Ask the Author: Agatha de Loon
Answered Questions (10)
Agatha de Loon
My whole life is and will remain a mystery for you. I don't give any personal details, not even my name. My life depends on being scrupulously secret. However, if you are looking for an irrelevant but intriguing fact I can give you one : I have no pictures of my first years. Even my grandparents have pictures of their first birthdays but not me. My first photo is a school picture at about 7. So, who am I ?
Agatha de Loon
I would go to Dante's Inferno and Paradiso. More seriously, I would not go to a fictional place for real but a real place in fiction. I would cross behind death and come back and tell all of you what it's like so we could all live and die in peace without the recurring anguish how all this is supposed to end...
Agatha de Loon
Please, read my answer to the previous question!
Agatha de Loon
What to do with a nagging dream on your mind that demands to break free and live its life on its own? You encode it into words in one language or another, hoping to convey the message in a way that anyone who reads it would experience the same emotions. But it never happens. Readers will interpret your book according to their own experience of life, and so they will love it or hate it. If they went through similar feelings in the past, it would revive their pain and joy, and if they did not, they may feel incredulous, uncomfortable, dubious if such sentiments exist at all. In a certain way, this kind of story tells you everything about who you are, more than telling a tale on its own. A professional writer would not take the risk. If you make a living out of writing, you cannot afford upsetting half of your readers by confronting them with what they live in the bottom of their hearts. It is not a subject that people would willingly share on social networks or would easily comment on. Your experience is but your own.
Agatha de Loon
A sequel to Rob My Heart and Hope to Die is lurking in the corner of my mind. I'm not sure you would call it a sequel. It's rather what could be a consequence if things worked out as expected, imagined, dreamed...
Agatha de Loon
This time I thought that nothing worse could happen, that my number was up, and I would never come to myself again.
And I didn't.
And I didn't.
Agatha de Loon
On top of my list, I had Midnight Sun, of course. We have been waiting for it for so long. I loved the idea at the time, putting the two versions together like an effortless puzzle. Nonetheless, I was deeply upset by the result. It sounds artificial, heavily corrected, and targeted. Twilight had an innocent freshness, a perfume of youth still vivid and enchanting, a point of humor infused here and there, and a bewitching talent to keep you up late and night to turn the pages on an on. This time I felt dutiful to get to the last chapter and fell asleep quite often. The fault of aging or changing, or perhaps, it was just too late!
Agatha de Loon
Honestly, I have never been confronted to it. I didn't want to write. I had to. Words came with an unexpected urge an ease. The hardest part was the emptiness I felt once I finished. An abyss of sensless boredoom opened under my feet and the nostalgia of the pleasure of creation made me unexpectedly miserable. However, I don't write for a living and my work is demanding enough to keep my mind busy most of the time. A sequel to the story is lurking around me, but how many sleepless nights will it take before I find the nerve to write again? Writing is one thing, going through edition as a lonesome indie writer is an entirely different matter. It's a hard and thankless job that consumes time, energy and money you don't have. Who would want to go through that again without help and encouragement? Readers are the key to any kind of block. Like some students inspire their teachers by their love and gratitude, readers can give inspiration by their discreet, patient but active support. No one enjoys crying into the desert.
Agatha de Loon
I don't know how to become a writer. I wrote this book since I couldn't do otherwise. It was a compulsory, obsessive, unavoidable act, a nagging thought and an endless nightmare. Is it any better now? No.
Agatha de Loon
I'm not a professional writer. I wrote one book, period.
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