[It’s that time of the year again when The New Kindle Book Review is running its Best Indie Books of the Year awards. Top five finalists for the 2013 awards in various genres were announced September 1, 2013. In keeping with our tradition established last year in the first year of the awards, we have asked each of the finalists who care to participate to provide us two pieces: a dream interview and a dream review. Although these will appear under my byline and Caleb Pirtle’s, the posts are the work of the finalist authors. We hope you enjoy them and use them as an introduction to the works of these fine writers.-SW]

Today’s dream interview is of Lea Carter, author of Silver Majesty, a finalist in the Young Adult genre.

 

Phil:  Ladies and gentlemen, this is Phil Morrow, welcoming you to today’s episode of Write ’em and Read ’em, where we interview the authors and their public.  Today we have with us Lea Carter, a contestant in the 2013 Kindle Book Review Best Indie Book Awards…

Lea:  (Laughs)  I’m happy to be here, thrilled in fact.  I know I love learning what I can about my favorite authors, and of course, picking up new authors to try out as I learn more about them.  Thank you for having me today.

Phil:  Our pleasure.  So, when did you first decide you wanted to be an author?

Lea:  Well, I don’t remember deciding to be an author, actually.  But I did once find a part of story that I’d started working on, back before I’d learned how to write cursive…

Phil:  Wow, so it was actually on paper?

Lea:  Mhmm.  Oh, yes, this was long before computers were in every home!  I…that’s kind of odd to think about, isn’t it?  We’re so used to having computers now.  (Laughs)  Dating myself with that one!

Phil:  (Laughs)  And now your books are out as…what is it you call them?

Lea:  EBooks, that’s what I call them and have heard them called.  But yes, I think my earliest example of writing would have to be that story, which I started when I was nine years old.

Phil:  Did you ever finish it?

Lea:  Um, no.  (Laughs)  In fact, I think I lost it over the years.

Phil:  Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.  I’m sure I would’ve enjoyed reading it.  Of course, we do have your current works.  There are…three of them?  Yes?  Which was your first full-length book, and how did you happen to write it?

Lea:  My first full-length story is called Silver Princess, though it started as Silver Dreams, and actually one reviewer has called it a “novella,” so I almost don’t think it counts as a full-length book…

Phil:  Novella, novel, encyclopedia…there are so many names for the different lengths and types of books nowadays!

Lea:  I know!  Even though it’s short, I would say it’s a far cry from the “penny dreadfuls” that our great-grandparents used to read.  In this case, though, of all the times I’ve sat down to write, I don’t think I intended to write a whole book.

Phil:  No?  Wow! (Laughs)  What happened?

Lea:  No, I… (Laughs)  I know, isn’t it amazing?  (Laughs)  I was actually trying to record an experience that happened to me when I was sixteen.

Phil:  Wait…you wrote a book about fairies based on something that happened when you were sixteen?

Lea:  (Laughs)  I started by writing about a time that I was knocked unconscious in the process of falling off a horse.  I wish I had had wings!  That would have been nice!  (Laughs)  But the characters took on a life of their own, almost as soon as I put a name to them they began having their own ideas of what was going to happen next.

Phil:  Your characters wrote the story?

Lea:  They…it was like meeting two fascinating people, Rebecca and Hugh, and having them let me chronicle their lives.  I did have an ending in mind, though.  I knew I wanted a happy ending for these two characters, and with that as a destination the story practically wrote itself.  Silver Majesty was a lot the same way, once I knew what the story’s conflict was going to be.

Phil:  What a vivid description!  I almost think I can write a book now.  How did you choose a conflict for Silver Majesty?  Do you think you found the right one?

Lea:  I hope I found the right one!  (Laughs)  I started Silver Majesty with the happy ending still in mind…

Phil:  So we don’t get the happy ending in Silver Princess?

Lea:  Um, no.  Not exactly.  It’s not an unhappy ending, it’s just not…it doesn’t end the way most books do.

Phil:  And if I want to know more I’ll have to read it.

Lea:  (Laughs)  Great idea!  But the conflict in Silver Majesty does stem from that idea of a happy ending for Hugh and Rebecca.  She’s been going along for nearly a hundred years with absolutely no ambition or idea of ruling the tribe.  And suddenly, not only is she slated to become the next Queen, someone else is picking her King.

Phil:  Someone else?  Why, what happened?  I mean, I know you can’t tell me what happened.  Let me rephrase that.  Is there some emergency?  Did the current king pass away?

