Shelby asked Daniel Price:

What is your writing process? Do you listen to music when you write? Do you need silence? Do you write out storylines and characters or do you go for it with just a few ideas and a general direction of where you want the story to go? Are you always thinking about the book even when not writing? Do you have a set amount of time you write everyday? Do you ever get writer's block and if yes how do you over come it?

Daniel Price Hi Shelby,

To answer your questions in order:

"What is your writing process?"

Write some bad words, revise the hell out of them until they're not so bad, then move on. For a guy who tells stories about time manipulation, I'm obsessively linear. I have to write the story sequentially, chapter by chapter. I can't move on until I'm absolutely 100% satisfied with everything I have so far.

"Do you listen to music when you write? Do you need silence?"

I most definitely need music. I listen to a lot of ambient, instrumental, worldly type stuff that gives my girlfriend a facial tic. But it's the only kind of music that gets me in the right creative groove. I owe at least half my career to Dead Can Dance.

"Do you write out storylines and characters or do you go for it with just a few ideas and a general direction of where you want the story to go?"

I write each book with a very detailed outline but I give myself enough room to improvise if the characters or situations demand it. For example. I'd never planned on Hannah and Theo having a romantic relationship in "Flight of the Silvers." But it made perfect sense, given their circumstances, that the two of them would come together in a clumsy, desperate kind of way. Just one of the many times the characters changed the story on me.

In "Song of the Orphans," Mia strong-armed me into a subplot that I had no intention of throwing her into. But she insisted and I listened. She does some very surprising stuff in Book Two.

"Are you always thinking about the book even when not writing?"

The short answer is yes. The long answer is me cackling maniacally until the men in white take me away in their butterfly nets.

"Do you have a set amount of time you write everyday?"

I usually start at 8am, then write until my word brain shuts down on me. That usually happens around 5 or 6, but that doesn't keep me from plotting the next few scenes in my head. I usually spend about an hour a night pacing around my office like a nut.

"Do you ever get writer's block and if yes how do you over come it?"

Depends what kind of writer's block it is. If it's situational, I try to look at the factors of my life that are keeping me from writing productively (stress, health issues, etc.). If it's book-related, then that usually signifies that I've taken a wrong turn with the story. I backtrack until I can find the problem that's been driving my subconscious batty. Sometimes it's just a tiny little fix that sets the whole thing back on track. I can't even tell you how many times that happened with "The Song of the Orphans." And I can't tell you how glad I am to ALMOST BE DONE WITH IT. Wheeeeee!

By the way, I really like the name Shelby, so I just dropped it into the second-to-last chapter as the name of a throwaway character. Please don't sue me.

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