Amanda Hocking has become quite a legend among budding writers – those who publish independently and traditionally. After uploading her Young Adult ebooks to Amazon and Smashwords, she ended up making up a million dollars in a few months. Unsurprisingly, big publishers took notice of her. (Ironically, these publishers rejected her novels over and over again years ago.)

She ended up signing up with St Martin’s Press, for a US$2mil (RM6.4mil) four-book deal.

I had the opportunity to speak to Amanda. The result is my article, published in The Star: Amanda Hocking: A Success Story.

The following is the full transcript of our conversation:

What inspired you to become a writer?
I spent the majority of my childhood sitting in my room writing stories, telling stories, or acting out stories in my backyard. I think it’s something I’ve always wanted to do.

You’ve written about 17 novels by the time you were 26. When did you start writing? What is your writing process like?
I started writing stories as soon as I learned how to write, but I wrote my first novel in high school. I would start writing around 8:00 or 9:00 at night, and then keep going as late as I could. That’s pretty much still how I do it today.

Did you have a day job when you were writing your novels?  
Yes, I was working at a group home for mentally disabled people.

How did you balance writing and your day job?
My job was usually from about 3:00-10:00 PM, so when I got home I would just go to my office, and write until 8:00 or 9:00, go to bed, get up, work, and do it again.

What stories fascinate you?
I think all stories fascinate me, for different reasons. I will read just about anything. I recently saw The Avengers, so right now I’m in kind of a superhero phase.

When did you start trying to get your books published? How was it like?
I wrote my first novel when I was 17, and I started sending query letters to agents immediately after that. I would take a few breaks here and there, but I was pretty much always sending out letters. Now, I realize that the book I wrote when I was 17 was pretty horrible, and the agents were right for not accepting it.

How did you end up publishing your books on the digital platform?
I heard about some people having success with selling their books for e-readers, so I thought I could give it a shot.

You’ve made millions from e-publishing. Did you ever anticipate such a success?
No, not at all. E-publishing was very new to me, so I had no idea what to expect. I’m very thankful to everyone that decided to take a chance, and buy my books though.

How did you react to your success e-publishing?
I was ecstatic. At first, I was taking screen shots of my Amazon sales page if I sold like 30 books in a day. I slowly started selling more and more books each day, and things got pretty crazy. It was fun.

How has success changed your life? I think the thing I’m most grateful for is having an audience. Like I said, I’ve always told stories, but it was mostly to myself, or my mom. To have people actually interested in my books, and to actually pay money to read them, is a huge honor.

What do you think is the secret to your success?
I have no idea. I try to write books that I think people will enjoy, and be entertained by. I think that’s the best anyone can do.

Why did you decide to publish traditionally in the end?
Doing everything on my own got to be a lot of work, I knew that going with a traditional publisher I would have a whole team of people to help me, and to be along with me for the ride. I also wanted to get my books out to people who don’t have e-readers.

How did people react to your decision to go down the traditionally-published route?
I think most people were excited about it. I know there were a few self-published authors who thought I was making a mistake, and that I was a “sell-out” but I never said that I would only be a self-published author, and I think I made the best choice for me and my career.

How has your writing process changed now that you are traditionally published?
My writing process hasn’t changed at all. The editing process is definitely much smoother now. Before I would have to try and find editors online to go over my work, and I didn’t always like their style, or agree with what they said. The editor I have now at my publisher is amazing, and working with her is a lot of fun.

What was it like seeing your books in print?
I was on a book tour when Switched came out, so I got to see a lot of different covers, and a lot of different stores/displays, so that was a lot of fun.

What inspired you to write Switched?
I had this idea to write a book about a changeling, and while I was doing research I came across some Scandinavian folklore about trolls that described them as beautiful, ill-tempered, intelligent creatures. I thought that sounded really interesting, and that’s how the whole series got started.

What are you currently working on?
Right now I’m working on the last book in the Watersong series, which is a four book series. The first book, WAKE, is coming out this Summer.

What advice would you give budding novelists?
I think the best advice I can give is to get a lot of advice. Before you start sending letters to agents, or throwing your book online, it’s good to know what you’re getting into, and what’s going to work the best for you.

Nina Amir is an “Inspiration-to-Creation Coach” who enjoys motivating writers to “fulfill their purpose and live inspired lives.”

The veteran journalist and book editor lives in the Santa Cruz Mountains above Los Gatos, California. Her book, How to Blog a Book: How to Write, Publish and Promote Your Work One Post at a Time (Writer’s Digest Books), was just published and has already received good reviews on Amazon.com.

My article on her book and the concept, Blog a Book, recently appeared in The Star.

I stumbled across Nina’s book while googling for something or another one day and was immediately fascinated by her blog and her book, which was not released then.

Nina’s detailed reply to my questions was such a treasure trove of information that I feel it needful to reproduce on my blog:

What does “blogging a book” mean?
Blogging a book means composing your manuscript on the internet using blog technology. Basically, you write, publish and promote your book at one post at a time on the Internet. This produces the first draft of your book, or your second, depending upon how much editing you do prior to hitting the “publish” button. It also produces an author’s platform, or a fan base, so you have a built-in readership for the printed book or ebook once it is released.

