1 post tagged “talk with author”

Yesterday was dads 50th birthday party, he let me invite one friend, and I chose to bring Marie, who I thought would at least get her moneys worth out of the free alchohol. It was at the Geebung Polo Club in Hawthorne, which is actualy a pretty popular spot with young people from around here.

Before leaving I decided to wear my rainbow psyco scarf, just because it is so  incredibly me. I think if I had to describe my personality, presenting that thing to someone with a smile on my face would be pretty effective. Anyway...

Before leaving, mum started to go through the list of guests, "Oh they arn't coming? Shame. Wait Paul... Wayne? Is Trudi coming?" Marie and I look at each other with complete evil glint. Oh the plans. Several jokes followed about Marie finding a knife and killing her, but yeah.

We left and got there, then went and had dips. Marie was making plans with mum to force me to drink alchohol. One of them involved finding a cute guy and getting them to buy me a drink without asking me what I wanted.
"Marie, your idea of what is attractive and my idea of what is attractive differ by about twenty years."

We finaly went upstairs to where we had booked the rooms. We both got a drink, and explored the maze. There were two rooms with fireplaces and the bar room. We then decorated the place with toy cars and road signs. We also placed the red car napkins stratigicly then grabed ourselves a sear on the couch and waited for people to arrive. Some people turned up and dad walks in "Do you want me to introduce you to Trudi." we said no and started 'stalking' her, me demonstrating my stalker skills by trying to take a photo of her in a mirror. Eventualy he did introduce us as her "Two biggest fans" much to our embarrisment. We ran to the loos and then went down stairs and sat around for a while.

Shortly after this we went back up stairs and found callifornian rolls. "Ooh, prawn!" I said, grabbed one and ate it. Marie says "Oh ok, prawn." grabs one, takes a bite and starts making some very, very funny faces, and running around. Turns out that wasn't avacado. I quickly took a picture while she was still making 'Wasabi faces' and then showed it to anyone I could find.

We then retreated to the stir case, where clair came over and chatted. And then she came over. Trudi. (She is REALY tall) and sat down between marie and I. "Hello, I thought I'd come over and do some reasearch."

Marie got in first, and asked if Dannyl and Tayend where in it. I couldn't hear what she said. Claire was starting to look confused, so I explained. "Trudi just happens to be our favourite author." Claire was stunned, and started asking her lots of questions about how you write a book. Trudi's answers were pretty intresting. She talked about not understanding fan reactions, saying "Well there is this one character, Akkarin and I killed him off at the end of the last book, I had no Idea fans were going to react like that. I find the dark silent ones the most annoying." Marie and I both squealed. "Oh girls, this is not a spoiler, he's not coming back. Unless it's as a zombie. BRAAIIINS BRAIINS!" she did a great zombie Akkarin voice. She then told us this story about how in the original draft Rothen had taken Sonea to his ranch in the county, and they had both gone rinding and "..it was all very jane austen." she told us that instead of doing the whole comming into her room and  "I know everything, you must be my novice!" thing (she said this in an Akkarin voice) he had ridden up on a black stallion. Marie and I were absolutly cacking myself, and all I could think of was what it would be like to have Colin Firth play Akkarin. Not Good.

She then told us about Sonea in the next book being around fourty and getting very grumpy. "The problem with that is that grumpy and a black magician are not a good mix." we laughed. "There's a problem with there whole system. What if the black magician goes bad? What if they get killed? The guild wouldn't be able to defend themselves, so they need a second magician to keep an eye on the other one. And he happens to be a very upright, moral individual, and Sonea hates him. 'Why can't I go outside the walls?'" trudi crosses her arms and sits up strait "It is against the rules!' the intresting thing is that in the secong book he is hunting someone down and is very scary. He's not bad though."

"Tell me who you think sonea will end up with?" she looks at us, "Oh and it's not him."
Marie asks "Is it someone we know?"
Trudi pauses..."Yes...oh I hope I didn't give too much away."

She started telling us about the underworld in the sequle and how it's alot darker and very gangland, shes been reading gangland biographys and stuff as reasearch and is no longer sure it can remain a young adult novel. She then told us about wondering how far she could go with Cery and about the less icky trades like "Smuggler, or a running a realy clean brothel."

"I can't imagine Cery running a brothel!"

We asked about the blood ring and she didn't tell us annything except that she might not include it in the sequle it might remain a mystery. We talked about the audi books, she couldn't listen to the Aussie one because apparently it made her feel like a kid being read to in the school library, and I told her about Cery and the Blood leaches being cut out of the british ones. She was like... well i can take that as a complement, if they had to take out a whole character then that means my writing was pretty clean. No Savarra!"

We switched to chatting about the prequle and I predicted that fans would be trying to work out who is related to present day characters, and she indicated that that it is possible to work some of them out based on the names.

She told us that the first chapter of the prequle will be up in the next 6 weeks (Squeal) and that the book would be around the same size as priestess.

Theres so much to try and remember! I'm done for now I'll post the second half of the night later on, although I'm sure marie will post and fill you in before I get around to it. 

"But how do you come up with Iideas? You must be so creative."
"Not realy, Ideas are deffinitly not the problem. I have more problems not coming up with ideas."
Marie and I are looking at eachother grinning.

Claire left and trudi asked us what we would like to know. She had this thing where she looked at each of us turning her head from side to side, which I found very intimidating.

"To tell you the truth my brain walked out the door when you came up, this is rather intimidating."
"Don't worry, I find talking to fans intimidating."

Ok I think, "Sea leeches."
Her eyes brightened. "Sea leeches!"
"Yeah I adore them, that was an awesome scene. Possibly my favourite."
So she explains about how her editor had told her to have travel, and she had thought, ok who isn't doing much? Dannyl! and to make the journey more intrsting she needed a sea monster, but instead of having one big sea monster, she thought how can I subvert this? So she made them leeches and about this long, the idea being that in mating season they all grab onto you and sink you under their weight, then suck the life out of you.