I’m so happy to have Starla Huch­ton back that if I was a gig­gler I would, uhm, gig­gle. Need­less to say, I’m excited to bring her back to talk about her new book Maven which is set to be released on June 3, 2013. That’s just over a week away! She’s such a busy woman, which I can totally under­stand and appre­ci­ate, so the fact that she spared the time to do this inter­view makes her pres­ence here that much more sweet.

So Starla, talk to me…

1. For the sake of those who don’t know you yet, give us a lit­tle bit of infor­ma­tion about your­self. You write, yes, but what else are you up to?

Most of what I do these days (out­side of chas­ing my kids while my hus­band is deployed) is design book cov­ers. I work with both inde­pen­dent authors and pub­lish­ers alike. I believe my job as a designer is to get to the heart of a story and try to con­vey that into the visual. It’s not the eas­i­est of tasks some­times, but I love what I do and I’m thank­ful that oth­ers like my work enough that I can con­tinue doing it.

Some might know me as an audio­book nar­ra­tor. I’m cur­rently work­ing on the fourth book in Lind­say Buroker’s The Emperor’s Edge series, though I am woe­fully behind in this. It’s been a rough few months with mov­ing and hav­ing the hus­band deploy amongst other things, but it’s coming.

2. Tell us about Maven. What was the inspi­ra­tion? How long did it take to write it from inspi­ra­tion to com­ple­tion? Where do you hope to take the series and how long do you plan it to be?

Maven is the first book in my new Sci­ence Fic­tion Romance Endure series. There will be four total when the story arc com­pletes, and I plan to have all of them out in the world before my birth­day in March 2014. It’s an ambi­tious sched­ule, but I’m more than on-track to meet it. The major­ity of the story takes place in an under­wa­ter lab in the year 2050 (at the begin­ning of book 1), but by book 3 you get to see some of the out­side world. It’s not a huge stretch from mod­ern day, really, but enough so that it’s firmly planted in Sci­ence Fic­tion. Even with these futur­is­tic lean­ings, it’s still a very acces­si­ble story, even for read­ers that are not typ­i­cally fans of Sci­ence Fic­tion. I don’t gen­er­ally like hard Sci-Fi, but I do like some of the ele­ments, so I wanted to cre­ate some­thing that oth­ers like me could really enjoy. As I’ve man­aged to sway at least two Para­nor­mal or Urban Fantasy-only read­ers over to the dark side of SF, I’m count­ing this book as a success.

As for the inspi­ra­tion, well… that’s a long story. Basi­cally, as a teenager in the 90s I was a huge Jonathan Bran­dis fan­girl. How­ever, I didn’t dis­cover him until one sum­mer I hap­pened to catch a rerun of the first sea­son of a show called SeaQuest DSV, of which he was a cast mem­ber. In re-watching the show now, I inevitably wind up in fits of gig­gles over the “future tech” and some­what cheesy scripts, but for a geek like me, especially back then, it filled a huge enter­tain­ment void in my world. I took my love of that show so far that 16-year-old me even tried my hand at writ­ing my own scripts for it, nei­ther of which I fin­ished and nei­ther of which will ever see the light of day because they are absolutely awful. But, there was some take­away from it. The hero­ine of the Endure series, Dr. Lydia Ash­ley, was born from those pre­co­cious, imma­ture scrib­blings, and she has stayed with me all these years.

So, that leads into another part of your ques­tion. If we’re talk­ing how long it took from it to go from orig­i­nal inspi­ra­tion to com­pleted novel, the answer is sev­en­teen years. How­ever, I didn’t really pur­sue the story until Jan­u­ary 2012. In six weeks I knocked out 68,000 words of Maven, but then I hit pause. The rea­son for this is prob­a­bly because my Steam­punk novel became a final­ist in a con­test, which it then won. My focus shifted to that book and its sequel and Lydia and Daniel got put on the shelf. Fast for­ward to Jan­u­ary of this year, at which point I had 3 or 4 unfin­ished first drafts of things in var­i­ous states. I decided it would be my goal to fin­ish sev­eral of these up over the next year and went look­ing at each one to see which spoke to me the most. Hon­estly, I didn’t think Maven was the one that would make the cut, but the moment I opened the file I was imme­di­ately drawn back into that world. A week or so later, the book was com­plete, but I real­ized their story was not. I jumped right in to the sec­ond one, and then imme­di­ately the third right after that. At some point in book two, I fig­ured out this was not going to be a tril­ogy. Four full nov­els would be required. It didn’t feel like a heavy weight to bear, how­ever. This story is easy for me to bring to the page now. I would think so, after think­ing about it for 17 years!

