Ask the Author: Marina Costa
Answered Questions (16)
Marina Costa
Yes, I saw it afterwards. It is a mistake of Goodreads and I requested it to be removed. It seems to not have been yet. :(
Marina Costa
I definitely am not the author of the books you are mentioning and I have never said that I am. Maybe you are mistaking me for another Marina Costa from another country. Actually, all my books are in Romanian, I wrote none in English.
Marina Costa
All the books I have written are my own. I cannot say I wrote anything else than I actually did. Almost all of my books have my photo on the back, so they are unmistakable.
So I do not understand your question. Maybe there is another Marina Costa in another country (because in Romania I am the only one, but this name is rather common in Portuguese, Italian, Spanish and Greek as well) and you are mistaking me for another one.
So I do not understand your question. Maybe there is another Marina Costa in another country (because in Romania I am the only one, but this name is rather common in Portuguese, Italian, Spanish and Greek as well) and you are mistaking me for another one.
Marina Costa
I can't say much about the European market. It is changeable... and it has particularities from country to country. But work on what YOU are interested to write, because if you write to the market, the trend will already change until your book gets published. I am writing what I'd love to read. And if I'd love to read that, surely there are others who would like it too...
Marina Costa
I guess the Romeo and Juliet story of how I met and married my husband... But I doubt it will ever be written.
Marina Costa
A sort of mushroom smoke was seen on the whole sky. There was nothing remaining of the great city.
Marina Costa
I use to reply that I would love to join Lucy and the others in Narnia.
Marina Costa
I use to reply that I would love to join Lucy and the others in Narnia.
Marina Costa
I had several books on my summer reading, most of them by Romanian authors, bought or received with autograph at the International Book Fair and at various book launching events. I did not manage to read all of them, unfortunately, due to lack of time and health problems.
Marina Costa
I had several books on my summer reading, most of them by Romanian authors, bought or received with autograph at the International Book Fair and at various book launching events. I did not manage to read all of them, unfortunately, due to lack of time and health problems.
Marina Costa
First, research. Because if I don't know what the characters are supposed to see/ pass through/ live , then how to write it? Then, choose which of all those researched aspects could have been met/ happened to my characters. And, based on the characters' personality, knowledge and circumstances, I have to choose how they see/ react to what is around them or happening to them. Could they have known a certain fact, the way we know it now, from chronicles? Not at all, if they couldn't read the newspapers/ if these weren't things to be announced in newspapers. Or biased by their beliefs. (One man's hero is another man's bandit...) Napoleon was a hero to the French Revolutionary Army, and the worst enemy to the occupied Italian and Spanish areas...
Marina Costa
Everything can inspire me: a song, a movie I watch, a book I read, a story I hear somewhere. My mind functions in associations of ideas. I am writing since first grade. I can't live without writing, because the stories in my head want out.
Also, during research I get new ideas starting from the facts discovered then. For example, a name of a town or a historical event give me ideas about involving my characters.
Also, during research I get new ideas starting from the facts discovered then. For example, a name of a town or a historical event give me ideas about involving my characters.
Marina Costa
If you are asking about the ongoing one, "The second shuttle boat" (A doua cursa), it was last September, about 2 weeks after I sent to print "Echipajul" (The crew). I was in the tram, going to my mother's, and thinking about the book and its characters. Then it dawned on me that a certain secondary character who had drawn the shortest stick in life deserved a second chance to happiness. And that I could write a book about him, starting at about 2 years after the final chapter of the first book... It shocked me so much that I was nearly descending from the tram one station earlier :P
Marina Costa
I have an ongoing contemporary novel, titled "A doua cursa" (The second shuttle boat) which is a sequel to "Echipajul"(The crew). I hope to finish it during Camp NaNo April and to put the editing touches afterwards.
I am also making the "good to print" final corrections on the sequel to "Vieti in valtoare" (Lives in turmoil). It is titled "Alte valtori ale vietii" (Other turmoils of life) and it gets my characters up to 1849, when the main characters are already grandparents and the city of Saint Louis is prosperous (while the revolutions in Italy failed).
I am also making the "good to print" final corrections on the sequel to "Vieti in valtoare" (Lives in turmoil). It is titled "Alte valtori ale vietii" (Other turmoils of life) and it gets my characters up to 1849, when the main characters are already grandparents and the city of Saint Louis is prosperous (while the revolutions in Italy failed).
Marina Costa
Keep writing, finish what you start, and read more, in order to improve. The internet is also rich in creative writing articles which might help new writers.
Marina Costa
In my case, it means either that I need more research for a specific issue of the book (if I cannot see clearly a scene in my mind, in all the details, I can't describe it in written. Sometimes it can be about what's on the tables of a Viking wedding feast, or how they danced, or what exactly had each sailor to do during a storm.) or that I have other problems weighing on my mind and I can't focus on the writing until I solve them, because anger, tiredness, negativity, difficulties, sickness are draining my creative well. Otherwise, I believe in researching and powering through the slump.
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