Talia Vance

Author Interview:

When and how did you start writing?

I ‘wrote’ even before I could read, acting out stories with my stuffed animals and little people when I was four or five. 

The first story I recall writing with a pencil and paper became a puppet show involving a news broadcast where everything goes wrong.  I wrote it in the third grade, and performed it for all the classes in my elementary school.  I wrote a play in college that was produced as part of an undergraduate script writing program, and worked for a time as a freelance scriptwriter for human resources training films. 

Despite a lifelong desire to write a novel, I didn’t sit down to write one until the summer of 2008.  I can’t explain why I finally decided to stop talking about it and start doing it, it was just time.  That book became SILVER, which will be published by Flux in 2012.

Can you remember the first book that made an impact on you? Who were your childhood storytelling heroes?

There were so many books that impacted me, but as an early reader, I loved GO DOG GO and anything by Richard Scarry.  CHARLOTTE’S WEB is the first book that made me cry.  I saw the movie first, and then started reading the book even though it was probably too advanced for me.  I had a dog-eared copy of that book for years and years. 

Can you talk us through the writing of your latest book? What were the key moments?

SILVER started out as a fictional account of my love affair with my husband, who I met when I was sixteen.  It soon became clear that the truth was too strange to make believable fiction, so I changed the characters quite a bit. 

Still, Brianna is probably the most like me of any of my characters.  I love paranormal books, and I knew I wanted magic and mythology to play a big role in the story. 

I decided to focus on Ireland because of its rich supernatural history.  I was particularly interested in what happened to all that magic once Christianity took root, and that became the jumping off point for the supernatural aspects of the story. 

Was it hard to get an agent? Can you talk us through the process?

Yes and no. 

It was hard in the sense that there was rejection, and rejection is always hard. 

I found my agent the old-fashioned way.  I sent queries and sample pages if allowed to do so.  I received everything from no responses, to form rejections, to requests for the manuscript.  The process took 4-5 months, with revisions to the manuscript along the way.  In the end, things seemed to happen all at once. 

I was lucky enough to get multiple offers of representation, and I felt like the Greenhouse was the right home for me, even though it meant a complete rewrite of a significant part of the manuscript.

Describe your writing day. Where do you write? How do you organize your time? Where do you look for inspiration?

I have another career that takes most of my time during the week, so I write at night and on the weekends.

I write on my favorite corner of the couch with a laptop and cup of coffee.  My inspiration usually comes when I’m driving to and from work.  That’s when I can really start to visualize scenes and stories.  A lot of the details don’t come until I actually sit down and write, but I always have a general idea of the characters and story beforehand.

Can you tell us about the book you are working on at the moment?

I am currently working on SPIES AND PREJUDICE, pitched as Veronica Mars meets PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, which will be published by Egmont in 2012. 

It’s the story of Berry Fields, a teenage private investigator, who gets in over her head as she investigates her “dead” mother’s past and has to rely on the one boy she is determined to hate.  I love writing Berry.  She’s smart and kick ass, but vulnerable in ways she doesn’t realize. 

Are there any tips you could give aspiring writers who are looking to get published?

Write.  Don’t just think about it, sit down and do it. 

Get feedback on your writing from people who are involved in publishing, not just family and friends.  And then rewrite. 

Read widely, both inside and outside your genre. 

Analyze what works and doesn’t work for you in the books you read and try to figure out why. 

Then write some more.  Not writing is the only thing that is guaranteed to keep you from getting published.

Can you describe three aspects of writing craft that have been most important as you’ve developed as an author?

Dialogue, emotion and plot. 

Since my background is in writing scripts, I feel like dialogue came the most naturally to me as a writer, but I had to learn to incorporate emotion and internalization to really flesh out a scene.  And plotting is hard.  Critical, but hard. 

Which favorite authors would you invite to a dinner party? What fictional character do you wish you’d invented?

Simone Elkeles, Sarah Rees Brennan, Stephen King and Lauren Oliver, so long as they like take out.  And I wish I’d invented Lizzy Bennet.  She’s lovely, smart, flawed, and always has the perfect retort.  And she gets the guy.