If you’ve seen the movie Freaky Friday, you know that its premise is about change and growth through role reversal. For my Friday Blog entry I thought it would be interesting to interview aspiring authors–writers who spend lots of time reading the interviews of published authors and dreaming of the day when they might get their book on the shelves..
Today’s Freaky Friday Interview is with the very talented by shy Heather Chriscaden Versace. Heather and I are members of my local SCBWI Shop Talk. So we’ve gotten a chance to read each other’s work, hang out in person and cause all kinds of trouble in our local Barnes & Noble. You’re going to love her, so let’s not wait another minute.
Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
My name is Heather Chriscaden Versace and I am a music lover and a bookworm.You can bet that if I am not playing or teaching or listening to music, you’ll find me with my nose in a book or at the computer writing stories of my own.
Music has always played a large role in my life, and I have played many instruments, including piano, clarinet, electric bass, and double bass …and once I even played a version of Misty on the nose flute that had the audience in tears (OK, so maybe they were tears of mirth).
Music has taken me around the world -from Seattle to New York City, from Poland to Japan,and from the U.S. Ambassador’s residence in Bogotá, Colombia to Leonard Nimoy’s living room.
Music was the course of my studies in college.
I earned a Bachelor of Music Degree in Double Bass Performance from WSU, and then became the first student to earn a Masters Degree in Jazz Studies from the University of Oregon.
Since then, I have spent time as a full-time freelance jazz bassist, a full-time teacher of college music theory and ear-training, a teacher of private music lessons, and, always, a closet composer of music and stories.
Wow! You’ve seen and done so much. It’s incredible. So…what made you start to write for kids and what the heck is a nose flute? :o)
As soon as I realized that people actually wrote books (that they weren’t just placed on library shelves by fairies), I wanted to write them — don’t worry, this was when I was about six years old. Since then I was always writing one thing or another that I was convinced would be my first “novel.”
Then, in middle school, though I was still an avid reader, I started to get really serious about music, and at the same time my passion for writing dimmed because I wasn’t inspired by the writing we were required to do in school.
Since then, my life has been all about music. That is until three years ago, when this nagging urge to write a book reappeared unannounced on my doorstep. Instantly we became fast friends again.
I didn’t really choose to write for children, so much as the most compelling story that presented itself to me happened to involve a 13-year-old girl. But that being said, I do love middle grade and young adult literature. Young people that age are at such an exciting time in their lives – walking the tight rope between discovering their uniqueness and figuring out how they fit in in this crazy world.
As for the nose flute … hmmm. It looks like a hard plastic binky, really. You play it by changing the shape of your mouth the way you would if you were whistling a tune … but at the same time, you have to blow through your nose to produce the sound. It sounds a little like a slide whistle. There are some videos on youtube for those who want to see and hear it for themselves. Unfortunately, many budding nose flute careers have been derailed by the common cold : )
In fact, here is link to a video…
OMG!!!! That was more “interesting” than I’d expected. ROTFL!!! So glad you sent the link LOL!
So does your WIP have a nose flute in it? Can you tell us about it?
Haha. No, my WIP doesn’t have a nose flute in it … yet. You may be on to something there …
At any rate, my main character, Edra Edwards, does play the flute. She wants to be a great composer and is off to Camp Komeekha, a summer music camp in the Catskill mountains. Unfortunately, things don’t go as planned: she bombs her audition and is placed last in all performing groups, she is not selected to study composition with her idol, Maestro Dupree, and her beginning composition teacher seems to have it out for her.
At the same time, strange things are happening at camp. There is a warning from Tristan Bridges — a camper who supposedly fell off the top of Komeekha Falls nearly 15 years ago. It is assumed to be a hoax until a mysterious man dressed in gladiator attire is seen roaming the forest, and a student is injured while hiking the trails alone.
When Edra has a particularly bad day, she breaks the rules and heads up to the cave behind the waterfall. As she explores the cave, she finds a passageway to a beautiful meadow, but before she has time to check it out, someone grabs her from behind, and everything goes black.
The following weekend, Edra and two friends return to the cave to investigate. They don’t find the meadow, but they do find an old journal – the journal of Tristan Bridges. The journal is the first of many discoveries as the three are pulled into the mystery of Tristan Bridges and find themselves in a race to rescue him.
Ohhh sounds intriguing!!!! I can’t wait to read all of it!!! Ummmm one last question…see I can’t stop myself. What are your top five books–ya know–the ones that would make you get our the old nose flute and do a jig?
Okay, I’m going to cheat on this one because I’m a series girl and always have been. There’s just something wonderful about finding an exciting world inhabited with characters you love – and then getting to spend an entire series with them.
So here are my favorite series, some which had a great impact on me as a child, some as a teen, and some not so very long ago:
1) Madeleine L’Engle’s Wrinkle in Time series
2) C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia
3) Anne McCaffrey’s Harper Hall Trilogy
4) J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series
5) Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games Trilogy
Thank you so much Heather. I’d stick around and chat a little longer but I’m heading out to get a nose flute. Shhhh don’t tell anyone. *wink* If you would like to find out more about Heather’s books and music, you can find her on Facebook. Have a great weekend. :o)
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