I met Brandon Mull when he came to Iola, Kansas, during his nationwide book tour in
September 2011. At the time he was promoting his
Beyonders series, now a New York Time Bestseller. I had a wonderful time getting to know him and asking him some penetrating questions about writing. We have kept in contact through the years as I read and reviewed many of his books. Brandon is an awesome guy with an outstanding imagination. It's a thrill to meet someone putting their amazing potential to work in creating incredibly original literature. He has a brilliant future ahead of him!
Here is his bio from his
website:
“Brandon Mull is the author of the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestselling
Beyonders and
Fablehaven series. Brandon resides in a happy little valley near the mouth of a canyon with his wife and four children. He spent two years living in the Atacama Desert of Northern Chile where he learned Spanish and juggling. He once won a pudding eating contest in the park behind his grandma’s house, earning a gold medal.”
_________________________________________________________________________________
Through my correspondence with Brandon, he's answered many of my writing and reading questions regarding his work:
1. What helps you to keep writing?
Good scenes keep me writing. Make every scene count. Make sure every scene engages you (because it is funny, or revealing, or amazing, or tense, or whatever). Pay attention to how your favorite writers build their scenes--how they start, how they handle dialog, how they work in backstory, how they paint on your imagination with descriptions, how they end the scene, and what they skip dramatising in a scene. If you write good scenes, then string them together in a smart way so that as a whole they convey a complete story, your readers will have a good time.
2. Do you ever come to your writing with a problem you are dealing with in your life and then try to write through it?
I do let things on my mind (troubles, issues, etc.) drift into my writing, and sometimes it has helped me clarify my thinking on certain issues or principles.
3. How did you start up the Spirit Animals series?
Scholastic came to me with the premise, but I served as architect for the series, creating the characters, the world, and outlining all seven books. I then wrote book one. There will also be a bonus book of stories about the Great Beasts, and I wrote one of those stories.
4. What other books do you have coming out soon?
(With the
Candy Shop War) there will probably be a third and probably final novel called
The Carnival Quest, but it is four or five years away due to contracts for other books.
Scholastic released, like
39 Clues,
Spirit Animals, written by a team of authors. I wrote book one and the outline for the other six books. See more here
http://oomscholasticblog.com/2013/03/spirit-animals-cover-reveal.html
Then I have the series called
Five Kingdoms, a five book series where our main character crosses over to another world, but with a lighter feel than
Beyonders. It'll be true middle-grade like
Fablehaven, but the world where he goes will be really different from anything we've seen. The first three books will come out only six months apart from each other.
And then in 2015 there will be a sequel series to
Fablehaven called
Dragonwatch. It will be five books and will continue the main storyline of
Fablehaven, following Kendra, Seth, and the other main characters.
A trip to a haunted house turns into a nightmare when Cole and his friends are kidnapped by slave-traders and taken to a world called the Outskirts. Once there, Cole comes across shaping—a magical ability used to create objects, buildings, or “living” beings. Cole is sold to a company of raiders and he makes friends with three other slaves: Mira, Jace, and Twitch. Later, Cole learns that Mira is one of five princesses hiding from their father, the High King, supreme dictator over the Five Kingdoms. Cole must decide whether to aid Mira or search for his missing friends.
