Ask the Author: Susan Rooke
Answered Questions (6)
Susan Rooke
Some years ago I’d given myself a deadline for starting a novel, determined to follow through. I was closing in on my start date, with no idea for a plot, when the words “A young woman is taken by faeries” came into my head. A few days later I was on the treadmill, reading a fascinating book describing all the physical abnormalities that scientists have documented in human beings. It hit me then that the faery tribe who kidnap the young woman have imposed just such challenges on themselves because of guilt over an ancient sin committed by their ancestors. I began writing and The Space Between grew from there.
Susan Rooke
By reading. Before starting the day’s writing on The Realm Below, for instance, I’ll spend 15 or 20 minutes reading some sort of speculative fiction. Anything from H.P. Lovecraft to Susanna Clarke or Neil Gaiman, to the illustrated fiction of Edward Gorey’s The Unstrung Harp or Raymond Briggs’s Fungus the Bogeyman. Even the late Carl Barks’s inimitable Scrooge McDuck comics.
Susan Rooke
I’m about 100,000 words into The Realm Below: The Rise of Tanipestis, the second book in the Space Between series. (I hope to have it out by the end of 2018.) The story picks up not long after the end of the first book. The Titan Tanipestis has taken advantage of the power vacuum left by Satan’s absence from the Realm Below, so Satan decides he's ready for a drastic change in his own life!
Susan Rooke
First: Read widely. Far beyond your chosen genre, because all of it has value. Even if it’s only to show you how and what you DON'T want to write. Second: Don’t procrastinate. Write. Too often we make the mistake of thinking, “There’s always tomorrow.” And too late, realize there's not.
Susan Rooke
There are numerous advantages to being a writer, but my own “best” is that I’m never bored. I always carry a notepad and pen in my purse, and any waiting room becomes my office. Some of my favorite scenes in The Space Between were written in the customer lounge at the car dealership while waiting for an oil change.
Susan Rooke
I’ve never had writer’s block, so I can’t really say. I’ve had plenty of writer’s laziness, however. And waaaay too much writer’s procrastination!
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