VP Profile #22: Darice Moore

Here's Darice! She completes our set of Viable Paradise XIII interviews here at the Tamago. Please enjoy!

Tamago: How long have you wanted to be a writer?

Darice: I think my mother still has the first book I wrote, when I was five—it was about a cat and a mouse, and owed quite a bit to the Looney Tunes school of plots. I always enjoyed writing and wanted to be a writer, but I didn’t get serious about it until I was in graduate school and wrote my first (execrable) novel, because I figured I’d better stop talking about writing and just do it. A lesson I still need to relearn every once in a while.

Tamago: Who are your creative influences?

Darice: Madeleine L’Engle’s books made me want to be a writer and taught me about balancing the everyday and the fantastic (my daughter is named Meg for a reason…). When I was a teen, Tamora Pierce’s and Robin McKinley’s books brought me into fantasy.

These days, I turn a lot to Terry Pratchett’s Wee Free Men—not just because it’s a cracking good read (my entire family loves it), but also because it’s a lesson in writing, both overtly and through example, and I learn something new every time I read it. (That narrativium really works.)

Another influence is Connie Willis, who plunges me into her characters’ lives so effectively that I never quite leave them behind (having worked in the corporate world for a while, I have a weird soft spot for Bellwether). And I wish I’d discovered Diana Wynne Jones when I was a teen; I found her books as an adult, and Dark Lord of Derkholm is my favorite epic quest/family/coming of age/parody novel ever.

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Mirrored from Writer Tamago.