KF: Are you a musically-inspired writer or do you need silence? If you write to music, care to share any of your fave writing songs/singers/groups?
SB: I don’t need music, but I definitely prefer it, and I make a different playlist for every novel and short story. My first novel, A Most Improper Magick, has a definite theme song: "Stand and Deliver!" by Adam & the Ants. For me, it totally captures the sense of high-spirited fun (and highwaymen!) that I wanted in my novel.
KF: Is there any writing advice you wish you’d never heard?
SB: "Real writers outline". Ouch ouch ouch! I REALLY wish I’d never heard that one. I know that outlining works for a lot of great writers, but for me, it completely kills the spark of inspiration I need to write a book or story. In the old days, I used to ruin a lot of potential pieces that way. Nowadays, whenever I get stuck, I sit down and freewrite about the story until I figure out what should happen next (or, more generally, where the characters need to go by the end of the story to complete their personal arcs), but I never, ever try to sit down and map out exactly what happens from points A to Z, and there are never any Roman numerals involved. ;p
KF: Come clean: Out of all your characters, which one is your favorite? No fair saying all of them, but if you’d rather turn it around and say your least favorite, I suppose I’ll forgive you.
SB: My absolute favorite character is Kat Stephenson, the heroine of my trilogy (The Unladylike Adventures of Kat Stephenson). She’s recklessly brave, 100% loyal to the people she loves, and she dares to say all the things I wish I could let myself say in real life!
KF: Your first book, A Most Improper Magick will be out in 2010. Can you tell us a little bit about it, or about the series in general?
SB: A Most Improper Magick is the first book in The Unladylike Adventures of Kat Stephenson. Here’s how I described it in my original query letter:
Her mother was a scandalous witch, her brother has gambled the whole family into debt, and her Step-Mama is determined to sell her oldest sister into a positively Gothic marriage to pay it off--so what can twelve-year-old Kat Stephenson do but take matters directly into her own hands? If only her older sisters hadn’t thwarted her plan to run away to London dressed as a boy and earn a fortune! When Kat makes a midnight foray into her mother’s cabinet of secrets, though, she finds out something she never expected. Her mother wasn’t just a witch, she was a Guardian, a member of a secret Order with staggering magical powers--and Kat is her heir.
Of course, there’s no chance of Kat choosing to join the Order that forbade her parents’ marriage...but Mama’s magical mirror doesn’t seem to understand that. It keeps following her wherever she goes, even when the family travels to Grantham Abbey to meet the sinister Sir Neville, her oldest sister’s chosen fiancé. And what with Sir Neville showing a dangerous interest in Kat’s untapped powers, her mother’s old tutor insisting that she take up her mother’s position as a Guardian, and her sister Angeline refusing to listen to her about anything, as usual...well, it’s a good thing Kat kept her boy’s clothing, because she may well have to use it--especially if the rumors of a highwayman are true.
ETA: Thanks so much for this, Stephanie! Not only is it a great introduction to the book, I'm sure some currently-querying writers are grateful for the example! (Including myself!)
KF: This is one author-specific question I also asked Tiffany Trent: You write a lot of historically-based fantasy- how do you balance the need to have relate-able characters with social constraints of any particular time period that we might not really understand now?
SB: It really is a balancing act. One of the things I always try to do is read a bunch of letters and diaries from the time period, as well as biographies of real people who lived back then, to try to capture the voice of the period and understand the social rules. Then I try to convey those social rules as a natural part of my story, so that readers can understand, for instance, why it would be so outrageous for a twelve-year-old girl to wear boy’s clothing. (Nowadays, of course, girls wear jeans and T-shirts just like boys, so what’s the big deal?) But it can’t ever lapse into info-dumping, because my main goal, trumping everything else, is always to tell a great story!
KF: Are you a plotter, a pantser, or somewhere in between? Note: I hadn't expected the answer to this to be part of your "evil writing advice" answer!
A definite pantser! :) (See above.)
KF: A question from Travis M.: How do you schedule your writing time?
SB: This has become a lot more complicated since I had a baby! ;) In the old days, I used to write first thing after breakfast, while I was still drinking my morning coffee. That’s my natural time of day, when I most easily think creatively. Nowadays, though, I have to cram my writing into whatever free time I can steal out of the day, whether that’s after breakfast, after lunch, or for 20 minutes in the middle of the night! I’ve also had to dispense with all the little rituals I used to have to ease myself into the right frame of mind. (For instance, when I was writing A Most Improper Magick, I would always read a few of Jane Austen’s letters before I got started every day.) I don’t have time anymore to do anything but fling myself into the novel straight away, whenever I get any time to myself...and luckily, that’s working out pretty well so far. I enjoyed those old writing rituals, but it turns out they aren’t nearly as necessary as I used to think.
KF: A question from Kitty: Where do you find the names for your characters?
Kat was always Kat, from the first moment I "heard" her speaking the first paragraph of the novel in my head. (I was in the middle of chopping onions at the time, but I dropped them to run and grab a notebook to write the paragraph down!) At one point, I wondered whether I should change her name, because there had been a few other recent novels whose heroines were also called Kat, and I was worried that it might be too common, but I just couldn’t do it. Her name is too much a part of her identity. With other characters, the names have just come from daydreaming and brainstorming until I end up with something that feels subjectively right.
KF: And a question from Megan: Where do you find inspiration for your stories?
SB: The best way to find inspiration, for me, is by reading historical nonfiction, especially good biographies, or by watching good historical documentaries made for television. For instance, my story "The Five Days of Justice Merriwell", which is set in an alternate-history, fantasy version of the English Civil War, was inspired by watching the two episodes about Oliver Cromwell and the Civil War in Simon Schama’s "A History of Britain" documentary. Finding out about all the incredible things that real people have done - some of them SO much crazier and more unlikely than anything we’d ever put into fiction! - is a great way to start thinking about what my fictional characters might do in similar situations or settings, and what kinds of complicating relationships they could have.
Thank you so much for taking the time to answer these questions, Stephanie! Now, everyone go pre-order A Most Improper Magick!
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