Featured Interview With Verity A. Buchanan
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was born in South Carolina, but have lived in northern Michigan most of my life. When most people think Michigan, they think of Detroit and car industries, but to me Michigan is rolling hills, rural farmland, tough runty pine trees, freezing winters, and marvelously blue lakes nestled everywhere. The countryside around me continually serves as inspiration for the descriptive settings in my books.
I don’t have any pets. I do work on a dairy farm, where I see calves and barn cats regularly. The calves will let you pet them. The cats… not so much.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I’ve never known a time when I didn’t love books. My parents read to me from babyhood up, and I was reading on my own by the age of four. I loved entering another person’s story and experiencing it for myself, and I had no reason to believe I couldn’t accomplish the same thing on my own. So when my mom offered me a spare notebook at the age of six, it was like a switch flipped. I wrote my first story and I never looked back.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
My long-time favorite authors are J.R.R. Tolkien, Rosemary Sutcliff, Eloise Jarvis McGraw, and Agatha Christie. All of the above have inspired me: Tolkien with world-building and thematic elements, Sutcliff with symbolism and descriptions, McGraw and Christie with story and characters. That’s simplified, of course, because all of them overlap in one or more areas, but it’s a fairly accurate breakdown.
Some of my newer favorite authors are M.L. Little, Anne Elisabeth Stengl, C.M. Banschbach, and A.S. Peterson.
My favorite genres are definitely historical fiction and high fantasy. They both immerse the reader in a separate, foreign world, a world that the author must take time to research and develop, and that, when done well, makes for a realistic, rewarding read.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
In an era where a lot of YA fantasy focuses on people with important destinies, The Journey is about three very ordinary people who don’t save the world, or even save a country. Alone in the world, without resources, friends, or shelter, the Thorne family just wants a home.
Fred Thorne is afraid to be accountable.
Sandy Thorne is afraid for things to change.
And Marjorie Thorne is afraid for something to happen that will finally, irrevocably tear down what’s left of their family’s reputation.
In a single blow, every one of those fears comes true.
You won’t find any extraordinary people in The Journey. Just ordinary people. Some of them are unpleasant, and some of them are unhappy, and all of them are struggling. The deepest strugglers are often those who mask their pain… and those silent struggles, defeats, and victories are the ones that deserve to be told.
I started The Journey as a brand-new teenager, and it took me just over three years to finish it and revise enough to start submitting to agents. However, it wasn’t till last fall, two years after completion, that I was finally accepted by a publishing house and got on the road to bookstores.
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