Hi, friends! I’m thrilled to share this interview with you today! Rebecca Chisam is a friend of mine who is a fellow animal author! She got inspiration for her books from the friendly cats in her neighborhood. If you want to read my review of her book, The Guardians of the Neighborhood, you can find it here at Noble Knoll!
And if you are looking for more young writer interviews, keep a lookout for more on my blog!
Young Writer Interview
What first inspired you to write?
I first got into writing simply because I loved stories, and wanted to make some of my own. A middle school English teacher encouraged me to write more.
Why do you love writing?
I love writing because it is a way to process thoughts and emotions and create lovable characters and stories!
What do you think is the most challenging part of writing?
Writing without inspiration can be very difficult. If you are unsure where a story should go, you can feel like you are dragging yourself through mud to keep writing, and that is really tough.
What is your favorite part about writing?
Creating characters, definitely! I love to make interesting people and animals who feel real and 3 dimensional.
Tell us more about your current Work-In-Progress!
My current WIP is How Not To Die as Accidental Chipmunks (a guide) and it is full chaos, love, and found family. And chipmunks, of course. ;] A blurb is below if you are interested:
Medusa Gaines isn’t especially skilled in the art of interacting with humans.
If you asked her secretary-turned-assistant-turned-sort-of-friend, Ellie Acosta, she’d likely say this is because she treats everyone like a lab rat; a specimen to be studied.
Medusa disagrees.
She treats them like lab chipmunks.
As an up and coming research scientist at Specnet Laboratories, Medusa much prefers studying eastern chipmunks (Tamias striatus, mind you!) than your everyday average lab mice or rats. She stands firmly by the fact that they are far more intelligent than their other rodent counterparts. After all, they have the sense to scream and bite when others of their species get too close to them.
Chipmunks are natural loners. Medusa can understand that. (Especially when the ever bubbly Ellie’s friendly overtures start becoming more frequent and… enthusiastic.)
But when the mismatched duo accidentally causes an important Specnet experiment to go awry, Medusa finds herself quite transformed… literally. Not only has she now found herself in a forest she’s never seen before, she’s also about 2 inches high, fuzzy, and with a few stripes down her back.
In other words, she’s a chipmunk.
But that’s only the least of her problems; Ellie’s become a chipmunk too. And to survive in such a foreign world, the two girls will have to stick together to even last a day.
Whether she likes it or not, it seems that Medusa’s dreams of a loner life are rapidly coming to a close.
What are some of your favorite writing resources?
https://www.behindthename.com/name/ is great for character names, and pethelpful.com is great for learning about all sorts of animals!
What is the best advice you could give to a young writer?
Have fun, honestly! If you are anything like me, you can probably find ways to make a lot of things stressful. By all means, set goals, be dedicated to finishing your work, but also don’t forget to have fun. Writing is an amazing gift, and we must never forget that! 😜
How can others support you and your writing?
You can check out my website here and the Guardians of the Neighborhood series on Amazon.
Thank you for having me!
About the Author
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