Author Interviews

About the author Tell us your story? What made you start writing? First, thank you kindly for asking me to do this! I’m so thrilled! I started writing as a teenager (I’m almost 35 now) and I wrote mostly poetry at first. My dad is a great storyteller with an incredible imagination; furthermore, both of my parents are Disney lovers and believers in a romantic view of the world and introduced me to that musical, happy idea of Happy Ever Afters. Imagine my surprise finding out real life isn’t like the movies? That’s when I decided to tell my own stories. I adore the written word, the act of expressing yourself in words; I found that using language was one of my favorite ways to express myself…on paper. In person, I’m sometimes very chatty because I’m enthusiastic about, well, most things, and my thoughts aren’t as neatly packaged as with the written word. The short answer, I started writing to capture what I may have trouble saying and, in a world where I could. There’s a line in Spellbound that the character Baron Maxwell says, stating he feels poems are narrating the thoughts of the heart; he and I share that observation. I think that can go for stories as well. Anytime you get to share what you feel inside…that’s all heart! There’s a vulnerability in sharing your creations. It’s great and terrifying all at once. And most recently, in the last nine years, I was cheered on to keep… Read More »Melody Arlene

About the author Jane Shand lives in Hampshire, England with her family and two cheeky cats. She has always been an avid reader and got hooked on fantasy after reading ‘Lord of the Rings’ at a young age. She dabbled at writing all through school, college, and university but then life, career and children kind of got in the way. She became serious about writing again when she picked up a copy of ‘The Writing Magazine’ in 2017. It took three years to get her first short story published and meanwhile she completed the ‘Constructing a Novel’ course with The Writer’s Academy. This novel would not be what it is today without that course. Tell us your story. What made you start writing? I have always loved writing and making things up since I was a child. I loved English at school (along with science!) and I made up elaborate games with some of my toys. Between the ages of 16 and 20 I wrote an 80,000-word novel. But I had no idea about POV or editing or who to send it to. I wrote another novel length story in my late twenties, but it was just for my enjoyment. I wrote all through my thirties, but just bits and pieces as I had a career, and then kids came along, and it was harder. But in 2017 I found Writing Magazine and it inspired me to take it seriously. I wrote a novel called The Towers and the Mist… Read More »Jane Shand

About the author Aino was born in Helsinki, Finland, in the ’80s. She’s always loved stories of all sorts, but ever since her mother read her Tolkien’s LoTR when Aino was 5, she has loved fantasy. Overall, Aino is the slightly annoying artsy type who is often wrapped up in her own head. But she can be nice too, especially if you buy her a glass of whiskey. The only constant thing about her personality seems to be that it’s always shifting to the opposite. She doesn’t so much think about the story as she notes it down as it unfurls. Though several neighbors and bypassers might have spied her acting out dialogue and then talking to herself about the flaws. Her passions include shiny things, silliness, and oddly placed melancholy and pathos. On the more boring and factual side: she has studied writing under a few Finnish authors and creative writing when she was in Uni getting her translation degree. Tell us your story? What made you start writing? Nothing in particular. I’ve just always been a story-teller. I made my “first book” when I was 5 or so, since what else would I do with papers, a stapler, and crayons? (I guess mom thought I’d be less of a hazard with a stapler than with scissors after I cut up her evening gown to make doll clothes… She’s never going to stop reminding me of it, not that I’d stop if I was her… It was a one-of-a-kind… Read More »Aino Lahteva