I think the coolest thing about blogging is the other bloggers I’ve cyber-met. We are all so different in so many ways, but we all share a passion for writing. I was blown away when Author Alethea Eason asked me to be a featured writer on her blog “Heron’s Path” http://theheronspath.com/. She then contacted me for an interview about my blog and published it on hers. I interviewed her just before she left for Chile yesterday.
Introducing Alethea Eason…
Your blog looks so professional. How are you able to be creative and technical? I didn’t think it was possible to combine the two.
I was having the same thoughts about your blog, how professionally done it is. I really don’t know what I’m doing. I waited for “featured writers” to come to me, and then last week I thought, hey, I needed to invite them.
I can’t stop reading the excerpts of your books. Where do you get your inspiration for the worlds you create? I only know how to write non-fiction memoir-type stuff. I wouldn’t know where to begin to write the way you do.
As far as writing, I’ve written for most of my adult life. I always knew I wanted to be one, but I guess I was too much of a perfectionist as a kid to try. I was too scared.
It’s very hard to write and to teach. I used to be able to write after school at night, but having a classroom I had NO energy. I’m going to be reading specialist again next year, so I’m hoping I’ll have more ummpf for when I get home.
I don’t really understand social media very well and have no idea how to market myself. How do you do it?
I do not like “social networking”. I twitter only when I find articles I like. I tried promoting Heron’s Path on it but everybody and their sister is hawking books on it. Facebook works for me and I’m having more and more response to my blog because I’m trying to look at others. What gets me is that I don’t want to spend my life in front of a computer screen. I can get sucked in and hours have gone by and I think taking a walk would have been better.
My first book HUNGRY was published by HarperCollins and did not do well. They were not interested in STARVED. It’s been on my computer for five years and I just decided I had to do something with it. I’m glad I revisited it because it’s a better book than HUNGRY. And I love (the character) Deborah.
I was convincing myself to not worry about writing. I like to paint as a hobby. Teaching is ENOUGH on many levels, then Spectacle told me that they were doing this second edition. So, here I am, at least until the first week of August when I have to go back to work. The second edition has been delayed . . .
It must be absolutely gorgeous in Cobb, California. What a great place to write.
It’s very pretty. We’re kind of in the Appalachia of California, the county north of Napa, but a world away.
How long have you lived there? Where did you grow up?
I grew up in Anaheim, and then we moved to the desert, Yucca Valley, when my dad retired in 1971. I went to the University of Redlands, near San Bernardino. Moved up to N. California after I graduated and struggled until I went back to become a teacher. I’ve been teaching since 1986. Lived in Lake County since 1980, when we only had one traffic light!
What are you going to do in Chile?
We lived in Chile for a year and a half. My husband wanted to see if we might move there forever. Many reason why not, though with health care we might change our minds once I retire. There’s a richness to life we don’t have here. I’m going down to visit the women I taught with. The junior school librarian, Miss Carmen, was like my Chilean mother. She’s getting close to 80 and I want to visit. I taught at St. Margaret’s British School for Girls, for rich Chileanas whose parent could afford it, so they grow up learning English.
Alethea said that she had to get ready to leave for Chile and that a friend was coming over so she had to go. I thanked Alethea for her time. Then she said, “By the way, your response to my writing is what I’ve always dreamed of”.
Right back atcha, Alethea!
Alethea Eason Biography
Alethea Eason is a writer, teacher, and free-lance editor.
Heron’s Path is her second published novel. Two sisters, two destinies. Journey with Katy and Celeste down the Talum River as they discover Celeste’s destiny to fulfill the heron’s path. “A magical tale of a girl finding her power, beautifully told.” Ashen Vaden, Course in Mirrors (Amazon review).
Hungry is Alethea’s humorous middle grade science fiction novel published by HarperCollins in 2007. Would you eat your best friend if your parents told you to? That’s Deborah’s dilemma. She’s the only 6th grade alien on Earth, disguised by a human overskin, and pulled between her loyalty to her friend Willy and her family and species. Alethea has finished Starved, a sequel to Hungry.
Alethea has published stories in several anthologies for children including A Glory of Unicorns, edited by Bruce Coville, Stories have also appeared in New Moon Magazine and Shoo-Fly Audio Magazine. She also writes for adults and her work has appeared in Sweet Fancy Moses, Radiance, and Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine, among others. She won the Eugene Ruggles Poetry Award, sponsored by The Dickens, published by Copperfiled Books of Sonoma and Napa Counties.
As a reading specialist, Alethea has taught grades kindergarten through eighth. She spent a year and a half at St. Margaret’s British School for Girls in Concon, Chile where she worked in literacy in the junior school and as an IB English teacher at the senior school. She now teaches at Minnie Cannon Elementary School in Middletown, California.
Alethea has edited a number of novels and memoirs. She prides herself on working quickly and thoroughly. When working on a novel, she becomes invested in the book and hones it so that the best potential of the manuscript shines forth.
Alethea lives in Cobb, California with her husband, Bill, and Jinxy and Arturo, their two tabby cats.
About HUNGRY
Deborah is starting to notice things about her best friend, Willy—like how cute he looks in his Halloween costume and the adorable way his red hair curls just above his collar. He’s the coolest boy in sixth grade, and the closest friend she’s got . . . that is, until her alien parents tell her she has to eat him for dinner. After all, she’s an alien, too—even if she and her family do live in disguise.
Should she keep Willy alive and survive on forbidden hamburgers and chocolate . . . or point her tentacles at her best friend and gain approval from alien kind?
There are times when everyone feels like they’re from outer space. A zany adventure and a close and sympathetic look at middle-school friendships and rivalries, Alethea Eason’s wonderfully unique first novel satisfies that craving to fit in.
About Starved:
starvedthenovel.wordpress.com
Sequel to Alethea Eason’s middle grade science fiction novel HUNGRY
Chapter One: Destiny
Posted on May 19, 2013 by aletheaeason
While our mothers planted tulip bulbs, Willy Logan and I were working to stop my species from invading Earth. I think Willy and I became friends because both of our families have this huge weirdness factor. His family is way into horror films, and mine? Well, we eat people.
About Heron’s Path: 
Alethea Eason’s newest book, The Heron’s Path, has all the grace of the river that flows through its pages. One steps lithely into the world of Katy and her delicate sister Celeste. It is a world where the old and the new mingle, the Old Ones hold a knowing but genteel sway and the country man perhaps shouldn’t be so trusting of his dulled senses. Will Celeste come to know the purpose of her wanderings and dreams? Will Katy and aged Olena be able to keep her from the clutches of the evil we-nei-la? Follow them “north to the true wilderness, dark with ancient trees, where the Nanchuti struggle to keep their sacred songs from vanishing”. Like the current of the river Talum that witnesses all within these pages, you too will be swept along in the adventure, sometimes in reflective pools, sometimes drawn inexorably to the falls… to find the Heron’s Path.