Dear Tamora Pierce,
*insert project details here*
I remember picking up Alanna: The First Adventure while on vacation when I was in 7th grade. I’d never read fantasy before, so it was a new experience. The back of the book looked promising, and the idea of a girl masquerading as a boy appealed to my tomboy attitude. When I finished the first read, I put it down on my bed, thought about it for a moment, and picked it up again. I read it at least five more times in the period of a week.
Gradually, I read my way through the rest of your books, enjoying all of them in different ways and during different periods of my life. Two always stuck out to me, though. The first Alanna book and Trickster’s Choice.
Alanna appealed to my tomboy side as well as my budding feminist side, spurring my very first novel, which I titled Ash. The original title was Black Spandex of my Third Life, but it was much too complicated and I scratched the thesis that allowed that title to make sense anyways. I won’t go into the details of the story, written between the Octobers of my 7th and 8th grade years, because, like its original title, Ash is odd, complicated, and inconsistent. But the actual story isn’t important. What was important was the fact that I actually wrote, for the first time, a 35,000 word manuscript, and it was Alanna that started it all.
The premise of and inspiration from Trickster’s Choice has stuck around for a bit longer. Although I enjoyed the magical elements in it the same as your other books, what really interested me was the spying. I’d always enjoyed spy themed entertainment, like Mission Impossible and the Alex Rider series by Anthony Horowitz. The second of my novels, much more coherent and composed than the first, Addicted, was espionage-themed. The plot revolved around a 19 year old undercover spy investigating the alleged illegal drug manufacturing of a billionaire. I drew several elements of inspiration from Aly, and unconsciously named the character in my latest “spy-epic-in-progress†Allyson, or Ally for short. Actually, I didn’t even realize the correlation until I started writing this letter. Huh.
The point of this letter is to thank you, however. So, thank you, Tamora Pierce, for inadvertently launching my writing “careerâ€, although at the moment it’s more of an extremely time-consuming hobby. Your books and characters will always be close to my heart, helping me become a better writer and a better, stronger person.
Regards,
Bri
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