On the previous blogstop author Lynn Fowler reviewed Like A Girl anthology here. Lynn is an Australian writer who delights in sharing with readers about her writing and reviewing good inspirational books.

Maree Long is the founding curator of Café Soiree, providing events and a platform for poets, writers, playwrights, musicians, and artistic photo media to share their talent. A prolific writer of poetry herself and, being inspired by nature and her surrounds, she is well known for her lyrical unique style.

Maree has kindly allowed me to reproduce the interview here:

Like a Girl Blogtour

I would like to introduce Jeanette O’Hagan, one of the contributors to Like a Girl anthology, who has agreed to share as part of a blog tour

As you will see Jeanette has been very busy writing. I had the privilege of working on and collaborating on the anthology Let The Sea Roar with her with the inclusion of my own story ‘Catherine and the Dry Stone Wall’

Please enjoy the following interview:

1. How long have you been writing?

A long time. I started imagining my narrative world when I was nine and wrote some of the stories down soon after. In my early twenties I wrote my first novel but put it on hold for many years, only really taking writing up again seriously four years ago.

2. Do you have a particular writing process you employ?

I usually need a story idea which could be based on a character or a situation. I reflect on it a lot, allow my characters to ‘act out’ and interact with other characters to work out what happens before I start writing the story down. So in part the story comes from allowing my imagination free reign, in part from the flow of actually writing it down and in part from planning and research. I like to ask questions, to turn the scenes and plot around and look at it from different angles.

3. Who is your favourite author?

It’s always hard to pick a favourite. C.S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien were the most influential authors, but I would say Lewis because he has influenced me both with his fantasy fiction and with his theological works.

4. What inspired you to write this book?

Like a Girl is an anthology, the ‘brain child’ of the talented Mirren Hogan who wanted to contribute toward Plan International Australia’s support of girls education around the world. When she mentioned her idea and asked for contributions, I immediately began thinking of how I could write about the theme of girls education in my narrative world and the result was my short story ‘Lakwi’s Lament.’ (I also have two poems in the anthology.)

5. How has this book impacted you? And who do you think will enjoy this story?

It’s been a privilege to see the enthusiasm of the contributors and editors of Like a Girl and to see how each author approached their stories in a different way. One of the stories is written by 15 year old Kathryn Hogan. I also had the opportunity to help with some editing and proofing along with our head editors Mirren Hogan and Christina Aitken.

I think the book would appeal to anyone who enjoys fiction and values girls’ education. There are a number of sci-fiction and fantasy stories, some contemporary and also historical stories – as well as a handful of poems. The book could also appeal to teens.

6. Briefly what is the story about?

My story in the anthology is about a young princess’ desire to read the books in the Royal library, but girls aren’t allowed inside. She is lonely and is flattered by the attention of her dashing cousin. Will her drive for knowledge lead her into more trouble than she can handle?

7. What other projects are you working on?

2015 has been an exciting year for me with five short stories and seven poems published in 7 anthologies. In particular I was co-editor of an inspirational anthology Glimpses of Light (with Nola Passmore) – stories and poems on the theme of light in dark places. I continue to work on my Akrad’s Legacy series and hope to have the first couple of books in this series published this year. I’m also planning on publishing a longish short story – Heart of the Mountain – which follows the adventures of three young people as the lights in the below ground kingdom begin to flicker out.

8. To write what do you need in terms of aesthetics, environment etc?

I can write just about anywhere – as long as it’s not super noisy – or I’m not being constantly interrupted. I often write at home but also love to write in cafes or libraries.

9. What other books have you written, and do you have a favourite?

Written or published? I’ve finished or am close to finishing five fantasy novels, all part of the Akrad’s Legacy series. Of the seven anthologies with my short stories and/or poems – my favourite would be Glimpses of Light. I loved writing ‘Ruhanna’s Flight’. Like a Girl would also be a favourite.

Thanks for some great questions. It’s been a pleasure chatting with you.

Jeanette O’Hagan

Jeanette O’Hagan enjoys writing fiction, poetry, blogging and editing and is writing her Akrad’s Legacy Series—a Young Adult secondary world fantasy. She has stories and poems published in another anthologies, including Glimpses of Light, Like a Girl and Let the Sea Roar. She lives in Brisbane with her husband and children.

