#omigod where can we get signed copies of the book???

[personinthepalace]

Emmy signing The Riddle of Ages!!

From Emmy DeOliveira’s instagram

[vampire-himbos-of-santa-perdita]

I’m doing The Thing, which @ingridlake posted, because evidently I inspire numerous people with my writing insights or something...  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

So here’s some Wisdom™.

What made you first start writing? Do remember anything specific that made you start or have you always “just wanted to?” For as long as I could hold a pen, I’ve been a writer. When I was like, 5 or 6, idk, I was making picture books with like, dozens of pages. But I remember when I read Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time series and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, I thought to myself, “omigod, I wanna write that!” and then I was like “...I can write that! I’m gonna write that!” So I did.

In grade 5, I wrote my first complete story, and I initially wanted to write it as a short story I could give to my parents for Christmas, but then November turned into March and I had a 75 page novella on my hands. I’ve been writing 500 page novels ever since. 

What was your favourite childhood book? Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I’ve read it about a dozen times at this point? Also, shout out to Ella Enchanted and A Ring of Endless Light, which I also read multiple times.

Have you read a book or story that you would say stuck with you “the most” either as a reader or as a writer? Wuthering Heights haunts every single thing I write and I don’t realise I’ve written another version of WH until AFTER it’s finished... 

Music! Do you use it at any point in your writing process? Lots and lots. I’m obsessed about putting together playlists that perfectly match every detail of every scene or characters’ development for each project. Time, Regardless currently has about half a dozen playlists with about 20 songs each. I’ll listen to specific playlists when I go out for walks if I wanna get in the zone to plot a certain scene. How do you feel about fairy tales? Love them, hate them, read them all the time, think they’re childish or is it something else? LOVE! I’ve always been fascinated by the original Grimms and Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales because they’re so dark and gothic and do so many clever things as cautionary tales and allegories. In high school, I had to read Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, which is a really dark, fucked up feminist take on fairy tales, and it changed my life. I have yet to really find another fairytale retelling that holds a candle to that. Though I continue to search for it nonetheless, because fairy tales are so timeless, retellings are constantly on trend. There’s always new stuff. It’s like Shakespeare, there’s countless ways to adapt any number of them, and we get new stories every time. What kind/sphere of knowledge tends to influence your writing the most? (i.e. if you know a ton about music, does that show up in your work? Are you a mythology buff and pull a great deal from that knowledge? Or maybe you’re into science and use that a good bit!) I am a Victorian gothic nerd. I fell in love with Wuthering Heights and Dracula in high school, and then went on to do my undergrad in Victorian literature and criminal history, so I have an inordinate amount of grim, gruesome facts stored up in my brain and that comes out a lot whenever I write anything. My writing’s always very dark and gothic, even in ways you wouldn’t expect. I also happen to have an MSc in Publishing, and I’ve done a lot of work in the industry, and researched what it’s lacking, so I’m always working with that in the back of my mind when I make important decisions for my characters. I know that the YA market is in desperate need of more diversity, so I’m very conscious of adding in diversity of gender, sexuality, and race. And in extension, making sure I’m speaking to Own Voices in order to ask the appropriate questions that’ll invite an accurate portrayal of these experiences.  Have you had/do you have one person that you would consider your “writing mentor?” Not for a very very long time, because I think I came to a point in my life even back as a teen, where I sort of became my own mentor, but I really do owe my writing “career” to my grade 4 teacher, who saw a spark in me and lit it up. We had this assignment to write this Gold Rush era story and I wrote this horrifying tale about this man whose donkey was murdered, and instead of calling my parents in and saying “your daughter is Concerning”, she pushed me to write more. She urged me to enter this essay contest, which I won (I had to read it in front of 300 people at Sea World, so if you ever wonder where that occasional over-confidence about my writing comes from, it was instilled pretty damn early...), and that was what kinda gave me the permission I needed to pursue writing. I love her and she’s the first person getting a signed copy of  Regardless when it’s finally published. <3

Have any books made you want to travel to a specific place (in the real world of course!) SIMPLY because the book really brought it to life? I remember The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants made me obsessed with Greece, and Harry Potter made me obsessed with the UK, to the point where I Knew I was meant to be an honorary Brit. (I’d love to strive toward dual citizenship one day).  Have you ever named a pet after a character from a book you read? Have you named a pet after a character from a work that you wrote? Our cat came with the name Oscar, but I like to think he’s named after Oscar Wilde, because duh. I also occasionally call him Ozymandias, because Shelley, and he’s an asshole who thinks he rules All the Land ™. Our dog is named Pippin, after arguably the best hobbit in Lord of the Rings. I very seriously consider naming my first future cats Rosie and Hugo after Ron and Hermione’s kids, because why not? I’d never name any pet or child after any of my characters though because they’re all assholes. Do any specific settings crop up repeatedly in your works? Are those settings pulled from where you currently live or have lived in the past? Regardless and Undone are both set in San Diego, where I lived when I was first developing the series. I love a good beachy setting... <3 Victorian Crime Novel is set in London, which is my favourite city in the entire world. I like to think my heart is just there, constantly. It never left. And Moonage, once I get to rewriting it, will be set in a fictitious amalgamation of Canadian tourist mountain towns like Jasper, Kelowna, and Banff, with a touch of Vancouver Island, because that’s the area of my home country I feel remotely connected to. I really just needed a suitably foresty backdrop for Moonage to replace Cabeswater, and I feel that makes the most sense to me. I’ve spent so long on one project, I’m super psyched to branch out to all these different places beyond California, especially since I’ve been to so many places that deserve to be immortalised in print.

I tag whoever wants to answer these questions! :3