2000 - 11/2000 Meeting

Page Created: 09/25/10. Last Update: 10/25/10. Last Google Group Page Update: 01/08/08.

TAMORA PIERCE

Tamora Pierce primarily writes fantasy for young people.

The author's website is: http://www.tamora-pierce.com/

Novels:

Alanna: The First Adventure

Beka Cooper

Briar's Book

The Circle Opens

Circle of Magic

Cold Fire

Daja's Book

Daughter of the Lioness

First Test

Emperor Mage

The Immortals

In the Hand of the Goddess

Lady Knight

Lioness Rampant

Magic Steps

Page

Protector of the Small

Realms of the Gods

Tris's Book

Sandry's Book

Shatterglass

Song of the Lioness Quartet

Squire

Street Magic

Trickster's Choice

Trickster's Queen

Wild Magic

Will of the Empress

Wolf-Speaker

Woman Who Rides Like a Man

Young Warriors: Stories of Strength

MEETING SUMMARY:

Meeting Date: November 11, 2000.

Meeting Site: Saddle River Valley Cultural Center, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.

Official Attendance: 30.

Meeting Program: Talk by YA Fantasy Writer.

Notes:

Meeting Memories:

Newsletter Account:

... The childhood of Tamora Pierce was spent as a hillbilly child in Appalachia. Her parents were supportive of her storytelling and imagination, and she would entertain herself by making up stories about days of yore. She clearly remembers a television series about Robin Hood which led to her fascination with all things medieval.

As a child, she wrote reams of medieval fantasy stories, but hit a writers' block in her teenaged years. A friend got her in the door at a Mens Magazine, and the confessionals she wrote helped pay her way through college. She received a degree in Liberal Arts and worked at a variety of positions after graduation. She was working with troubled teenaged girls when she returned to the realm of the fantastic.

She began with a scene about a pair of motherless fraternal twins, a young girl and boy. Their inattentive and absent minded father has decided to apprentice each of them to a different guild and send them off on their way. The twins are unhappy with their arranged career paths and switch places, with the girl having to pose as a boy in order to join the military class. She wrote scene after scene and soon had a 700 page adult fantasy novel.

Her day job was as a councilor, and the house mother had strict ideas about what was and was not appropriate for troubled young girls to be hearing, so Ms Pierce had to storytell an edited version of her saga to her curious charges. An agent showed the work to an editor at Athenaeum, a publisher of Young Adult books, who agreed that with some rewriting, the tale could be published as a series. It was published as the Lioness Quartet: ALANNA: THE FIRST ADVENTURE, IN THE HAND OF THE GODDESS, THE WOMAN WHO RIDES LIKE A MAN and THE REALMS OF THE GODS.

The author was soon at work on a second quartet, but was also plotting an adult fantasy when she began receiving fan mail. A succession of letters like "I survived a broken back/abuse/my parents divorce/etc. because of your books and others like "I took up riding/archery/fencing/etc. because of your characters" made her rethink her plans. There was a dearth of strong female characters in the YA field, and she felt she could make a difference by writing for that audience.

One of the things she tries to do in her writing is to create heroes who are fully human. She greatly admires Tolkien, but finds his characters too distant and unapproachable. Much of her writing is a direct reaction to heroes of this sort. She feels that it helps people to aspire to heroism to see their role models as flesh and blood with flaws and foibles. She reveres the Founding Fathers, but loves 1776 because it shows their less idealized sides.

The series she is currently working on features a female knight-in-training, Kell. The cover of the first book in the series shows the heroine with a black eye. The second with a bruised cheek. When someone asked if all the books in the series would show Kell in the aftermath of various fights, Ms Pierce replied, "They will if I have anything to say about it."

Tamora stated that when she was young, she wanted to read about female sword slingers. She intends to continue writing the sort of fantasy that her younger self had wanted to read.

Ms Pierce was gracious and informative. After the meeting, she accompanied members of the club to Matthew's Diner for coffee and conversation.

As always, our thanks go to everyone who helped with the set up, clean up, and smooth running of a successful meeting.