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MEET MELAINE BRYANT
by Bonnie O'Brian

When you were a child did you ever have moments when you decided that you were going to be a writer when you grew up?

Melaine Bryant

There wasn’t a specific moment when I decided I was going to be a writer, I just always wanted to be one. Even before I could write, I would sit at my dad’s typewriter and type out strings of letters and then pretend to read them. I always loved books, and I wanted to see my words between covers with my name on them. I wrote my first story when I was five (you can see it on my website—www.theprophecykeepers.com), and throughout my childhood I spent much of my time writing—even during school. Until I got to college, I hated school—it was pure torture for me—so I always had a notebook with me into which I could write and escape.

What books influenced you most when you were growing up?

The LORD OF THE RINGS is the major one. I also loved C.S. Lewis, Ursula K. LeGuin, John Christopher, Lloyd Alexander, etc. Always fantasy and science fiction. Another huge influence was the original Star Wars trilogy. I patterned a lot of my early writing on the movies. They taught me how to move from scene to scene, from one set of characters to another. I still write that way today.

What are the topics are some of your books?

I am currently writing a series of five fantasy books for young adults called THE PROPHECY KEEPERS. This is the first work I’ve had published. The first two in the series are in stores, and the third one should be coming out in March 2011.

What audience did you have in mind for your career as a writer - adult or children?

Here again, I didn’t make a conscious choice. I just write my stories, and because of genre and content appropriateness, they happen to fall into the young adult category. But I never write down to a certain level, and like many “young adult” books, mine are really for all ages. Underneath my basic adventure tale is a meaning and complexity that can only be appreciated by an older reader.

What gave you the idea for  THE PROPHECY KEEPERS?

I was in graduate school at the time I started the books, and I was writing a paper on BEOWULF, the ILIAD, and the ODYSSEY. I was also working on a story (fantasy) a friend wanted me to write and reading some other works of old literature. So I had all this stuff in my head that I was thinking about while driving one day from Northern California to Southern California. Somehow it all came together, and at the end of the five hour drive, it had solidified into a structure for the books and a mythology for the world. The series has evolved from there.

Do you enjoy researching or do you prefer working totally from your imagination?

I love research, and I do it extensively. I draw from a lot of old literature for metaphor and symbolism, so in a way, I have done similar work to what I would have done had I stayed in graduate school, just on a larger and (to me) more interesting scale. I read the primary texts, research what others have written about the primary texts, and draw connections—my favorite thing! I love the connections of things on a grand scale. I do other research, as well, to add vividness to my detail. For instance, throughout my series, my characters travel all across their world to many different environments, and so I have researched many different environments—rainforests, deserts, fenland, etc.

Do you work on more than one book at a time?

I do, but they are all within the same series. I actually wrote the last chapter of the last book at the same time I started the series, so I’ve always know how it would end. I write in scenes and tend to develop major events and beginnings and endings (of chapters and books) first, and then string them all together and flesh them out. A lot of times, as I write one scene, I think of material for others, so I have parts of all three final books written.

Which of your books did you most enjoy writing?