How did you get the idea for “blog the book?”
I was asked to serve as a speaker on a panel at the San Francisco Writers Conference; the panel was about blogging and blogging books, but I noticed no one on the panel was an expert on blogging books per se. I thought the idea of blogging a book was a fabulous one, checked around and noticed nobody seemed to be writing or teaching anything on how to blog a book. So, a month prior to the conference I started a blog with the intention of blogging a book about how to blog a book. I called it How to Blog a Book (www.howtoblogabook.com). I, therefore, became the expert on the topic, and over time I drove my blog to the #1 Google position with the search terms how to blog a book, blog a book, and blogging a book.

The premise was simple. I thought I would apply the principles I use with my writing, book and author coaching clients to blogging a book. I would take readers of the blogged book through what I call the “proposal process” and have them see their idea through the eyes of an agent or publisher. In other words, I would show them how to evaluate their blogged book through the lens of all the sections in a book proposal evaluating its marketability online and off and their own ability to help a book succeed—to actually be an author or a successful author. I would explain how to map out all the book’s content and to write posts that would garner traffic (readers). They would then begin writing and promoting the book online, in the process building the coveted author’s platform necessary to land a traditional book deal or to successfully launch any book.

I finished blogging my book in five months by writing 3-4 posts per week.

Can you briefly explain the process?
I basically did so above. However, after the evaluation process and after mapping out the content and coming up with a promotion plan, etc., you begin writing your book one post at a time off line and then publishing it using blog technology. You create a manuscript off line using a word processing document, which you later edit, and you post 250-500 word pieces of the manuscript to the blog consistently—I suggest 3-5 times per week.

You then promote the blog with social networking, commenting on other blogs and using other means, such as ezine articles, traditional media, writing for publications, speaking, etc.

If you garner a large amount of traffic for the blog, a publisher or agent may come knocking. If not, you may need to write a query letter and look for an agent to help you find a publisher. In either case, at some point in the process it’s a good idea to take the information accumulated during the proposal process and place it in a proposal, have that edited professionally, and begin submitting it to publishers. (Or have it ready for when a publisher finds you.)

If you don’t land a publishing deal, you can take your blogged book, revise the manuscript, get it edited, and turn it into a POD (print on demand) book, some other type of self-published book or an ebook, and sell it yourself.

What are the benefits of blogging a book?
Eighty-one percent of Americans say they have a book inside them waiting to come out. Most of them never get it written. I’m sure the statistics are similar in other countries.

Today, a good idea and good writing are not enough to make you a published author—at least not a nonfiction author. You need an author’s platform—a huge number of people who know you in some capacity—a fan base—who likely will buy a book you write. If you can prove that you can sell books, you prove you are a good business partner for a publisher.

Blogging a book is the fastest and easiest way to write your book and promote it—build platform—at the same time. If you don’t want to take the time to promote yourself or your work, and you aren’t finding the time to write your books, blogging your book may be just the solution to your problem. Plus, more blogs are getting discovered by publishers today than ever before and turned into books. So, if you blog a book you might actually land a book deal—or at the least, end up with a readership large enough to convince a publisher your blog deserves to be a book. If you decide to self-publish your book, you’ll also have created the fan base to produce a successful book.

How did people react to the idea?
Almost unanimously aspiring authors and publishing and book marketing professionals have thought the idea is a fabulous one. Aspiring writers, especially those who would like to land a traditional publishing deal and know they need an author’s platform to do so, are hopping on board. Publishers and book marketing experts alike agree that a blog offers writers the best tool for building platform today. And most writers don’t want to take the time to build platform. Blogging, therefore, allows them to write—or write their book—and build platform while actually producing the first draft of their manuscript. They kill the proverbial two birds with one stone.

If you want to hear what industry experts are saying, here are a few of the testimonials I’ve received:

“Recycling your blog posts into a book may provide the easiest way to write a book, and How to Blog a Book provides the plan for producing both the blog and a book that agents, publishers and readers will notice.”

Dan Poynter, The Self-Publishing Manual and How to Write Nonfiction, www.parapublishing.com

“Blogging is a great way to create content for a book. Now Nina has put together a road map for getting a book out of your blog posts. Check out How to Blog a Book. It covers all the stops along the way to your destination as a published author.”
John Kremer, author of 1001 Ways to Market Your Book, www.bookmarket.com

The old saying, Kill two birds with one stone, is the perfect metaphor for what Nina teaches in this valuable book. Blog with the intention of turning the accumulated material into a complete trade book is a brilliant concept.
Jeff Herman, Literary agent, www.jeffherman.com

“If you are just starting out as a blogger or if you already have 15,000 posts online, Nina Amir’s How to Blog a Book, has the plan for you. You can’t go wrong with this book. Written to provide you with the easiest path from screen to page, How to Blog a Book, gets you there while helping you to dodge many pitfalls and common frustrations. Read it and learn.”
Shane Birley, co-author of Blogging for Dummies, www.shanesworld.ca

Writers were often told that if their books end up online, there goes the publishing deal. However, you are encouraging readers to blog their first manuscript right there on the blog. Why is that?

It’s true that some publishers balk at previously published material. For the most part these days, publishers see a popular blog as a successfully test marketed book idea. According to the president of Hyperion Books, prior to blogging technology publishers had no way to test market a book idea effectively. What better way to use a blog for this purpose than to actually plan out your books content and publish it on a blog?

