Oy. Finally!!! I am so late on this post! I sat down to write it on September 17th but the app I used to record it (which worked before, during, and after the interview!) wouldn’t play the audio file!! Since then I’ve been emailing the company that made the app weekly. They finally got back to me this week and we figured out a way to get my file out of the app and on my computer. So, way, way late, here’s my interview from the Fierce Reads tour!
Who: Ann Aguirre (Mortal Danger), Marie Rutkoski (The Winner’s Curse), Caragh O’Brien (Vault of Dreamers)
What: The first stop on the Fall 2014 leg 1 Fierce Reads tour!
When: September 16, 2014
Where: Anderson’s Bookshop, Downers Grove (specifically, in the basement!)
(These answered are transcribed by me from an audio file. Errors are probably mine!)
First, since this is the Fierce Reads tour… what do you think makes a character fierce?
Ann: For me a fierce read is one where the protagonists are intelligent and their choices are comprehensible. You don’t have to always agree with their choices, but I feel like you have to be able to believe in what they’ve decided and believe it’s the cleverest choice. Because for me fierceness starts in the mind. It certainly has other components like being a good fighter or being physically tough. But for me fierceness starts with a really good head on your shoulders.
Marie: I think my answer would, in some ways, just be a variation on yours. I think that Kestral, my main character, is fierce because of her intelligence. When I sat down to write the book I did want to write a character who was a young woman, who was badass. I decided very specifically that I wanted her form of badassery to be her intelligence. Her father really wants her to be a member of the military because that is his life. He’s the highest ranking general in the Valorian army and he wants her to join and be an officer. She could very easily do that because she really has a mind for strategy, but she resists that because she also really has a good heart and she doesn’t particularly like the idea of being involved in killing people. I suppose another aspect that makes her fierce is that she listens to her heart.
Caragh: It’s so interesting to me. I come from a totally different direction because I think it’s about intensity. For my character, Rosie, it’s her willingness to face things she doesn’t know, things that kind of scare her and that can totally derail everything that she’s familiar with or that she can count on. Something about the word “fierce” almost means angry or courageous but with an angry kind of way. It’s like an emotional bravery. I think that’s what Rosie has.
What are three adjectives you’d use to describe a character in your book?
Marie: My three adjectives for Kestral would be manipulative, brave and vulnerable.
Caragh: For Rosie I would go creative, resourceful, and brave.
Ann: I’m going to do my hero, Kian… hot, tormented, troubled.
Each of these books has many different “types” of scenes… action, suspense, romance… do you have a favorite type of scene to write?
Ann: I love the kissing scenes. I’m known for writing really, really convincing action sequences but those are really hard for me. You don’t know how many action movies I have to watch and I watch Chinese dudes streetfighting on youtube endlessly. I just have to constantly look at real fight scenes and then I basically break them down and try to extrapolate. It takes me forever to write an action scene as opposed to an emotional bonding/kissing scene. That I’m just like click, click, click, click and it’s done and it’s awesome and I love it. And then I have to write more action and it’s like… *sigh* because nobody wants to read all kissing. I don’t know why!
(Note: If, like me, you think a kissing book from Ann sounds great check out The Queen of Bright and Shiny Things.)
Marie: I think that, for me, when writing the kissing scenes what’s really fun about that is making the language kind of stand in for the action that you can’t see happening. As a writer I don’t want to tell exactly who is kissing what and in what order. I think it’s much more exciting to let a sort of sensuousness take over the language. I enjoy that.
As for fighting scenes, I was really excited to write a duel for The Winner’s Curse. I just happen to mention in one of the earlier chapters that someone had a duel as part of the gossip that was happening between Kestral and her best friend. I thought, “Well, this is a militaristic culture. There would be duels.” And then as soon as I put the word duel in the book I thought, “Well I obviously have to have a duel!” I was basically mentally rubbing my hands in excited glee waiting for the time when I would get to write the duel. Even though it’s hard writing an action scene… doing all the blocking. You really have to block it all out.
Caragh: The scenes I like are the ones that are psychologically tricky. When you don’t really understand what’s going on. They’re threatened, either because they’re being manipulated or they’re manipulating people. They don’t know how it’s going on and they’re sort of discovering that about themselves while they’re doing it. I think those are the scenes that I keep getting drawn back into. They take so many layers to revise and get right. I really like that. I feel like my characters are developing and I’m getting to know them better when I’m writing the psychologically complex scenes.
What are some books that were influential to you as a teen or as a writer?
Ann: For me this is a two part answer. My childhood would not have been complete without Madeleine L’Engle. A Wrinkle in Time was absolutely pivotal for me to read. When I found it I wasn’t finding a lot of heroines who were smart. Most of them were pretty and they played with dolls. Meg just wasn’t. She was awkward and she was unattractive and she was not at all bothered by that. She was smart and the only thing she cared about was her family and her missing father. She went on these amazing adventures and she still met a cute boy who liked her even though she was awkward and unattractive. As a child for me that was earth shattering. I would like to write a thank you letter if I could but unfortunately that ship has sailed.
