I also keep my website up to date, and you can find cool freebies on there, like bonus chapters.
Website: https://deborahgracewhite.com
Newsletter signup: https://deborahgracewhite.com/mailinglist/
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/DeborahGraceWhiteAuthor
That was so much fun! Deborah is such a huge inspiration to me and so many others, so it’s been a privilege working with her on OUAP this past year. And now, my copy of The Unlucky Prince is calling me, so I’m off to find out if the frog gets the girl.
Happy reading,
Lyndsey
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Lyndsey Hall | Author 