The 2018 Author Interview Series Featuring D. Wallace Peach

It’s time for the next subject for my 2018 author interview series. Author interviews are posted every Friday throughout the year.

I am honored to continue this series with Oregon author, artist D. Wallace Peach

You can catch up with all of my past author interviews (nearly 200) on my Author Directory page.

If you’re an author interested in being interviewed in this series, I still have limited spots available for 2018. You can email me at don@donmassenzio.com

Now, please enjoy this interview with D. Wallace Peach:

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Do you try more to be original or to deliver to readers what they want?

Well, I hope that these are occasionally the same thing! As a reader, I’m often looking for originality, and I think that may be the norm for fans of speculative fiction. Unlike some genres where certain tropes define the form, speculative fiction is incredibly broad, and there’s no reason not to experiment. Even if that weren’t so, I would probably still honor my preference for originality. My stories feel organic to me, inspiration sparking on the inside and bursting like fireworks into my head as fully formed ideas. I’ve never sat down and said, “I want to write a variation of “The Hunger Games.”

If you could tell your younger writing self anything, what would it be?

I didn’t begin writing until I was fifty, so my younger self isn’t all that young. What I do wish is that I’d found the time and inspiration to starting writing twenty years earlier! I envy those 20-30-somethings who are carving out hours here and there to create. They’re so far ahead of where I was at that age (which was still figuring out what I wanted to do when I grew up). But life doesn’t work that way, and I’m happy to have started when I did.

What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel?

Hmm. This is a hard one. I’ll stick with fantasy and mention a series that few people are going to have heard of: The Legends of Dhanen’Mar by Peyton Reynolds. I loved the story, the characters, and her magic system just blew me away. I inhaled the books. She couldn’t write them fast enough, and there are 15 books in the series!

Do you read your book reviews? How do you deal with bad or good ones?

I browse them all and look forward to the day when they’re rolling in so fast that I can’t keep up! A big fat dream, that one. Anyway, yes, I read them. I do happy dances when I get good ones, and I ignore the bad ones with one exception – a bad review that gives specifics. I try to view those as prickly little blessings because if the reviewer made a good point, I can go in and make fixes. By the way, this was not an option when I was traditionally published, and it’s one of many reasons I switched all my books to indie.

Do you hide any secrets in your books that only a few people will find?

Rarely. In my first book, I named flowers after relatives. My niece was the only one who noticed.

Do you Google yourself?

I did when I was starting out. The whole publishing/blogging adventure was so new and exciting. I haven’t looked in years. Hmm… maybe I should take a peek… make sure there’s nothing embarrassing out there!

What is your favorite childhood book?

As a little kid, it was Charlotte’s Web, the first book to make me cry. As a teenager, it was The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I credit Tolkien for my love of reading and my decision to write fantasy.

If you had to do something differently as a child or teenager to become a better writer as an adult, what would you do?

I’m not sure I would do something different as it relates to preparing for a career of writing. All my experiences, the sweet and the sour, the delightful and the miserable, the successes and failures, made me who I am today, and they feed my stories. Beneath all the fantasy elements, I hope that I tell human stories, and that requires that I endure and continue to endure a range of experiences – the good, the bad, and the ugly.

How long on average does it take you to write a book?

About six months writing full time. That’s my average, it seems, from start to finish. I’m a slow, edit as I go writer, and I do about 8 complete drafts with plenty of little edits in between. I wish I could write faster, but if wishes were made of silver, I’d already be rich.

About D. Wallace Peach:

D. Wallace Peach started writing later in life after the kids were grown and a move left her with hours to fill. Years of working in business surrendered to a full-time indulgence in the imaginative world of books, and when she started writing, she was instantly hooked. Diana lives in a log cabin amongst the tall evergreens and emerald moss of Oregon’s Coastal Mountains with her husband, two dogs, and Pinky the Cat.

D. Wallace Peach’s Books:

Ready for a reading adventure?

The Sorcerer’s Garden
Sunwielder
The Bone Wall
The Melding of Aeris

The Rose Shield Tetralogy:
Catling’s Bane, Book I
Oathbreakers’ Guild, Book II
Farlanders’ Law, Book III
Kari’s Reckoning, Book IV

The Dragon Soul Saga:
Myths of the Mirror, Book I
Eye of Fire, Book II
Eye of Blind, Book III
Eye of Sun, Book IV

Grumpy Ana and the Grouchy Monsters: A Children’s Space Tale

Connect with D. Wallace Peach:

The Blog: http://mythsofthemirror.com.

Amazon author’s page: https://www.amazon.com/D.-Wallace-Peach/e/B00CLKLXP8

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Myths-of-the-Mirror/187264861398982

Twitter: @dwallacepeach

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7068749.D_Wallace_Peach