Author Interview and Giveaway: Ruth Warburton!

Ruth Warburton's debut young adult novel A Witch in Winterreleases today! Ruth very kindly took the time to stop by my blog and answer some questions about her book...and stay tuned for an awesome giveaway at the end!

Anna Winterson doesn't know she's a witch and would probably mock you for believing in magic, but after moving to the small town of Winter with her father, she learns more than she ever wanted to about power. When Anna meets Seth, she is smitten, but when she enchants him to love her, she unwittingly amplifies a deadly conflict between two witch clans and splits her own heart in two. She wants to love Seth, to let him love her - but if it is her magic that's controlling his passion, then she is as monstrous as the witch clan who are trying to use her amazing powers for their own gain.

When love is tangled up in magic, how can you be sure what's real?

Buy A Witch in Winter: Amazon UK/TBD

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1. I'm a huuuuge fan of twitter so, can you sum up A Witch in Winter in 140 characters for us? 

Ooh hard! Ok...

It's your average girl meets boy, girl enchants boy, girl tries to take enchantment off & they both get into a whole heap of trouble, story.

How's that? 140 EXACTLY.

[I checked, it is--C]

2. What inspired you to write YA and did you do a lot of research into the genre before writing your own?

I don't think I ever really sat down to write YA. It was a sort of mix of chance and circumstance.

The seed for the story came from an interview I listened to on radio four where the interviewer was talking about romance, and how the challenge in modern romance is keeping the main characters from jumping into bed with each other - because in this day and age, if you like each other, why wouldn't you? And I started thinking that for me, the main reason I wouldn't jump into bed with someone I was in love with, would be if I wasn't sure howthey felt about me. And somehow the idea of the spell just popped into my head - a girl gets the boy she loves, but can never be completely sure how he feels about her.

It just came out as YA in my head - I knew from the outset that the characters would be teens, and I'm not sure why, except that maybe I was spending a lot of time in the children's section of the library with my toddler, and I'd started browsing the YA section - basically out of boredom! I never really got to sit down and read a full book - but I'd look at the titles and the jackets and maybe read a page here and there - and it reminded me of a whole section of books that I hadn't thought about for a long time. I work in adult publishing so although I read a lot, it's almost always "work" books - which means adult literary fiction and non-fiction, pretty much.

Which kind of answers your other question - did I do a lot of research? No - not really, in the sense that I didn't read a great deal that was specifically YA. But I guess I had a pretty good idea of the tone and themes out there, just from browsing.

3. I know that you work in publishing, do you think this has helped (or hindered) your journey as an author?

Hmm... good question. I'd say a bit of both.

It helped for sure in that I knew how high the bar was, and how good a manuscript has to be to get published, so I made damn sure my book was as perfect as I could make it. I also had a pretty good idea of how to craft a pitch (it's kind of what I do in my day-job, only for other people's books, which, let me tell you, is a whole lot easier than pitching your own!) 

I also knew the basics - like the kind of thing that makes a submission an automatic "no", and how to research agents and go about subbing to them. But I didn't have any contacts in the children's side of the business so for me the actual process of subbing was the same as for any other aspiring author - I looked up sites on the internet like www.authoradvance.com and checked who was interested in YA, and who was accepting subs, and then I drew up a hit list and subbed via the agents' slush piles like anyone else.

But it also hindered for the same reasons. I'd been writing for years but always adult novels and all my manuscripts had always gone under the bed. I just wrote for my own fun, really. As I said above, it's incredibly hard to get published - fantastic manuscripts get rejected every day. I knew the odds and it really put me off even trying - which is kind of pathetic, but I'm not the kind of person who's spurred on by setbacks. I have a very low failure threshold and tend to just give up! Also I really, really didn't want to sub to agents and editors I worked with. I thought it would be horrendously awkward all round.

But then this book just somehow came out as YA. I wrote it without even really thinking about publication - just for pleasure like all the others - and then when I'd finished it I suddenly realised it was a totally different set of agents and editors - ones I'd never met and would likely never run across in the course of work. So I decided to go for it. And 2 years on - here we are!

4. I love the setting of Winter, the small English coastal town that the book takes place in, why did you decide on this?

I don't exactly know where the setting came from - the first scene that came into my head was a girl in the car with her dad, driving along the M25 towards a new life. He was whistling Jumping Jack Flash through his teeth and looking forward to a fresh start after he'd been sacked - she was depressed and trying not to show it. That was the first scene I wrote - though in the event it got cut quite early on! I didn't immediately know where they were headed and then Winter gradually took shape in my imagination. It's quite similar to the town where I grew up, Lewes. Lewes isn't by the sea (it's about five or six miles inland) but it has a lot of the same features as Winter, including a ruined castle which glowers above the town, a bit like Winter Castle. It was also heavily flooded in the year 2000 (including my dad's house) which was the inspiration behind some of the later events in the book. 

The seaside setting came from the Sussex coast and also from holidays in Cornwall, Brittany and Devon - I wrote some of the book in Brittany and in Padstow, in a house overlooking the sea.

5. Magic features pretty heavily in AWiW, if you could cast one spell successfully, what would it be?

Crikey, that's a hard one! I think I would be incredibly wary of messing around with spells after what Anna goes through! A bit like genies with wishes in the Arabian Nights, the spells in my books always seem to cause more trouble than they solve.

But I am quite envious of Anna's ability to fly (wait for book two!) which I think would be very fun, and a huge saving in commuting costs!

6. What books are you most looking forward to reading in 2012? 

I am really, really excited for the release of my friend CJ Daugherty's first book, Night School which (bizarrely) comes out the exact same day as mine. I also intend to try Cassandra Clare's Clockwork series after you recommended it so strongly! [yes! you will LOVE it--C]

7. A Witch in Love, the second book in your trilogy gets released later this year, can you give us any hints about what's to come?

Hmm... what can I say? Well it starts six months in from where A Witch in Winter ends, just before Christmas. Anna's made her peace with what she did to Seth in book one, but after what happened she's vowed to suppress her powers and become an ordinary girl. Unfortunately it's not as easy as all that. Some things are beyond her control - including her heart. She's also about to find out that there are more terrifying entities out there than the Ealdwitan - not all of them witches. Emmaline, Bran and Seth will all be returning and we're also going to see a lot more of Abe...
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Thanks so much for taking the time to answer my questions Ruth!
You can learn more about Ruth and A Witch in Winter on her website
Or her Facebook
And you should definitely follow her on Twitter 
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And now for the totally awesome giveaway! Ruth has very kindly offered to send a SIGNED AND DEDICATED copy of A Witch in Winter to one lucky winner!

To enter you must:

Live in the UK

Leave a comment with your email address and an answer to:
If you could cast one spell successfully,what would it be?

I'm also going to give away a copy of AWiW to one INTERNATIONAL winner

To enter you must:
Live outside the UK
Leave a comment with your email address, state you're entering the INTERNATIONAL giveaway and give an answer to:

If you could cast one spell successfully, what would it be?

NO extra entries, but I would appreciate you spreading the word any way you can!

Contest opens today (5th) and will end on the 10th January at 12am GMT