Wild Magic: 1 (Immortals S.) - Softcover

Pierce Tamora

Softcover

ISBN 10: 067988288X ISBN 13: 9780679882886

Publisher: Random House USA Inc, 1997

Synopsis

Daine gets a job helping the royal headmistress drive a herd of ponies to Tortall, and the others soon realize that the girl's talents and horsemanship arise from magical powers. Reprint.

About this title

From the Author:

Thank you, Sir David Attenborough!
By the early 1990s I had spent much of my adult life (since 1976) living with Alanna in one form or another. I was ready for a change. I knew I had written Alanna for the girl I was, one who wanted to see a girl swordfighter with Attitude in the books she read as a teenager. Now it was time to write something for the grown-up girl I had become, a shy and somewhat reclusive writer who loved animals. I was still trying to develop ideas for the current me when I discovered a series of programs on television, starting with "The Living Planet," narrated and shaped by naturalist David Attenborough (he wasn't a Sir then). I watched him with fascination, then awe, as he went places you couldn't pay me to go to interact with creatures I had never heard of. My husband and I came to the reverent conclusion that this man would pick up *anything.* He introduced us to gorillas, kiwi birds, and Komodo dragons, climbed volcanoes and forest canopies and soared in balloons to give his audience a better understanding of the natural world. He was clearly happiest with animals and cross when surrounded by humans, exactly the qualities I wanted for my new girl hero, Daine. I watched program after program done by Sir David, absorbing his enthusiasm for and acceptance of wild creatures. I even found his footprints in places I never expected to: researching mythical creatures for the Daine books, I found his name again, as the man who discovered a gigantic prehistoric bird egg on Madagascar!

We writers find our influences in all kinds of places, many of them quite unexpected. Sir David Attenborough's work was and is a bounty to this particular writer. I owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude, both on my own behalf and on that of the many readers who have taken Daine and her animal friends to their hearts.

About the Author:

In the sixth grade, Tamora Pierce was encouraged by her father to start writing and she immediately got hooked. Once she discovered fantasy and science fiction, she tried to write the same kind of stories she read, only with teenaged girl heroines who were usually missing from the 1960s stories.

Before her junior year at the University of Pennsylvania where she studied psychology, Pierce rediscovered writing when she wrote her first original short story since tenth grade. She sold her first story a year later and then enrolled in a fiction writing course during her senior year. When her teacher suggested that she tackle a novel, her childhood ideas came back to her and she began her first sword and sorcery novel.

Pierce then worked as a housemother in an Idaho group home for teenaged girls, who loved hearing Alanna’s story from the in-progress quartet, Song of the Lioness. As Pierce continued to write and send out manuscripts, she moved to Manhattan to get her publishing career off the ground.

Pierce still lives in Manhattan with her husband, writer/filmmaker Tim, and their three cats, two parakeets, plus a floating population of rescued wildlife. She enjoys her hectic life as a full-time writer and she hopes that her books leave her readers with the feeling that they can achieve anything if they want it badly enough.

Tamora Pierce is a popular author of fantasy books for teenagers. In her latest quartet, Protector of the Small, readers follow heroine Kel as she rigorously trains for the knighthood.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House USA Inc
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 067988288X
• ISBN 13: 9780679882886
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 320