Julie Berry answers my questions

Thanks to Julie Berry and Kate Lied, I was able to ask Julie Berry some questions. I hope you find them all really interesting.

Me: What or Who inspires you to write?

Julie Berry: Good writing inspires me to write. All the wonderful books I've devoured and adored have filled me with happy sort of jealousy that made me want to try and see if I could also write a story worth reading.

Me: How old were you when you started writing?

JB: I started keeping a journal faithfully when I was nine years old. I got it for Christmas that year, and wrote just about every day until I was twenty. I spent my twenties starting my career and having my four sons, so the only writing I did was work related, with some occasional creative writing and journal writing thrown in. At age thirty I began to write columns for my local newspaper, and after I'd done that for a few years I went to graduate school to study fiction writing for children and young adults.

Me: Do you ever have a hard time figuring out what to write?

JB: Sometimes it is hard to decide which of the many ideas floating through your head is ripe enough to turn into a good novel. You don't always know until you write a book just exactly where an dea will tale you.

Me: What gave you the idea for "Secondhand Charm"?

JB: The notion of good luck charms and love potions, such as you might buy from someone at a fair, was the idea that first pulled me into the story. I thought, what if there was someone who wore these charms, and they really worked, but only for her? That seemed promising. Then I had to ask myself, why did they work for her? What made her different? Where did that difference come from? The rest of the story came into place from that line of questioning. I loved stories about the sea, and magical allure of the ocean.

ME: Do YOU believe in magic?

JB: Yes and no. mainly yes. I believe in possibilities, and certainly I believe in grace and miracles. For all our knowledge, there's much we can't explain or understand, and so I try to keep a cautiously open mind. But I use magic in stories because of the creative possibilities it offers me, not because I believe in actual sorcery and so forth.

Thank you so much Julie Berry for taking the time to answer my questions. I absolutely loved your book "Secondhand Charm"

Mollie