I was very lucky to have been referred by one…
Author Spotlight: Diane Magras
Introduction: About You
3 Little Known or Interesting Things About You
1 I’ve been telling stories since I was very, very young. My father tried to read bedtime stories to me, and I kept interrupting to switch around the narrative and tell it my way. I guess I’ve always been a writer!
2 My writing space is covered with presents from my son over the years: encouraging drawings and notes, paper castles that he designed and built, small bits of jewelry, and a Lego trophy. It also has a quaich, a very Scottish gift from my husband.
3 Pretty much everything in my books has a link to history, sometimes to quite a depth! For instance, to really understand what hearth bread is like (many of my medieval characters eat it), I hunted until I found an accurate medieval recipe, and then made it. I ate it fresh, as well as two days old (pretty stale), so I could describe what the experience of eating hearth bread would be like.
Hogwarts House and/or Camp Halfblood Cabin (If you have not been sorted or if you have not taken a quiz, I have linked them for you.) I sort as Ravenclaw, and for Camp Halfblood I’m very much with Athena!
What is your writing Kryptonite?
What other authors are you friends with, and how do they help you become a better writer? I’m part of a wonderful group called the Electric Eighteens, all YA and MG authors whose YA or MG debuted in 2018. We’ve supported each other ever since 2017 when we were preparing for our debuts, and it’s been an incredible community.
What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel? The British author Philip Reeve’s upper middle grade novel Here Lies Arthur seems little-known in the U.S. It’s a brilliant story of who King Arthur might really have been, told from the perspective of a girl who rides with his war-band. It’s vivid historical fiction with a lot of drama, action, and incredibly descriptive writing.
How do you balance making demands on the reader with taking care of the reader? I write middle grade, and I know that kids in the age of my readership are incredibly smart and perceptive. So I don’t think of it so much as making demands on them as meeting them where they are. But when I write, I think about them, and I know it’s my responsibility to write things that will introduce new thoughts, entertain, and always tell the truth. A lot of writers say that they write lies, but I think of it differently: I tell the truth in ways that we sometimes can’t in everyday real life.
As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot or avatar? Definitely a crow: the most brilliant and creative of birds!
About Your Books
Tell us about your book(s)-length of time it took to write, journey, publishing, release dates, etc. The Mad Wolf’s Daughter is a book that’s been in the back of my mind for a long time. When I was a kid, I loved reading action-adventures set in the times of knights and castles. But girls were always flat characters just put there to be rescued. And I didn’t want to be rescued when I was a kid; I wanted to be the knight. Years passed. I wrote literary fiction, then adult historicals, and didn’t really try to get published; I just wrote for fun. And then I was reading middle grade books to keep up with with my son, quite the third grade avid reader, and realized that I loved what he was reading more than anything I was writing. I told myself to write what I wanted most to write, and began The Mad Wolf’s Daughter in June 2015. After several rewrites, constant obsessing, and a few big tweaks, I signed with my agent in April 2016. In June 2016, I received an offer from my editor. And then…the process of MORE revisions! Not too much, actually, though I rewrote Tig’s character, switched around some scenes, and edited down extra words that didn’t need to be there. In the summer of 2017, I gave feedback to the cover art. And then, March 2018, it was published.
While I was editing my first book, I was writing my second. And after March 2018, while doing appearances, including bookstore and school visits, I was rewriting my second. I ended up whipping through quite a rewrite in two weeks to come up with the final manuscript. I cut many scenes that I loved (including a rescue where Drest climbs a castle wall and carries down a lady!), but I knew what I had to do to really bring the story together. Then, more cover art consultations, and it was published in March 2019. I was quite honored the following month when The Mad Wolf’s Daughter won my home state’s Lupine Award, which Maine gives annually to one book that a committee deems the best juvenile fiction set in Maine or by a Maine or Maine-born author.
