3xA MA: Julie Kagawa

I feel like authors deserve so much from the readers. I believe that authors are people who really connect with us. It was actually an author who I "sorta" owe my life to. Authors and their words make us feel and they can help us.
In this event, I want to get to know the authors. I’d like to get interviews or blog posts about THEM in connection to their book. Who is the mind behind each author?

For each post, I leave links to connect with the author. Please take the time to use one of those links and leave a message for each author, if you can. It can be towards the book or it can be something as easy as “I love the post you wrote on Out of Time! <33”

I have no idea how I managed to get Julie Kagawa onboard with this, but whatever I'm going with it! I got to meet her in Brampton which was really cool! She's super nice and I still remember a bunch of screaming girls beside me!

Minis and Me!

Most people who know me know that I'm an author. That writing is what I do first and foremost. It's my job, my career, and what I love to do. I see myself writing stories and making stuff up for a very, very long time to come.

However, writing isn't the only thing I love. I have a whole slew of hobbies, including martial arts, video games, sketching, reading (of course) and, most recently, sculpting.

Maybe sculpting is too ambitious a word, though. When I think "sculpting" I think of the great statues of Michelangelo. I think of long hours over a pottery wheel or with a chisel in hand, painstakingly molding the clay or chipping off tiny bits of stone to create a masterpiece.

My sculptures are not like that.

My sculptures are more like this.

< - - -

Definitely not the statue of David. That's kind of like comparing a stick figure to the Mona Lisa. But, it's something I enjoy, and I've found making "cute" things is a lot easier than creating a masterpiece. I started "claying" (I'm an author, I'm allowed to verb nouns if I want) because last year I was writing three books at once and I needed something else to do or I would drive myself crazy. One day I happened across an adorable clay dragon online, made from polymer clay, and thought I might try something like that myself. I loved it, and soon I had a whole shelf of clay critters; they were taking over my living room. I didn't know what I would do with them, but I didn't want to stop, either.

Just for fun, I shared a few photos on my blog. The response was shocking; everyone wanted to know if they were for sale or if I would put them up on Etsy. At that time, I'd never heard of Etsy. (If you've never heard of it, either, it's an online community/store where you can offer your handmade and vintage items for sale.) I was even more surprised that people were willing to buy my little figurines. I decided, after researching Etsy and wondering if I could really do this, what could it hurt? So I opened an Etsy store, and the first batch of figurines sold out in a day.

So far, it hasn't slowed down. I can barely keep dragons on my shelf anymore. I'm so very grateful that something that started out as a hobby has become so successful, but it is a hobby. My first and greatest love will always be writing, though at the end of the day, it's nice to be able to relax and do something else I enjoy. I hope that my dragons will continue to bring people as much happiness as they do me, and that I can continue for a long time to come.

Julie's Etsy Store

I find her critters all over the place, especially on twitter! I love looking at them and honestly, if the shipping to Canada wasn't more than the actual item, I'd so buy a family of them! If you're in the US (or not), you really should consider! They're amazingly cute <33

Enter the giveaway below! Thanks for checking out my blog and remember:  
Be kind to one another. - Ellen

For more giveaways (because these giveaways really rock) and awesome author posts, be sure to check out the opening post with the schedule of authors so far and links! Click here for the opening post and if you're awesome.

Author Info

Julie's Goodreads | Goodreads for her (Many Good) Books | Twitter | Website |

Julie Kagawa, the New York Times bestselling author of the Iron Fey and Blood of Eden series was born in Sacramento, California. But nothing exciting really happened to her there. So, at the age of nine she and her family moved to Hawaii, which she soon discovered was inhabited by large carnivorous insects, colonies of house geckos, and frequent hurricanes. She spent much of her time in the ocean, when she wasn’t getting chased out of it by reef sharks, jellyfish, and the odd eel.

When not swimming for her life, Julie immersed herself in books, often to the chagrin of her schoolteachers, who would find she hid novels behind her Math textbooks during class. Her love of reading led her to pen some very dark and gruesome stories, complete with colored illustrations, to shock her hapless teachers. The gory tales faded with time, but the passion for writing remained, long after she graduated and was supposed to get a real job.

To pay the rent, Julie worked in different bookstores over the years, but discovered the managers frowned upon her reading the books she was supposed to be shelving. So she turned to her other passion: training animals. She worked as a professional dogtrainer for several years, dodging Chihuahua bites and overly enthusiastic Labradors, until her first book sold and she stopped training to write full time.

Julie now lives in Louisville, Kentucky, where the frequency of shark attacks are at an all time low. She lives with her husband, two obnoxious cats, one Australian Shepherd who is too smart for his own good, and the latest addition, a hyper-active Papillon.

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