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About Tracy Deonn

Tracy grew up in North Carolina, where she fell in love with fantasy novels. Tracy persuaded her Master’s committee at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to allow her to write both her thesis paper and a fully-produced, award-winning play about Superman, West African myths, and secret identities. Tracy earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in communication and performance studies from UNC. After, Tracy worked in video game production, live theatre, and K-12 education where she taught theatre. She also instructed creative and academic writing at Chapel Hill. Tracy is contributed to the 40th Anniversary The Empire Strikes Back anthology From a Certain Point of View, from Del Rey/Star Wars books. 

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Tracy's authentic voice in her writing is derived from personal experiences in her own life. Her mother falling ill and dying provided a hardship that inspired her writing of the novel Legendborn. She based a lot of the main character, Bree, off of herself. Tracy wants to represent her community authentically, and therefore, she choses to represent herself and her experiences in her writing.

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Interests

Tracy loves speaking at fantasy and science fiction panels. She spends lots of time reading fan fiction. Her other interests include arranging puppy playdates and trying ginger-flavored foods. 

Interviews, Social Media, and Bibliograpy

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Interview: In Conversation, How to Approach Feedback, Magic and Worldbuilding Edition with Tracy Deonn

In this interview, Tracy talks about her own story and how that has inspired her writing. She goes on to discuss the importance of growing in response to feedback in writing while addressing the role of being an author and not losing your own voice in your work. She also talks about writing the genre of fantasy and specifically how to write about things that do not exist such as magic. Tracy says about her writing process while receiving feedback, "but I also try to remember what I'm trying to communicate to the reader into the protagonists through magic." I appreciate how she communicates with the reader through magic in her novel Legendborn.

She talks about her structure while writing fantasy, like how she made a spreadsheet to organize the different aspects of her writing and how she kept track of the feedback she received. She defines the significance of creating a unique world in fantasy novels. Tracy also discusses the relationships between characters in her book. She explains about the relationship between Sel and Bree in Legendborn, "the idea of changing some character's base level relationship like fundamentally if you're blood-related that shift, that like creates a whole dynamic." The relationship was essential to the story and it was interesting to hear about her writing process in relation to their relationship.

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Tracy talks almost only about her work on her social media, and you can tell this is a way she remains connected and communicating with her fans. In a recent tagged post she has a photo of Bloodmarked, labeled as an "instant #1 New York Times Bestseller." Her caption on the photo is that she wrote the book with her whole heart, and connects her personal being to the honor of having a NYT #1 Bestseller.

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Check out Tracy Deonn's biography on her website!

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