Teri Terry chat

Heads up: Teri Terry reveals her next book title!
(plus a book giveaway)

Last Thursday, I had the good fortune of whiling away a morning with Teri Terry as she bit down on her nails, feeling all anxious about the Leeds Book Award announcement later in the day. Her book, Slated, was in the running for it.

She told me she was shattered. She didn’t look it. She was as bright and fresh as a daisy and full of gleeful bounce. As well she should have been because Slated went on to win the day in the age 14-16 category! Congrats to Teri. Little M and I both loved Slated. It’s a really thoughtful dystopian (Teri doesn’t like that term but I do!) that continues in the sequel, Fractured.

Teri spoke to me about growing up with an airforce father, which meant she got to live all over beautiful Canada – and especially Vancouver Island (phew, none of my tourist illusions shattered!). She also lived in Sydney, which as a tourist, I’d loved visiting: going to Manley on the ferry – we both had good memories about that! But, an upside is that living in Australia has cured any fears of English spiders that Teri may have harboured. There’s nothing quite like the Aussie beasties to do that for you! Teri now lives in England with her husband.

We also chatted about publishing and the editing process. Teri’s busy doing the edits on the third book in her Slated trilogy. Teri told me a secret about this. I promised not to tell anyone except Little M. Teri Terry is one of her favourite authors and her world would have been shattered if I’d left her out of the loop. She was already feeling a bit battered about having to miss meeting Teri!

To make up for it, Teri signed Little M’s copies of Slated and Fractured, and answered a couple of questions too:

Little M: Can you remember what book got you into reading?

Teri: I've been an avid reader since I was tiny, so I can't remember if there was a particular book from way back then that really got me into reading. I can remember a picture book that I must have had read to me over and over - Millions of Cats, by Wanda Gag - I can still remember some of the lines now (hundreds of cats, thousands of cats, millions and billions and trillions of cats!). Books that really stick out in my mind after that - Lord of the Rings. I read this over and over again. And I really loved Anne McCaffrey's Pern books.

Little M: When you found out that your book was going to be published, what did you do?

Teri: I was very happy! There was definitely some celebrating going on. But there was also this part of me that didn't believe it. Until I actually got the book in my hands and knew nobody was going to change their minds, I kept feeling like someone was going to tap me on the shoulder any minute, and say, 'sorry, it was all a mistake'.

And now, today’s the day where Teri’s said I can spill the beans to the world. Have you spotted it yet?

The title for the next book in the series is.........

SHATTERED

Read our reviews of the first two books, Slated and Fractured.

Win a copy of Fractured!

To win a copy of Fractured:

leave a comment on this blog post

OR

e-mail us with FRACTURED as the subject title - wesatdown2 (at) gmail (dot) com.

Entries close on Friday 7th June 2013.

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