Are there any more stories about Mel and Vidanric?

Yes: the story of Vidanric's early training, A Stranger to Command, appeared August 2008. In September 2003 the anthology Firebirds, from Firebirds Books, printed my story “Beauty” about Mel’s middle daughter. A story about Raec, Mel's and Vidanric's son, comes out in Firebirds Soaring in spring 2009.

Why don’t you make a movie of Crown Duel?

Will there be a fourth Wren book?

Yes. Wren Journeymage was written four years ago, I just need to find a publisher

Where is your biography?

I don't like putting personal information on-line. I don't think the details of my life are relevant to the books, but sometimes young readers are doing book reports and need to include information about authors, so here is my standard "biography":

I am a middle aged woman who recently retired after twenty years of teaching. I have been married for nearly thirty years. We have two kids, three dogs, (two of them rescues) and a house full of books--about ten thousand or so. That's because my husband is a professor, and I studied history in graduate school, and we both love reading!

I started writing novels about another world when I was eight, but the work was so hard I switched to making comic books of my stories. (I actually began making little books when I was six and seven, out of paper towels taped together.) I went back to novel writing when I was ten, and I never stopped. I tried sending out my novels when I was thirteen. I typed them on a manual, and wow, did that take a long time, especially since I was (and am) a terrible typist. I got letters saying "We almost bought this..." and "Try us again!" but nothing sold, so when I got to college, I figured I needed to learn something about writing that I just didn't yet grasp. It took fifteen more years to begin to learn about rewriting, but meantime I went to college, lived in Europe, came back to get my masters in History, worked in Hollywood, got married, started a family and became a teacher.

I discovered that studying history was a good thing for an author, because I learned how cultures are shaped, how people thought, acted, ate, and lived in the past. I learned what they really did, how, and most important, why. Reading history, plus getting one's own life experience, is the best way to help a writer create characters that are true to life, instead of copying them from other writers' visions in favorite books.

Wren to the Rescue was first written when I was seventeen. It was one of the ones I sent around all through high school, though in those days it was called Tess's Mess. It was the first one I sold after I began the long road (still on it!) to learn how to rewrite. Since then I've published over twenty-five books, many of them translated into other languages, like Russian.

Is Sherwood Smith your real name?

Yes. That is, I was born a Smith, and though my given name is something else, I never liked it, and adopted Sherwood when I started writing about that other world. (The gang of girls I wrote about had Sherwood as their last name--has nothing to do with Robin Hood. When I was little I had this vague idea that you couldn't change your last name until you were married, so I replaced the unwanted first name as my way of belonging.) All my contracts are signed with Sherwood Smith and my checks come made out to Sherwood Smith, so as far as I am concerned it is my real name. I can't help that it seems like a man's name--when I was eight years old, such things never occurred to me.

Do I ever put real people in my books?

Never. I don't think I could if I tried. That isn't to say that familiar traits don't show up in this or that character, derived from experience, but I don't consciously take someone's real life trait and stick it onto a character like a band aid. Every writer's process is different, of course. My characters walk into my mind fully formed--they have their pasts, their families, likes and dislikes, and I can't change them any more than I could make my kids taller or myself younger! My job is just to write their stories.

Will you read my Story and tell me where to publish it?

I wish I could read them, but I already work full time, have a family, and get up every single morning at five, seven days a week, just to get some writing time. I don't watch television--there just isn't any free time! As for publishing suggestions, my agent knows more than I do about that. Over on my Young Adult page, you will find some suggestions for workshops and critique groups to join.