Our first EpicReads event since earlier this year is also the one I’ve been wanting to do ever since we started doing EpicReads events because Megan Whalen Turner is one of my absolute favourite authors, and one of the few I love nearly as much as Diana Wynne Jones.
After our book talk – in which there was mostly gushing, for us who’ve read all the books – we started our Google Hangout session. Megan began with a talk about how she came about the idea to write The Thief, about the quest stories she had loved and the authors/books that had influenced her along the way. She also shared about the latest Queen’s Thief book, Thick As Thieves, and how it’s mainly influenced by Rosemary Sutcliff’s Eagle of the Ninth.
I asked her about how she got published, because Lauren James talked about that during her event and it was so fun to listen to. Megan’s story is equally fun, although like she warned us, it wasn’t exactly a recommended path to follow – she talked about working as a bookseller at different stores before starting to write short stories, and sending them to Diana Wynne Jones who liked them. It may not be a thing that can be replicated by aspiring authors listening, but it’s still amazing to hear about.
After the Q&A, she asked us questions – she wanted to know books we loved when we were young, and books we love now. I answered the first things that came to mind – Diana Wynne Jones and Pamela Dean, and Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor, completely forgetting A Wrinkle in Time and The Phantom Tollbooth, and Jo Walton (which I now feel a little guilty about because I love them just as much!)
ghostgrrrl reads 