I did exactly that and had my blogged book picked up by a publisher who specializes in books on writing and publishing. They seem to think the premise is a good one! They didn’t mind that a good bit of the book had already been published in cyberspace. I do, however, suggest that book bloggers hold back some material and plan on releasing that in the printed or ebook version.

How would you describe a quality blog post?
This really depends upon the type of book you are writing, if you are talking specifically about a post related to a blogged book.

If you are talking in general about blogging, a quality post has great information or thought-provoking information.

If you want it to generate great SEO, it has to contain keywords so it is searchable and helps your site rise in the search engine results pages.

It has to add value to the lives of those that read it, or strike an emotional chord.

It should generate reader engagement, in the form of comments, conversation, or shares or likes.

What about those who have an existing blog but did not start out their blog with a proposal in mind? How can they turn their blog posts into an eBook?
Yes, they can repurpose their posts into a book, or “book their blog.” And turning it into an ebook is a great idea. Ebooks are hot right now; it’s a great market to get into, and just like blogs offer inexpensive ways to write, publish and promote books, ebooks offer an inexpensive way to turn that final draft of your blogged books into a saleable product. Aspiring authors can become published authors in no time flat with an ebook. I highly recommend they take this route. (Of course, book bloggers become authors as soon as they begin hitting that “publish” button on their blog.)

You mention that one can blog a novel too. How does one do that?
Blogging a novel is a bit trickier. The chapters in novels aren’t as easy to break into small pieces; it’s easier to do this with a nonfiction book. However, there are novelists doing so. You simply have to find logical places to break your writing so you are still posting short pieces on line and not long ones. This keeps your readers coming back to “turn the page,” if you will.

I think this works best for novels with short chapters so you basically serialize the novel. If you post 1,000 words at a time, rather than, say, 500 or 750 words, you will blog your book very quickly and not build up a readership. I have, however, heard of some novelists who blog one book fairly quickly and then go on to blog another immediately afterward. Some do this on the same blog and some start a new blog. They build a readership simply by churning out a lot of content and great stories one after the other.

If you are blogging nonfiction, I suggest your post length range from 250-500 words. By keeping the length short, you will blog your book over a longer period of time. This allows you to build a readership for the printed book.

How did the book deal with Writers Digest come about?
I already had a literary agent. She was peddling another writing-related book for me at the time when I finished the first draft of How to Blog a Book on the blog. I was concerned about being first to market with the book. My agent encouraged me quickly to write a proposal. As soon as I was done, she began marketing the How to Blog a Book proposal to publishers instead of the other. We got turned down by a few publishers (2 or 3); Writer’s Digest Books, however, voiced strong interest, although we had to submit there twice and wait quite a long time to hear back from them. Once they said “yes,” like me, they were in a hurry to get it published. In fact, I signed the contract in July 2011 and the book will be released in April 2012. That’s pretty fast for most traditional publishers.

What does it mean to “repurpose” content?
This means reusing content in other ways and for different purposes, such as taking a series of blog posts on one topic and putting them together into a short ebook, or one blog post and rewriting it for a press release or an article—or the majority of a blog and turning it into a book. You can repurpose an article you wrote into a couple of blog posts or a social network status update or comment on a blog into a blog post as well. Additionally, you could take a blog post and repurpose the same material into a Youtube video or into an audio clip or break it down into a series of tips you post as Twitter status updates.

Some people believe that blog posts should remain as they are – with errors and all – when included in the book as it’s more authentic. What do you think about that?
I don’t think that’s the best strategy if you want to gain new readers—buyers—to a book. I consider the blogged book, or the blog, your first draft. I coach people to write their book in a word processing program in post-sized bits that they then publish on their blog. This becomes their first draft. Just like any writer or aspiring author, that first draft then goes through several more drafts. It needs both developmental and line editing. It needs to get fleshed out, polished. That’s why my book went from 26,300 words, the length of the online book, to more than double that word count in the final draft. And the writing is cleaner, I’ve included more and better content, and I’ve included new content you can’t find on the blog. That makes the printed book attractive both to my regular readers and to new readers. Everyone will find something new in the book.

And why would anyone want to read a book—or publish a book—with errors? That makes no sense to me. You want to put your best work in print. You want to look professional.

There are blog-to-book programs available. They will print your book so it looks exactly like your blog. I don’t suggest that. You want your book, when it is finished, to look and read like a book. Let the blog be a blog and your book be a book—even if you are booking your blog.

How did you end up in the writing life?
I began writing when I was quite young—probably in elementary school. I used to write stories about horses. And I’d illustrate them, too

In high school I thought I wanted to grow up and become a novelist, because I loved reading so much. However, my mother told me only “a really good writer can make a living as a novelist.” So, I assumed she was trying to tell me something. I then took a journalism class, and discovered I could have a career—maybe not well paying, but a career—as a journalist. So, I went to college and became trained as a magazine journalist.

That led me to writing and editing jobs on magazines, other publications and even in corporations and businesses. Later, I took on a job editing a book for someone I knew. My professor in college had told me books were just a series of articles on the same topic strung together. So, I figured I could edit a book since I could write and edit articles. That’s how I became a book editor, and later a book, writing and author coach and consultant. It’s also how I became an author. I applied the same principle to blogging a book—lots of posts on one topic strung together into a book.

