So. Alma Alexander’s Worldweavers trilogy was completed earlier this year with the release of Cybermage. I was fortunate enough to interview her after the book came out, but have been tragically derelict in my duties when it comes to this here website. Hopefully I can make it up to you a bit now, by posting the interview along with a brief description of Alma’s awesome work.
If you’ve been reading the Worldweavers series up until now, you know that our heroine, Thea, was long considered to be a magical dunce. In her world, where magical talent is the norm for humans, Thea showed no aptitude for the arts until she was shipped off to Wandless Academy. At that point it became apparent that she’s not only a magician, but a rare powerful one, whose talent lies in the supposedly un-magical area of computers.
In Cybermage, Thea and her friends meet the famous scientist Nikola Tesla at various times in his life, whilst attempting to keep an important magical object out of the hands of a race called the Alphiri.
The book, Alma’s tenth, is awesome, and I heartily recommend the entire series to you. It’s funny, interesting, dramatic and also exceptionally creative.
Without further delay, I bring you Twenty-one Questions with Alma Alexander:
Question One
Me: You write under the name Alma Alexander, but you seem to be pretty free about your given name [Alma Hromic Deckert]. Why do you use a pseudonym?
Alma: Because when The Secrets of Jin-Shei was being published, my agent phoned me up and said they wanted a pseudonym. They wanted a name that was easier to pronounce. It was presented to me as a dealbreaker. My middle name is Alexandra so I went with that, so it felt more like me. [Alma's maiden name, Hromic, is pronounced H-rome-ich.] (more…)
I think books about modeling are kind of over. Which is not to say it hasn’t been a good run: We’ve had Melissa Walker’s Violet, Cheryl Diamond’s gritty memoir, and Meg Cabot’s awesome sci fi experiment with Nikki/Em. (I would be happy to see more of any of these, btw.)