On Friday I went to an event at Blue Willow Bookshop for Joy Preble and Heather Terrell. Actually, since Joy is a local author, she interviewed Heather for us 🙂 Then, the awesome Maria invited me to join them for dinner! So not only did I get to meet Joy again and get to meet Heather for the first time and learn about her new book, Relic, I also got to hang out with them at dinner (we had Tex-Mex)! Woot! Here’s a recap of the evening.
First Joy and Heather were telling us about their awesome editor and what makes someone a great editor. They both said that their editor thinks like them and understands where they are going before they get there. Heather mentioned a mind meld. She said her editor understands her and knows what she can and can’t do in her writing. Their editor can also help them get around road blocks and get to their end goal because he has the vision of the story in mind the entire time.
Heather told us she used to be a lawyer and loves to research. She’s interested in hidden truths, myth and legend, and how they play a role in us learning about ourselves. Her first 3 books take unanswered historical mysteries and answers them in a unique way. She also has a YA series called Fallen Angel, which is a retelling of how the vampire legend emerged. Her newest book, Relic (the Books of Eva), is a genre blending series that is a bit dystopian and fantasy. It takes place in a post-global warming world, after a major flood, where people choose to live in the arctic and choose to live as in the medieval times (they believe everything modern has led to the fall). Her main character decides to participate in “The Testing”, which is an archaeological dig. The society makes chronicles about artifacts (items from our current world). Through this “Testing”, Eva discovers truths about herself and her society. I asked whether the books can be read standalone and Heather said that each book resolves a separate mystery, but all the world building is done in the first book so it wouldn’t be as fun to pick up the second book without reading the first.
Joy didn’t talk much about herself since she’s local and people already knew her but I’m looking forward to reading her newest, The Sweet Dead Life. I also picked up a copy of Dreaming Anastasia because the premise really fascinates me. The series is based on Russian Folklore, so come on it is right up my alley.
Heather doesn’t have twitter, and she told us this is because she has an addictive personality (as proven by the fact that she ate most of the chips in front of her). She said she would likely get lost in the vortex hehe. Dinner was really fun and we talked about various different places to live (since Heather lived in New York for some time and now lives in Pittsburgh, and of course the rest of us are here in Houston).
It was a fun evening and I’m so excited that I got invited to hang out with the authors and bookstore people!
