Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
Hello! My name is Linda M. Crate, and I’m a Pennsylvanian based writer born in Pittsburgh yet raised in the rural town of Conneautville. I have a degree in English-Literature from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, and I have been writing since I was thirteen.
I’ve written numerous poems, articles, essays, reviews, and short stories which have appeared in a myriad of magazine, and around twenty novels including the couple that I scrapped. Not all of them have been published yet, but I am looking on finding them all homes. I’m currently working on a piece that is unlike anything I’ve written before, and I’m pretty excited about it.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My latest book is called Centaurs & Magic and it’s a prequel to Blood & Magic and Dragons & Magic. Normally, I go in chronological order, but my one friend asked me for some history on Atriel so I wrote this prequel after the first and second books had been published.
I decided that this book, too, was going to be different. I challenged myself to write a book without romance and I did. It’s a very dark, creepy tale about the villain of the first book Evan and his ruthless pursuit to become king no matter what it costs.
Ironically enough, there’s actually more history set in the book after this one (which takes place directly after Dragons & Magic, but what can I say? My characters are sometimes brats).
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Define unusual? I write whenever I get the chance to. But I don’t think I really have any strange writing habits.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Edgar Allan Poe, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, J.K. Rowling, Anne Rice, Emily Dickinson, Christopher Paolini, Agatha Christy
What are you working on now?
A piece about a part-vampire named Nymeri. It’s funny because I thought I knew where this story was going, and yesterday it decided to go in a new direction. We’ll see where it heads from here.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I usually promote on twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Of the three, I think FB and Instagram are the most effective.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Never give up. My novel Amethyst Epiphany was picked up and then later dropped by a publisher a year after I’d started working with them. It really broke my heart. My friend Alicia, however, encouraged me to keep going on; and a month later Ravenswood had accepted the first book in my Magic Series: Blood & Magic. You’ve got to work hard to achieve your dreams, and so if this is what you really want, prepare to work hard and endure ruthless critiques sometimes from people who have no idea how hard it is to put your heart and soul on paper.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
When Anne Rice said there are no rules for writing. I felt better for ignoring the “10 top things you should know about writing” and lists like that because I felt in my heart that we all write how we write. It’s all about environment, how we learned, and what angle we want to take. We all have our own authentic voice so the same story cannot be told twice and I think that’s the thing I love most about writing.
What are you reading now?
I’m currently not reading anything. I recently finished Pestilence by Jeani Rector. It was an interesting historical fiction centered around the Plague of Europe. She worked very hard to keep everything authentic to the time period and gave a lot of details about the Plague whilst doing so which were factually accurate.
What’s next for you as a writer?
I never know. I keep pushing my books, my poetry, my articles, etc. out into the world. I’m going to keep writing, dreaming, and pushing. We’ll see where that takes me. Hopefully to high places because I’ve had enough of the low. Ha ha.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
If I were stranded on a desert island and only had four books to bring with me I would probably bring a practical one on how to build rafts or escape desert islands, one on how to forage for food in desert climates without exerting too much energy, one on poisonous animals and insects that live in the desert so I can avoid them if possible, and one on how to stay hydrated. Because as much as I love my fantasy novels, I really don’t think they’d be practical and I want to be rescued as quickly as I possibly can be.
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