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El Tempo de las Mil Puertas* is an online magazine specializing in Teen and Young Adult literature, done by and for young people. Published six times a year, every issue includes articles, interviews of both national and international writers and, of course, reviews of new releases and any other books we find interesting for our readers.
We started this nonprofit project in December 2007, and it has grown ever since. The most recent issues exceed the 4000 hits, and each of our more than 400 reviews has recieved between 600 and 4000 visits.
Over the years we have had the opportunity to interview many of the most important writers of YA. That's why we have decided to upload the interviews on the site, not only in Spanish but in their original language.
*Our magazine is named after The Temple of a Thousand Doors from Michael Ende's The Neverending Story, a place in Fantastica "from which one can go anywhere and which can be reached from anywhere" —a beautiful metaphor for reading.
Kerstin Gier
Manche Dinge passieren einfach spontan beim Schreiben. Xemerius ist mir während SAPHIRBLAU eingefallen – gleich am Anfang, als ich mir vorstellte, wie Gideon und Gwendolyn sich in der Kirche in Belgravia küssten. Bei diesem Kuss kam auf einmal dieser kleine Wasserspeier angehüpft und ließ sich von da an nicht mehr wegdenken. Von ihm konnte ich mich auch am schwersten trennen, als ich die Trilogie fertig geschrieben hatte. Obwohl, eigentlich lässt er sich nicht wirklich abschütteln. Gerade jetzt sitzt er neben mir und macht dumme Bemerkungen.
Holly Black
At the end of the day, it's readers who create trends. Publishers can believe a book is going to be big and they can make sure that a book gets a lot of marketing and a beautiful cover, but unless it's embraced by readers, it's not going to be a phenomenon. Readers are the ones who press books into their friends hands and tell them, "you'll love this." Readers are the ones that spend hours online creating fansites, drawing fanart, and getting into conversations with other readers who loved the book as much as they did. Readers create trends; publishers follow them.
Rick Riordan
How about a wink to the Spanish fans? Can you give us a famous Spanish demigod’s name?
Oh, I’m pretty sure Hernán Cortés was a son of Ares, and Salvador Dalí was a son of Dionysus, because he must have had some crazy visions to inspire his art. Miguel de Cervantes was no doubt inspired by the Nine Muses. Possibly he was a child of Apollo.
R. L. Stine
For me, there is a very close connection between horror and humor. Horror films always make me laugh--not scream. If you listen to people on a rollercoaster ride, you hear them laughing and screaming at the same time. These are visceral, basic reactions which I think are easy to get on paper.
Richelle Mead
Social networking allows readers to see the person behind the book. Likewise, authors get to instantly see how their books are being received. It’s still impossible to contact every reader individually, but the Internet has definitely allowed authors to reachout from what has traditionally been a very solitary job. I especially like that my readers can still get information and news from me in the long waits between new books.
Shannon Hale
I don’t set out to teach values or morals in my books. I think the reader is better at doing that than the author. I try to write realistic characters and to live a genuine, honest life and hope that good seeps through naturally. In my experience, girls are strong, powerful, clever, and interesting, so I think my characters tend to be.
Susan E. Hinton
I think kids will always divide into groups, there will always be an "IN" group, and always be an "Out" group. That is human nature and I don't believe it happens only in the USA.
Kai Meyer
Unabhängig davon halte ich Jugendliche für das schönste Publikum überhaupt. Als Kinder und Teenager haben wir uns alle noch völlig in Büchern verlieren können, die fiktive Welt hatte einen ganz anderen Stellenwert, war greifbarer und in gewisser Weise noch eine echte Alternative zur Realität. Als Erwachsener liest man selektiver, oft auch unaufmerksamer. Aber die Welten der Bücher, die ich als Jugendlicher gelesen habe, sind für mich auch heute noch ungeheuer präsent.
Lois Lowry
I first conceived of it as a single book. Then I began to think about the second book, about what it would be like in the future if people had lost their technology and become very primitive, so that’s what I was exploring in Gathering Blue. Then it occurred to me that I could connect the two books, that the two societies could be co-existing and that people from them could connect.
