Tenners

Today Angela Frazier is here for a chat! If you have a book coming out in 2010, be it your first or 100th and I have not interviewed you please email me! I would love to interview you!

1. What has been the most exciting part of getting published?
It keeps changing! First, it was getting to see the book’s cover. Then, it was the arrival of the ARCs. Now, I think I can firmly say the best part about being published is the idea that people are going to be reading my words. They’re going to be meeting the characters I know so well, and I’m excited about sharing them with everyone.

2. How long did it take you to get published?
I spent seven solid years writing and querying. I wrote three novels that I tried to get published (a middle grade, a YA, and an adult novel), and I queried editors and agents, small publishers and large houses… it was a very long process!

3. Were you faced with rejection at first? How did you handle it?
Oh, absolutely! And I deserved it, too. My writing wasn’t up to snuff yet when I first started querying. I took the rejection as an opportunity to improve. One agent flat out told me that he “didn’t like my style of writing at all” and then told me why (all telling, no showing). It was harsh, but it was the most helpful piece of criticism I’ve ever received.

4. Where did you get your ideas for this book?
I was renting a caretaker’s cottage one winter with my husband (then fiancé) and the ceilings were all covered in vintage travel posters, many of them advertising places in Australia. I was snowbound a lot that winter—the snow drifts were crazy tall, blocking the long driveway and even the front door!—and I spent the time thinking up a story that could be set in Australia. It seemed exotic and adventurous, and so very far from frigid New England. The story wove itself from there, building up around the setting.

5. What do you think or hope readers will gain from your novel?
Ultimately, the book is about a girl on the cusp of adulthood who is faced with some weighty decisions that will lay out the path to the rest of her life. I hope there will be readers who will identify with Camille and the confusion and pain—and the need to trust your heart—that come with hard decisions.


6. When writing do you outline or just begin?
I usually just begin. If I attempt to outline, the story veers off in its own direction anyway. I start with about a paragraph hook, and some glimmerings of what the end might be. Many times various scenes will pop up in my head all out of order and I’ll need to figure out how to bring them all together. My writing process is very messy!

7. What authors inspire you?
I take inspiration from a lot of different writers. I find I can usually learn from each book I read, even if it’s something I didn’t particularly enjoy or like. In that case, I learn what I don’t want to do! But as for writers I am in awe of, there is Libba Bray, Cassandra Clare, Lois Lowry, Natalie Babbit, Katherine Paterson, Jane Austen, Edith Wharton, Avi, and I’m sure more that I am just overlooking right now.

8. Complete this: While writing this book I learned...
That there is no such thing as perfection.


9. Complete this: You should buy my novel because...
It is one big adventure, with love at the heart of it.