For my surprise interview of the Great Canadian Blog hop/giveaway I would like to Welcome Gisela (Gigi) Sedlmayer. She is the author of the Talon series for children and adults. Talon sounds like such an interesting adventure story and I am so excited to have Gisela here today.
(CB): Gisela thank you so much for come to talk with us today. I think this will be a lot of fun and was so happy when you agreed to be interviewed by me.
Answer: It’s my pleasure to talk to you. I was actually surprised, when you asked me if you could do an interview with me. But I have to say I was happily surprised. So, thank you so very much Charlotte, for giving me the opportunity.
CB: Can you tell us a little about yourself?
Answer: I, Gisela (Gigi) Sedlmayer was born on 19. May 1944 in Potsdam, a suburb of Berlin in Germany.
My family escaped to the West just before the infamous wall went up. My family moved around in Germany until finally settling in Munich, where I studied Architectural Draughting and met Albert in 1965. We married in December 1967. I worked as Civil Draughtsperson in various private consultancies in Munich.
During that time I heard that my uncle was a writer so I tried to write short animal stories. Nothing further came of that but I developed a love for the written word and started to consume books.
In May 1975 my husband and I moved to New Zealand. Because of language challenges I started a handcraft business. As a specialty I made colourful parrots of which I sold thousands in a few years.
In 1983 we became Christians.
In 1988, after years of careful consideration we decided to adopt and became adoptive parents of twin girls the year after.
We lived in New Zealand for 18 years and moved to Australia in September 1992.
Two year later I was diagnosed with cancer. After the operation I just vegetated around, watching TV all day. But I was always there for the girls, never forgot them, but I always thought that I be dead in a few years anyway. Then suddenly my brain started to work again because I realised after few years that I was still alive. So I told myself, ‘get a grip and do something with your life’.
So I thought about the time when I was writing short stories but then again, I would have to write now in English. But I thought, I would give it a try and see how it would work out.
Albert taught me how to use a computer and so I developed many short stories. I have sent them in for competitions and got sometimes very good reports back, but none made it for the first price. But it gave me confidence to go on writing. And one day the idea of the Talon series came to me.
Now I love writing full-time. In my spare time I love gardening and cross-stitching and watching good adventure DVDs or going to the movies.
CB: I read you biography on you website (I will link your sight here) and I must say you have lived an amazing adventurous life. Did you get the idea for an adventure story because of everything you have experience personally?
Answer: Not in the beginning. But when I started to write, it came to me, that lots of the things I was writing, came from my life; particularly the rejection. I never thought I could write about that. But it fitted so wonderfully.
CB: Aside from the adoption of your twin daughters what would you say is the biggest adventure you have taken on?
Answer: Actually there were many adventures in my life.
I married an Australian. I met him in a draughting school in Germany, in Munich. He said right from the beginning, that he wanted to go back to Australia. Since I had no sense of ‘Home’ I said, that is fine with me. After 8 years marriage, we immigrated to New Zealand because, even though my husband was Australian I wasn’t allowed to come to Australia. So we immigrated to New Zealand. There we became Christians and then we adopted our Indian twin girls from Fiji. They were special needs children. After 18 years in New Zealand, my husband finally wanted to go back to Australia. So we moved back to Australia. Since then we are here and love it here. But after living here for one year I was diagnosed with cancer. It was a very hard time for me. But I guess, it made me a stronger person. Believing in life, believing that we are here for a purpose. Loving nature, loving life, loving birds and all the rest of the animals. And, as it is written in the bible: Love yourself as you love others. That is my motto. I hate seeing cruelty to animals or people.
CB: You are a cancer survivor, as is my sister. I am amazed at the strength that my sister has shown. You mentioned that you feared the worst, what was it that finally made you realize that you would survive and what advice would you give to others battling cancer or any other disease?
Answer: After the operation and the radiation (it damaged my tissue and bones quite a lot and so I still suffer from that) I did nothing. I waited to die. I was there for my husband, I was there for my children, they were only small in this time. But otherwise? I did nothing. The TV was my friend. So one year went by, another year went by. Then suddenly, one day, as if I got a knock on my head, I looked up and realized that I was still among the living. But what now? Should I go to work? But what should I do? I had no idea. That night I walked with my husband and talked. It was actually the first time after the operation that we really talked. I was alive again. Suddenly my husband said, ‘Why not start writing. You did it before.’ (My husband writes too.) I looked at him, stunned. Writing? What should I write about? Animal stories again? In English, in German? I told him that I would think about it.