Website: Jeanetteohagan.com
Jeanette’s Books: http://www.amazon.com/…/B00RBSE85C/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1

Like a Girl anthology

Fourteen Authors from around the world have contributed their stories to raise money for PLAN Australia.

‘Like a Girl’ is a celebration of the strength and resilience of women, told in a variety of genres and voices, the proceeds of which will help empower girls and women all over the world. It turns the derogatory term ‘like a girl’ on its head, celebrating the contribution girls and women can and have made.

Featuring stories and poems by Jeanette O’Hagan, Avril Sabine, V. Hartman Di Santo, Kathryn Hogan, Mary Grace, Coralyn Swift, Christina Aitken, Mark Taylor, D.L Richardson, Mimi Emmanuel, Erin Yoshikawa, Druscilla Morgan, Michelle John and Mirren Hogan.

The stories and poems use humour, adventure, imagination and emotion to explore themes of resilience, determination against odds, empowerment, relationships and women’s achievements.

It is available in print and e-book from Amazon

Win a Copy

There is still time to enter the Goodreads Giveaway or the Like a Girl Rafflecopter giveaway for a chance of winning a print copy of this beautiful anthology .

More Behind the Scenes

For more behind the scenes information about Like a Girl anthology – check out the rest of the blogtour, the coffee chats with D L Richardson and news items:

Stop 1 24 Jan – Jeanette O’Hagan

Stop 2 25 Jan – Paula Vince

Stop 3 27 Jan – Mimi Emmanuel

Stop 4 29 Jan – Lynn Fowler

Stop 5 1 Feb – Maree Long

D L Richardson’s coffee chats with Jeanette O’Hagan and with prolific fantasy author Avril Sabine.

Girl power with the pen - Mirren Hogan, Kathryn Hogan and Debbie Richardson interviewed by Bay Post.

Read on and meet this fascinating author.

About Paula:

Award-winning author, Paula Vince loves to evoke tears and laughter through her novels. A wife and homeschooling mother of three, she resides in the beautiful Adelaide Hills of South Australia. Her youth was brightened by great fiction and she’s on a mission to pay it forward.

Her novel, Picking up the Pieces, won the religious fiction section of the 2011 International Book Awards. Her novel, Best Forgotten, was winner of the 2011 CALEB Award in the fiction category and also recognized as the best overall entry for the year. She is also author of The Risky Way Home, A Design of Gold and the Quenarden Trilogy.  Paula is also one of the four authors of The Greenfield Legacy.

Her new novel, Imogen’s Chance, will be published in April, 2014.

Paula’s books are a skillful blend of drama and romance tied together with elements of mystery and suspense.

Find out more at www.justoccurred.blogspot.com

Welcome to Jenny’s thread, Paula. I’m thrilled to have you with us today and am looking forward to learning more about you and your writing.

Imogen’s Chance is your ninth book to be published and more than one of your books has won awards. How did you start writing and why?

I think writing has been in my DNA since I was small. At school, whenever we got a chance to do some silent reading or write stories, I’d be instantly happy. I found it very easy to get involved in the worlds of story book characters, so it followed naturally that I wanted to write them. The initial choice was to make myself happy, so if I could make others happy too, it would be a bonus.

Paula, your books are often about troubled young men and women in their early 20s usually facing some big questions in life. What attracts you to writing about this age group?

I first started trying to write novels when I finished University and got married, which happened at the same time. Back then, I was the same age as my characters, which made it easy for me to relate to them. Since then, I’ve kept the habit going and suddenly I’m older, while some members of my family are a similar age to my characters. I have a nineteen-year-old son and a 23-year-old nephew boarder, as well as younger children.

I also remember those twenties as a memorable transition time in my life. I felt that childhood was finally behind me, and the adult world beckoned. It was an interesting stage where I’d switch from anxiety to enthusiasm and back again in a flash. I decided that, as I could swing so easily between apprehension and anticipation, it was a perfect age to set in stories.

Can you see yourself in any of your characters?

I think there are bits of me in all of them. I can certainly relate to Imogen’s honest longing to do all the right things, without knowing how much of her past she ought to reveal to the people in her life. I can even relate to Asher, who I initially thought was completely unlike me. His personal uncertainty and sense of not living up to expectations is something I’ve been familiar with at different times.

