12 Author Days of Christmas – Rachel Hartman

2nd Day of Christmas: I met Rachel Hartman when I moderated a panel she was on at the Vancouver International Writers’ Fest. I have to be honest, I’ve never read a lot of fantasy novels. But I had to read her new (and first) book, “Seraphina,” in order to sound, you know, like I knew what I was talking about. (I’m including two cover images here – the purple is the one I’m familiar with – the other one is crazy-different – I’ve never seen it before – UK, maybe??).

It was fantastic. She had me hooked, and sucked me into a world where a small group of people live as half-human, half-dragon, and have to hide that fact or risk persecution or worse. I couldn’t believe it was her debut novel – it spent three non consecutive weeks on the NYT bestseller list. I remember being envious of her “overnight sensation” status. As a fellow author I should have known better; I found out later this book took eight YEARS to come to fruition.

Then I met her in person and she was terrific, too. I’ve since had her speak to my creative writing class at UBC, and they adore her. She talks in such a frank, funny and accessible way about the ups and downs of a writer’s life. The sequel to “Seraphina” came out this year, “Shadow Scale,” and it is equally amazing. I can’t wait to see what Rachel does next.