[Rob B]

Hearty welcome to our newest Official Author Forum author - Madeline Howard!

Ms. Howard's first book, The Hidden Stars was published in October 2004 in the US by HarperCollins FSF imprint, Eos (http://www.harpercollins.com/global_scripts/product_catalog/book_xml.asp?isbn=0060575875).

Ms. Howard just posted an excerpt of the first chapter HERE (http://www.sffworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11124)
Her official Web site is http://thehiddenstars.com

[Monty Mike]

Welcome Madeline! Great to have you here :D

[Teresa Edgerton]

Thank you, monty mike. I'm very pleased to be here.

[Radthorne]

Hi, Madeline, and welcome!

Love the Hobbit-hole writing space pictured on your website - it looks like just the place for conjuring up magic and adventure!

[Teresa Edgerton]

Thank you, Kevin. It's actually a very restful space -- sometimes a little too restful. And what you can't see in the pictures is that all three windows have views of our garden, which tends to run rampant this time of year. It really feels very rural back there, even though we're right in the middle of the suburbs.

[alison]

Hi Madeline - how nice to see you here! I was similarly entranced by your hobbit hole - I just live in a burrow marked out by bookshelves, whch has its own charm, I suppose, but it is a little small and I tend to disappear behind piles of things... I guess it gives me something to aim for!

[Radthorne]

I tend to disappear behind piles of things...
This, um, would perhaps be related to that height thing? ;)

[Teresa Edgerton]

For years I did my writing in whatever space was available, and well do I know the experience of disappearing behind piles of things, Alison -- and I'm not even particularly short. With a large family living in a small house, the piles tend to grow to impressive heights.

Finally, I got tired of scrambling to find space for myself in the midst of chaos, and claimed my own territory! It helped that there was a well-built garden/storage shed that I could take over. Everyone said, "But where will we put our things?" I said, "You'll just have to figure something out, won't you?"

So I moved in. The privacy and the ability to spread out my books and papers was wonderful, but the building itself was scorchingly hot in summer and freezing (well, as freezing as it gets around here) in winter. After about a year, my husband took pity on me and decided to put in insulation. That's when I had the idea of turning the place into a hobbit hole while we were at it.

[alison]

*Splutter* Are you saying I'm short, o radical one? Oh, that's right, I am...

I used to write on the kitchen table until Daniel and I got together. He was appalled and made me put aside a room in my house to be a study. I was very intimidated for six months by this lovely room, and would just sit in it for a while and then go back to the kitchen table...but now I don't know how I did without it. A room of one's own is terribly important!

It's complicated in our house, because we need two work spaces - my husband too is a full-time writer. So we have a very democratically demarcated area which is The Office. It does look rather like it. If I had lots of money, I would have a study like Pablo Neruda's, floor to ceiling bookshelves...

[Teresa Edgerton]

Really, my little place is only slightly larger than half an average size room, so I probably haven't much more floor space than you, Alison. But the great thing is that it's mine, all mine.

I, too, dream of more bookshelves. We have plenty of second-hand ones and even more hand-built (including the frame for an old water bed, which, turned upright against a wall, is fine for paperbacks), but somehow there never seem to be enough. We haven't quite run out of wall space to put up more shelves, so we could have more.

My youngest daughter and I are addicted to the home improvement channels on TV. It just kills me when a designer walks into a room, sees a nice big bookshelf unit full of books, and declares that it looks too messy and cluttered. Then they take out ninety percent of the books and use the space for knick-knacks. Or they convert a room into a "library" with one medium size bookshelf and about twenty books. If they don't want to use the shelves for the purpose that nature intended, they could send them on to me!