1. What is your name and where do you call home?
Hi! My name is Meagan Spooner, and I live near Washington, D.C. I do a lot of traveling, though, and have lived in New York and Australia in the past.
2. Do you have a pen name?
Nope! Although in real life most people call me Meg, not Meagan—so in a way, my real name is my pen name.
3. What is the name of your most recent book and if you had to sum it up in 20 or less words, what would you say?
Well, my first book, SKYLARK, comes out this fall from Carolrhoda Lab (Lerner Books). It’s a dystopian fantasy about a girl named Lark who must flee from her people to avoid being enslaved, heading into a scarred and nightmarish wilderness no one has survived in hundreds of years. I’m going to get to announce all the good stuff like release dates, covers, and so forth soon!
4. Do you have plans for a new book? Is this book part of a series?
SKYLARK is the first in a trilogy—the other two books will come out in 2013 and 2014. I’ve also sold a second trilogy, entirely unrelated to the first and co-written with my fantastic writing partner, Amie Kaufman. The first book of that trilogy, a science fiction romance called THESE BROKEN STARS, is due out from Disney-Hyperion in Summer 2013.
5. What or who inspired you to start writing? And how long have you been writing?
When I was little, WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE was my absolute faaavorite book. But when you’re little, you don’t really think about where things come from—they’re just there. When I was four or so, I had this epiphany while looking at the cover of the book, that someone had actually written this—that someone else had imagined it all, written it down, and now I was imagining it too. I thought that was magic. Later, in high school, I had a wonderful teacher who really encouraged me to write and really believed I could do it!
6. What book are you reading at the moment? And in what format?
I’m re-reading UNDER THE NEVER SKY by Veronica Rossi, and I’m reading it in hardcover. Usually I end up disappointed by the big super-hyped books, but this is one that honestly deserves every ounce of praise and hype that it’s gotten. It’s really spectacular, even the second time around, and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes YA, fantasy, dystopian, science fiction… really, anyone who likes books!
7. Do you have any advice for other writers? And what’s the best advice that you have been given when it comes to writing?
The best advice I was ever given, and the advice I’d give to any aspiring writer, is to write every day. I know, it’s a drag to set schedules for something so creative and fun, but if you want to turn writing into a career, it’s something worth trying. It won’t work for everyone, but you might be surprised. I used to think I was a “wait for the muse to come” writer, going days or weeks without writing and then writing a ton all at once. But when I actually tried writing every day, it ended up making me so much more prolific and consistent. Now I don’t write any other way. Which leads me to my other piece of advice…
Be OPEN to new ways of doing things! Be willing to try everything once. You never know what might help. Everyone’s different so not everything will work for you, but there are a lot of really smart writers out there who’ve figured out a lot of cool ways to make it work.
8. Where can your readers follow you?
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/MeaganSpoonerBooks
Goodreads author page: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4615776.Meagan_Spooner
Twitter: http://twitter.com/MeaganSpooner
Thankyou so much for taking the time to do this interview and allowing us a glimpse into your writing world!
gr8 interview
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