What do you love about working with words?
I can express myself, my thoughts and my feelings clearly. I can explore thoughts, concepts and ideas. I can reach people, touch people, create change in the world on a variety of levels. Oh…and I can be sure my words mean what I want them to mean…unlike when I speak. Sometimes I say things and the words come out wrong or are misinterpreted or misunderstood. That happens a lot less when I write.

Publishers have been compiling blog posts into books for some time now. However, veteran journalist Nina Amir says that “blogging a book” is a different thing altogether.

“Blogging a book means composing your manuscript on the Internet using blog technology. Basically, you write, publish and promote your book one post at a time on the Internet,” says the California-based Amir via e-mail.

Do read my article, Blog a Book, which is about the concept and on Amir’s book How to Blog a Book.

So, just how do you go about this? Nina gives a few tips:

1. Choose a topic. By this I mean a topic you feel passionate about. You are blogging a book, but you will need to blog about the topic long after you have completed the manuscript. You can’t just stop blogging after the book is published. So choose your topic carefully.

2. Hone your subject. After you choose your topic, compare the idea for your book and your topic to the other books already published on your topic and to the blogs being written on your topic. Make sure the book you plan to blog will be unique in the blogosphere and in the online and brick and mortar bookstores.

3. Map out your book’s content. Actually do what is called a mind map and come up with all the content for your book. You can also simply outline your book. When you are done, you should have a complete table of contents and be able to write a chapter-by-chapter synopsis. This becomes your writing guide.

4. Break your content into post-sized pieces. For nonfiction books, you will write posts of 250-500 words. While most books have 5-10 subheads, yours will have 10-20. Each of these represents a blog post. If you are writing fiction, you need to figure out if you can find a way to break up the action in your chapters logically. (This may or may not work with preplanning.) Memoirs could be written with vignettes later pulled together in the second draft. Prior to writing, though, you will want to plan this small content chunks out as much as possible.

5. Create a business plan for your book. The book proposal aspiring authors turn into an agent or publisher is, for all practical purposes, a business plan. While you don’t need a proposal to begin blogging a book, you do need to look at your book idea through the lens of a proposal. (And if you plan on trying to land a traditional publishing deal, you’ll eventually need a book proposal.) So, I suggest you look at your idea through the eyes of an agent or publisher and go through what I call the proposal process and accumulate all the information necessary for a proposal. This will help you see the big picture of your blogged book idea. When you are done, you’ll know if the idea is a marketable one—one that has a chance of success in the market or in your niche online as a blog and offline as a printed book or even as an ebook. You’ll also know if you are cut out to be an author—to be a good business partner for a publisher or to do what it takes to successfully self-publish a book.

During the proposal process you ask questions like:

Does what I have to say add value?
Is there a market for this book?
Who are my readers?
What is my competition?
Is my topic or approach to the topic unique?
How will I position myself in the market?
How will I promote my blogged book to attract readers?
What content will I include in my blogged book?
How will I organize the book (and, thereby, my blog)?

6. Set up a blog. This is pretty obvious…

7. Learn how to promote your blog. Your business plan must have a promotion plan built into it. This includes promotion online through social media and offline through speaking, media appearances, writing for publications, etc.

Tomorrow: Interview with Nina Amir

Carol Berg‘s latest book The Daemon Prism, the third book in The Novels of the Collegia Magica series, is finally out!

To commemorate that, here’s the transcript of an interview I did with her in 2010. (The article that came out of it was World Weaver, which was published in The Star on May 30, 2010.)

When did you first start writing?
I started late, about halfway through my 17-year software engineering career and at a time my children were needing less of my time. A friend suggested we start writing a series of e-mail letters “in character” so she could practice her writing. It sounded fun, not near so hard as planning and writing a whole story, which I had always imagined next to impossible. When I sat down to write the first letter, I came up with twenty pages. I was astonished, and I was hooked.

What kind of stories interest you most?
Complex, layered stories about interesting people caught up in dramatic adventures. I want to like the protagonist – eventually if not at first. And I want a satisfying ending, not artificially happily ever after, but not ambiguous or unrelentingly grim.

What does your family think about your career?
My husband has been totally supportive throughout it all. He is thrilled that I’ve discovered work I’m passionate about. Writing is not just “a job.” My sons are also enthusiastic supporters. When my youngest son Andrew was in seventh and eighth grade, and I was still writing for myself, he would come in and have me read my work to him. He kept coming back for more, which was a great encouragement. He still likes to read my work before it gets printed.

Of course, my eldest son, a musician, has told me he thinks my books need more pictures. I threw a book at him.

What spurred you to quit your full time job at HP to write full-time? was there a particular event?
Actually yes. In 2002, my employer Hewlett-Packard Co. bought Compaq Computer. One of the first things they did after the merger was offer to pay those who had been with the company more than fifteen years to leave. I felt as if it was an IQ test which I passed.

How was the transition like?
Very easy. I was already working at engineering only three days a week and writing for the other four. I just dropped that old day-job stuff.

