We'll start with one of those questions that get asked every time in interviews: When did you realize you wanted to be an artist? When I was in second grade, I use to get my crayons taken away from me by my teacher, Mrs. Desilva. All I wanted to do was color and nothing else. I lost a lot of crayons that year <laughs>. My mom and I remained friends with her for many years and she would always bring up the crayons and how hard it was to keep me in the real world as opposed to my artsy...
New Book Release: “The Names of Heaven” by Flavia Idà
We are thrilled to announce the immediate availability of The Names of Heaven by Flavia Idà. One man. An extraordinary choice. In 1511 a Spanish ship en route from the island of Hispaniola sank off the coast of Yucatan near the town of Tulum. The survivors were captured by the Maya; these were the first white men ever to set foot on the mainland of the American continent, and the first white men the Maya had ever seen. Among the castaways was Gonzalo Guerrero, a sailor from Palos. After he was captured, he lived among the Maya as a slave...
Interview: Lisa Jacob, author of Homecoming (A War Mage Story)
What inspired you to get into writing? I was always a voracious reader. I had been surrounded by books since childhood, and my mother was always a big reader. In junior high, I started reading “adult” authors like Stephen King and Sidney Sheldon, books my mom read. I finished The Shining and I thought to myself, I can write like this. So I started writing fan fiction for a few TV shows—this was way before fan fiction was a “thing.” My first original novel was written during the summer from 8th to 9th grade, and really improved my typing skills....
On Paper Angel Press’ First Birthday
How did it feel to see your book in print? For me, seeing my book in print was a rush. To this day I will look at MY book on the bookshelf behind my desk, and wonder who this person J Dark is, and how they used my name to write this book that sounds so much like the one that was in my head, and is now on paper and in this book I'm looking at. It felt surreal, and a powerful validation that someone liked, actually liked how I wrote and how I told a story. It still...
Interview: Laureen Hudson, Acquisitions Editor
What got you into editing as a profession, and what helps with being a good editor? So that’s actually a funny story. Waaaaaaay back in high school, I signed up to work on the school newspaper. The teacher noticed me informally answering other people’s questions about spelling and word choice, and decided I should be the editor. That would have been where it stopped, except that the school principal made a habit of censoring editorials in the paper. It enraged me, and I embarked on an anti-censorship campaign that ultimately got me suspended a few times… but I learned the...
Interview: Kimberley Wall, Promotions Manager
As a promotions manager, how would you describe your job? Essentially, my job is to familiarize myself with the work, collaborate with the Editor and Business Manager on appropriate genre classifications, brainstorm ideas for whom to contact, where to go, what to do to make the book visible on a larger scale, and then pursue opportunities from the office and encourage authors to pursue others on their end. Tell me about the role of Marketing & Promotions, specifically in the world of the small press. If you didn’t want people to read your book, you wouldn’t bother to publish it,...
Interview: Flavia Idà, author of The Iron and The Loom and The Names of Heaven
Where did you get the idea for the The Iron and the Loom? I'm an inveterate daydreamer. It doesn't take much for me to withdraw into my inner world, to the exclusion of everything else. I also love history and I grew up in Italy, which has more history that anybody knows what to do with it, you look around and there it is. So daydreaming about a favorite period of Italian history and writing a novel set in it for me was an inevitable combination. Every author seems to have a different way of developing a story. Did you...
New Book Release: “Il ferro e il telaio” by Flavia Idà
We are thrilled to announce the immediate availability of Il ferro e il telaio (The Iron and The Loom) by Flavia Idà. How many times, she wondered, had she woven together cloth that his sword had then torn apart along with the flesh underneath? The year is 1136, the place Tropèa, a walled sea town in Southern Italy during the Norman domination. Kallyna d’Àrgira, a master of the arts of the loom who can turn the world into silk thread, is pledged in marriage by her father to Raimo Trani, a man she hates. After a sudden tragedy leaves her...
Interview: The Unruly Woman interviews Steven Radecki, author of Building Baby Brother
When the guy who makes your book dreams come true publishes his first book, you read it. So I did. I read a science fiction book, my first ever science fiction book! And I shocked myself by loving it. I asked Steven Radecki to let me interview him so I could drag other people into my excitement about Building Baby Brother. He said, "YES!". So I did my first Unruly Books interview and it is here for your listening pleasure (http://goo.gl/92HTqM). [powerpress]
Interview: Steven Radecki, Father of Building Baby Brother
Where did you get the idea for Building Baby Brother? To be honest, I don’t remember where the actual idea for the plot came from. The story itself started as part of an exercise that, well, kind of got out hand. My son’s charter had planned to sponsor an event to help foster reading and writing skills by asking students and willing family members to write a short story and then read it out loud at this event. Always willing to write, particularly for a good cause such as that one, I started pondering possible story ideas. I knew I...