Author Interview with Shira Glassman
Today, I’m delighted to announce that we have an interview with author Shira Glassman.
Shira Glassman is a bisexual Jewish violinist passionately inspired by German and French opera and Agatha Christie novels.
She and her agender same-sex spouse live in north central Florida, where the alligators are mostly harmless because they’re too lazy to be bothered.
Hi Shira, thanks so much for joining us today! To start with, please tell us about your debut novel, THE SECOND MANGO.
A chronically ill princess finds herself on her father’s throne after an unexpected fatal accident. Too young, too sheltered, and too grieving to know what she’s doing, she finds a source of strength in a dragon-riding female bodyguard who takes her under her wing. They go on a quest to find the new queen a girlfriend, since she doesn’t know any other lesbians and the bodyguard is straight, but they soon wind up getting involved in a rescue mission instead when they find a group of women who have been turned to stone by an evil sorcerer.
What inspired you to write THE SECOND MANGO?
Three things coming together: 1. My dad died and I need a way to deal, so I wanted to write about someone else going through the same grieving process. 2. I wanted a Jewish Disney princess, and a princess who liked other girls, so that I could see myself in the Disney princess lineup. Yes, it’s cheesy, but I grew up in Florida so I went to the parks a lot. 3. I love dragons and wanted to create a lovable dragon (and a lovable “deep-voiced guy in goatee and cape”, since like dragons they always wind up being villains, which is distressing when you find both groups appealing.)
How many Mangoverse books will there be?
I don’t know! There are three published and a fourth completed and coming out in July 2016 (The Olive Conspiracy, Prizm Books), and if I get another idea I’ll write another one. Since they’re all standalones there never really was any plan or overarching arc.
So how long does it take you to draft a novel? Do you plan excessively or see where your writing takes you?
I plan very thoroughly. If I don’t have the entire skeleton in my head, emotionally I can’t even start writing the words. Now, that skeleton might shift as the book evolves, with arms getting repositioned or extra legs being screwed in! But without a whole story outline those first words won’t even come.
Sometimes coming up with stories and making all the details fall together takes years. My average Mangoverse novel writing time, actual writing on the laptop, is about half a year.
What is your favourite part of writing?
Finally having the characters and relationships start out the way I like them instead of having to change canon to suit my preferences. The heroic knight is not only female but Jewish and has a nose like mine, for example. The f/f is canon, the older man/younger woman ‘ship is canon, it goes on and on.
Do you prefer reading a physical book or an ebook? Why?
I prefer paperbacks because that way I can get away from the screen and there’s no temptation to check fifty other tabs all the time. I just like the tactile and ocular experience of a paperback. I am grateful for eBooks, though, because so many people love them and I don’t think I’d be able to share my stories with as many people if eBooks didn’t exist.
What are you reading now?
Mighty like a Rose, a romance novel set during the miner’s strike in the 1980’s by writer friend Kitty Campanile. I’m looking forward to it since my Climbing the Date Palm is also based on real-world labor unrest (a local wage-theft ordinance my spouse and other activists helped put on the books a few years ago.) Once I finish Rose I’ll be sure to mention it to the rest of the union types around here.
What’s your all-time favourite book?
I don’t have just one favorite book but I’m a passionate Agatha Christie fan and also really love elements of Watership Down and Jane Eyre. I used to add The Odessa File to this list but lately I’m not entirely sure how I feel about stories where Nazis are the bad guys but we end up relegated to the sidelines while some gentile hero gets to kick their butts. I will reread it again soon, just… not sure. Anyway, I own nearly everything Christie ever wrote so let’s just stick with that.
Is there anything else you’d like readers to know about you or your books?
I’m a classical and folk musician and I’ve been writing a lot about musicians lately. This January I have a short story coming out called “Fearless”, my first lesbian contemporary. It’s a sweet, G-rated romance between a lesbian band mom and the cute butch, Jewish orchestra director from her daughter’s high school. I’m really excited about it because it focuses on the lifelong rewards of playing music and that’s a subject that’s always been very important to me.
About Perach: Shulamit’s kingdom is based on South Florida, where I grew up. Many of the details of her world are based on real places. Here are some pictures of the real places that inspired the settings of my Mangoverse books.
—
Find Shira online:
