Beth Fehlbaum, YA fiction author

YA Writer Wednesdays welcomes E.G. Gaddess, author of Dhampyr Heritage! 

What’s your book about? Dhampyr Heritage is set in the Edwardian (Victorian) Era and is about a young man about to turn 16 years old – Gideon – who returns home to face a horrible event from his past: the attack that turned his best friend into a vampire.

What inspired you to write it? When Twilight was being read by all my daughter’s friends, she wasn’t into reading romances; she still isn’t. Since I liked to write, she asked me to write a story with vampires, but that wasn’t a romance. Though there is a romance in the book, it is the “b” story, not the main plot.

Do you write from an outline or are you a “pantser”? Definitely a pantser. However, I have found that making an outline or graphical depiction of my conflicts and plot points helps, but only after I have a first draft done (or nearly done.) I tried outlining once, but the characters ended up going in a very different direction than I had planned, so now I don’t bother with any kind of structure until I get them to the end – then I can use it to go back and see where the holes and weak points are that need to be fixed. It helps me understand the story I have written so I can make it better.

Are you a full-time writer or do you have a “day job”? What do you do in your “day job”? I wish I could write full time, and I hope to be able to do that sometime in the future. For now though, I am an editor of technical plans and reports , which is very boring. And sometimes, it is hard to switch between the two styles of writing.

Why YA as opposed to some other genre? Well, at one time I thought I was a writer for adults and I was struggling with it. My writing instructors and coaches kept telling me I needed more... something. I took a break from writing for anyone but myself when my daughter was born – I was too busy for anything else. When she was finishing elementary school (10 years later), she couldn’t find anything she wanted to read. So she asked me to write something for her. And I did. And it was fun and she loved it. I have two manuscripts in various stages of completion that are middle grade – and I would like to publish them someday. She keeps asking me to write stuff for her, and that is what I am doing. I love it and though I struggle with it at times, it’s not like when I was trying to write for adults. Dhampyr Heritage is for younger teens – older than middle grade (which is now elementary school?) but younger than those getting ready to graduate high school. It’s for kids in middle school or just starting high school. 

E.G. Gaddess can be found on Facebook, too! 

Dhampyr Heritage can be purchased through E.G. Gaddess' website (www.eggaddess.com), on Amazon, at Barnes and Noble, and for the Kindle, Nook, iTunes, Sony eReader, and Kobe at their respective sites.