Poppy Woods #interview

Please welcome debut author Poppy Woods *

Tell us a bit about yourself

Ahhh, I’m terrible at this. I’m Poppy… I’m short, southern, and swear like a well educated sailor? I’m a mom. I have two evil day jobs in addition to arguing with fictional characters (quite frequently *while* I’m at my evil day job, much to my boss’s dismay)

* Have you always wanted to become an author?

I have always wanted to write. I don’t know that I always wanted to publish anything. I used to write a ton of poetry… probably from the time I was like 7-20. I have those in a binder somewhere, they got me through hard times.
A Call To Pride is the first story I’ve actually finished. I’ve started writing it and a hundred other stories a million times and just never had the willpower to finish. I’d try to edit it while I was still writing and get discouraged and scrap everything.*

What was your inspiration for your current book/series?

Liza’s story is a little bit of everything to me. She has parts of me in her and parts that are completely organic, a product of my weird and twisted imagination.
The series as a whole (Unsung Veil) will focus on other characters throughout the series. My inspiration for the series is honestly a combination of reading works like The Damon’s Mountains series by TS Joyce and the Wings of Artemis series by Rebecca Royce and wanting to create a book world like that. A book world where there is a single universe that all these characters share, and maybe some of them know each other, but everything comes back to a single plot thread. Eventually. I guess we will have to see if I pull that off.

What are you working on now?

Right now I’m writing Unsung Veil Book 2 – A Call To War. It’s the conclusion to Liza’s personal part of the story. She will still pop up as a side character in at least a few books, but her personal plot will be done.

Do you have any quirks while writing?

I don’t know… lol. I get frustrated and close my laptop a lot. I smoke cigarettes religiously during sprint breaks, or when I get to a point in the story where I need some space to think about my next move.

Do you have any advice for new authors about the publishing world?

I haven’t done traditional publishing and probably never will. I like the indie world. I like being in control of my career and setting my own deadlines. If I had any advice it would be just to write the damn thing. Don’t try to stop to self-edit it. Just get that first draft out onto paper/screen so that you have somewhere to start. If you stop writing it to do anything else, you probably won’t finish it. At least, that’s been true for me a million times.

What are your hopes for the future?

I have several things in the works. Once I finish writing ACTW (Liza’s second book) I’ll be doing a totally new, secret project with another author, in a completely different universe. Once I finish that secret project, I’ll come back to the Unsung Veil and play with the characters there.
My overall goal is to eventually be a full-time author so that I can focus on my little terrorist at home instead of splitting my time four ways: Momming, Evil day job one, Evil day job two, Author.

Do you have anything to say to your fans?

Thank you! I realize there may not be that many of you yet, at least not compared to some of the big names in this business, but each and every one of you are important to me. You make it possible for me to chase this dream of mine and I couldn’t possibly be more grateful! Every book, every page read, matters more than you know.