OBS fans, do you recall when we covered the young adult faerie novel Wings in May of 2010 for our monthly Book Club? Have you seen the slue of exclusives on the series and have had the pleasure of reading the Q & A with Aprilynne Pike in Oct 2009? Well, we have another exclusive for you. We are excited to announce that the New York Times bestselling author recently chatted with OBS about how she feels about the popularity of Wings, her fans and an upcoming movie based on the popular series. Here is our exclusive author interview with Aprilynne Pike:
Looking back, did you think the Wings series would be so popular or has it gone beyond what you imagined? What has been the best part of your success?
I think every author hopes that their book will be bestselling, become a movie, launch into a world-wide phenomenon, etc. but I think we are all too realistic to actually expect it. Even with all of the marketing and push my publisher gave me, the actual results were overwhelming! The very best part of my success has been that not only am I a full-time writer, but my husband gets to stay home as well as my lawyer/tech-guy/personal assistant. With four young children having a stay-at-home dad to help out makes all the difference!
You are very gracious with fans. How do you keep in close contact with your fans and how important is it to you?
I try to be! I actually stopped answering fanmail lately and I feel badly about that, but with an infant daughter, revisions and traveling all coming together, there just wasn’t time. That being said, I have a Facebook fanpage and am still able to reply to every comment, and I love being on Twitter and try to respond to fans there as much as possible. As far as I am concerned, my fans are the most important part of my success and I owe them respect for that! I love my fans!!
What is the best fan experience you’ve had and which was the most surprising?
One of my favorite fan experiences was when I was traveling for several family events last summer and was recognized in a bookstore for the first time when I dropped in to sign stock. The girl didn’t have her book with her (obviously) but since I was going to be there a couple of days, I went ahead and arranged a time to meet her and sign her books. It was so fun to be able to make her day like that!
The most surprising experience I had was shortly after Wings came out I was at a signing and had a girl ask me to please tell her something—anything!—about the next book! I told her a small tidbit and she literally got tears in her eyes she was so excited. I think that was the first time I realized my books could affect someone so deeply.
At one time, we heard the series might be made into a movie, can you give us any update on this?
Disney has optioned the film rights with Temple Hill producing and Miley Cyrus attached to star. All I know at this point is that there is a screenplay in the works and that everyone at both Disney and Temple Hill are excited about it! If I have any further news, believe me, I will post it everywhere!
OBS did Wings as our book club in May of 2010. How do you feel knowing you have gotten many young adults reading?
I LOVE that! I have a woman who is a family friend of my mother in law and she sat down with Wings just to page through it a little and in the course of a week, had read the whole thing. This may not sound impressive but this is the only book this woman has ever read in memory. When she told me she said, “I didn’t know I could read a whole book!” That was, in my opinion, the best compliment ever. I hear regularly from teens who have grudgingly read Wings only to discover they actually like to read and have gone on to read many more books! If I can be a part of that, I consider myself a success!
If you could give advice to an aspiring writer what would it be?
Read! I think you learn more about writing by reading than any other single thing. The other advice I give, particularly to younger teens, is to not worry about finishing books yet. If finishing comes easy to you, great! But if you are constantly getting fifty pages into a project and then your attention is stolen away by another project, that’s okay. Eventually I will start telling you to BIC (Butt In Chair) and finish the book, but when you’re still in Jr. High and High School, it’s so much more important to learn to think creatively on a regular basis than to finish a book. Learning to think creatively is so crucial if you want to be an author and as long as you are thinking of new stories all the time it doesn’t matter if those stories fit into one book or ten different first chapters. Just learn to think creatively and love doing it!
Are you working on any new projects? If so, what can you tell us?
I am working on a series about two “soulmates” who are reincarnated each time they die, and every new lifetime they have to remember each other and find each other all over again or their magic fades. And it’s been six lifetimes since they found each other. I’m super excited about it and will be writing the first book this summer.
Which authors do you admire most?
So many! I have to give kudos to Lois Lowry because she is the author of my favorite book ever, The Giver. I also really admire Stephenie Meyer, Rick Riordan, Meg Cabot, Brandon Mull, Saundra Mitchell, Leah Cypess, and Kim Harrison, to name just a very few.
Name three words you use often, whether in speech or writing.
Snatch, just, and “quite frankly.”
If you haven’t had a chance to read Wings, we suggest getting yourself a copy. Following Wings, the second in the series is titled “Spells” and the thirds book is titled “Illusions“, which has been released this year.
Check out our reviews of “Wings”, the second installment “Spells” , our Fan Art Madness Wings Edition and Wings Casting Couch.
