Before there was Twilight, there was The Vampire Diaries.
L.J. (Lisa Jane) Smith’s first teen vampire romance novel came out more than 20 years ago. She wrote four books for the series by 1992, before calling it quits for nearly a decade to help take care of family business.
When Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight hit the shelves, Smith got a call that The Vampire Diaries books were mysteriously back on the bestseller list. So, she wrote three more books for the series and was set to write another trilogy when Alloy Entertainment Inc. and HarperTeen hired a ghost writer to finish the series with shorter books that fit the new The Vampire Diaries TV series better. The Secret Circle, another series by Smith, was also passed to a new author for the same reason.
Now, Smith warns aspiring writers to be wary of the words “work for hire,” which she says helped “mutilate her child limb by limb and destroy it.” Salt Lake magazine sat down with Smith, who has 20 plus books published, to get her thoughts on losing the series, her thoughts on the fans and what she's doing right now.
Continue to read the rest of the Interview Here >> Interview by Jaime Winston on October 27, 2012 for SaltLake
PHOTO CREDIT: CNNI’m writing this in case somehow some of my readers have missed out on the story of Malala Yousufzai, the fourteen-year-old girl who is, in real life, the kind of heroine I would like to write about.
I first saw Malala’s video on CNN.com, the day she was shot. I say an interview in which she was saying simple things about the simple rights that teenagers in the U.S.A. take for granted. She blogged about having those same intrinsic rights.
“I have the right of education. I have the right to play. I have the right to sing. I have the right to talk. I have the right to go to market. I have the right to speak up.”
But the problem was that she didn’t have those rights. Not in Pakistan in a city under the rule of the Taliban. There, they don’t want girls or women to be educated at all; they don’t even want them to have the freedom the leave their houses.
So they tried to silence this fourteen-year-old girl by assassinating her. She was coming home from school in the battle-scarred valley of Swat, Pakistan, when Taliban thugs burst into the bus she was riding and shot her in the head and neck, wounding two other girls in the process.
They wanted Malala to die and be forgotten. Instead, she is still alive, and was flown from Pakistan to a hospital in Great Britain, which has treated hundreds of soldiers wounded in Afghanistan.
According to a Reuter’s article by Ben Hirschler and Alessandra Prentice, "Doctors...believe she has a chance of making a good recovery on every level," said Dr. Dave Rosser, the hospital's medical director, adding that her treatment and rehabilitation could take months.
Moreover, Malala has become a global symbol for the rights of girls to be educated, and for her breath-taking courage and the Taliban’s monstrous, scandalous, and most heinous cowardice.
I know that anyone who cares about my books enough to read this blog will agree with me that Malala Yousufzai is the complete embodiment of what I consider a hero. She was living in a true Dark Dimension, and yet she had the guts to take a stand against blatant sexism and injustice, even knowing what might happen to her.
I hope that all my readers will keep Malala in their prayers and thoughts, and also think a little about the rights they enjoy as citizens of free countries, where their rights to education and mobility are not in question.
By the way, I found this blog very difficult to write because I am trembling with rage at the scurrilous, murderous, craven dogs of the Taliban who would try to kill a child for speaking the truth and who even now say that if she survives they will try to kill her again.
A few links to sites about Malala:
Lisa's Facebook account has been hacked and apparently the hacker sent message/s using that account. No further information is available but as soon as we have more we'll post it here. Please view Lisa's Tweeter account to view the latest news >>>
