I must say this interview has been a long time coming.

I met Bruce Coville at the American Booksellers Association Convention (now called Book Expo America) about 15 years ago. (Bruce, has it been that long?). Bruce shared a small table with my writer/ friend Jeanne Spicer Evans at the Audio Publisher's Association party. He and I had gotten into an animated discussion of theater soundtrack recordings ...and a friendship was born. We have met over the years, as well as talked via e-mail and phone. I love his work,,,in print and in audio, as a friend, writer and critic. I must thank Bruce for taking time during his non-stop busy schedule for doing this interview. His web site is www.brucecoville.com.

Bennet Pomerantz: I have always wanted to ask you this question, when did you consider yourself a writer?

BC: That's a complex question, Bennet. One way to finesse it is to say that I thought of myself as a "writer" from the time I started trying to write fiction that I could sell, and thought of myself as an "author" when I finally managed to get my first book published.

BP: Bruce, I know you and I both have great soundtrack (movie/tv/Broadway music) collections. So how many do you have these days? Any new ones you like lately?

BC: Oh, lord, I have no idea how many I own. My most favorite from the recent seasons has to be Avenue Q, which has to be one of the wittiest shows ever written. Also, there was an off-Broadway show about four years ago called Batboy that I absolutely adored. It was a truly outre concept -- they took the weird character that the Weekly World News (most bizarre of all tabloids) occasionally featured on its cover and built this astonishing gothic/satire musical around him. The show was well-reviewed and had a lot of fans, but died in the post-9/11 downturn that took out so many struggling shows.

BP: You write in mostly the fantasy genre, where do you get your ideas from?

BC: I have WBS. ("Weird Brain Syndrome")

BP: Your current book Thor's wedding Day (in book by Harcourt books and in spoken word recording by Full Cast Audio) is based on Norse legend. You have readapted Shakespeare's Hamlet. Harry Potter books uses items and creatures from myth . . . Do you feel in a way. The classics have been reawakened to a new generation with these type of books?

BC: People are constantly re-imagining Shakespeare in order to bring him alive for a new generation. The Shakespeare adaptations that I've done have been as faithful as I could possibly make them. I write them hoping to remove what I call "the curse of greatness" -- the mistaken idea that because Shakespeare is great he must be hard to understand (or, even worse, boring!)

My own love of myth was awakened by the retellings I read as a kid. I think it is a responsibility of each generation of children's writers to bring new visions of the world's myths to young people -- trying to be both fresh and faithful at the same time.

BP: Thor's narrator was the Goat Boy, an interesting plot device, may I ask why you used the goat shepherd as your narrator?

BC: I'm glad you asked that! This book is something I've been working on, off and on, for nearly three decades! I had originally conceived it as a picture book -- a straight retelling of the bumptious Norse poem "The Thrymskvitha" which is the only truly funny myth I knew. One editor had turned the book down as being politically incorrect -- not because Thor and Loki have to wear women's clothes, but because the story implied that that would be embarrassing for them!

Well, I finally sold the book to my editor at Harcourt a number of years ago. But before we could get very far with it, they decided that this kind of long picture book no longer had a market. So it languished for a while. Finally I called him and said, "Look, let's either do this book or cancel it" So we talked about it for quite a while, and finally decided I would try it as a novel.

It didn't take me long to realize that for a kid's novel I'd be better off having a kid-character for the young readers to identify with. Fortunately, the myths provided one! Though Thialfi the Goat Boy does not appear in "The Thrymskvitha", he was indeed Thor's servant, and appears in a couple of other stories. When I decided to tell the story from Thialfi's point of view it really began to come to life. He was a fun character to write. And letting the goats talk -- they don't in the original stories -- made it even more fun for me. After all, what's more enjoyable than cranky comment from a couple of old goats?

BP: Are you intrigued with magic, myths and legends since many of your novels use them?

BC: Oh, sure. Myths are simply the human story codified, a key to the way our minds work. What could be more fascinating -- or more important?

BP: What other jobs did you do before you settling at being a writer?

BC: Well, I planned on being a writer all along. The other jobs were just a way to stay alive while I was making that happen! They included gravedigger, cookware salesman, air freight agent, toy maker, teacher, and magazine editor.

BP: According to my research, You wrote your first book at the age of 27. How many books is that for you at this point . . . including the ones where you have been an editor?

BC: Well, I SOLD my first book at 27. I'd been writing the darn things since I was 17. I don't even remember how many I wrote before I finally sold one.

My total count now, including short story collections of my own work and anthologies that I've edited, is 90.

BP: How did you get started as a writer?

BC: I sat down and did it. That sounds flip, but I'm quite serious about it. There's no magic key. You just have to do it.

BP: If you remember, what was the first thing you ever had published? What was the first thing you ever wrote professionally?

BC: The first writing I ever got paid for was a one paragraph story synopsis I sold to House of Mystery comics. I wanted to write for comic books, and I had sent in a script to DC. They told me they weren't buying full scripts from outsiders, but that they had set up a program to let people sell them story ideas that one of their staff writers would develop. I sent in a few ideas and when they bought one I felt as if the door was finally starting to open a crack. I would far rather have sold them a complete story, of course. But it was a beginning.

BP: Do you remember how it felt to see your name in print for the first time? Do you still get that thrill?

BC: Well, it's kind of embarrassing to admit, but sometimes I just stand in front of the shelf and look at all my books. It makes me really happy. And as soon as I get an advance copy of the cover for a new book, I wrap it around some other book to get a sense of what the finished product is going to look like!

