Interviews

Exploring the Blank Page (11/13/20)
“It took me a while before my story went from readable to publishable.”

The Hope Prose Podcast (09/20/20)
“I built [my faery world] one book at a time… sort of feeling my way into the world myself.”

Canadian Launch Podcast: Talking about SWIFT with R.J. Anderson (09/10/20)
“People have to be able to believe for themselves… so that is a recurring theme in my books.”

Family Fiction: Speculative Q&A with R.J. Anderson (07/29/20)
“[T]he idea that Ivy might actually not be swift compared to others, and might have to overcome that in the story, was especially compelling to me.”

Kinderlit: The Proust-Esque Questionnaire (09/02/15)
“All my protagonists are misfits in some way or another, often painfully so.”

Enclave Publishing (06/19/15)
“I write slowly, painstakingly, with lots of rewriting and thinking as I go.”

AMA on Reddit (01/20/14)
“When I try to sell a book, I really hope that an editor somewhere will [love it]… But I don’t try to bend my ideas to suit some notion of the current market, because that way lies madness.”

CanLit for Little Canadians (12/02/13)
“There were times I thought researching [Ultraviolet and Quicksilver] would kill me, but I’m very proud of the way they turned out.”

The WAR Series: Writers as Readers (02/26/13)
“I don’t usually get weepy when reading, but when I got to a certain point in Laurie Halse Anderson’s Catalyst, I dropped the book and sobbed brokenly for several minutes.”

deCOMPOSE (02/21/12)
“All my books so far have been rooted in the same fundamental concept — that there are extraordinary magical, supernatural or extraterrestrial beings living secretly as part of our own modern world, and that only a few humans ever learn of their existence.”

VIDEO: In Person with R.J. Anderson (11/20/11)

Family Fiction Magazine (07/11)
“I believe, based on what the Bible teaches, that being human isn’t something to despise or despair over but rather to celebrate, because we are made in the image of God and He has a wonderful plan for us.”

Novel Rocket (07/12/11)
“I try never to shoehorn Christian ideas or themes into my books, but I also try never to hold back from including them where it seems natural and right to do so.”

Imaginary Reads (07/12/11) * WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS *
“I hoped to make Ultraviolet the kind of book that people would want to read twice — once when they don’t know the twist, and once again when they do to pick up all the clues they might have missed along the way.”

VIDEO: Q&A with Orchard Books  (02/04/11)

Opening Up New Worlds With R.J. Anderson (12/06/2010)
“It seemed like the books I kept coming back to again and again were those I’d discovered in my childhood and early teens.”

Q&A with HarperCollins on Wayfarer (04/10/10)
“To me, fantasy and SF offer a chance to explore emotional, philosophical, and moral issues in a fresh and interesting way.”

We Love YA (12/28/09)
“I think I just have a crazy writer brain, really. Ideas for me were like an itch I had to scratch, and it never occurred to me NOT to write.”

R.J. Anderson Unveils the Writing Life (03/24/09)
“I didn’t want to force anything in there, but on the other hand, I didn’t just want to write an exciting story with no depth or substance to it…”

Look at that Book (02/14/09)
“…it ticked me off that in all the books I’d read the disabled guy never got to be the romantic lead.”

5 Minutes with R.J. Anderson (12/01/08)
“I hardly dared to hope that I would get not one, but TWO fantastic covers, by two such talented artists.”

Fumbling With Fiction (11/18/08)
“It took me a ridiculously long time to realize that my book was YA instead of an ‘adult’ fantasy.”

*
The following interviews are broken links – I’m still looking for online copies to replace them…

Readers get A Little Taste of Poison (09/09/16)
“I write for my younger self, and that never changes.”

A Magical Adventure (09/17/15)
“Kids deserve to be taken seriously. Rather than writing down to them, I write alongside them.”

Author’s latest a tribute to Golden Age mysteries (09/14/15)
“I’d been saying for ages that I wanted somebody to write a book like that… and nobody was taking me up on it.”

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