Rae D. Magdon

It was my pleasure to get to know two of my fellow Desert Palm Press authors recently. This interview is with Rae D. Magdon, who I somehow thought was named Rae Dawn Magdon. I apologize to Rae for giving her a middle name! 

AJ: I publish with a small publishing company called Desert Palm Press. We started out less than a year ago. With the exception of SL Kassidy and I who live not too far from each other, but have never met, our little band of authors come from different countries, and none of us knows the others well. In an effort to get to know my fellow authors a bit better, this week I’m featuring two other Desert Palm Press authors. In this interview today, I am featuring Rae D. Magdon. I hope you will enjoy getting to know a little more about her along with me.

AJ: Welcome. Do people call you by your full name, Rae Dawn?

RDM: Rae Dawn? Uhhh… I have no idea where you got the ‘Dawn’ from, but I think I’m keeping it! It’s pretty. Rae D. Magdon is actually an anagram of ‘Armageddon’. I was 14 when I came up with it… Don’t judge me.

AJ: I met our publisher Lee Fitzsimmons when she was functioning as a Beta Reader. She helped me with my first book, Sunset Island. She had great faith in my book and in me. When she established Desert Palm Press, she called me and offered me a contract for the Friends Series (Sunset Island, The Interim, Awaiting My Assignment, and Anything Your Heart Desires.) How did you come to publish with Desert Palm Press?

RDM: I met Lee in much the same way. Several years ago, I submitted my novel, ‘The Second Sister’, and its sequels to The Academy of Bards so people could read it for free. At the end, I tacked on an author’s note asking for a beta reader. Lee generously volunteered her services. We fell out of touch for a while when I moved on to other projects, but once she started Desert Palm Press, she was kind enough to send me an e-mail asking if she could publish The Second Sister. I had already published my first novel at that point on my own, but her offer intrigued me, and I decided to accept and release my future works under the DPP label.

AJ: Let’s start with a couple of easy questions: 

Tea or coffee?

Cup half full, or cup half empty?

City mouse or country mouse?

RDM:

Neither (I don’t drink caffeine), half empty (I’m a pessimist by nature), and I’m definitely a city mouse. However, I’ve had to compromise, since I’m married to a country mouse. Anchorage has enough city to satisfy me, and enough country and wilderness to satisfy Tory.

AJ: You currently have two books out, Dark Horizons, which you wrote with Michelle Magley, and The Second Sister, which you authored on your own. Tell us about your books.

RDM: The Second Sister was the first large-scale project I ever completed, and it has a long, complicated history. The book is a darker, adult retelling of Cinderella in a fantasy world where magic is taboo. I first started writing it at age 16, when I was probably too young to be authoring erotic novels, now that I think about it… After several years, I brushed it up and posted it on The Academy of Bards. It stayed there for a while, and I finally submitted it to L-book.com a few years into college. They offered me a publishing contract, but two weeks before the scheduled release date, the owner of the company sadly passed away. My book was never published, and I moved onto other projects. It sat on my hard drive for years until Lee contacted me.

Michelle and I got to know each other through fanfiction.net. We’re both huge fans of the game Mass Effect, and we were fans of each other’s work. We started out writing fanfiction as collaborators, something I had done in the past with a lot of other writers, and eventually moved on to original fiction projects. Dark Horizons had its roots in that early fanfiction, but Michelle and I had a lot of fun creating our own unique sci-fi universe and our own alien species. It was a special challenge for us, because we didn’t always agree on what to include, but thankfully, she hasn’t murdered me in my sleep yet. We’re friends in real life and live close by, so it wouldn’t be too hard.

AJ: What story or stories are you working on now? Will you co-author with Michelle or write another book on your own?

RDM: I’ll be releasing a lot of books in the near future, both on my own and with Michelle. I’ve published three so far: ‘All The Pretty Things’, a crime novel I wrote with Michelle and published indie, ‘Dark Horizons’, our first DPP book, and ‘The Second Sister’, my first solo work.

‘All The Pretty Things’ is getting re-released through Desert Palm Press this winter, and a sequel to that book will be released around the same time. Both of those projects are collaborations with Michelle. We’re planning to write a sequel to Dark Horizons this summer as well.