Lea:  The King is very much alive, and she turns to him a couple of times throughout the stories.  But see, it’s different in Fairydom, that’s their world, than it is here.  Instead of waiting for a monarch to die, or get assassinated by an impatient heir, in Fairydom, as soon as the heir apparent is of age, the current monarch can yield the throne to him.

Phil:  Him?  It has to be a him?  I see.  So they yield the throne to…that’s an unusual set up!  But that’s how they do it.  And that sets the stage for Silver Majesty?

Lea:  That’s right.  The King has no son of his own, so with pressure from the Council of Citizens, that’s sort of like Parliament, and some fancy legal footwork, the story unfolds.

Phil:  (Laughs)  So, are you excited about making it to the Finalist stage of the 2013 …?

Lea:  I think ecstatic is more the way I feel.  I would never have even known about this competition if not for Dawn Edwards.  I approached her about reading Silver Princess for review and she recommended I enter.  She…

Phil:  What, she read Silver Princess and recommended you enter?  How, well, how did you come to enter Silver Majesty instead?

Lea:  They were published in the same year, so I had to choose between them.  And, when I read the description of what the books would be judged on, including the ending, I had to pick Silver Majesty.

Phil:  Oh, it has a better ending?

Lea:  (Laughs)  It’s slightly less of a cliff-hanger ending.  I wonder now that I dared end Silver Princess the way I did, or even Silver Majesty for that matter, but there they are.  As an author I’ve found I’m never quite finished tinkering with a story, so the truth is that Silver Princess took much longer to write and I finally just had had enough.  I could either keep fiddling with it, or put it out there and wait for the results.

Phil:  I see.  So now they’re written and epublished and…

Lea:  Exactly.

Phil:  And there you have it.  Now, you’ve mentioned two books.  I understand you have three currently available.  Are there any more?

Lea:  Oh, yes, I’m actually working on two different stories at the same time, continuing in the world of Fairydom.

Phil:  Two different stories?  Wow.  I can’t even…I can’t dribble a ball and chew gum at the same time!  How do you keep the stories straight?

Lea:  I struggle with that, actually.  Those who already have my eBooks have received some very polite emails from Amazon letting them know that there have been editing updates to the first three books a few times already.

Phil:  Editing updates?  (Laughs)  So even now they’re a work in progress?

Lea:  Pretty much.  And most of the corrections have come from my readers, which I really appreciate.  That’s one nice thing, among many nice things, about eBooks versus books in print.  I’m always able to open the file, make a small adjustment or two, and upload it with the corrections.  Then I let Amazon know there have been updates, and they inform those who have downloaded that eBook.

Phil:  Isn’t that incredible!  Boy, I know that’s one of my pet peeves.  I’ll be reading along in a fabulous book, a real page turner, and then I hit a typo, something that, for some reason, never got caught.

Lea:  Made it all the way into print, exactly.  I see those, too.  I find them kind of comforting, in fact!  (Laughs)  Here is a company spending hundreds, maybe even thousands, on a book with the editing, proofing, printing, marketing, and – bam!  You find a typo.  That makes my mistakes seem less…world-ending.

Phil:  (Laughs)  So, another reason to love eBooks.  Well, this has been a wonderful interview, thank you so much for taking the time to meet with us today.  Now, I do have one last question for our audience.  Where can they go to find out more about you, about your works?

Lea:  Oh, thank you so much for having me, I really enjoyed it!  I’m…there are a variety of ways to reach me.  That’s the part of being self-published that’s a mixed blessing, in fact.  I have multiple websites out there, but it’s not enough to create them, I also have to maintain them!  Keep them fresh and updated, post announcements, and just generally be creative.

Phil:  On top of writing two books at a time.

Lea:  (Laughs)  I’m making a lot more progress with the eBooks than the marketing write now.  So, rather than rattling off a lot of website addresses, I’ve arranged to have them listed at the bottom of the interview.

Phil:  Perfect.  That way people can visit them at their leisure.

Lea:  Right, precisely.

Phil:  Ladies and gentlemen, this has been Phil Morrow interviewing Lea Carter, author of Silver Majesty, Silver Princess, and one more eBook that’s out right now, but apparently she’s  not done writing yet.

Lea:  No, I…I hope to write many more books.  (Laughs)  Thanks, Phil.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Silver-Sagas/204000439644771

http://www.amazon.com/Lea-Carter/e/B009HIK0G0

http://leasbookshelf.blogspot.com/

https://sites.google.com/site/leasbookshelf/

http://www.goodreads.com/klcislc