Episode 39: Interview with Victoria McCombs

Today we are thrilled to share our interview with writer Victoria McCombs!

Victoria released her first book The Storyteller’s Daughter on July 14th through independent publisher The Parliament House. This tale revolves around a reimagining of Rumpelstiltskin, where “every child in Westfallen has been born with a Gift, and these Gifts defined them. Then Cosette is born, Giftless.” A father’s desire to help his child feel accepted backfires as a seemingly harmless lie has serious consequences.

The cover for this story is a great example of visual storytelling and based on her descriptions we cannot wait to read it! This book is the first in a 4-book series of reimagined fairy tales in the vein of Ella Enchanted. The cover for her 2nd book Woods of Silver and Light was just revealed on July 16th, check it out @Victoria_McComb on Instagram and Twitter.      

In this episode, Victoria discusses the two series of books that she is in various stages of creating, her process that includes separating her writing activities from her reading as well as how she goes about actively seeking tools to develop her craft, what she’s learned through working with beta readers, and her experience being a 3rd generation writer and how that history has influenced her process. She also gives some practical advice for those in the process of pitching their book to a publisher or seeking to query their work to an agent.

We hope you enjoy this episode, we were really encouraged by the advice and insight she shared and we hope you will be too! Keep reading, writing, and putting your voice out there!

Into the woods,

Fable & The Verbivore

Notes:

Victoria mentions that she posted a pitch on Twitter during #PitMad. This is a pitch party on Twitter where individual authors pitch their completed, polished, unpublished manuscripts. Agents and editors can make requests for more information. The next date for the 2020 #PitMad is September 3, 2020 (8AM – 8PM EDT). Check out more information on https://pitchwars.org/save-the-dates-pitmad-schedule-for-2020/.

Victoria also discussed writing during NaNoWrMo camp. The camp occurs each year in April and July, and you are able to set your own word goals and work on any type of writing project while tracking your progress on this website. They also have writers who serve as camp counselers by sharing advice and sending out prompts. More information can be found at https://nanowrimo.org/what-is-camp-nanowrimo.

Books Mentioned:

Music from: https://filmmusic.io
’Friendly day’ by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)
Licence: CC BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

interviewBethany Stedman