It's not the things you don't know that trip you up. It's the things you think you know, but you don't. You fail to ask a certain question because you believe you know the answer. Separating your information from your assumptions can be very tricky business.
Claudia Gray
'Star Wars' is very black and white, and honestly, I like it that way. But fantastical settings like that work best when the characters within them feel real. Real people have conflicts and make mistakes and get it wrong sometimes.
If you at any point forget that Wookiees aren't real, it's time to come up for air.
At the end of 'Afterlife' - hmm, how do I do this without spoilers - Skye took a very strange journey that crossed the boundary between life and death. And now, for her, that boundary is permanently blurred.
I love the romance in Kimberly Derting's 'The Body Finder.' 'Cold Kiss' by Amy Garvey is unbelievably touching - and about so much more than just romantic love.
I literally cannot remember a time when I was not asking myself what events in 'Star Wars' were like for Princess Leia. The good side of all this is that what looked like 'goofing off' or 'daydreaming' these many years has all turned out to be valuable career preparation.
The great thing about a parallel-dimensions story is that you can literally never run out of plot.
I'm from New Orleans, and we have a Mardi Gras group called the Chewbacchus. It's celebrating all things geeky: science fiction, fantasy, 'Star Wars,' 'Doctor Who,' 'Men in Black,' 'Ghostbusters,' everything.
I always create book soundtracks to capture the overall mood I'm going for and listen to them as I write. Those songs and scores really fuse with the scenes in my mind.
Basically, I always wanted to be an author but went through all these other jobs while getting up the nerve to finally go for it with my writing! Thank goodness it worked; who knows what I might have done next?
I've loved Leia and Han since I was seven years old. Getting a chance to tell some of their adventures? Mind-blowing on every level. I wish I could go back in time and high-five my baby self.
Honestly, I've been asking myself how it would feel to be Princess Leia since I was seven years old.
'Balthazar' is very much about the title hero having to choose between his past and his future. For the first time in a long time, he has a chance to be happy - with Skye. But he has this terrible tendency to set himself up for heartbreak, in part because he punishes himself for his past.
The main song I listened to with the 'Firebird' books was 'Breath of Life' by Florence + the Machine.
Napoleon might have understood Dwight D. Eisenhower, who fought not even a hundred and fifty years after Waterloo. But I don't think Eisenhower could even begin to wrap his mind around drone warfare, spy satellites, or any of the technology that now defines the security of our world.
