FEATURED ARTIST FRIDAY: Anne Elisabeth Stengl
Today, please help me out by giving a warm welcome to Anne Elisabeth! She has graciously taken the time to answer a few questions (and I now know that we have a lot more in common than I even knew) and to offer a sneak-peek at her up-coming novel, AND she's offering a giveaway, which I'll tell you more about at the bottom of this post. So, lots of exciting things today!
(all of the pictures will take you to various sites belonging to Anne Elisabeth if you click on them)
1. Please tell us a little bit about yourself as an author. What got you started writing?
Let’s see . . . I have been writing “novels” since I was about nine years old, at least in part because that’s what my mother did. My mother is a multi-published, award-winning romance novelist, and I grew up watching her create stories. It seemed natural for me to pick up a pen and paper and start scribbling down ideas of my own. Eventually, I set aside notebooks and pens for computer documents, and the stories got bigger and more complex. Too complex, really. In my inexperience, I didn’t know how to handle the enormous epics that began taking shape in my mind during my teenage years. So, at age seventeen, I went back to writing in notebooks, this time focusing primarily on short stories and novellas.
Thus the first of the Tales of Goldstone Wood were born.
After college, I sat down once more with notebook and pen, and began writing what became Heartless, but which started out as a short story with the unprepossessing title of Dragon Princess. In this story, I finally felt as though I had a true doorway into the world of Goldstone Wood, both for myself and for my readers. So I expanded it into a full-length novel, bringing in hints about the rest of the world and the series I hoped to develop, both past and future tales. So while Heartless was not the first of this series to take shape in my heart, it was certainly the cornerstone story.
2. What would you call the genre you write, and why did you choose that genre to write in?
I like to call my genre “Fairy Tale Fantasy.” I write in this genre simply because I could not tell my stories correctly in any other genre. My style of writing is not typical to modern YA Fantasy. I choose to write in the omniscient narrative, which has sadly fallen in popularity since the days of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien (both of whom used the omniscient narrative brilliantly in their famous works). There are plenty of amazing novelists in the general market using this narrative voice—Neil Gaiman, Sir Terry Pratchett, Megan Whalen Turner, and others. But in CBA fiction, it has even been labeled “bad” writing, and I have encountered more than a little resistance to my work and my style over the years.
However, I maintain that the omniscient narrative is the perfect writing voice for the type of stories I tell, which are both fairy tale and epic at the same time. I try to create a sense of familiarity in my basic plots by use of archetypes and classic literary themes. I want my readers—lovers of fairy tales—to have a sense as though the world of Goldstone Wood is one they know, perhaps from a childhood dream. I want the stories themselves to feel recognizable, even though they’ve not been told before.
But I don’t write retellings. My stories, while harkening back to older fairy tales, are all original, with new characters and twists and my own world-building style. And the plots, as the series progresses, are quite large, intertwined, and epic.
3. At your book-signing, you said an image for a character popped into your head (that eventually inspired the Dragonwitch) but that you didn’t really get to write her story for many years. Was it disappointing to you that this character who had been with you so long ended up a villain?
Oh, no, I wasn’t disappointed at all. I knew from the beginning that she was a villain. But I don’t consider my villains any less important or less interesting than my heroes. And sometimes (as in Lionheart’s case) my heroes are also my villains! So there’s no disappointment. Indeed, I have a great deal of compassion for and investment in my Dragonwitch. I was eager to tell her story and to make her the keystone character of her own novel, even as the villainess.
(If you want to know more about Dragonwitch, feel free to click on the picture to the left)
4. You have a lot of fantastic characters, and while my favorite so far is definitely Rose Red, do you have a favorite?
I really love Eanrin. I am a cat-person, after all, so that’s no surprise! Also, I’ve been writing about him for longer than most of the other characters. He was featuring in Goldstone Wood stories back when they were just my first scribblings in a notebook. He even featured in several stories that were never written down but simply told to my baby brother (who is ten years my junior) while I folded laundry or cleaned bathrooms or washed dishes, and he sat keeping me company.
Eanrin is such a larger-than-life, charismatic personality, and he is a great deal of fun to write. Any scene where he features is sure to be entertaining for me. I think other people enjoy writing him too, since he features in a lot of the Fan Fiction I receive from my talented fans! :)
5. Is anyone else in your family musical/artistic/writers? Describe your family members’ artistic interests and abilities.
Absolutely! Most of them write at least a little. My mother, as stated above, is a professional novelist (and will soon be publishing a new novel after a seven-year hiatus!). My brothers have all played around with stories over the years, and my father also is an excellent storyteller and has recently begun putting some of those stories down on paper, much to my delight.
6. What are your top three favorite books?
Okay, I’ll list three, but I reserve the right to change my mind at a moment’s notice! At the moment, however, my top three would be:
1. Nation by Sir Terry Pratchett
2. The Queen’s Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner
3. Anything Diana Wynne Jones ever wrote. But if I have to pick one, then Howl’s Moving Castle.
But again, those are just the current favorites and may easily be supplanted at any time.
