The time we held up the line

Sooz has always been one of my favorite people and authors and so of course when I saw she was going to be at Mysterious Galaxy for Truthwitch, it was a sure thing.

Michelle, Keiko, and I met up early for delicious food and Starbucks. We went back to the store around 4pm to hang out and just run amok.

They made the mistake of letting us go in the back room and take some pretties. I almost had a heart attack at some of the lovelies just sitting on the shelves. {And no, I didn’t shove Michelle out of the way for that new Kasie West. You did.}

Susan got to the store right before 7:30 and I ran over to squeeze her and say hi. She got to the podium and said that it would be awkward to stand there, so we suggested her to sit on top of it. And she did.  She said that she felt weird sitting there like it was a throne and she was telling people to worship her.  So then she posed like a pretty princess. As you do.

She briefly talked about the SSaD series and then started in with Truthwitch. She gave the synopsis and mentioned how it was going to be four books.

Has writing 4 books cut into your writing time?

Or has writing 4 books cut into my gaming time? I have a day and a half off and I already know when I get home that it’s gaming day.

What was your favorite part to write?

Two scenes that came out gloriously in a flow and barely changed from draft to final, which never happens. The dance scene and there’s a scene in a lighthouse in chapter 15. One thing I’ve tried to do is that all of the scenes have something about it that I love. It’s been hard sometimes.

If you could be any witch, which would you be?

I have a background in marine biology, so I feel like Waterwitch is my calling, but I feel like Bloodwitch is really cool. I’m too nice, so I would be like “Oh, I’m sorry. Did I just control your blood?”

What is your writing process?

It’s constantly changing. I had to relearn my process because it had been so long since I could just sit and work. I had to rebuild a routine. You train your brain to work at a certain time of day or with a certain set of circumstances. For me, it’s a spiral bound notebook. I see lined paper and my brain just goes, “Write.” I write most of my stories on paper and then spend days typing it in.

Do you revise while typing?

Some, but I also revise by hand. I’ll enter parenthesis with “describe setting here” so while I’m typing it, I’ll do it then.

Is there a character that you loved, but are afraid to write because they’re so awesome?

Merik. He’s very black and white, right and wrong. It was hard to crack his nuances. And Windwitch is really his arc and it’s been…I don’t know.

Do you have the arc set up already?

They bought the 4 books right away off the synopsis. They know that it’s not going to be that paragraph. I know each book is an arc of each character.

Any YA book boyfriends?

Jack from Blood Red Road. I love slow burn romance where you’re not sure if they like each other.

Did you know you wanted to write YA?

When I decided to become a published author, I had no idea about the business. I knew I wanted to write for a reader like me and books that I liked. And when I did, YA was a thing.

Book recommendations?

I can’t always come up with something. I feel like I need go to the shelves and start pointing. Vengeance Road by Erin Bowman. Shadow and Bone trilogy. There’s so many books, that’s the good and bad thing about YA. I’ve been reading non-fiction.

Non-fiction recs?

Cathedral of the Wild was the best non-fiction I’ve ever read.

Can you cut the gaming time in half and work on Starkiller?

I wish. Sarah is so busy and so am I. But she’s on like another level. Apparently she thought it was a good idea to write three books a year. Even my sensi, who is a 45 year old man, asked me to stop coming to dojo to work on it.

Will you be at SDCC this year?

No. It’s really expensive. That trip cost me a couple grand. {This prompted a side conversation about how when authors go to conventions and the like, they pay for the entire thing themselves.  I had no idea.}

Favorite place to travel?

Croatia was the inspiring location for Truthwitch. I couch surfed around and it was beautiful. I didn’t speak the language and they don’t speak much English.

I went to Antarctica for work and the thing I wasn’t prepared for was is the scale of an iceberg. You can’t imagine how big it is. It’s like a skyscraper. We went to a penguin breeding ground and they’re cute in Happy Feet, but they’re actually quite smelly. Well, I guess there was a lot of them. There were 30k breeding pairs so there was a lot of poop.

Linguistics. Use a base or make it up?

I think it’s because I’m a gamer and partly because of my scientific brain. I set the rules and I hope they work. I don’t just make something up because it’s fantasy. I wanted all of the names to have a hard sound, so they all have hard consonants. The language is soft though, like Romanian.

I’m crazy about research and when it came to the rabbit hole the worst was the tides. When it talks about the receding tide, I matched it up to the exact time and location, so it’s accurate.

You gave a disclaimer about your other covers. How do you feel about this cover?

I love it. I love my other covers, I just don’t feel like they’re representative of the books. They don’t scream steampunk zombie book to me.  Tor is a great publisher. I just wanted a strong girl and they went that way. And I just saw the Windwitch cover and you guys it’s amazing. I love it.

Can you explain a Threadwitch?

My disclaimer is that in all of the revising, I think we cut out some of the pieces, so I’m sorry. We got so familiar with the content, that I think we saw things as being redundant and ended cutting up everything.

In theory, a Threadwitch can see the emotions of people. It’s colors floating over people, so they can see the emotions that someone is feeling and who they’re connected to. So bright red of they’re in love and together or fraying if they’re not together any more.

Journey of agent and book?

I always feel embarrassed because it was easy and not the norm. 80-90% of publishing is luck. You could have the best book ever, but if no publisher or agent wants it right now, you won’t sell it. I got an agent and a book deal all within a month.

Which author blurb were you most excited for?

Robin Hobb. She’s my hero and I didn’t even know she was reading it. I got the email about it and I dropped my phone and fell to the floor and started crying. She told me that she read the entire thing as a word doc on her laptop.

There were a couple of other questions, but I was getting final pictures, so I didn’t get them.  We got up to Sooz and just generally fangirled all over her. I gushed about the SSaD series because my love for it is just so fucking immense.  Then we talked about Donnie Darko.  Then we talked about possible novellas Susan might write.  We were up there a long time.  Like longer than normal.

When she started to sign my book, I said something about how I love that she always draws a picture in all of my finished copies, so she said she couldn’t leave Truthwitch out.

We hugged her again and thanked her for coming.  I apologized to the people who were next in line for taking so long and then we made the rounds in saying goodbye to everyone at MG.

As always, Sooz was fantastic and as I type this up, I realize it’s the first time I’ve ever heard her talk about her books.  If you haven’t read her books, I suggest you stop reading this and go buy everything she’s done.

Oh and maybe watch my Instagram account for a special giveaway. JSJSJSJS