Laura Bowers - Shop Talk Tuesday with Terie Garrison!

Happy Tuesday!

Today I'm interviewing the lovely Terie Garrison, who recently celebrated the release of her e-book, CHANGING GEARS, a young adult sports novel on bike racing in San Diego!

Winning the race doesn?t equal winning at life.

After receiving a classic racing bike for his birthday, Barry Sloane discovers that he has the makings of a top-notch bike racer. If things work out right, he could even go to the Olympics some day.

Of course, there are other attractions: the young women racers, and particularly Daphne Turner, who can kick Barry?s rear on a bike any day of the week.

Another discovery, though, puts him at odds with his best friend, and soon Barry has to choose between pursuing his Olympic dream and being the kind of friend he always imagined himself to be.

And now that Terie is settled in with her favorite coffeehouse drink, tea--just plain bog-standard tea . . . or Earl Grey if she's feeling spunky . . .

And her favorite snack, potato chips . . .

... Let's begin!?Okay, Terie, what?was your favorite book as a child?

I don?t remember any particular favourites from my pre-teen years, but the book that grabbed me when I was twelve and didn?t let go for a good three or four years was The Outsiders by SE Hinton. I loved that book so much I would often read the last line and turn back to page 1 and start over. Of course, The Outsiders is particularly well-suited to that! For a couple of years, you could?ve opened to any random page and read a few words, and I could quote the rest of the paragraph word-for-word.

When did you decide to be a writer?

When I was in fifth grade, we were taught how to write limericks in an English lesson, then given some time to write one. I wrote three, and the next day, my teacher was showing my limericks to the other fifth-grade teachers. That was the moment I decided I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. After reading The Outsiders for the first time, I decided I wanted to write books for teenagers when I grew up. Which is kind of ironic since technically speaking, I wasn?t a teenager myself yet!

Where?s your favorite place to work? (Bonus if you share a picture!)?

I like to go anywhere that?s not ?home? or ?work?. Here?s a recent photo I took while writing at the Chester Zoo (in Chester UK).

Some other favourites are Alderley Edge,

Stonehenge (yes, really!),

Avebury,

and Castlerigg Stone Circle.

Wow. Absolutely GORGEOUS!! Talk about inspirational places to write. Speaking of which, how were you inspired to write your current release?

I used to be an avid cyclist. I raced as an amateur for a year, but didn?t really like it much. I still rode with a couple of racing clubs and was also involved with ultra-marathon cycling, which I liked better than regular racing. One of the clubs I rode with (the club I actually raced for that one year) was focused on juniors, so I got to spend a lot of time hanging out with teenage bike racers even though I was one of the ?old ladies? in the club. (Ahem, that?s ?old? only relatively speaking!)

Anyway, they say ?write what you know,? and cycling and bike racing was really important to me, so that ended up being the milieu for my first novel. The early drafts were fairly typical first-novelish, and though I got some good rejection letters, the book still needed work. It all seemed to come together when I came up with the idea for Barry, the main point-of-view character, to discover his best friend?s deep dark secret. The interplay of learning how to race and learning how to deal with this secret create a tension in Barry that he has to come to terms with.

If you followed the career path you chose for yourself in high school, what would you be doing for a living now??

I?d be writing novels full time. And even though I?m not, I?m still really lucky: I do have a day job as a writer. I work as a technical writer, writing user documentation for software systems. It?s not glamourous or anything like that, but it means I get to play with words all day long and make a decent salary while I?m at it.

You?ve been locked in a bank vault like the man from Twilight Zone, so you finally have time to read! Your glasses remain unharmed, (whew,) so what?s the first book you crack open??

Oh wow! That?s one of the very few episodes of The Twilight Zone I?ve ever seen! A chill climbs up my back every time I think of it. Of course, my eyesight is really bad and I can?t read without glasses, so it really hits home.

I think I?d pick up the first book in a long series that I?ve never read. Maybe the first in the Song of Ice and Fire series by George R.R. Martin, or maybe one by Aliastair Reynolds, Peter Hamilton, or David Weber. I might end up staring for quite some time at all those books trying to decide which one to start first.

For one day, time travel is a reality and you have the opportunity to visit any famous deceased author you want. Who do you pick?

Charles Dickens. What amazing characters that man created! Who better to learn from than a master?

You magically find a $100 bill in your box of cereal. In what frivolous way would you spend it? (Key word: Frivolous.)

Silk yarn. I crochet a lot, and I already have scads of yarn in my stash. I need more like I need three holes in my head. But I?d buy some expensive silk yarn to make a shawl or scarf with.

What?s your favorite quote?

Oh, I have so many! But the one that probably comes out of my mouth the most is from The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien: ?It?s a habit of the old; they tend to speak to the wisest person present.? If you knew how very unwise I can be much of the time, you?d understand the irony of me saying this frequently.

If you could sum up your best advice for new writers in only four words, what would they be?

Write something every day.

Awesome. Thanks so much for stopping by, Terie, and best of luck with CHANGING GEARS!

Source: http://laurabowers.livejournal.com/153365.html

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