As for my solo projects, the Amendyr series will continue with ‘Wolf’s Eyes’ this autumn. It’s a re-telling of Little Red Riding Hood, and focuses on Cate, one of the supporting characters in ‘The Second Sister’. There are four books total in the series, and I’m really excited to release them.

I’ve also got a pet project up my sleeve called ‘And Once More Saw The Stars’. It’s a fully illustrated novel with several images per chapter. Rachel George, the genius responsible for my covers, is my collaborator. It follows a succubus demon named Lilith as she travels through the nine circles of Hell with her lover, known only as “the girl”. They are on a quest to get Lilith’s soul back from Shaitan, and although I wouldn’t classify the book as ‘religious’, the plot borrows from Judeo-Christian mythology and classical literature. And, of course, it has lots of kinky sex.

What advice would you give to your younger self?

RDM: Learn how to take constructive criticism better. I’ve struggled with critiques my whole life, which is a bit ironic, considering I chose two careers that require constant feedback from your audience and peers. I wish I had known as a young teenager what I’m finally learning now: ignore the people who have nothing useful to say, listen to the people who are trying to help you with as much grace as you can, and then move on.

Which famous person, living or dead would you like to meet and why?

RDM: Does Xena count? Can I meet Xena? PLEASE!?! Or at least early 2000s Mariska Hargitay… No, but seriously, I’d love to meet Brahms (the composer), Gertrude Stein, and Ingrid Bergman. Because, you know. Look at her. I usually prefer them butch, but she’s gorgeous.

Describe yourself in a single sentence?

RDM: I hear music in words, and one of my greatest delights in the world is discovering the right ones.

What do you like to do when you aren’t writing?

RDM: I have a second career as a musician. I gig and perform around town as a flutist, and I teach flute and piano lessons. That’s why I rely so heavily on a pen name.

When did you first start writing and when did you finish your first book?

RDM: I have been writing for as long as I can remember. I wrote a lot of stories by hand as a kid, and I read every book I could get my hands on. I even wrote a story about walking, talking animals going to war against each other in 4th grade with one of my friends.

After years of false starts and practice, I began what I would consider my first real project when I was about sixteen years old. It was ‘The Second Sister’, although I have rewritten the book several times since then. The first version was finished within about two years. Now, I move at a much quicker pace. It generally takes me about 5 months to write a novel, usually because I’m balancing multiple projects at once.

How did you choose the genre in which you write?

RDM: I write in all sorts of genres. Mystery/Crime Drama, Sci-fi, Fantasy, everything. But if you want to go with ‘lesbian’ as a genre… I write lesbian fiction because I am a lesbian, and I enjoy making up stories about other lesbians. Sadly, there aren’t enough good ones in mainstream entertainment, although we flourish in our own little corner of the internet.

Where do you get your ideas?

RDM: I have SO many ideas. Seriously, so many. I heard this from another author I admire, Holly Lisle: “So if I offered to sell you a hundred novel ideas for a buck, would that be a good deal, a fair deal, or a lousy deal? It would be a lousy deal. Trust me on this one. I can come up with a hundred usable ideas for novels without breaking a sweat. So can you. So can anyone.” The real challenge is finding the time to write them all, but I look forward to trying!

Do you ever experience writer’s block?

RDM: All the time. It’s usually related to anxiety – ‘Can I get enough done? Will it be good?’ I get around it with my ‘three goals’. I give myself three goals every day, and they have to be simple and easy to achieve. For example: wash the dishes, play my flute, and write 500 words. I usually number in the thousands on good days, so 500 isn’t much to ask of myself. But on days when the writer’s block is bad, I can just force out a page or so and call it good. The important thing is to keep writing even if you don’t want to, or don’t think you can. Making a habit of writing daily is key.

How can readers discover more about you and you work?

RDM: They can go to my website: http://raedmagdon.com

Visit my tumblr: http://raedmagdon.tumblr.com

Visit my facebook: http://www.facebook.com/raedmagdon

Or visit my fanfiction.net profile: https://www.fanfiction.net/~raedmagdon

raedmagdon@yahoo.com is my primary e-mail address

 

Buy Rae's books here on Amazon

© JEN 2014