Author Q & A

Q: I love the twining of the two stories, the contemporary adventure and the flashback sequences of the twins. Why did you choose this method to tell the story instead of laying it out in a linear fashion? What sorts of challenges did you face with the two narratives? (Amy Atwell, Kathleen Bolton)

TW: When I started writing this story in 2002, it was without Moira’s tale and began with Maeve bidding on a keris at Lansing’s Block. The manuscript didn’t sell, so in 2005 I decided to rewrite it completely. I still felt the auction house was the best place to kick things off, because that scene sets the most important incident of the protagonist’s life in motion. What had happened between the twins was a fundamental part of Maeve’s tattered fabric, though, so I decided to interlace the story of her past with the present day narrative and tell the former from Moira’s point of view.

The biggest challenge was weaving everything so that the two stories dovetailed when they needed to and tensions evolved at a comparable rate. Oh, and I wanted to build off similar themes between each chapter and out-of-time sequence. Many hairs went gray during this process.

Back to the Author Q & A  »