Hello, hello, all you bookworms and writers and fellow Random Bookish Folk!! ^^ How have you all been doing? I have been absolutely buried in stories this past week. Really, I’m only a week into February and I must admit, things are getting kind of crazy. (And I have something very exciting coming up at the end of the month that I really cannot wait to talk to y’all about!!) I have… basically been buried in emails and books for the entirety of February. :’)
Today, however, I am most delighted to be joined here on this blog by the wonderful Valinora Troy, author of Lianna and the Hombit!! I was sent a copy of Lianna and the Hombit a little while ago in December and it made for a most delightful read while cozied up on Christmas day! It is just so very heartwarming and I love Lianna so very much!!! And so today, I am most excited to have Valinora here with us to talk about the inspiration behind her book, her writing process, and her advice for young writers.
Many thanks to her for agreeing to be interviewed and sending me a copy of her book!! Take it away, Valinora! :))
Hello, Valinora!! Thank you so much for joining me for this interview! 🙂 To start us off, could you tell us a bit about yourself, your books, and how you got the idea for Lianna and the Hombit?
Thanks so much for having me on your blog, Isabelle! I’m a middle grade children’s author from Ireland and the author of The Lucky Diamond trilogy, classic fantasy middle grade adventures. I’ve been writing all my life. I have a Masters degree in Creative Writing, specializing in writing for children and young adults. I have served as a judge on the CYBILS awards and I am also a reading ambassador for Louth Libraries. My first book (book 1 of The Lucky Diamond trilogy) came out in 2021.
Lianna and the Hombit was originally meant to be a prequel to The Lucky Diamond. Some of my readers said they wanted to spend more time in Lowdar (the children leave the town in chapter two). I’ve always felt there were more stories to be told there so I decided I would write about where the children’s magical gifts came from. But once Lianna appeared, a friendless girl arriving in a strange country where she knew nobody, I wanted to know her better. She also has a cursed ruby ring so that got my attention. Lianna made it clear to me that this was her story, so I married it up with an idea I had for a story about ‘sins of the father’ being visited on the children, in this case Lianna’s Papa, whose past actions deeply impact the person he loved most, Lianna. Of course, as I wrote the story, I realised there was also a strong theme of grief and loss, and of how differently the characters (Lianna, the Judge, the rocks, even Abby) deal with their pain. In the end, I also included a cameo of the children from The Lucky Diamond and a little bit about their gifts for any fans out there.
I loved the cameo of the children!! And I also adored the hombit. How did you come up with it? Did its purpose/character in the story ever change as you wrote it?
My sister has a small glass bird, I’m not sure if it is an ornament or a paperweight. It has a streak of graduated blue inside and is really beautiful. I imagined that blue glass magically changing colour and the bird becoming alive. As you know, I like making objects that are normally inanimate sentient (the Diamonds, the rocks, etc) so I put that together with the glass bird and the need for a friend for Lianna, and the hombit immediately jumped up and said that’s me.
In the first draft, the hombit was there for comic relief, and behaved more like a slightly confused but loveable uncle (or great-uncle). That version had multiple plots and subplots, with just too much going on. The next draft I cut out most of those subplots, and realised that Lianna needed emotional support. This hombit was quite maternal, their relationship almost mother and child (Lianna had never known her own mother). But I didn’t want the hombit to be there just to support Lianna, I wanted it to have its own story, and that’s why in the final version their relationship is now a strong friendship as they help each other complete their missions.
Ohh, the glass bird sounds gorgeous!! I love how you came up with the hombit! And in the book, there is a sort of dark family past that Lianna discovers slowly throughout the course of this book. And I also loved the living rocks! What inspired that past and the rocks?
I didn’t want Lianna’s beloved Papa to be bad, that would totally destroy her, but I wanted him to be responsible for doing something foolish with unimaginable consequences, then repenting, and trying to make amends. You can’t undo actions (unless you have a time machine or an Omega 13 device!), no matter how much you regret them, and their impact often lasts for generations. So I needed something huge that would explain why Papa never returned home or spoke about it and that would lead to a hostile welcome for Lianna. I also wanted a sympathetic reason for the judge’s coldness and distance. The exact events of the past popped into my head once I discovered what Lianna’s ruby ring really was, and it all fell into place really nicely, the way stories sometimes do. Not only did Papa’s actions impact his immediate family and friends, they also affected his own life and subsequently Lianna’s. He did his best to make reparation for his mistakes, which I hope comes through in the story.
Ah the living rocks! I am from a village called Blackrock. We used to scramble over rocky outcrops on the shore when I was a kid – I thought them huge at the time (spoiler: they are not!) This left me with a love/fear for anything to do with rocks so when I was trying to throw a few obstacles in the way of my heroes in The Lucky Diamond, sea stacks that could seize and crush you if you sailed too close seemed like the ridiculous sort of thing the king of the Diamonds would come up with. And in his impetuosity, make a mess of! In Lianna and the Hombit, I took the living rocks one step further.
