We had the pleasure of chatting to author Alane Adams about her middle grade series, including the next instalment The Rubicus Prophecy. Alane discusses its inspiration, her writing process, book recommendations, and more!
Hi Alane! Tell us a little about yourself!
My name is Alane Adams and I am a children’s author and literacy advocate. A few years ago, my then 12-year-old son asked me to write him a book he could read, and my life-long desire to become an author came to life! With his encouragement, I completed drafts of the middle grade series, Legends of Orkney, and received additional inspiration from my father to write books about his childhood growing up in 1920’s Pennsylvania, which hatched an entire line of picture books starting with The Coal Thief.
The Rubicus Prophecy is the second book in the Witches of Orkney series. If you could only use five words to describe it, what would they be?
Bewitching fun meets magical adventure!
For those who haven’t read the series, can you tell us a little about it?
The Witches of Orkney series is a prequel to my original series. I wrote it with a younger reader in mind, someone not quite ready to tackle a 300 plus page book, but one who’s outgrown the super easy chapter books. I wanted to include magic and adventure and a little bit of mystery. It was so much fun to revisit the world of Orkney that I had created and imagine the lives of characters from the first series when they were children.
What inspired you to write this series?
I travel around the country visiting schools and talking to kids about reading. So many elementary kids were asking for a book that wasn’t from my picture book series, but I worried the middle grade series was going to be too hard for them, so I decided to create a new series for that younger reader with similarly-aged characters using a world I had already created, so the magical creatures and places were already in place. This saved a lot of time, and also allowed me to answer a lot of things I didn’t know about my background characters.
Were there any particular parts that you really enjoyed writing?
In the second book of the series, The Rubicus Prophecy, our main character meets an Orkadian boy named Robert. Those readers from the first series will immediately realize that many years later the two fall in love and their son is the main character of the series. But in the Witches of Orkney series, the two immediately dislike each other and it was really fun to write!
What is your process when it comes to writing?
I have a very simple process. Sit down every day and write. There are no excuses. It’s a daily habit and it’s the only way to get a manuscript finished. With the Orkney series I’m working on, so much of the research on background and Norse characters and lore has already been done, so its kind of like picking up a book you’ve read before and revisiting it. Everything feels familiar to me so I can easily slide into the world and focus on the story at hand.
Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?
Write. It’s actually the only way to become a writer. Reading a lot of books helps, but at the end of the day, talking about your dreams won’t make them come true. You have to sit down at a computer and let the stories in your head land on the page.
What’s next for you?
I am always working on new projects. I have a new Greek mythology series coming out next year called Legends of Olympus. The first book The Eye of Zeus, features a female-protagonist who may or may not be a daughter of Zeus, and most likely is going to destroy Olympus before she figures out her powers.
Lastly, do you have any book recommendations for us?
I read a lot of kids books in my line of work, and one of my favorite recent ones was a fantasy novel starring a talking-dog character with a really sweet storyline called Endling: The Last by Katherine Applegate.
