Donna Farley is the author of numerous short stories, some of them published in Cicada magazine for young adults and in SF magazines such as Realms of Fantasy and Weird Tales. Some of these stories are available free at her online archive.
Her children's picture book about Saint Cuthbert, The Ravens of Farne, is available fromConciliar Press.com , who also published her non-fiction book, Seasons of Grace: Reflections on the Orthodox Church Year
find more of Donna's writing on her website++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Text Interview by Simon Rose, originally posted on Facebook Children's Author's group:
Simon Rose:
Our guest today is author Donna Farley.
Tell us a little about yourself.
I sold my first story, "The Tortoiseshell Tom" in 1987 to the first of Andre Norton's Catfantastic_ anthologies. I do non-fiction and poetry as well, but my heart is in my fiction, most of it science fiction and fantasy. And the heart of my heart is in the fiction that is for young adults. "The Tortoiseshell Tom" falls into that category, with a young adult protagonist. I have also published YA fantasy twice in Cicada magazine, and a number of other fantasy stories in markets like Realms of Fantasy_ and Weird Tales.
What is your latest published work?
Bearing the Saint is a YA historical novel set in 9th Century England, recently released by Conciliar Press. It's my first full-length fiction publication.
Where do you get your ideas from?
I try to take Ray Bradbury's advice and stuff myself with good stories. All my life I've loved fairy tales, comic books, science fiction and fantasy. I also developed a lasting fascination with the Anglo-Saxons when I studied Old English in university, and that's how I ended up writing Bearing the Saint. It's a story that has never been told fictionally for young people, based on Symeon of Durham's account of the flight of the Haliwerfolc. These were the inhabitants of the island of Lindisfarne, who took the body of Saint Cuthbert away with them and traveled about the north of England and Scotland to evade the Viking invaders. It's a wonderful story because these weren't just monks - as well as the monastic community, there were lay men and women and children of all ages.
While I was writing and researching for this book, I was reading Bede's life of Saint Cuthbert, and it struck me that one of the episodes would make a perfect picture book. So I wrote that story up in free verse form, and now it is The Ravens of Farne, which came out earlier this year from the same publisher that contracted _Bearing the Saint.
What are you working on right now?
Last year I sold a short story about a teenaged shape changer, Camellia Chameleon" to the web and print zine _A Thousand Faces_. I'm now working on developing a series of books using this same character.
Do you have any tips or advice for aspiring authors?
Nothing very original-- I live by Robert Silverberg's rules, which are:
1. Read a lot
2. Write a lot
3. Read a lot more, write a lot more.
And I would also add: join a crit group, either in person or online. And don't submit anything to an editor or agent until you've done that, and also studied the markets and learned to use the correct formats. If you don't take these pre-submission steps, unless you are a very special writer indeed, you will only be disappointed and discouraged at the rejections.
So often new writers are so excited about the creative high they get from writing the first draft of a story, they get dazzled by the idea of getting published and getting strokes for their work, so they skip those pre-submission steps; and when they don't sell right away, they decide to head for the vanity publishing route. It's very easy to do that with today's technology, but I believe some eager new writers may be shortchanging themselves by trying to leapfrog over the less exciting parts of writing-- critiquing, editing, doing market research.
Do you have a crazy story about an aspect of the writing life, perhaps from a school visit or event?
No. My writing life is boring. The stories themselves are what's exciting! :-)
Is there anything else you'd like to add, such as a website or blog?
You can read more about my writing at http://matdonna.shawwebspace.ca/ and if you want to read the first chapter of Bearing the Saint, you can find it here:
http://bearingthesaint.blogspot.com/p/read-excerpt.html
Tell us a little about yourself.
I sold my first story, "The Tortoiseshell Tom" in 1987 to the first of Andre Norton's Catfantastic_ anthologies. I do non-fiction and poetry as well, but my heart is in my fiction, most of it science fiction and fantasy. And the heart of my heart is in the fiction that is for young adults. "The Tortoiseshell Tom" falls into that category, with a young adult protagonist. I have also published YA fantasy twice in Cicada magazine, and a number of other fantasy stories in markets like Realms of Fantasy_ and Weird Tales.
What is your latest published work?
