Welcome Alexandra!
How did you come to write fantasy? What attracted you to the genre?
It was a complete accident; my first five manuscripts (which will now never see the light of day) were women’s fiction or contemporary romance. Then in a discussion with my writers’ group about how problematic fairy tales were, we pondered what it would be like if the hero who got cursed DIDN’T behave like a complete bastard. I started writing and it grew from there. Please note, it’s not a retelling of a fairy tale; that was just the kicking off point.
However, I’ve always loved fantasy starting as a child with The Dark is Rising series, Narnia, Peter Pan, The Once and Future King; and as I grew older that turned into Douglas Adams, Tolkien, Terry Pratchett and so on. My favourite novels now are all sci fi or fantasy - Murderbot, Spectred Isle, and The Adventures of Amina Al Shirafi.
So maybe it was inevitable that I’d go there.
Are you a plotter? Panster? Or somewhere in-between?
I’m a pantser through and through. I did plot one early novel and hated every minute of it, to the point I stopped enjoying writing, and the end result was formulaic and boring. I’m actually a “looper” in that I write to discover what happens, and then loop back and fix things up so that what’s now happening makes more sense. So I’m constantly rewriting what’s gone before, and by the time I get to the end it’s not usually too much of a mess.
Do you have advice for aspiring writers?
Find out what works for you. There’s lots of advice out there and plenty of people who’ll tell you there’s a particular thing you HAVE to do to be successful (you have to plot, you have to do character sheets, you have to set aside time to write every day, you have to enter contests, you need to hit these beats). Listen to as many different people as possible talk about what works for them, try out any ideas that sound good, and figure out what works for you.
Tell us about your release?
Thoroughly Disenchanted is a cosy romantasy: four friends, a magical bush manor and a weekend away that has lasted a century.
It’s published by HarperVoyager and is out now in print, ebook and audio.
What else can we expect from you in the future?
More books, I hope! I’ve finished and am polishing the next one right now, and have an outline in mind for the one after that. Sticking with cosy fantasy for the time being.
What are you currently reading/watching?
Last month was a comfort-read month due to the horror of world affairs; I re-read 3 KJ Charles, 3 Cat Sebastian and 2 Everina Maxwell novels. This month I’m trying to only read new-to-me books and it’s going okay but I haven’t found anything mind blowing. I just started Covenant of Water for book club; it’s not a book I’d have chosen, so let’s see how that goes.
Alexandra Almond lives and works on Bunurong land in Melbourne (Naarm) with her tennis-ball obsessed Labrador, Captain. Before turning her hand to writing, previous roles included stablehand, clown, HR assistant, flower buyer, procurement manager, cleaner and human-centred designer, which is her current day job. She might have included footballer on that list if the AFLW had arrived three decades earlier; and if she had any ability. She writes mostly cosy fantasy, although she also dabbles in contemporary romance. Her debut novel, THOROUGHLY DISENCHANTED, was be published by HarperCollinsAU in December; it's a cosy fantasy about a group of friends trapped in a country house for 100 years.
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