Have you always wanted to be a writer?
Actually, I never believed I could write a book. I have always been an avid reader of many genres, fantasy and science fiction, mystery, spy thrillers, classics, you name it. But the idea of figuring out a complicated plot, making characters come to life, foreshadowing events so that a reader would say, “Ah-ha!” just seemed horribly difficult. For many, many years, I was content to read, and channel my creative efforts into my work as a software engineer and my family.

How long did it take for you to get published?
I wrote for the sheer pleasure of it for about nine years, never imagining anyone else would want to read my stories. Along the way, I picked up bits of information about the craft of writing. Eventually I entered a few contests and got some good feedback. In 1998, I started a new story and knew it was better than anything I’d written thus far. (That was Song of the Beast.) When I finished it, I started Transformation and knew that was the best thing I’d done thus far. Meanwhile my friend and I went to a regional writers conference to learn about publishing. A year and a half later, I sold Song of the Beast, Transformation, and the book that became Revelation and Restoration.

How did you feel when you finally got published?
Elated. Disbelieving. I still don’t quite believe it. I see myself as a very ordinary person – wife, mother, teacher, engineer. I took up this hobby, and wow, here I am doing an interview for a Malaysian publication!

What drew you to the fantasy genre?
I’ve always read across many genres: mysteries, historical fiction, classics, adventure, fantasy, science fiction, mountain climbing stories, mythology, spy thrillers, romantic suspense, and so on. What I love about fantasy is that it is such a grand canvas for telling any human story. Its “genre prescriptions” are very minor, and one can incorporate all the delights of these other types of stories.

Your characters are often put through quite a bit of torture in your books! Is there a reason why?
It’s true, I am not easy on my heroes and heroines. Conflict is the meat of a good story. Conflict changes people.  And in order to make people change, in order to make them do things they really, really don’t want to do – to be truly heroic – I confront them with hard events. My characters tend to be smart and strong, which means their challenges have to be hard, mentally or physically or both.

What’s your writing process like?
I am not an outliner. Most of the time I begin with an image of a character in a bad situation – a handsome, arrogant young warrior riding through the desert, as if bound for a great destiny, though I know he is currently unworthy of it (whatever it is) or my poor musician getting released after seventeen years of torment still not knowing why he had been imprisoned. Or I get struck by something I hear, like a news feature on our National Public Radio entitled The Last Lighthouse that gets me thinking about lighthouses and what they do. Which, of course, led to the development of the Lighthouse Duet. As to the events in the unfolding plot, I come up with them along the way, always trying to think: what would these people really do, and how can I turn these events upon their heads. I keep notes and timelines and “who knows what lists” that I develop as I go.

What do you think about your books becoming eBooks?
I think it’s terrific. Clearly more and more readers are reading on electronic devices, often in addition to paper books.

But I do think someone is going to have to do something about piracy. I’ve seen “torrent sites” where 1,500 copies of one of my books have been downloaded, and there are hundreds of these sites. Authors get not a cent from pirated books. This not only prevents them getting royalties, ie. income! But also it cuts into their sales, which means publishers won’t pick up their next works. Readers will eventually be stuck with the twenty bestselling authors and miss out on lots of wonderful stories.

Among all your books – who’s your favourite character and why?
Oh, that is like asking which of my children I like the most! Valen from the Lighthouse Books, is my delight. But Anne, Portier, Dante, and Ilario … new in the Collegia Magica books … are all waving their hands at me. And then there is Seyonne … and Aleksander. Aidan is incurably romantic, and I loved Gerick from when he was a troubled ten-year-old, all the way to maturity. And that’s not even getting in to the secondary characters like Saverian and Jen and Paulo … Nope. It’s impossible to answer that.

Would you consider writing other genres?
Possibly. But right now, I’m really enjoying what I write. There are limitless possibilities in fantasy.

What do you enjoy most about being a writer right now?
I love having readers tell me they reread my books and find new things in them on each pass through. That’s the relationship I have with my favorite books. I enjoy meeting readers at conventions and conferences. I enjoy the writing itself – even when it is hard – especially feeling the pieces of a story fall into place by the end.

What do you say to aspiring fantasy writers?
Here are the pieces I consider essential for a fantasy that I want to read:

1. Complex characters that live and breathe, who have all the richness of human beings (even if they are not quite human). The genre has far too many pasteboard heroes.

2. Intelligent, likeable heroes and heroines and intelligent, complex villains. People who are not all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good or all-evil.

3. A world that hangs together logically, that while I am reading, makes me believe it could exist, even including its fantastic elements.

These things require lots of hard thinking, true research, and hard work at the craft of writing.

How many more books do you have in you?
Many more, I hope.

The publishing industry is a brutal one, and staying published is a challenge – how do you manage to keep being published?
Mostly it is thanks to faithful readers, who not only buy my books, but write reviews or recommend them to friends and coworkers. I like to think that happens because I work hard to create stories I am passionate about. Readers do need to know that almost every author they follow is on the verge of being dropped.

Finally, if you can spare us some details about the second book after Spirit Lens, it’ll be wonderful.

The Soul Mirror takes up the story four years after the ending of The Spirit Lens. The missing perpetrator has not been found. Strange things have been happening around Castelle Escalon, which lead Portier and the king to believe that they have not ended the conspiracy, but only delayed its result. And our renegade sorcerer has become more erratic and much more dangerous.

