Life Altering Reads: @ShelleyDavidow on Providing Doors & Windows into Other Worlds #AmReading #SciFi #YA

Have you met any people in the industry who have really helped you?

I had a wonderful writers group in Oregon when I lived there, made up of some very prolific authors whom I deeply respected. They taught me how to pare things down to what was essential, and how to work slowly and carefully. We worked on poetry and that helped me become a better fiction writer.

What do you hope people will take away from your writing? How will your words make them feel?

I hope my words provide windows and doors into other worlds, where the writing vanishes and the characters and their struggles and relationships remain.

How do you feel about social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter? Are they a good thing?

If you mean, are they a good thing for a writer, then the answer is, maybe sometimes. They can be good for marketing and staying in touch with the general conversation, whatever that is, but they also just take up space and time and words and can also be distracting. Whenever I’m doing something on Facebook or Twitter I always have this little voice that says, ‘real writers would just be writing their books.’

If you could do any job in the world what would you do?

Write.

What are you most passionate about? What gets you fired up?

I’m passionate about children and education and looking after the environment. I get fired up by the stupidity of those who poison our world and don’t understand that in doing so, they poison themselves.

What makes you angry?

War and harm. I’m angry that the human race still behaves in awful ways to those who are vulnerable, and to an earth that will not sustain us forever.

How do you think people perceive writers?

As imminently interruptible!

What’s your next project?

I’m working on a memoir entitled ‘The Immigrant’ for my doctorate, and planning the sequel to Lights Over Emerald Creek, A Portal at Emerald Creek.

What would you love to produce in your life?

Books that are worthy of being read.

How do you feel about self-publishing?

I feel it’s had a democratising effect on writing. I think in some instances it might be the way to go. If your manuscript gets rejected by twenty publishers, and then a million people like what you’ve written and buy your self-published book, then the masses have spoken, and I think that’s really great.How important are friends in your life?

They are essential to both mental and emotional health!

Lucy Wright, sixteen and a paraplegic after a recent car accident that took her mother’s life, lives in Queensland on a 10,000 acre farm with her father. When Lucy investigates strange lights over the creek at the bottom of the property, she discovers a mystery that links the lights to the science of cymatics and Scotland’s ancient Rosslyn Chapel.

But beyond the chapel is an even larger mystery. One that links the music the chapel contains to Norway’s mysterious Hessdalen lights, and beyond that to Saturn and to the stars. Lucy’s discoveries catapult her into a parallel universe connected to our own by means of resonance and sound, where a newly emerging world trembles on the edge of disaster. As realities divide, her mission in this new world is revealed and she finds herself part of a love story that will span the galaxy.