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Welcome to third and final installment of Calico In Conversation with Maria V. Snyder. If you missed Parts One and Two, click below to catch up:

Part One: Eye Candy
Part Two: Getting Goosebumps

Editor’s Note: this interview was originally conducted in March through May of 2016.

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You started out with the Study trilogy, then the spin-off Glass trilogy, an SF YA duology, then the Healer trilogy, and now you’re back to the Study universe. What brought you back to this world and these characters?

My readers brought me back. They kept asking for more books about Yelena and Valek and I really wanted to write more for them, but I didn’t have an idea that seemed…big enough for another book. Yelena was too powerful and Valek just too skilled a fighter. I thought of writing a prequel about Valek’s life before meeting the Commander up until he meets Yelena, but I think the relationship between the two of them is what really makes the stories. Then I thought of having some hot shot new assassin try for Valek’s job and his interactions with her would be a nice segue for flashbacks into his past…and that was enough to write a new Study book. The plan was to write one, but once I finished Shadow Study, I knew I could write two more. Now, I’m trying to finish Dawn Study before I leave for Australia. [Maria’s Note: which didn’t happen, I’m just wrapping it up and it’s the end of May!]

It’s nice when the ideas come to you! Once this trilogy is done, what’s next? Can you talk about it?

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Meteorologist turned novelist, Maria V. Snyder has been writing fantasy and science fiction since she was bored at work and needed something creative to do. Over a dozen novels later, Maria’s been on the New York Times bestseller list, won a half-dozen awards, and has earned her Master’s degree in Writing from Seton Hill University where she’s now part of the MFA faculty. She also enjoys creating new worlds where horses and swords rule, ’cause let’s face it, they’re cool, although she’s been known to trap her poor characters in a giant metal cube and let them figure out how to get out.

Editor’s Note: this is part one of a three-part interview. Parts two and three will be published Tuesday June 14th and June 21st, respectively. Also, this interview was originally conducted in March through May of 2016.

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Now, to get started, I ask all of my interviewees the same starting question, and that’s this: how do we know each other?

We both attended Seton Hill University’s Masters of Arts program for writing popular fiction. I graduated in 2007 (I’m not sure if we were students together? – in my defense that was 9 years ago!). Then in 2008, I returned and am now on the faculty.

I remember some overlap. I got to hear you read from Magic Study as your thesis defense, and I also remember seeing the very early pages in workshop that made up the opening chapter of Inside Out. But my favorite memory is this: attending my very first SHU class when you were handing out bookmarks promoting Poison Study. I saw the cover art and flipped out, because I’d drooled over the hardcover just weeks before in a Barnes & Noble! So tell me: what made you, a published author, apply for the SHU Writing Popular Fiction Masters Degree?