7. What is the hardest thing about writing for you?
Beginnings, usually. I have the worst time in the world finding the proper place to start a novel, and my beginnings will often go through three or four (or more!) drafts, while the bulk of the novel remains pretty much the same as draft one.
However, with my current manuscript—Book 7 in the Tales of Goldstone Wood—that hasn’t been the case. The beginning has been solid for me through the whole of the first draft. Now that I am beginning draft two, there are minor changes to be made, but nothing tremendous. For this book, it’s simply been a matter of time. It’s an enormous and exhausting project, the biggest I’ve ever tackled. And I’ve struggled with finding the time to really hash out all of its complexities over the last many months of its development.
8. Of the books you have completed, which one was the most fun to write?
Probably Heartless, since it was the only one not written on a deadline! LOL. But I will say that my upcoming novella, Goddess Tithe, was also a lot of fun. I wrote it just for the pure enjoyment of it, and it came together in two weeks. It reminded me a lot of writing Heartless.
As for the others . . . there are moments of real fun, but they are also all written under deadlines, so there’s much more work involved than before. I will say that my favorite novel to write is always the one I have just finished! So, ideally, that will soon be Book 7 . . . . :)
9. What advice would you give to a beginning author?
Don’t read your reviews. Ever. The negatives ones will devastate you, and even the positive ones can be harmful. Many’s the positive review I have read that said something along the lines of, “I really loved this book except for this key problem” and I have been just as devastated by that critique as by the overtly negative reviews. And an all-round positive review really doesn’t balance out the negative ones, and probably serves for nothing more than to swell your head. So don’t read them. Get yourself a handful of trusted editors and beta readers. Consider their comments and opinions. But ignore all others! (Fan mail is a different story. For the most part, fan mail is just sweet and kind and very worthwhile. Though not always, so be prepared!)
My other big advice is to not neglect your pleasure-reading. It’s so important for a novelist to remember why she writes. Reading fun books by talented authors—both classics and modern—is such a good, healthy way to keep the love of storytelling alive. After all, a good chef eats good food, right?
10. Would you be willing to share a paragraph or two from one of your books?
Sure thing. How about an excerpt from Shadow Hand, which will release February 2014? So this is a sneak peek! I hope you will enjoy it:
Sneak Peek from
Shadow Hand
By Anne Elisabeth Stengl
It must be a dream or an illusion brought on by the magic intoxication of Nidawi's presence. It must be, for how else could he see, even through dark and rain, that form in white rags, her hair falling free in red-gold tatters below her shoulders, her icy eyes fixed upon him in unbelief. His bride: his beautiful, broken, terrible bride.
"Daylily!" he cried, and took three strides. But he had not taken a fourth when, with a roar that shook the orchard, Lioness sprang over his head and charged; charged in streaking, snarling fury right at that vision which was no vision, but which breathed and moved and looked right at him.
"No!" Foxbrush shouted, though he did not know he shouted. Like one in a dream, he could not run, could not make his limbs move, straining against the pull of resisting time. Seconds, half-seconds, were hours too long, for the white lion bounded with the speed of lightning.
Daylily shook herself free of her shock at seeing Foxbrush in this of all places and focused her gaze fiercely on that which approached. It was not a wolf. It was not! It was a Faerie beast, an invader, and her enemy.
Our enemy!
She snatched the Bronze from around her neck and crouched, prepared for battle.
Save our land!
The Lioness leapt, and Daylily, though her arm was none too strong, would have driven her sharp stone up and into her flesh as she descended, had the great cat not turned in the air at the last and landed to one side. Lioness lashed out, claws flashing, but caught Daylily's gown and not Daylily herself. The lion’s second swing struck Daylily in the side, sending her crashing to the ground and her Bronze stone spinning through the air.
Daylily bared her teeth and reached for the stone, but Lioness pressed her to the dirt with an enormous, crushing paw. Claws tore into Daylily's shoulder and she screamed. Her voice pierced the rain and the thunder and Foxbrush's heart, and he screamed as well and threw himself at the lion.
But just as he did so, a savage yell rang out, and a wild man in skins, his hair pulled back in a long braid, fell from the branches of the fig tree above and landed square upon Lioness's broad back. With strength greater than his size indicated, he unbalanced her, pulling her off Daylily so that both of them rolled across the ground. Foxbrush narrowly avoided losing his face to Lioness's flailing claws, and found himself standing clear, staring down at Daylily's flattened form.
Nidawi caught Foxbrush's arm and pointed at Daylily, screaming, "Kill it! Kill it, my king!"
Thank you so much for joining us today, Anne Elisabeth!
For more information about Anne Elisabeth please visit her blog: http://anneelisabethstengl.blogspot.com/
And now for the giveaway, and your chance to win any completed Tale of Goldstone Wood!