As a reader, what do you think makes a good story?

I think that, first and foremost, the characters must be easy to love and empathise with. Readers should find it easy to imagine their physical appearances, even though descriptions may be sparse. In the same way, we ought to be able to hear their distinct voices in our minds’ ears while we read their dialogue.

Secondly, the plot should be tense and fast-moving enough to bring the best out of the characters and hold our interest. The very best stories leave us with that ‘book hangover’ feeling, when we don’t want to begin a new book because our head is still too full of the last. (I find these are the times I pick up non-fiction instead, until the impressions begin to fade away.)

Who/what are the biggest influences in your writing and why?

I think I’d have to say every author whose books I’ve immensely enjoyed, although there are far too many to single out. I might also mention my husband, Andrew, who has always encouraged me. When we were first married, I told him that although I’d always wanted to write fiction, I didn’t think I had it in me. He kept urging me to give it a go, telling me that he was certain I’d come up with a good story.

What do you find is the most difficult aspect of writing and how do you cope with it?

The marketing part, which comes with each new book, is always a challenge for me. I’m not a natural salesperson. Daydreaming is easy, but recognising opportunities as they whiz past is not so easy. Often, I’d hear about opportunities in retrospect, and think, ‘If only I’d known, I could have gone to that.’ Unlike my hero, Asher, I don’t have the gift of the gab, which means coming up with the right things to say when I’m trying to sell books at public forums can be a strain.

As for coping strategies, I think it’s just a matter of doing it often enough to get used to it.

Faith is woven through your books sometimes more understated, at other times more obvious. Can you tell me what faith means to you?

I’ve battled with fear and uncertainty at different times in my life, and my faith has always pulled me through. Since I was very young, I’ve had a fascination with the way God may choose to work in people’s lives. This makes it easy to create characters who become intrigued with the same subject.

Without giving too much away, what is your favourite moment in Imogen’s Chance?

Okay, I’ll say the bit with the lights in the cabin. It made me very happy to write that. I hope that’s cryptic enough to make everybody want to read the book. Apart from that, I liked all of the interactions between Asher and his brother, Seth. In the early stages, I had the feeling there might be a bit of friction between those two, but had no idea why. As I let them have their way and converse with each other, the hidden chinks in their attitudes toward each other started showing, surprising even me. I loved it when the buried feelings of those two young men came to light.

Launching a new book is a very busy time so I know you have lots of things on your mind, but I can’t help wondering – do you have some other writing projects on the boil?

It’s all still in my head at the moment, except for a few rough jottings on paper. As well as wanting to write a nostalgic story based on my grandfather’s real war experiences, I have some ideas regarding more romantic triangles, guilty secrets and unexpected turns of events like nothing I’ve written so far.

Thanks for inviting me to discuss my book with your readers, Jenny. I’ve enjoyed it a lot.

Thanks for talking with us Paula. I’ve enjoyed reading a number of your books over the last couple of years, including Imogen’s Chance. I find your books entertaining as well as giving me lots to think about. Thank you so much for sharing about yourself, your books and your life as a writer. We wish you great success with the launch of your latest book Imogen’s Chance.

I hope you enjoyed getting to know Paula. Let me encourage you to check out her blog for information about Paula’s Blog Tour through April – with the chance to win copies of Imogen’s Chance along the way and a special promotion Greenfield Legacy Pack for the first three people who leave a comment at every visit spot, and tell Paula about it on her blog. Don’t forget to comment today too.

Jeanette O’Hagan

***

About Imogen’s Chance:

She has given herself a chance to fix her personal history. But will old mistakes bring up new emotions?

Imogen Browne longs to make up for past mistakes before she can move on. She quietly resolves to help the Dorazio family, whose lives she accidentally upset. Her biggest challenge is Asher, the one person who may never forgive her. And he is facing a crisis of his own. Imogen must tread very carefully, as trying to fix things may well make them shatter.

A sensitive story about misplaced loyalty, celebrating life and falling in love. Can family secrets concealed with the best intentions bear the light of day?

Check out Alison’s upcoming book where a young exchange student in China investigates a scam and gets more than she bargains for.  http://oneyearinink.wordpress.com/2012/12/26/the-next-big-thing/

My Next Best Thing:

1. What is the working title of your next book?

Akrad’s Children

2. Where did the idea come from for the book?

Akrad’s Children is a prequel of my first (unpublished) manuscript Adelphi – so the ideas really came as I explored the back story for my characters of Adelphi. The characters took on a life of their own and insisted that their stories be told too. Eventually a storyline began to unfold that develops over 100 years and several books.