So next day, I actually sat down and started to write a story. It flowed out of my hand. Just like that. Didn’t need much to think about, it just came. I wrote the story in a scrapbook, with lots of crossing out and writing over it. It looked a mess, after I inspected it. I thought that couldn’t go on like that. But I loved the writing.
Next weekend my husband showed me how to use our spare computer. Oh, how beautiful that was. No problems with crossing out there. My story developed nicely. Then I found out, through writing clubs, that you could send your story to competitions, so I did that. I didn’t get the first price, not the second either, but I got very good commendations. It inspired me to go on. I wrote a lot of short stories and sent them in. I always got good comments.
So finally I started to write about a bird. I love birds. So I wrote a short story about Matica, the growth-handicapped 10-year-old. Her rejection in life, her hope, her inspiration, her love. Then I thought, I could write about her and make a novel out of it, even a series. So the Talon story began.
My advice is: Find a “Condor” as Matica did. Not literally, but every child or adult, that is battling with something, should find something good beyond their circumstances, that lets them forget what is happening to them.
And, never give up in life, there is always something coming around the corner.
CB: You used to write short stories have you ever published any of them or thought about putting together a collection of shorts?
Answer: Up to now I have not published any of the short stories, but I weave some of them into the Talon series now, often as dreams Matica has. But when I am famous, and a publisher likes my stories, then I will see if they could put all my short stories into a book.
CB: Throughout the years you have lived in various places all over the world. Is there any place you would love to live for a while?
Answer: Wherever we lived, that was my home, because I never felt ‘at home’, as I have seen others have and describe to me. When I was little, my father went wherever there was work. So we moved around in Germany from city to city. And so I went to 9 different schools. In the end I never made friends anymore, because I thought I would lose them soon anyway. I was lonely in the last few schools, but that was okay with me. I choose to be lonely. So, when I write the about Matica, I know what loneliness is. And so, no, I don’t have a place. We live now on the Gold Coast of Australia, and we love it here.
CB: What are your writing habits?
Answer: When the girls were little I had a fixed time for writing. And that was during school hours. I picked them up from school then we did homework together, then cocking until my husband came home from work.
But since they have grown up, my writing habits are different. One day I write all day, another day only an hour or two. I don't really have a rule or a writing habit now, but I write every day.
CB: Would you mind telling us a little about your book TALON today? Answer: Since I went through the things Matica is going through, Matica is actually me. (I am not handicapped but faced lots of rejection as well.) Matica and I, we are looking for acceptance.
I say: Children with special needs or with disability, or are handicapped don't have an illness, so there is no cure and it's not contagious. They want what we all want, to be accepted.
And that is the underlying thrust of my book TALON, COME FLY WITH ME, but not only the first one, in all of them.
And that is the underlying thrust of my book TALON, COME FLY WITH ME, but not only the first one, in all of them.
CB: Your site says this is the beginning of the adventures for Talon and Matica, will there be more books to follow and can you tell us about them?
Answer: Yes, there are more books to come. I plan about 8 books in the Talon series. But only the first is published up to now. The second, TALON, ON THE WING, the third TALON, FLIGHT FOR LIFE are finish and professionally edited. I am working on the forth TALON, HUNTING THE HUNTER.
The first book TALON, COME FLY WITH ME. This book tells that Matica with her missionary, schoolteacher parents come to Peru. Because of her growth handicap the local Indians don’t accept her into their community. Lonely she is looking for something else to play. So she, with great patience and a sense of adventure, befriends a pair of condors she names Tamo and Tima. A strong bond and love develops between them. And then, she with her father rescues their egg from poachers and she incubates it and names the chick Talon. The book describes in detail how Matica helps Talon grow into the majestic condor he was meant to be. The book then ends with a most spectacular twist that sets the stage for the following books.
The second book TALON, ON THE WING is about how she finally is accepted into the community because of how she preserved the endangered condors with her selfless deed.
Then what Matica had dreamed of ever since she first befriended the condors, was finally happening to her. That started in the last chapter of the previous book, Talon, come fly with me.
In this book she has scores of incredible adventures and near disasters; also a love develops between her and her best friend Amos.
Matica is now very happy that she is small and wouldn’t want to have it any other way. She is accepted and loved, and could do what she had always wanted to do. What more could she have? All her rejection, her hardship, her loneliness was over. It is as if a door was opened for her that was shut before and now she begun a new life. It was a new era in her life.
Also the Indians promised Matica that they would always protect the condors from any poachers, if they ever would return.
