The Faery Tales Bundle: Author Deb Logan

Yes. You read that right! While Debbie Mumford is the curator of this bundle, my alter-ego Deb Logan is one of the authors 😀

So … here’s all about Deb:

A prolific copywriter by day, Deb Logan has been published in WMG Publishing’s Fiction River anthologies, Dreaming Robot Press’s 2017 Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide, as well as other anthologies and e-zines. WDM Publishing has released several short stories, short story collections, and novels for young readers, including the popular Dani Erickson series. Find out more about Deb’s work at deblogan.wordpress.com

Where do you live and what is your writing space like?
I make my home in the beautiful Pacific Northwest of the USA. Vancouver, Washington to be exact. No, not Vancouver, British Columbia, that’s in Canada, several hundred miles north of where I live. Vancouver, Washington is just across the Columbia River from Portland, Oregon, and in some ways, is a bedroom community to Portland.

As to the question of my writing space, I don’t have an actual office. I write on a MacBook Pro laptop, sitting in my favorite chair in the living room … with my feet up. What can I say? I’m into comfort! With my body at ease, my mind is free to wander into other worlds and visit possibilities of existences other than our own.

Why do you write?
I’m an avid reader—I think most writers are—and I’ve always found myself saying, “Yes, but what if that happened?” At some point, I stopped wondering about nuances of other writers’ worlds and decided to create my own. It’s harder than you’d think, being the god of an imagined world, but at the same time, it’s exhilarating and freeing. When I’m really in the zone, I’m completely submerged in my story. Words rush from my subconscious through my fingers onto the screen without me being consciously aware of what I’ll write next. It’s like magic! Characters do things I hadn’t even dreamed of, and my surface mind wonders, “What will they do next?”

Ultimately, that’s why I write…to discover what happens next.

When did you start writing?
I can truthfully say that I wrote my first story before I could read. I dictated it to my mother and then illustrated it with crayon drawings!

Then came a LONG period of no writing other than school assignments and later, Christmas newsletters. I thought about writing often while I was raising my children, but time with them always took priority, so I didn’t truly start writing until my husband and I launched them out into the world. Then I sat down and wrote my first novel. I finished it, all 100,000 words, in a little over six-months and blithely sent it off to agents and editors, thoroughly expecting it to be snapped up immediately.

Yeah. Not so much. My novel was met with universal form letter rejections. I was so green, I didn’t even have a clue about what I’d done wrong. At that point, I buckled down, found some writing mentors and began to learn my craft. Can anyone say “cart before the horse”? Definitely. But you don’t know what you don’t know, and at least I started and finished a novel and had the confidence to send it out. I also used the rejections as a goad instead of letting them defeat me.

What genre(s) do you write?
As Deb Logan, I write contemporary fantasy for middle grade and teen readers. My alter-ego, Debbie Mumford, writes a little bit of everything from fantasy romance to science fiction to mystery. If it interests me, I write it!

Interestingly enough, Deb Logan always writes in first person, but Debbie Mumford writes her tales in third person. Yep. I definitely have a personality split!

Tell us about the book you have in this bundle. How did it come to be?
One of the very first short stories I wrote was a frame story – a little girl sitting on her grandmother’s lap and listening to stories of her grandmother’s childhood. I’d envisioned a whole set of these stories. The group that was mentoring me at the time suggested that frame stories were kind of dated, that I should simply tell the story. So I did, and Deirdre’s Dragon was born. Their advice was good, because that story was my very first sale!

But it was also a very short story and didn’t really tell the whole tale. So I rethought my premise and this time, I wrote a novel. Faery Unexpected is the story of a perfectly normal teen girl who inherits a dragon and discovers her destiny.

That very first story, Deirdre’s Dragon, is currently available as a free read for my newsletter subscribers. If you’d like to know more about my writing and are curious about that story, please sign up for my newsletter at http://eepurl.com/bTXJ-f

What is the best piece of writing advice you’ve ever been given?
Don’t give up! If you enjoy writing, write. Eventually your readers will find you.

Are you a planner, or do you write into the dark? Do you write fast or slow?
I write off into the dark. I start with a character, in the case of Faery Unexpected it was a girl who inherited a dragon, and then I just start typing. I discover the story as my fingers type it, and that’s my favorite part: discovering the story!

As to speed, it depends. I’ll often take a week or two dreaming of a short story, but when I set out to write I usually start and finish in the same day … if I’m not interrupted by real life *smiles*

Novels come in fits and spurts since they’re too long to accomplish in a single sitting, and sometimes those fits and spurts are very widely spaced!

Tell us about your most recent book. 
At the moment, I’m writing short stories. My most recent publication, Beauty or Butterface?, is a re-imagination of a classic fairy tale, a contemporary story very loosely based on Sleeping Beauty.

What are you currently working on?
Right now I’m in the dreaming phase of a sequel to Faery Unexpected. I’m not planning a novel, more likely a short story though it could expand into a novella. We’ll see. My working / dreaming title is Faery Unpredictable. I expect to enter the writing phase as soon as other projects permit, but definitely by the end of September.

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And now you know a little bit more about the other side of my personality! Thanks for reading 😀

Information about the Faery Tales Bundle is available at BundleRabbit.

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About Debbie

Debbie Mumford specializes in fantasy and paranormal romance. She loves mythology and is especially fond of Celtic and Native American lore. She writes about faeries, dragons, and other fantasy creatures for adults as herself, and for tweens and young adults as Deb Logan.
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