Fantastic Author Friday: Lisa Mangum

Hi Folks,

We have an incredible interview for you today: Lisa Mangum, author of the Hourglass Door trilogy. Lisa's books have won ForeWord YA book of the year, and have already established quite a following. Placement alongside Stephanie Meyer books at Wal-Mart can't hurt! Lisa's 3rd book, The Forgotten Locket, is now available.

Joshua: So, Lisa, we're glad to have you here. Please tell us a little bit about yourself.

Lisa: I suppose I could just copy and paste my official author bio that appears on my books, but that seems like cheating. So here are a few things about me that you may or may not already know. I’m a book lover, and I’m an editor for a publishing company. My first paying job was at a library, but I quit at the end of the summer because I couldn’t handle the fact that people kept bringing the books back. I don’t wear high heels. I don’t like seafood. I love using different colored paper clips when I’m working on a project. And, oh, yes one of my back molars is reversed, which my dentist says makes me super cool.

Joshua: What was your journey of discovery in becoming a writer?

Lisa: I grew up with books and stories, and so maybe it was natural that I grew up wanting to be a writer. But I’ll be honest, when I was a teenager, I lost that surety that burned so bright when I was a child, and I started believing that I wasn’t good enough to be a writer. But I knew I still loved books, so I turned my attention to editing. I graduated from the University of Utah with a degree in English and started working as an editorial assistant for a publishing company. I wrote—a little—but not seriously. And then, about five years ago or so, my friends and I started a writing group and that reignited my passion for writing. It was like the floodgates opened and I was filled with all kinds of ideas. Before I knew it, I had written (and published) three books in three years, and I’ve never looked back since.

Joshua: Tells us about the Hourglass Door trilogy. [This links to a sweet book trailer]

Lisa: HourglassDoor is a YA love story with a mystery that dates back to Leonardo da Vinci. It has some great drama and suspense, but at the heart, it’s a love story between Abby and Dante.

In book one, TheHourglass Door, Abby is a senior in high school when she meets Dante, a foreign exchange student from Italy. Dante is guarding a secret that dates back to Leonardo da Vinci’s day. And the closer Abby and Dante grow in a relationship—and the closer Abby comes to learning the truth—the more danger her life is in. Dante has been sent through a time machine built by da Vinci, but he’s not the only one who came through the hourglass door, and he’s not the only one with a reason to go back.

Book two, The GoldenSpiral, and book three, The Forgotten Locket, continue the story of Abby and Dante as they work together to stop Zo from destroying the river of time.

Joshua: How did you come up with the idea?

Lisa: I was actually working on an epic fantasy story before I started work on The Hourglass Door. I was on my way to a writing conference for YA authors one evening after work and I thought to myself, What would I write, if I was going to write a young adult book? I knew it would be a love story, and I knew it would have a touch of fantasy, and I knew it would be a trilogy. I was thinking about Dante’s epic poem, The Divine Comedy, which has a great love story woven throughout it, and it was like Abby and Dante just jumped in the car with me. By the time I got to the conference, I knew where book 1 would end, where book 2 would end, where book 3 would start, along with character names and some key scenes and even some plot twists. After that, it was just a matter of getting it all down on paper and writing the story.

Joshua: As I recall, writing the third book in the trilogy was a labor of love. Tell us about that.

Lisa: It’s true. Book three was the hardest book to write in the trilogy. Part of it was because, up until then, I could always so, “Oh, I’ll figure it out later.” Well, now there was no later, and I had to figure it out now. Plus, it was the end of the whole story so I wanted to make sure I stayed true to the characters and provided them (and my readers) with a satisfying ending.

I also felt a lot of pressure to meet my deadlines in writing book, and it took a lot of time to outline the story and make sure the plot was just right. I ended up writing 40,000 words in 10 days. Then chucking most of them out the window and writing another 40,000 words in another 10 days. It was a marathon experience for me, and perhaps the best thing I learned from it is that I can rise to the challenge and succeed. That was a good thing for me to learn about myself.

Joshua: Where are some of your upcoming signings where we can meet you?

Lisa: All my tour information is on LisaMangum.com; I try to keep it up-to-date. This summer, I’ll be all over Utah, as well as spending some weekends in Seattle, Arizona, Idaho, and California. It’ll be a busy few months!

Joshua: Any suggestions for aspiring writers?

Lisa: At the Book Festival on June 4^th, my friend and fellow author Rick Walton shared this bit of advice, which I am shamelessly stealing and quoting here: “Give up. And if you can’t, do the work.” I just love that idea. Writing is hard and time consuming and sometimes frustrating. It’s easy to give up when writer’s block hits, or when you get a bad review. But if you can’t give up—if there is something inside you that won’t let you give up—then you have to do the work. And it’s the writers who do the work who are the writers who find success.

Joshua: What do you think about the changing publishing market?

Lisa: I think there will always be stories. How those stories are told, however, might change. It’s true that e-publishing is on the rise and digital is here to stay, but at the same time, I don’t think that means traditional books are going away either. I believe the marketplace is wide enough and strong enough to support both digital books and traditional print books. There are benefits and drawbacks to both, but in the end, they both have the same goal: to transmit the story from the author to the reader. And that is a kind of magic worth preserving.

 

The Forgotten Locket is available now, and can be purchased online at Deseretbook.com, Amazon.com, BN.com, as well as at in bookstores nationwide. You can find me on Facebook or at LisaMangum.com.