Friday, November 2, 2012

Adventures of Tilda Pinkerton Blog Tour


Angela Shelton’s Guest Post for the Adventures of Tilda Pinkerton blog tour




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Why the Children's Fantasy Genre?

 Don't you see those who write children's fantasy books having the dream job? I do!

For me, writing a children's fantasy series was not so much a decision as it was an answer to a dream - a dream job!

Ever since I was little, I have loved fantasy stories. I got lost in A Wrinkle in Time and the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

I loved the idea of other dimensions. I loved science fiction. I loved magic. I loved other worlds.

As I grew up and became a professional writer, I was mostly hired to write true stories or adapt novels into screenplays.  After writing my own life into the movie Tumbleweeds, I adapted Kay Gibbon's novel Charms for the Easy Life for Showtime and went on to adapt quite a few other books. Most of them were in the female chick flick genre even though I secretly dreamed of being over at Disney or Dreamworks writing some fantasy movie with loads of magical elements.

Don't get me wrong, I love chick flicks, especially ones with fantastic female leads. I also have plenty of other books and movies to write in honor of the female. But do you have to write in the same genre for the rest of your life?

Stuck in One Genre?

If you have a following, an audience, or a name connected with a certain type of genre, you will be told that to veer from that is career suicide. If you're a bit of a rebel like me, there's no better time to try something you've always dreamed of doing than when someone tells you that you can't.

Ask yourself what you want to write.

When I asked myself what I wanted to write if I could write anything, it was the little girl who loved fantasy novels who spoke up first. In fact she yelled in my ear - write a magical fantasy series with magical hats!

Perhaps it is because I have a very large hat collection.

It was a huge feat for me to write Tilda Pinkerton. I wrote it in a completely different voice than I'd ever written in before.  It is very lyrical - you could almost sing the book. Some of my close friends were a bit confused because they were expecting another book along the line of Tumbleweeds.

I think the most important thing in writing is to write what you want to read. If your bookshelf has an eclectic variety of books, there's no reason why you can't write an eclectic collection yourself!

I wanted a hero like Tilda Pinkerton for my kids - so I wrote one. I would love to BE a hero like Tilda Pinkerton - so I created her and got to live through her as she appeared on the page.

I plan on more adventures in different genres as I continue to write more books that take place in this world and other undiscovered ones.

I am very proud of Tilda Pinkerton.

Angela Shelton – author, actor, orator

http://magicalhatshop.com/

http://angelashelton.com/

https://www.facebook.com/tildapinkerton

1 comment:

Teddy Rose said...

Thanks again for taking part in the tour!