An Interview with Tabatha Shipley
I had the pleasure of interviewing Arizona-based young adult author, Tabatha Shipley, about her writing and editing processes, being inclusive, and her experience with self-publishing. Tabatha is the mother of two amazing kids, and is happily married to her high school sweetheart, living in El Mirage, Arizona. She loves to cook, play hockey, and read any and everything in her spare time. She was an elementary school teacher for fifteen years before she decided to actively pursue writing full-time a few years ago. Tabatha is the author of Breaking Eselda, a Kingdom of Fraun novel, as well as the stand-alone YA Fantasy story 30 Days Without Wings. The second book in the Kingdom of Fraun series, Redeeming Jordyn, is set to be published in April 2019, and a YA science fiction novel (whose name has yet to be determined—did I mention she’s a self-proclaimed “irrational perfectionist”?!) will follow in the autumn. Growing up, Tabatha admits that she always dreamed of being a writer but, when asked, would always answer “a teacher;” she now celebrates that she got to live both of her dreams. An interesting quirk that Tabatha confesses is that, when she’s stuck on a scene, she will write by hand rather than typing; most writers prefer one medium over the other, but Tabatha finds value in both. When asked what she did with her first profit from book sales, Tabatha divulges that the money went into donating copies of the book to middle schools, high schools, and new book reviewers. This fact really encapsulates Tabatha’s overall objective as a writer, which is to provided readers with a story to fall in love with rather than working towards a monetary goal. After getting to know her more intimately, we dove into a conversation about the logistics and specifics of writing and publishing novels.