This week I’m hosting Merrillee Whren with Hometown Proposal, Grace Bridges with Legendary Space Pilgrims and Erin Rainwater with Refining Fires. If you want to enter the drawings, please leave a comment on one of the post during the week with your email address. I will not enter you without an email address (my way to contact you if you win). If you don’t want to leave an email address, another way you can enter is to email me at margaretdaley@gmail.com. The drawings end Sunday (August 1st) evening.
Interview with Grace Bridges:
1. What made you start writing?
I was nine when my nana gave me a hardback notebook that looked just like a real book, so I decided to write one in it. It was all about planetary colonization and alien attacks!
2. How long have you been writing? When did you sell your first book?
My whole life, off and on. My first book was released in 2007.
3. How do you handle rejections?
It’s important to see that there is always a reason behind a rejection, whether you agree with it or not – sometimes it’s the wrong genre for that publisher, and other times there are valid issues with the writing that need to be improved.
4. Why do you write?
Because there are all these words in my head that tangle up my thoughts and the only way to straighten them out is to write them down!
5. What would you be doing with your free time if you weren’t writing?
Reading. Walking on the beach. Watching Star Trek 🙂
6. What are you working on right now?
Lots of things. The first draft of my fourth novel Godspeed, the second draft of CyberDublin, and an ongoing superhero serial called Comet Born at the Digital Dragon Magazine, one chapter a month beginning in March 2010.
7. Do you put yourself into your books/characters?
I did in my first book, but after that there was less need. It’s like I got it out of my system. But there are always hints and nuances in other characters that may at first seem less likely to be similar to me.
8. Tell us about the book you have out right now.
If Pilgrim’s Progress happened in space, this is what it might look like. A journey from oppression to freedom, both physical and mental, and the tale of young spacefarers coming of age.
9. Do you have any advice for other writers?
READ. The more language you absorb, the greater your ability to produce beautiful words. And WRITE. Just do it. You learn a lot about writing a novel by seeing one through to the end.
10. How important is faith in your books?
Good question. I think it’s very important. Even more important is where this faith comes from: you have to put out your very best work in order to have faith in it.
11. What themes do you like to write about?
The mind – memory loss, thought control, virtual reality. Also near-future technology and what-if scenarios that are in fact quite close to reality.
12. What is your favorite book you’ve written and why?
That’s like asking a mother to name her favorite child…I can’t do it. Besides, I’ve only written three so far and published two.
13. What is your writing schedule like?
Erratic. I write in fits and starts, when waiting around for any reason, intensely when away on trips, through the night if I have to. My “day job” is freelance and irregular and often also at odd hours, so my writing dovetails with that.