Lianna and the Hombit is a sort of prequel to the Lucky Diamond, though it is very much its own story. Did you know anything about Lianna and the Hombit while writing The Lucky Diamond (e.g. the characters, the setting, the plot)? Was there anything difficult about writing a book set in the same realm as The Lucky Diamond but in the past?
Great question. I wrote The Lucky Diamond as a standalone some years beforehand so I had no idea of these new characters. Lianna and the Hombit was written after the final book of the trilogy but before it was published, so I then snuck in a mention of hombits into The Great Forest.
In many ways, it was easy to set Lianna and the Hombit in Lowdar because I knew the town so well (early drafts of The Lucky Diamond spend a lot more time there) so Lowdar was well established in my mind. I had to be careful when mentioning the five children from the other books that I didn’t say anything contradictory to The Lucky Diamond but that all worked out well without any difficulty.
What was the hardest part of writing this book? What was the best part?
The hardest part for me was getting the balance right between the plot and the emotional arc of the main character. After I completed the first draft, my editor said to me ‘Great story, I love the hombit, I know what Lianna is doing and why but I don’t know how she feels.’ It took two further drafts to get that balance right. The best part was turning the backstory into a mystery Lianna has to work out – my first mystery! I‘ve discovered that writing a mystery is a lot of fun.
Mysteries really are so fun! I loved the mystery in the book! How did the story change from the first draft to the final published version? How long did it take you to write this book?
The overall story is the same but the first draft had a lot of subplots and other characters, including five evil puppets. They will return in other stories but it still hurt to cut them out. The main difference between the second and third draft was how Lianna discovers the truth about the past. In the second draft people told her what she needed to know. In the final draft she has to figure it out herself. Also Sabre, her tiger, the animals from Robunda, and her favourite book only turned in that third draft as well, which added nicely to her character.
I wrote the first draft really quickly, in about three months. The second draft was a little over a year and the final draft took eight months, so two years in total or thereabouts.
Oh my goodness! Five evil puppets?? (Now I really want to know more about them!! Though I must admit, puppets mildly unnerve me for some reason.) What were some things that inspired you as you wrote this book?
My love of horror played a role in writing the living rocks, as did my fondness for making inanimate objects alive. When I read through the proofs, I was struck with how many things were inspired by my own family history. For example, my father only wrote me one letter (which, like Lianna, I treasure). A couple of years ago we discovered letters he had written to his mother when he was a boy – these are now some of my most valuable possessions, much like every piece of paper with his writing becomes a precious keepsake for Lianna. My father was also a very good son who went into the family business young to help out, but unlike Lianna’s Papa, my father actually was perfect!
And finally, what is your advice for young writers who want to start writing and get their books out there?
Keep reading and writing. Find other young writers who like the same genre and share your work. Be open to feedback, even if it’s unwelcome, but remember that it’s just one person’s opinion and therefore not necessarily right for you to take to heart. Read about the craft of writing (I have a free introduction to creative writing on my website) and aim to improve every day. Remember you are the only one who can tell your story, because you are unique. Finish your story even if you have to skip over bits to get to the end. At least you will have something to come back to and work on. Don’t be afraid to ask for help or advice, we’ve all started out from the same place. Finally, don’t put too much pressure on yourself, it’s most important to have fun writing stories.
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That is some wonderful advice and most certainly something I think is important for a lot of writers to remember. A huge thank you to Valinora Troy for agreeing to be interviewed here on my blog!! It was wonderful getting to ask her these questions (though now, I must admit, I really do want to meet those five evil puppets!!! Well, perhaps not meet, but, well, know more about them perhaps. Definitely not meet.) and getting to learn more about Lianna and the Hombit!! ^^ I actually interviewed Valinora a year ago, on my YouTube channel, so it was wonderful getting to do so again on my blog!
And a thank you to you as well, dear reader, for reading this interview! I do hope you enjoyed it and that y’all will go and check out Lianna and the Hombit! It is such a beautiful middle-grade book and is the perfect read for if you’re snowed in at the moment! :))
Till next time, and wishing y’all a wonderful, bookish week!
-Isabelle
About Valinora Troy:
Valinora Troy is a children’s fantasy writer from Ireland. She has a MA in Creative Writing Specialising in Writing for Children and Young Adults, and has served as a panellist for the CYBILS awards (elementary & middle grade speculative fiction category). Her short stories for adults have been in a number of publications. She is the author of ‘The Lucky Diamond’ trilogy, three middle grade children’s fantasy adventures. She has recently been shortlisted for the Staróg prize, and has served as a Reading Ambassador for Louth County Libraries.
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