Stuff
Sarah Micklem Revealed
Revealing Questions
- Q. How would you describe your life in only 8 words?
- A. I love being alive, even when it hurts.
- Q. What is your motto or maxim?
- A. Pessimist by philosophy, optimist by nature.
On Books and Writing
- Q. How did you come to write Firethorn?
- A. I had already drafted a rough outline for my second book, the sequel to Firethorn, when I came across an account of “lightning shamans,” people struck by lightning who are believed to have special powers. When I read that, the plot elements shifted and locked together in a whole new configuration, and I knew what I wanted to do. But I was afraid it would be too hard. Suddenly I was reading about lightning injuries, brain damage, and aphasia, and trying to figure out how to write the fractured dialog of my protagonist, and trying to imagine how it would feel to have to reconstitute a shattered sense of self. The lightning strike didn’t change the sequence of my projected plot much, but it turned the meaning upside down, or maybe inside out.
