Rebecca Shelley: Red Dragon Codex

Details:

Title: Red Dragon Codex (Amazon | B&N)
Author: Rebecca Shelley (writing as R.D. Henham) (http://www.rebeccashelley.com/)
Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast
ISBN: 9780786949250

The Interview:

1. First off, congratulations on the big novel sale! Give us the elevator pitch. What’s your book about?

In the Red Dragon Codex, an evil red dragon abducts the village seer who is Mudd’s foster mother. Mudd sets out to rescue the seer and becomes a player in the red dragon’s designs. He and his companions must discover the truth and find a way to defeat the red dragon and save the seer before the dragon destroys them all.

2. Most new novelists have an interesting story to tell about their journey to publication. What’s yours? Did you use an agent? Make sure to tell us about the day you found out you’d sold a book.

That’s funny, I can’t remember the day I found out I’d sold the book. I don’t know where I was or what I was doing. Probably at my desk writing. I do remember what I was doing the day my agent called to say she was interested in representing a different book. I was twelve feet in the air up in a tree trying to build a tree house. I was so surprised I almost fell. That was crazy.

I think my story is the classic example of how to get published. I went to a lot of writing workshops to learn the craft, including Odyssey, which is a six week workshop in New Hampshire. I wrote a lot of books and a bunch of short stories and tried to keep them all submitted all the time. I got a lot of rejections.

After a while I sold several short stories to semi-pro children’s markets. That got me onto a conference panel with Stacy Whitman, an editor for Mirrorstone books. I talked to Stacy briefly afterward and told her I’d send her a sample of my writing. After reading my sample, she invited me to send her a proposal for a book about one of the minor characters in the Dragonlance: The New Adventure series.

The unusual thing is that when I read the series I remember the character of Mudd jumped out at me the first time he appeared. This was before I’d been asked to submit a proposal. I remember stopping mid-page and reading the paragraph about Mudd over and over again, then thinking how much I would love to write a book about him. When I got Stacy’s letter that listed Mudd as one of the possible protagonists, a chill went down my spine. I knew right away what my proposal would be. Lucky for me, Stacy loved it, and I got a contract to write the book. It’s kind of funny after writing so many books, I finally sold one that hadn’t even been written yet.

3. Do you have another book in the pipeline? What are you working on now?

I’ve already turned in the first draft of the Brass Dragon Codex. Since selling Red Dragon Codex, I have found an agent, the wonderful Jennifer Cayea of Avenue A Literary. Right now she’s marketing a series of children’s books for me called The Smartboys Club. It’s kind of like a cross between Junie B. Jones and Captain Underpants. In the first book, a fourth-grade genius named Monkey and his friends take on a band of ninjas. I’m also working on a series of political thrillers.

4. What’s your writing process like? Morning writer, night writer, or something in between?

When everything goes like it should. I get up in the morning, send my four children off to school, and then write for four hours. Last month I signed my four-year-old up for private school, so I’m still basking in the long stretch of uninterrupted writing time after eleven years of writing with a child on my lap.

5. There seems to be an unusually high percentage of writers who own cats. Here at The First Book, we’re doing a study to find out if there’s a direct relationship between writing success and cat ownership. Do you own a cat? If so, tell us about him or her. If not, tell us what you have against cats.

Actually, I’ve always considered myself a dog person. I’ve shown dogs and done dogsledding and all of that kind of stuff. For most of my life I thought I was allergic to cats. But then I met some cats some writer friends have and wasn’t allergic to them at all. After a few tests I figured out it wasn’t the cats I’m allergic to, it’s the weeds outside that cats get into. The simple solution was to have an indoor only cat. This made my daughter happy, because she’d been begging for a cat for years. We got Dawnsy, a long hair calico. Beautiful cat. She thinks I’m her owner, sshhh, don’t tell my daughter. A few years after we got Dawnsy, my husband picked out a bangle and named her Mask. I think bangles have the softest fur I’ve ever petted. As for a direct relationship between writing success and cat ownership this is all I can say. I sold my first book after we got Dawnsy and my second book after we got Mask.