But it is the abrupt murder of one of the witnesses from the trial that sets a new train of events in motion.Our librarian friend Portier does not tell this portion of the story. The narrator is Anne de Vernase, who was herself a most important witness in the culminating trial in The Spirit Lens. Anne is reserved and intelligent and very, very disciplined. She is a skeptic when it comes to magic and despises its practitioners (except for her sister). Which means, of course, that she is thrown into a situation where everything she believes is turned upside down, and she is forced to confront some Very Bad Things, including our scary renegade mage, with only her wits. And that’s before she starts hearing voices and seeing … mmm … apparitions.

Kami Garcia (left) and Margaret Stohl

Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl’s Beautiful Creatures was the first YA novel I bought in eBook format. The book had garnered such praise that I couldn’t resist taking a look. I was indeed impressed by what I read, and instantly identified with Ethan, the popular yet lonely boy in the Southern town of Gatlin. (Not that I was popular in my youth, but I was a thinker like Ethan, always thinking deeply about the issues of identity and belonging.)

I met Stohl at the MPH Reader’s lounge at Mid Valley megamall, and I found out that this was her first visit to Malaysia and that she had spent “a good four hours eating” the night before.

“I always say my favourite food is food,” she said, laughing.

It is always such a pleasure to speak to writers. I regard all of them as my sifus and take every opportunity to learn from them. And they have such wisdom! The result of our conversation is the article, Margaret Stohl finds her voice, which was published a few days after Christmas.

The following is a partial transcript of our conversation.

How did you end up writing Beautiful Creatures?
I’ve wanted to be a writer my whole life and I’ve been working as a writer for 20 years but never writing a book. Because it was the thing I most wanted to do and I think I was afraid that I’d fail. So I wrote video games for 16 years. I wrote animation, screenplays before that for Nickelodeon Pictures …. And then I finally stopped making video games and really wanted to write but I didn’t know what I wanted to do and I was messing around with different things when I went out with Kami Garcia, who was my daughter’s teacher.

She taught all three of my daughters and she was a Reading Specialist. And what we have in common is a love of books. So we came up with this idea and the rest happened really quickly after that. I came home from lunch and told my eldest daughter who is a teenager that we were going to write a book and she laughed and laugh and thought it was the funniest thing.

And I said, “No, really, I’m going to write a book!” And she said, “Mummy you may think you’re going to write a book but in three days you’ll be doing something else because you never finish anything. And I said, “Oh, it’s on! I’m writing that book and I’m going to show you. And that’s exactly what happened. It took me 12 weeks.

We had to revise it after that for nine months but the draft was finished in 12 weeks and I won the bet. Although if you ask what I won all I can say is I made a teenager cry.

How did you get over your fear of writing that novel?
For me it was my daughter. You do things for your kids you won’t do for yourself. And I just had to do it do it without thinking too much about it. I think it was because we weren’t writing it to be sold. We were just writing to tell them the story. And I wrote it for my teenagers and Kami’s half sister who is a teenager and their best friends. So, seven teenagers. It’s actually quite easy to write when you know who you’re writing for. And it was almost like writing a bedtime story for these children. When it was over I was so happy that she resepcted me that I won the bet that I honestly didn’t care what happened to the story.

And my friend who was a middle grade writer – a writer for younger children – sent the manuscript without telling me to his agent. So she called me and I didn’t even know who it was. And I’m quite shy on the phone so I pretended I did. And I called Kami after and said, “Well, the good news is someone likes the book. The bad news I don’t know her name, her phone number or where she works. But she eventually tracked us down. And then everything happened really quickly.

We had multiple offers. Amazon declared it the No.1 teen book and No.5 adult book which is something they’ve never done except for Harry Potter.

And then the movie rights sold. And all that happened before the book even came out. So then my life changed really, really quickly and everything was very strange for a while. Then I sort of got used to it and things got back to normal.

How did your life change?
Instead of being afraid to sort of call myself a writer. Then suddenly I really was a writer. And it was in the news. My friends were all writers. I met the people who were doing what I do. And I sort of found this whole other world. I found my tribe.

It felt great. I was in Paris when my book hit the NYT best seller list and I remember that was one of the great nights of my life. Also, the day the publishers sent me the book for the first time and I held it in my hands. That was a really big day for me. And that was exciting.

Why write young adult fiction?

I always say I didn’t choose it. It chose me. It’s where my voice is. I read a lot of Young adult books. I think I’ve always been interested in fantasy and imagined universes. The most creative place now is the teen genre.

How do you write with Kami?
In Europe they ask me, “How do you write with four hands?” That’s what it feels like. I will send her my pages, and she she will send me her notes. And I will do the same. We trade chunks of writing and we are very critical of each other. I would write over her writing and she will do the same.

Why do you think supernatural-themed fiction is so popular?
I’ve met with students and readers in Canada, US, here … I am surprised by how similar teenagers are. Their life is controlled by standardised tests. They feel that they don’t have any control and that decisions are made for them. The fundamental story for our book is Lena not being able to choose for herself. I think that’s a “teen feeling”.

Fantasy is a way of exploring dangerous and powerful emotions and topics. When you’re writing about supernatural powers you’re writing about emotional power.