BP: Talking about your editing work, what's it like to play editor to some of the biggest names (example Jane Yolen, Joe Halderman, etc.) in the SF/Horror/YA genres in your "Book of" anthologies?

BC: It can be kind of intimidating. But what I've learned is that -- with a few exceptions -- the bigger the name, the bigger the talent, the more professional the behavior. I will say that some of the writers I worked with who had mostly published for adults were sometimes surprised by the level of detail in the editing we did for these kids' books. And most of them were deeply appreciative of it, and wished they got the same kind of attention for their adult stories!

BP: You are one of the best-known modern day young adult authors, with such series as the I Was a Sixth Grade Alien, The A.I. Gang, Space Brat, The Unicorn, and The Magic Shop Books, when a child comes up to you, what amazes you when they say they read your work?

BC: Well, I'm not really amazed at this point. What does delight me, still, is when a child or parent or teacher tells me that one of my books was the first book that a kid ever read. I've got some wonderful letters from parents thanking me for turning their kids on to reading.

BP: This may sound harsh . . . like a father asking which one of his children he loved more. However of all the books you have written, do you have a favorite book or series?

BC: If I did, do you think I'd be silly enough to commit that fact to print?!?

BP: What is your normal writing schedule for any book?

BC: I don't have any normal schedule. Really. I used to, I think, but since I started Full Cast Audio I've been squeezing my writing in around the edges, almost the way I did when I was just beginning! The best time for me to write remains the middle of the night or very early in the morning. But -- and this may be a factor of getting older -- I can no longer say, "Well, if I start now, I can have a book in three months." It just doesn't work that way for me anymore.

BP: R.L. Stein, Judy Blume and other Young Adult authors have written at least one Adult novel . . . And James Patterson and Carl Hiaasen have written Young adult fiction and Jane Yolen has written both, what are your thoughts about this?

BC: People should be free to write what they want, as long as they are doing it with good will and clear artistic intent. The urge to put writers in boxes is like typecasting in Hollywood, it limits freedom and performance.

BP: What author or authors do you admire?

BC: I adore the work of Charles Dickens. And recently I read The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, which is an utterly awesome book. Among current adult writers I like William Goldman and Michael Chabon. Natalie Babbitt's Tuck Everlasting is, I think, the greatest children's book of the last fifty years. But my personal role model, the man whose writing I most try to emulate, is Lloyd Alexander.

BP: How do you do your research for your books?

BC: Well, research has changed drastically since I started. A lot of my research is done via Google, of course. I also love used book stores for research, since you find stuff there you might not stumble across otherwise. Serendipity is an important part of research! It's important to note, I think, that even when writing fantasy, research is important. If I'm writing about unicorns or dragons or gryphons, I try very hard to be true to the lore.

BP: You have created a spoken word company, Full Cast Audio which records many Young Adult books in a multi cast format. I know this month. Thor's Wedding Day will be in audio book from Full Cast . Can you tell me how you got started in audio productions?

BC: Tim Ditlow of Listening Library had contacted me once about recording one of my titles. I wrote back to tell him I was thinking about recording it myself. (This was because I had been unhappy with a recording of one of my other books, done by a different company.) This led to a conversation where we came up with the idea of recording books unabridged, but with a full cast. In the way of true collaborations, we no longer remember whose idea it was -- I swear it came from Tim, he is positive I was the one who suggested it. Anyway, we started Words Take Wing as an imprint of Listening Library, and worked to develop this style of recording. Later Tim sold Listening Library to Random House, and we came to an amicable parting of the ways. But I didn't want to stop producing and directing, since I had found that I really loved it. So, eventually, I started Full Cast Audio.

BP: And any new audio productions your company is MONKEYing around with?

BC: Cute, Bennet. Yep, we've just recorded King Kong! We used the revised and expanded (and estate approved!) text that is based on the old novelization done back in 1932 for the original film. I'm tremendously excited about the recording -- the book worked beautifully for our full cast format, and the actors really captured the period feel. I don't think we've ever had so much fun doing a recording.

BP: If you could record any book (or books) or any authors for Full Cast audio, who would you choose?

BC: Someday I would like to do a full cast recording of a novel by Dickens. The BBC has done adaptations and abridgements, but what I would want to do is the complete novel, exactly as written. Such a thing would be a huge project, of course, and might not be feasible in financial terms. But it's something I would really love to do.

BP: Any advice you want to give upcoming writers?

BC: Boneheaded obstinance is essential to success. Talent is good, too. But ambition, drive, and stubbornness are crucial factors.

BP: Any plans of future novels you are working on that you can talk about?

BC: The main thing in the works right now is the long delayed third book in the Unicorn Chronicles. This is SO overdue that it's embarrassing to even mention it. But I've got a significant portion -- over three hundred pages -- already finished and I hope to bring it in soon. This has been hanging over my head like the Sword of Damocles for over five years now, so it will be an enormous relief to finally finish it!

BP: Bruce, you are a literary renaissance man.  What would you like to be remembered for?

BC: Getting kids to read. There's nothing I take more pride in than having pulled kids into the world of books.

BP: Thank you for your time, Bruce Coville

BC: My pleasure, Bennet

Any comments, questions, author inquiries, etc....Please contact me at audioworld@yahoo.com. And put Author Showcase in the subject line.

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About the Writer:

Bennet Pomerantz is a media review columnist in 175 newspapers with his weekly column AUDIOWORLD. His fiction and reviews have appeared in the pages of Affaire De Coeur, Gateways, Mystery Scene, Power Star, The Hot Corner, Washington Entertainment Magazine, and many others. He is also known for his review appearances on the MCN Forum. View his web site at Audioworld.