3. Maven isn’t your first novel length work. Tell us about your other writ­ing endeavors.

My first fin­ished novel was The Dreamer’s Thread. It’s a mod­ern fan­tasy story and very much a first book. My writ­ing style has changed and grown so much since I put it out as a pod­cast. Peo­ple still enjoy it, how­ever, so I leave it float­ing around the inter­webs, wait­ing for unsus­pect­ing folks to stum­ble across it.

My sec­ond book, which isn’t out any­where yet, is the first of my Antigone’s Wrath series, a Steam­punk adven­ture called Mas­ter of Myth. It’s the one that won first place in the Crested Butte Writ­ers Con­fer­ence annual con­test, The Sandy, and, as a result, was requested in full by a senior edi­tor at TOR/Forge (never did get an answer either way on it, but that’s nei­ther here nor there). I’m a lit­tle over halfway done with the sec­ond in this series, Master of Machines. I was actu­ally hop­ing to put the first one out this sum­mer, but with all I’m doing with the Endure series, I’m no longer sure if I’ll have the time to devote to it that I think that story deserves. I know there are a lot of folks wait­ing to get their hands on it, so I hope they know I’m going to do my best here. I am only one per­son though.

4. Will you be podi­o­cast­ing your book? If so will you read it, or will you have some­one else do it?

At this time, I have no plans to pod­cast or audio­book the Endure series. Lydia and Daniel have unique voices to me, and I just don’t feel like I could do them jus­tice if I were to nar­rate it myself. First and fore­most, I’m con­cen­trat­ing on get­ting the writ­ten con­tent out, so peo­ple can enjoy the entire story arc as fast as I can toss it out there. I know how hard it is to wait between books in a series, so this is an exper­i­ment in rapid-fire con­tent for me. I’m curi­ous to see how it plays out.

5. Where do you see your­self and your writ­ing in ten years or so?

In ten years? Good­ness. Right now I’m just try­ing to get through the week!

I don’t really know how to answer this. In an ideal world I’d say “on top of the NYT Bestseller’s List”, but, really, who wouldn’t want that? I sup­pose what I hon­estly want is for my writ­ing to be enjoyed by as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble, and hope­fully make a lit­tle money for me. I like to keep my goals real­is­tic and achiev­able. That way, I don’t get too bogged down in how I’m not mak­ing any progress towards suc­cess. There will always be another mile­stone ahead, and another brass ring to grab. Def­i­n­i­tions of suc­cess change all the time and vary greatly from one per­son to the next. Today I might tell you I’d be happy to sell even 100 copies of Maven. Tomor­row, it might be land­ing a great review on a book blog I admire with a lot of fol­low­ers. A year from now I could be com­pletely burnt out on this whole thing and just want six hours of unin­ter­rupted sleep. I have no idea. That’s prob­a­bly a ter­ri­ble answer. Feel free to chuckle.

I can totally relate Starla. I wish you lots of luck get­ting those six hours of sleep, catch­ing up to the kid­dos, pub­lish­ing and find­ing a giddy appre­cia­tive audi­ence to read all of your work.

*****

Starla Huch­ton released her first novel, The Dreamer’s Thread, as a full cast pod­cast pro­duc­tion begin­ning in August 2009. Her first foray went on to become a double-nominee and final­ist for the 2010 Par­sec Awards. Since her debut, Starla’s voice has appeared in other pod­casts includ­ing The Dunes­teef Audio Fic­tion Mag­a­zine, The Drabblecast, and Erot­ica a la Carte. She is also a voice tal­ent for Dark­fire Pro­duc­tions, and nar­rates sev­eral of their projects, includ­ing The Emperor’s Edge series, This Path We Share, and oth­ers. Her writ­ing has appeared in the Erot­ica a la Carte pod­cast, a short story for The Gear­heart, and an episode of the Tales from the Archives pod­cast (the com­pan­ion to Tee Mor­ris and Philippa Balantine’s Min­istry of Pecu­liar Occur­rences series), which gar­nered her a sec­ond final­ist badge from the 2012 Par­sec Awards. Her sec­ond novel, a Steam­punk adven­ture enti­tled Mas­ter of Myth, was the first place win­ner in the Fantasy/Science Fic­tion cat­e­gory of The Sandy Writ­ing Con­test held annu­ally by the Crested Butte Writ­ers Conference. Maven is her third com­pleted novel and the first in a planned series of four.

After com­plet­ing her degree in Graphic Arts at Mon­terey Penin­sula Col­lege, Starla opened up shop as a free­lance graphic designer focus­ing on cre­at­ing beau­ti­ful book cov­ers for inde­pen­dent authors pub­lish­ers. She cur­rently lives in Vir­ginia where she trains her three Min­ions and mil­i­tary husband.

You can find Starla here:

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Designed by Starla

Upon the Wings of Greater Things