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MEET ROXYANNE YOUNG
by Bonnie O'Brian

Did you write stories when you were growing up? at school? Or at home as a hobby? As a young child, or as a teenager, or both?

Roxyanne Young

When I was in elementary school, I used to use spiral-bound notebooks for school, and mine were always full of drawings of these island nations that I’d create stories about. I’d make up stories about the rulers, the citizens, the neighboring countries, and so on. All fantasy, of course, but to me they were real enough. I started several novels when I was in middle and high school, but I never finished any of them. I fell in love with writing, though, and had some poems published in the school literary magazine, and then I saw RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and fell in love with Indiana Jones and archaeology. It was my dream then to travel the world as a feature writer for National Geographic, reporting on ancient civilizations and their treasures and people. In college I majored in Anthropology with a double minor in Journalism and History. Unfortunately, I learned on a post-graduation cruise that I get frightfully seasick. So much for the globetrotting writing career. I still loved writing, though, and studying other peoples and ancient cultures.

What was your first job when you graduated from college?

My first real job was as a social worker back in my hometown. I’d returned to go to grad school in my home state only to find that I’d lost my residency status and had to wait a year. Life happens, you know, and even though I had tried selling some short stories (unsuccessfully) and I had taken a few grad level courses, four years later I was still working for the State of Florida in the Medically Needy program. A few more life turns and a year later I was back in grad school pursuing a Masters in English Education. I was going for job security at that point and since I had always loved school and done well academically, it seemed like a natural fit. Writing had taken a backseat to paying the bills. Three years later found me teaching 8th grade Language Arts, and being reintroduced to some old favorite books, and introduced to new works by new writers. I learned in that first year that while I enjoyed teaching, I loved the literature more. I decided to try writing again in earnest.

Fast forward a bit. I got married and my new husband asked me to move across the country with him, which would mean giving up my teaching career for a bit, but I’d be able to pursue writing full time. I think I set a new world record for packing.

Now, many people in the industry will tell you that writing for children is a ten-year apprenticeship while you learn your craft, make connections, hone your skills, and so on. It was like that for me. I was lucky to meet some really wonderful writers and others in the industry who were very supportive and encouraging, but ten years in, I had only published a few non-fiction articles for kids. I’d submitted many manuscripts for picture books and midgrade novels, and I’d received some positive rejections (an oxymoron only aspiring children’s writers can understand), but no contracts.

How soon after that was your first book published? When was it published?

Along the way, I began designing Websites and learning marketing, and I had built SmartWriters.com and started publishing my own newsletter for writers, the Smart Writers Journal. Through that experience, I got to know Kelly Milner Halls, who contributed a lot of content to the site, and we became friends. Now, Kelly is a very accomplished children’s writer. She’s got over two-dozen books published, and we used to talk back and forth via IM frequently. One night –I think it was August 2005 - she asked me what I knew about Bigfoot. Having grown up in the South and hearing about the swamp ape and being fascinated by cryptozoological creatures since I was little, I started gushing everything I knew.

She worked that information into the proposal chapter she was writing for a new project with Darby Creek, with whom she’s already published several award-winning books. She submitted the sample chapter and the list of resources we’d created together, and a week later she’d gotten approval for the project from editor Tanya Dean, and more than that, she asked me to be co-author with her. It was a real honor and a great learning experience. I’ll forever be grateful to Kelly for that opportunity.

We worked hard on that manuscript and, along with illustrator and another of Kelly’s buds, Rick Spears, we turned the final edits in about four months later (Kelly works really, really fast!), and in June I received a box with the first author copies of TALES OF THE CRYPTIDS: Mysterious Creatures That May or May Not Exist (as investigated by Halls, Spears, and Young), and it went on sale in September 2006.

Do you do other types of writing - for example, educational, nonfiction, magazine work?

I do a lot of writing for educational venues, and I’m working with other authors in a developmental editor capacity, helping them develop their own book ideas and marketing plans. I still aspire to have my own novels published, though.

What kinds of things inspire you to write? Where do you get your ideas?

I get inspired every time I walk through a book store and see all the new books on display. I’m also inspired when I see a good kids’ movie, or hear a story about a kid who has done something extraordinary. Over the summer I took my ten-year-old daughter on a cross-country road trip. We visited every state along the southern tier except for Georgia, gathering a real wealth of experiences and impressions along the way. I’ve got a dozen book ideas from that trip alone, but I can be just as easily inspired by a trip across the street to the pet store. The subject of one of my new books is about a little girl who really, really, really wants a parrot.

Ideas are all around us. What matters is what we do with them.

What really triggers your imagination?

Anytime my paradigm gets knocked for a loop. I love it when something or someone challenges my thinking and shows me a different way of looking at something. I get there by paying attention, by asking questions, by trying to see the situation from someone else’s perspective.

Have any of your fiction stories been about real people or events?

Oh, yes. I’ve got real people and events in several books, and real places as settings. I find great inspiration in real life adventures. During our road trip, for example, my daughter and I stopped at the Alamo. Now, I’ve read about the Alamo and I know a bit about what happened there, but it wasn’t until I stepped into that building that I was overcome with the history of the place. That was an incredible experience. I learned that there were women and children in the building, too, which I hadn’t known before. So now I’m percolating on a book set during the siege.

Writing gives you an amazing opportunity to step outside your own experience, your own existence, and participate in someone else’s, whether that person is real or imagined. The lessons we learn in literature are the lessons we learn in life. Good books help us navigate the sometimes stormy waters of growing up, and for that, for being part of that, I’m very grateful.