Robert Muchamore
I think young readers like to read about characters who are their own age. I read quite a few teen books, just to keep up with what my rivals are doing (and to steal the good bits!).
Meg Cabot
Like most authors, getting my first novel published was terribly difficult! It took three years of rejection just to get an agent, and then another year after that to get a publisher. And getting The Princess Diaries published was no different.
It's always hard for new authors to get their books published--but once they get that first book in print, it usually gets much easier.
Scott Westerfeld
I think we are moving toward a future with more and more plastic surgery. We all have those super-gorgeous faces on our TVs and computer screens to compete with, and surgery will probably get cheaper and harder to resist. But here's what I think will happen: some people's brains will adapt and realize that faces on TV are simply show business and have nothing to do with the rest of us, and will wear their own face as a marker of intelligence and self confidence. Others will pile surgery on top of surgery as fashions change. And maybe someday two people from these different tribed will fall in love, and all their friends will give them grief about it.
L. J. Smith
I identify myself with all my characters. It depends on whose point of view I am looking through at the time. (I do a lot of thinking about the characters that doesn’t get on the page.) Sometimes I can see through Bonnie’s eyes. At other times I can see through Stefan’s. In my new books I can even see through Damon’s eyes (scary!). Or it might be Matt or even Meredith, who is the most mysterious character in the first trilogy.
Licia Troisi
I am always in touch with my readers; I meet them during my lectures, I talk with them by email. Recently, I started to comprehend that the link that a reader create with the author of the book he loves is very strong, in such a way dangerous; I feel like they have an idealized image of me, and sometimes they want from me things that I cannot give them. They think to know me because they've read my books, but I know that it is not true, that I am different from that can be seen in my books. I know that this means my books in such a way can touch very deeply some people, but sometimes this thing scary me a little. For example, once a girl, during a lecture of mine, was so excited that burst into tears when she saw me; I thought she was very sweet, and I tried to explain that I was a girl exactly like her.
Diana Wynne Jones
C.S.Lewis and J.R.R.Tolkien were strikingly different as lecturers (I never had any individual teaching from either, you know, but I went to all the lectures of both). Lewis was a short man with a big rolling voice who lectured to capacity crowds in the biggest lecture hall there was. He had a genius for making the dullest things vividly interesting. He talked about the beliefs and superstitions, the religion and everyday assumptions of the late medieval world. He unravelled the complexities of Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queen (which has always been my favourite long poem). We hung on his words. We remembered all he said. Tolkien, by contrast, was almost wholly inaudible. He lectured in the smallest possible room with his back to his audience. He looked like a minor Old Testament prophet(in glasses) but didn't behave like one at all. (...)
Jonathan Stroud
Although Bart was the most fun to write about, Nathaniel is in many ways the most important character of the trilogy, because it is his moral progression that we follow through the three books. He took longer to develop than Bart - when I wrote the first 4 chapters of Amulet, I stilll didn't even know what the kid was called. To begin with I thought the boy magician would be a nasty fellow right - but then I wrote the sequence when the little boy Nathaniel goes to his master's study and is attacked by all the imps, and I realised he had to be sympathetic too. Slowly I pieced together his background, and made him into the opposite of Bartimaeus, so they had lots of good arguments. Someone told me afterwards that Nat is very like I was when I was 12 - quite proud and over-serious... I hope I'm a bit more like Bart now!
Eoin Colfer
My characters seem to grow themselves, which is a strange thing. It is almost as if they decide what they will do next. I know that this is only my subconscious writing the story, but it feels like all these people are alive in my brain. My favourite characters are Fletcher Moon and Artemis. I would like to do adult books about these guys some day.
Marianne Curley
It was here that I learned that life is as fragile as a spider’s web, but in order to live a meaningful life, we cannot think of ourselves as fragile, but we should venture out beyond our limits, try new things and stretch ourselves.