Then, for my teen years, Judy Blume. She wrote the most realistic teen fiction that we could find at the time… Deenie and Wifey and Forever. She actually had sex in her books which meant we passed them around and we traded them back and forth. It was kind of amazing to see something that wasn’t sanitized or censored. I think that teenagers today are a lot luckier than I was because they have a much richer wealth of choices.
Caragh: There was a book I read when I was a teenager called A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter. I remember loving that. She wrote this in like 1906 or around then. You escape to another time. It’s this girl who is going to high school for the first time. She’s been living in the country and she goes to the Onabasha high school and she doesn’t fit at all. She has the wrong clothes and the wrong shoes. She didn’t know she was supposed to pay a fee before she went and she doesn’t have any money for books. She’s completely lost but she’s also incredibly courageous because she’s been spending all this time in the Limberlost, the swamp in the woods, so she has this inner strength that’s connected to nature. She just can fight off loneliness and cruelty and a mean mother to come out on top. I just found it to be a fascinating book. I could read that over and over. It was a really important book to me.
Marie: I could list a lot of authors who were incredibly influential to me as a child like Katherine Patterson and Susan Cooper. I think maybe the book that I’ll choose for having been most influential might be Pride and Prejudice because I’ve gone to it at different points in my life and have understood so much more every time I return to it. I love how Jane Austen is able to make so much out of so little. I think that there’s a reason why the really good film adaptations are able to make sexy happen out of very little. Like, in the Kiera Knightley version where Mr. Darcy takes her hand and then walks away. He just stretches his hand out and brings it back. It’s an incredibly sexy moment. It’s just a hand flexing. I feel like that’s really true to the heart of Jane Austen’s writing which is that the smallest gesture can mean worlds of emotion and social meaning.
The most recent influences specifically to The Winner’s Curse would probably be Kristen Cashore’s books as well as Megan Whalen Turner’s The Queen’s Thief series.
If you could visit and world from a book, where would you want to go?
Ann: People always ask me, “What literary world of yours would you like to go visit?” and I’m like, “None of them! I’m horrible to my characters! Have you seen the worlds I create? That’s just messed up.” Just for a visit though? I would like to go bang some hot dwarves actually. I would like to go to the movie world of The Hobbit. I want to bang the really hot dwarf, Thorin, the leader, the really cranky one with the awesome beard… Richard Armitage, isn’t it? I mean, if I can be single. I know that was really deep and meaningful. I don’t know how you guys are going to follow that.
Marie: There are so many worlds I love to read but would not visit. But, I mean, meeting Eugenides and stealing him away from the Queen of Attolia?
I’d like to visit Riverside from Ellen Crushner’s Riverside books, Swordspoint, The Privilege of the Sword. I’d be fascinated to see that world.
When I was 12 years old I so desperately wanted to go to Pern. I literally thought that if I only wished hard enough I would be able to go between and get to Pern and then impress upon a dragon.
Caragh: I’m really stumped because I want to go lots of places. I want to go to outer space. I want to go back in time to the time of The Other Boleyn Girl, the court of King Henry VIII. I kind of want to go to Call of the Wild and be on the Yukon where it’s just so pristine and gorgeous and there’s nature and I can just be alone. I want to go on adventures.
As a bonus we got into a really random but great discussion about Harry Potter and which houses we would have been sorted into. Ann has officially been sorted into Hufflepuff. Marie knows she’s a Ravenclaw (Go Ravenclaw!) and together Ann and Marie decided Caragh would be Gryffindor… especially based on her adventurous answer to the last question!
Aren’t these ladies amazing? So intelligent and fun to talk to. Thanks so much to them for taking time out of their busy tour schedule to chat! Check out the interviews they did with other bloggers during the tour:
Love is Not a Triangle | @LaurayJames
Queen Ella Bee Reads | @GabySalpeter
Perpetual Page Turner | @BrokeandBookish
Giveaway:
Enter to win Mortal Danger, THe Winner’s Curse, and Vault of Dreamers! US only. Must be 13 or older to win.
Fierce Reads, Leg 2:
And, because this took me FOREVER to figure out, leg 2 of the tour is underway! I get to go tonight in Arlington Height! If there’s a location near you I highly suggest going!
Susan
Cannot wait to read The Winner’s Crime!
Allison R
I have been wanting to read The Winner’s Curse for a while and missed the tour so I’m excited about the giveaway!
Shayla Emory
I’m really interested in The Winners Curse. Great interview and I hope you have fun at the second event!
Molly Mortensen
I think a fierce heroine needs to be not be a reactionary charter, she needs to be brave (not fearless) and reasonably intelligent. Nice interview. 🙂 I lol @ wanting to live with Thorin!
Christina R.
LOVE how being smart is part of being fierce!!
It’s awesome to read about how authors describer their own characters 🙂
thank you so very much 🙂
Mary G Loki
I really been wanting to read the books on Fierce Reads!! 😀
sherry butcher
Okay, now I want to read all the books and continue to follow Fierce Reads. TFS.