Some YA novels have been adapted successfully into movies, and some not so well. Do you worry about the fate of the movie based on your books?
I worry about that. But I could never control it. (The movie) is casting right now and filming in April. They’re putting really well-known actors in the adult roles. Not that many books are made into movies, however. Many are optionied, which is a halfway step.

What can you tell me about the last book of the series?
The last book is very much the end of the series. It is very closely connected to the third book they’re almost two halfs of one book. And the stakes are the very highest. The feeling of writing the last book is like a cross between a funeral, a wedding and a graduation. When I finished writing the draft I cried and when Kami finished writing her part of the draft she cried and when the editor finished reading it she cried. It’s just so emotional to finally have this world closing.

Is it possible to return to the world eventhough you’ve closed the chapter?
We really don’t know. Obviously with the movie coming up there’s a lot of pressure to do more. Right now I think it’s important for both Kami and I to explore our own voices.We are going to do that and we’ll always be friends and the possibility will always remain. I will never say never.

Any chance of writing a vampire novel?
Who can say? I don’t know.

More from Margaret:

“I can’t stand books where monumental things happen and the character just moves on. Your fantasy has to be quite real and honest emotionally.”

“Teens are very critical. They can smell a phony from miles away and they will tell you. I’m very respectful of the people I write for.”

To writers: “Be kind with yourself and be patient. And carry a book with you and write down your ideas. The difference between someone who is a writer and who is not is that they start writing …  I tell students to ‘sit down and write the worst book you can’.”

“I love books and readers. I love talking about books. I love bloggers. They’re the same in every country. I really like the YA book community. The writers are my very good friends.

It’s really strange because you’d think we’d be competitive. But we’re not. They say: ‘The rising tides lift all the boats.’ Because they want everyone to be reading YA.”

From her prolific pen comes tortured characters, living amazing lives in wonderful realms.

FROM the thoroughly-grounded-in-the-real-world field of software engineering, Carol Berg travelled as far as a person possibly could, to publishing best-selling fantasy novels. And this she did after working for multinational technology corporation Hewlett-Packard for 17 years. Talk about a late bloomer!

Though Berg was an avid reader as a child, this native of the American state of Texas – born at the “foot of the Rockies”, as she puts it – was caught up by science and the excitement of the US space programme, which was in its golden years when she was a teen in the 1960s.

Carol Berg is a late blooming author – but she’s certainly catching up quickly, publishing 11 books in one decade,
(Berg doesn’t address questions about her age but the Internet Speculative Fiction Database – tinyurl.com/3xacffy – has her in her early 60s now.)

She didn’t escape creative influences entirely, though, as she comes from a family of teachers, musicians and railroad men (who were, we’ll have you know, very creative in building the great rail network that eventually traversed the length and breadth of the United States!).

But Berg didn’t like writing school papers, she says in an interview at sffworld.com (tinyurl.com/386skrs), so she took maths and eventually got a degree in maths and another in computer science. She taught secondary school-level math for several years before becoming a software engineer for Hewlett-Packard. And there she stayed for almost two decades.

So how does one go from that to producing 11 fantasy novels in a decade, not to mention being a finalist or a winner in some form of awards or another almost every year since then 2000?

“Actually, I never believed I could write a book,” says Berg in an e-mail interview.

“… The idea of figuring out a complicated plot, making characters come to life, foreshadowing events so that a reader would say, ‘Ah-ha!’ just seemed horribly difficult.”

However, the writing bug finally bit her halfway through her engineering career, sometime in 1989. A friend suggested that they start writing a series of e-mail letters “in character” so that she could practice her writing. It sounded like a fun and easy exercise, so Berg decided to give it a go.

“When I sat down to write the first letter, I came up with 20 pages. I was astonished, and I was hooked,” she says.

She continued writing just “for the sheer pleasure of it” and although she read many genres, found herself attracted mainly to the fantasy genre: “What I love about fantasy is that it is such a grand canvas for telling any human story,” she explains.

For nine years she wrote her tales, never thinking that anyone would read them. Then, in 1998, one of her novels, Song of the Beast, about a musician who could “sing” visions, won a contest for unpublished authors at a writers’ conference in Colorado, United States. Somehow, she ended up reading her newest story, Transformation, to an editor from Penguin Putnam there.

“A year and a half later, I sold Song of the Beast, Transformation and the book that became Revelation and Restoration,” she says.

In 2002, when her company gave those who had been employees for 15 years the option of retiring early with pay, Berg grabbed the opportunity and became a full-time author. She soon began producing some of the best novels in the fantasy genre.

After Song of the Beast (published 2003), came the Books of the Rai-kirah (comprising Transformation, Revelation and Restoration, published 2000-2002), The Bridge of D’Arnath (Son of Avonar, Guardians of the Keep, The Soul Weaver and Daughter of Ancients, 2004-2005), and The Lighthouse Duet (Flesh and Spirit, Breath and Bone, 2007-2008).

Berg is currently working on The Novels of the Collegia Magica. The first book, The Spirit Lens, was published early this year, and she’s putting the finishing touches to the second book, The Soul Mirror.

Her family – Berg is married to Pete, a mechanical engineer, and has three sons “just about out of the nest” – thinks that her job is absolutely cool.

“Of course, my eldest son, a musician, has told me he thinks my books need more pictures. I threw a book at him,” she says.

