About Ska St. Julian:
I was an early reader in a household of avid readers, so writing came with the territory. I was always making up stories, creating strange places and people with wonderful talents and powers. My non-author life pales in comparison, and a lot of that revolves around reading and writing as well. I was an absent-minded professor, and now I’m an absent-minded freelancer. Basic bookworm existence.
What inspires you to write?
Everything. Anything. I’m one of these people who says, “Oh God, that should be a story!” on a regular basis. Some area of my brain is writing at all times. What inspired me specifically to write The Basket was the insomnia in my family. It was a way to make sense of sleep.
Tell us about your writing process.
The Basket of Seeds was an oral history before it was written. I added to the story each day, and it just grew in different directions. Friends would call and ask what was doing in the forest today, or in the dream screen today, and I’d tell them. There’s a whole other Basket of Seeds that isn’t in the book. In 2012 I sent an e-mail from Mommi Sparklie telling my friends to watch for lost baby floateens during Hurricane Sandy. It’s a seat-of-the-pants story at heart, but I ended up making a calendar-year outline to make sense of the whole thing. The characters more or less created themselves, and I plotted a graph of who turns up in each chapter to give the story an easy pace.
For Fiction Writers: Do you listen (or talk to) to your characters?
Both. Seriously, it’s a dialogue.
What advice would you give other writers?
Keep writing. Keep polishing and editing. Don’t worry what others think–get your work to where you’re proud of it and it represents you. Then take a break from it and see it through fresh eyes in a week or two.
How did you decide how to publish your books?
I spoke to someone who had a kids’ book out a few years ago, and she said that the publisher would put me together with an illustrator. Now, I drew the floateens, my own little extraterrestrials, so there was no way I was allowing some stranger assigned to me to mess with my concept. I had to have control, find my own artist, and work closely with that artist, including assisting in drawing the floateens. Enter Eugenia Cameron, and we entered the world of self-publishing together.
What do you think about the future of book publishing?
Just like Andy Warhol said, everybody will have fifteen minutes of fame. I’m all for it!
What do you use?: Dictated and got transcribed
What genres do you write?: fantasy
What formats are your books in?: Both eBook and Print
Website(s)
Ska St. Julian Home Page Link
Link To Ska St. Julian Page On Amazon
