Interview with Terri Bruce

Tell us about your publishing journey…

That is an insanely complicated question to answer :-) The short version is that I queried Hereafter for eight months in 2011/2012 and racked up over 100 rejections. I finally landed a deal with a small press and Hereafter was published August 1, 2012. Everything was going well, and then a dispute with the publisher over the second book in the series arose in May 2013 and we parted ways, with the rights to both books returning to me. I weighed my options on how best to get Hereafter back to market and ultimately, after rejecting several offers from various publishers, decided to self-publish. And here I am today :-)

What do you love about being an author?

Meeting people! I’m very shy and almost never strike up conversations with strangers. But being an author makes it easy to talk to people. I’ve met so many fun and interesting people since become an author—it’s been amazing!

If you could have dinner with any literary character, who would it be and what would you eat?

LOL—my response to the “what person (living/dead/real/fictional) would you have dinner with question” is always “no one,” because I am so shy and awkward and can’t make small talk and get very tongue-tied around people I admire, so the dinner would be an excruciatingly painful and embarrassing ordeal for both me and the other person! Gah! I’m picturing it right now and I’m feeling mortified just imagining it! 

If your book was to be made into a movie, who would you cast as the leads?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot (what author doesn’t dream of having her book turned into a movie???) and I can’t really think of anyone. Alison Scagliotti might be perfect if she was just a little older (Irene is 36). Jaime Murray and Alicia Coppola would be almost perfect (the right mix of sweet and snarky) but they are a little too mature—and I don’t mean to say that they’re tool old; I mean, when you look at their faces and in their eyes, they are mature, grown-up, thoughtful women. Irene is very immature. You’d never mistake her for someone’s mother or someone who could be maternal. As for Jonah…I haven’t yet seen anyone who might be Jonah. Jamie Campbell Bower is pretty close, except he’s way too old (Jonah is 14). I wonder if he has a little brother.

I don’t know—readers, what do you think? Any suggestions on who should play Irene and Jonah?

Have you had any ghostly experiences in real life?

Yes, my house seems to be haunted. I’m not going to say it is for sure, but it’s the only explanation I have at the moment for the weird stuff that goes on there—voices, noises, lights, stuff moving around… It was a little difficult when we first moved in, but we’ve all learned to live together and things are mostly peaceful. In Hereafter, Mrs. Boine’s statement, “Don’t disturb the living and they won’t disturb you” is actually something I started saying after we moved into this house (yes, I talk to my ghosts :-)).

If you had a time machine, which era would you go back to and why?

You know, I don’t know that I would. The past is fraught with a lot of peril—as a woman, anything outside the modern age and suddenly I have no rights, can’t vote, can’t work outside the home, have to wear horrendous layers and layers of clothes, am considered property, etc. And then there’s the lack of sanitation, superstitions (not keen on being hung for a witch), and bigotry/discrimination. So, yeah…I think I’ll stay in 2014. :-)

What life advice do you wish you’d been given sooner?

Oh geez, pretty much everything. There’s a line in Hereafter, “I guess you’re one of those people who has to learn everything the hard way,” and that is completely autobiographical. Part of it is that I’m a kinesthetic learner—you can tell me a thing a hundred times but it will never sink in. But if I do it once, then I’ll pick it right up. Plus I’m really stubborn and optimistic, so I don’t like to be told a thing is impossible. My first reaction is to prove the person saying so wrong So for me, advice has been sort of useless—I have to just go and find out for myself. Which really sucks—I wish I could just absorb life experience via explanation, then I wouldn’t have had to make so many mistakes and do things the long/most inefficient way possible!

What was the last book you read, and what were your thoughts on it?

I actually just finished The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle—I’ve been a fan of the movie since I was a kid, but somehow never read the book. I received a copy for Christmas and finally read it and loved it and wished I’d read it sooner. The movie is pretty faithful to the book, but there are a couple of additional scenes in the book that add a new dimension.

Where can fans find you online?

Email:                     tbruce@terribruce.net

Website/Blog:       www.terribruce.net

Goodreads:          www.goodreads.com/TerriBruce

Facebook:             http://www.facebook.com/authorterribruce

Twitter:                   @_TerriBruce