I have to admit to being a Berg fan; I think her books are fantastic – if you’re not one of her characters, that is. It’s not unusual to find some of them undergoing wince-inducing torture, imprisonment and enduring all kinds of injuries and injustices throughout the series.

“It’s true, I am not easy on my heroes and heroines,” Berg says, but then, conflict is the meat of a good story, she adds.

“Conflict changes people. And in order to make people change, in order to make them do things they really, really don’t want to do – to be truly heroic – I confront them with hard events,” she explains.

In fact, her books are usually born when she imagines a character in a terrible situation!

“A handsome, arrogant young warrior riding through the desert, as if bound for a great destiny, though I know he is currently unworthy of it (whatever it is), or my poor musician getting released after 17 years of torment still not knowing why he had been imprisoned,” she says.

Alternatively, she might be struck by something she heard or read. She was inspired to write The Lighthouse Duet duology after hearing a news feature on US National Public Radio about The Last Lighthouse.

“I (always try to think): what would these people really do, and how can I turn these events upon their heads. I keep notes and timelines and ‘who knows what’ lists that I develop as I go,” she says.

Till this day, Berg, who calls herself a “confirmed introvert”, is amazed by the fact that she has published 11 books and is now speaking at conventions, writers’ conferences and events.

“I still don’t quite believe it. I see myself as a very ordinary person – wife, mother, teacher, engineer. I took up this hobby, and wow, here I am doing an interview for a Malaysian publication!”

But Berg’s success is a rare story in the brutal publishing industry; staying published is always a challenge. Berg attributes her success to her readers who not only buy the books but write reviews and recommend them to friends and colleagues.

“I like to think that happens because I work hard to create stories I am passionate about. Readers do need to know that almost every author they follow is on the verge of being dropped,” she says.

Which is why, although she is thrilled that her books are now being turned into eBooks (authors get a bigger cut from eBook sales), she isn’t happy about how eBooks are pirated.

“I’ve seen ‘torrent sites’ where 1,500 copies of one of my books have been downloaded, and there are hundreds of these sites,” she says. (Torrent sites are based on a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol used for distributing large amounts of data.)

Authors do not get a cent from pirated books, and this prevents them from getting royalties – much needed income.

“It cuts into an author’s sales, which means publishers won’t pick up their next work. Readers will eventually be stuck with the 20 best-selling authors and miss out on lots of wonderful stories,” she says.

We do hope that’s never going to be Berg’s fate, as she has more than a few books still in her head. There are limitless possibilities in fantasy, she says, and right now Berg is content to stay in the genre, producing tales about broken men and women living in magical but devastated worlds who manage to overcome it all to emerge triumphant.

This article originally appeared in The Star on May 30, 2010.

(I interviewed Tim Harford via e-mail to get his thoughts about economics, his new book The Logic of Life. He replied my questions while flying to a book tour destination, that hardworking fellow! Read my article, which was published in The Star, Everyman’s Economist.)

Tim Harford achieved the impossible with me: He made economics fun.

The writer of the The Undercover Economist (a book and a column) said that “Economics is not just about the study of commercial transactions but about the way we make choices, especially hard choices – choices about voting, crime, alcohol or the response to racial discrimination.”

Harford never expected his book to reach such heights, and to become a bestseller at that!

(Read Pursuing Perfection, my article in The Star. I interviewed Picoult over the telephone – she was in Singapore on a book tour.)

Can you guess what really attracted me to Jodi Picoult’s works the first time?

The book’s fonts.

Yes, not exactly the most logical thing, but I loved the edtions by Washington Square Press.  The books were so nicely packaged, the fonts just the right size and type, the book just the perfect size and thickness. So I gravitated towards the books, picked one up as if it was some delicate toy and read the back covers.

Of course, like many other Picoult readers, I was then attracted to the dilemmas the characters suffered. Salem Falls was my first book and I really felt for the character.

“Salem Falls is the one place where the character doesn’t get his come uppance, because he couldn’t because of the end of it,” Picoult told me over the phone in early May. Boy, did I feel the same. I stamped my feet towards the end, sniffing, “No fair!”

She also talks quite a bit about religion too, and it’s pretty obvious where her political leanings lie:

“Keeping Faith is about religion and spirituality and the differences between them. It also examines how religion and politics never were separate in America.”

She speaks about how Americans are thought of as a “wildly religious group”, and about the rise of a Christian evangelical group that seem to preach the gospel but endorse causes that seem so contrary to its message, such as the death penalty.

“And in addition to that they (evangelicals) are working very hard to make sure that the politicians elected to run the country are also people of faith – their faith.

“Just because someone endorses something different from your own beliefs, it might not just be as valid – and I think it’s a dangerous place to be for the country.”

Then she talks at length about the Barack Obama, and how he had to be shown that he goes to church, but then his minister starts saying racially biased comments but all of a sudden he has to distance themselves.
“Its ridiculous the machinations politicians have to go through to get the right demographic vote.”

I thought the same too, wondering why it’s so important that Barack has to tell Americans that he’s not a Muslim but a Christian over and over again on TV.

But enough of that – here’s my newspaper article about Jodi, Pursuing Perfection where she talks about how she started on her writing path, her future novels and ghost hunting.