The third book, TALON, FLIGHT FOR LIFE. Because Matica’s family have decided to go on holiday back to Australia, Matica and her father walk to the next big city of Cajamarca to purchase the tickets and some food supply and medication for Pajaro, the spokesman of the village. They would be away for a week.
This is a test to see how Matica would cope with being away from her condors when they go on her holiday. She misses them terribly, but still has an adventurous and very good time with her father walking through rain forests and other parts of the beautiful country of Peru. She sees macaws, toucan, monkeys and a tame puma in the city of Cajamarca. They even encounter a wild puma on the way. Talon can't stay away and comes every day to visit them wherever they are.
In Cajamarca they heard that the poachers are back and snooping around, asking for the condors. Matica is devastated, and wants to go home quickly, to tell her condors that they have to be aware that the poachers looking for them.
On the way home they visit an old Incan dwelling, shortly after, a poisonous spider bites her father Crayn on his ankle.
He has a bad reaction to the bite; his leg swells to double its size. He becomes very ill and delirious with fever. Matica doesn’t know what to do and calls for her condors who come and save her father’s life by bringing a life-saving leaf.
The forth book, TALON, HUNTING THE HUNTER the poachers are back. Since the condors helped heal Matica’s father, Matica has to show that leaf to the elders of their community, Pajaro’s father, Elcano. Elcano is old, very old and on the brink of dying. But Pajaro insists that Matica sees him and shows him the leaf.
Matica is frightened, but she goes with Pajaro to see Elcano. Elcano is a very wise and educated man. He wants to take the leaf but then decides not to take it. It would have made him whole again. His life is finish, he said, and Pajaro should take over the village.
When Elcano dies Pajaro builds a pyre for his father. But just as they started the ceremony, the poachers return.
A fight develops between the poachers on the one side, and the Indians, Matica and her parents, and the condors on the other.
The poachers want revenge and want to get hold of Talon to kill him so Tamo and Tima could have another egg that they could steal and sell to a private zoo for lots of money.
But in the biggest fight of their lives, they conquer and defeat the poachers, and the police come to bring them to justice.
After the big fight, Talon flies with Matica to a region she has never visited before to show her something special; a mother puma with three newborn cubs.
Talon and Matica celebrate their birthdays – Talon’s first and Matica’s eleventh.
CB: How did you go about getting published? (do you have an agent, publisher, self published)
Answer: I tried for many years, writing query letters myself to several publishers here in Australia. But I always got that rejection letter back. So I approached a self-publisher here in Brisbane, Australia. They published my first book TALON, COME FLY WITH ME. They did a very good job with designing the cover. They also wrote a press release and did the distribution as well. So my book is now available in all the Internet outlets, like amazon.com and barnandnoble.com and so on. I also did many book signings here around the Gold Coast after it came out.
But now I have approached an agent, who I hope will take it over. I wanted to try to get into the conventional publishers, because I can’t do self-publishing again. It has become too expensive for the finished second and third manuscripts.
CB: Do you have any advice you would give other writers?
Answer: Never give up. That is my advice. One day it will happen, that is my belief and I hold tight on it. Because if I would give up, what would I have achieved? Nothing.
CB: Where can we find you?
Answer: Firstly at my website: www.writersportal.org/Gigi
And the publisher of my first book: http://www.bookpal.com.au/StoreAdmin/Categories/PaperbackBlackWhiteSmallSizes/tabid/130/CategoryID/59/List/1/catpageindex/6/Level/a/ProductID/527/Default.aspx
I also have a short animation video about my book, made by Martina Berger
CB: Where can Talon be purchased?
Answer: As above. From my publisher directly or my website or from all the Internet outlets. You can also get it by amazon.com for kindle, ebook, ipad and so on.
CB: Is there anything else you would like to share with us today?
Answer: This year I got very good reviews from professional reviewers. The reviews are all in my website.
My dream is, that a publisher will find me and see what the books are about and so will publish them all. I also got an assessment where the assessor said, that he could see the books as movies. So yes, I would love to see my books as movies.
CB: Thank you again for joining me today, I look forward to hearing more about the TALON series and have added it to my TBR pile.
Thank you Charlotte for giving me the opportunity to express myself in the interview.
I loved the interview. Interviews are my forte'. It especially informative to see what venue writers use to hit the market. You've had a very interesting journey.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great interview! Hopping through a little late but better than never!
ReplyDeleteThank you Bill and Misty. Most appreciated. Love your comments.
ReplyDeleteThanks Bill and Misty I really enjoyed having Gigi here, she is so interesting and I can't wait to read Talon. That is why I decided to leave the interview up a few extra days.
ReplyDelete