Writer of the Week #9: Roderick Townley

Check out Roderick's fantasy middle-grade novel The Blue Shoe, with a beautiful cover illustrated by Mary GrandPre (who is renowned for her Harry Potter illustrations)

Name: Roderick Townley

Age: More than 3 times your age, but less mature

Website : www.rodericktownley.com

Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/RoderickTownley

Location: Kansas

When did you realize you wanted to be a published author?
    I never thought that "writer" and "author" were synonyms, any more than "actor" and "star" are synonyms. I just wanted to write well and worked to improve, going through grad school not to get a credential but to learn how great writers wrote. The publishing came slowly, small things in little magazines. When I had an actual novel, I walked into St. Martin's Press in New York and had a nice talk with an editor, leaving the book in his hands. A month later I got a phone call. They wanted to publish the thing. Suddenly I was that wondrous being, an "author." I've gone on to publish 15 books.

Name 5 authors and 5 books:
    The Duino Elegies, by Rainer Maria Rilke, Little Big, by John Crowley, The Afterlives of Trees, by Wyatt Townley, The Carrier of Ladders, by W.S. Merwin, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke.

Where do you get your inspiration from?
    Where does the wind come from? From everywhere. Sometimes from a dream, sometimes from telling my wife a bedtime story, sometimes from my days as a journalist, when I'd go into coal mines, or war zones, or corporate boardrooms. Most often from remembering myself as a 9-year-old taking in the world for the first time.

What is the best quality a writer can have?
    Avid listening.

Any last words?
    Love your characters, even the villains. For they are you.

Challenge: Write a one-sentence story!
    Hoping to bring back his dead wife, the magician creates a portal through the spiral of a black rose, with dire consequences for himself.




Thank you so much, Roderick! If anyone is interested in being a writer of the week, please follow the instructions here.