3. What genre does your book fall under?

It is YA or New Adult fantasy with the stories entirely set in another world, Nardva.

4. What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

It’s a bit hard to say but maybe Aaron Tveit (Les Mis) or Ethan Hawk or Jeremy Sumpter (though his nose is too straight) for Mannok, a teen version of Gwyneth Paltrow for Ista and perhaps Chen Chang or Dev Patel (Slum Dog Millionaire) for Dinnis.

5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

“Three young lives are bound together in friendship, love, rivalry and tragedy: two orphaned refugees seeking a new life, a privileged prince striving to earn the approval of his father.”

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

At this stage I am pursuing publishing through the traditional route. I submitted Adelphi in the recent HarperVoyager publication window and will try pitching Akrad’s Children to various publishers.

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

I started writing the first chapters of Akrad’s Children in August/September this year but really got the bulk of it done in November as part of the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) challenge, writing over 50820 words. I have 4-5 chapters left to finish and then will continue writing the sequel Rasel’s Song.

8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Akrad’s Children and the other books in the series has similarities to Ursuala Le Guin’s Earthsea Trilogy, Anne McCaffrey’s Dragon of Pern series. It includes some adventure and romance and also focuses on the character development in a developed imaginative world.

9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I was seven when my parents began reading the Narnia series to me and my brothers. Shortly after this time I spent much of my time daydreaming about my own imagined world with characters and events of what would eventually become the world of Nardva. A vivid dream with the image of a young girl holding a lantern beside a fountain at night inspired the story of Jared and Elene in Adelphi and as I explored their story, other connected stories began take on a life of their own. Eventually this new place, the Five Lands, became part of the wider world of Nardva. I began writing Jared and Elene’s story in Adelphi and then felt the need to tell the earlier stories of Rasel, Dinnis, Ista and Mannok which became Akrad’s Children and Rasel’s Song.

10. What else about the book might pique the reader’s interest?

Each book has a story which stands on its own as the protagonists have both external and internal conflicts to resolve. Yet each one will contribute to a larger story that spans across at least a century – the young sorcerer Akrad’s ejection from the Isle of the Valdane and his arrival in the Five Lands, the impact he has on the lands of Tamra and Silisea and what happens to his legacy after his death. The stories contain romance, adventure, humour, suspense and mystery in a complex world with two moons, strange and ordinary beings, creatures and environments. I enjoy the characters – their vitality and quirky senses of humour – and their stories and I certainly hope you, the reader, will too.

For me 2012 has had two major highlights. At the beginning of the year I enrolled in a post-graduate writing course at Swinburne University and have linked up with some fellow aspiring writers. Towards the end of the year in October I participated in the Word Writers Camp on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland and have met so many aspiring and successful writers. It has been wonderful to meet such lovely, welcoming, creative people and it gives me great pleasure to link you to their Next Big Thing (uploaded next week on 9 Jan 2013):

Paula Vince has eight published works including two which have won awards and one, Greenfield Legacy, written in conjunction with three other Australian writers. She is preparing her ninth book Along for the Ride for publication mid 2013. While her preferred genre is Romance Adventure, I recently enjoyed reading the first book of Paula’s YA fantasy trilogy – the Quenarden series – and can’t wait to read the second one. Check out Paula at www.justoccurred.blogspot.com

Lynne Stringer is soon to publish her first YA Sci-Fi Romance novel The Heir and has two or three other books in the pipeline. Check out Lynne at  https://www.facebook.com/lynnestringer.author?fref=ts

Skye Wieland has recently published Sarah’s Gift – an Adult Christian Romance set in Australia and South Africa and the first of her Dare to Follow Series. Check out Skye at  www.skyewieland-author.blogspot.com)

Kayleen West is an illustrator and writer of children’s books. She has recently published Adoptive Father and has several other children’s books in the pipeline. Her illustrations are truly delightful. Check out Kayleen at http://kayleenwest.blogspot.com.au/

Jenny

https://www.facebook.com/JeanetteOHaganAuthorAndSpeaker