Writer’s Note: I sent a few questions to Mr. James Riley, author of the series ‘Story Thieves’, ‘Revenge of Magic’ and the trilogy ‘Half Upon A Time’. His books are spectacular; I encourage you all to read them! A big thank you to Mr. Riley for responding with his answers!

SHRIYA: If you had powers like Bethany, what’s the one book you’d want to jump into?

MR. RILEY: Probably a book describing all the gold in Fort Knox or historic treasures, so I could carry them back out with me!

SHRIYA: How many times have you edited your books before publishing them?

MR. RILEY: Oh, usually 4-5, but at times I’ve gotten up to 10-12 drafts!

SHRIYA: When you were a kid, what did you want to become? Did you ever dream of growing up to be a famous author?

MR. RILEY: I thought I wanted to be an animator, but I’m terrible at drawing/sketching, and never really practiced to get better. Stories were something I just told myself, so I never really dreamt about being an author… it was just something I was doing, and it took me until college to ask myself if someone else might want to read my stories too!

SHRIYA: Out of all of your books, which character is the most like you?

MR. RILEY: So many of them! Owen might be closest, but Jack/Lian/May in Half Upon a Time are all a lot like me too. And Bethany in a lot of ways. 

SHRIYA: On a scale of 1 to 10, how badly do you want to own a dragon?

MR. RILEY: See, I’d say 10, but then I start thinking about where I’d keep one, and run into the same problems Fort has. So if it were really an option, but I had to hide the dragon from the world… maybe just a 3?

SHRIYA: Which power would you rather want: Flying or Destruction magic?

MR. RILEY: Flying, for sure. While there’s more to Destruction magic than just destruction, I’m not big on tearing things down so much. And it’d be great to not have to sit in traffic!