Terri Selting David: From Animator to Empowering YA Author

Terri Selting David's journey from animator to young adult author has been fueled by a passion for storytelling and a desire to empower young readers. Her writing is a testament to resilience and creativity as she explores the emotional challenges of transitioning from childhood to adulthood, seeking to empower readers, especially girls and young women, to embrace their strengths and triumph over adversity as the while infusing her stories with humor, adventure, and hope.

Could you share a little about yourself and your current writing project?

My life started with a bang. Born with a rare congenital heart defect, Scimitar Syndrome, I had open heart surgery, spent years in and out of the hospital with pneumonia, and had my right lung removed before I was 7 years old. Medical issues have been an integral part of my entire life. This twist of fate led me to a childhood filled with books, art, and dreams, sparking a lifelong love for storytelling and creativity.

I hoped to be a travel writer and photographer while teaching English around the world. Alas, that career didn’t work out, so I blended my tech savvy with my love of art and pursued a career as a digital animator, back when the industry was just blossoming. For nearly two decades, I created video games, films, and TV shows, mostly as a character animator, rigger, writer, art director, and IP creator.

In 2015, I co-founded and created hundreds of curricula and projects for the Renegade Girls Tinkering Club, a STEM camp for girls and under-represented youths, inspiring thousands of future tech whizzes.

During lockdown in 2020, I took my camp into the world of fiction, writing and illustrating a series of middle grade books, The Renegade Girls Tinkering Club, to provide girls on the cusp of middle school with relatable role models and engaging stories, interwoven with illustrated hands-on projects readers can build along with the characters.

Since then, I’ve written the first three books in a YA series, Sarah & Simon, Spies, produced my first audiobook, and am working on a new spooky paranormal mystery series, and, with my teenager, a graphic novel fairy tale retelling.

I live in San Francisco with 2 rowdy kids, 2 fickle cats, and a fabulous, brilliant husband who brings me tea every night.

What inspired you to start writing young adult fiction?

I first started writing Middle Grade fiction, with my Renegade Girls series, as an extension of my summer camp. Through those books, I discovered a passion for delving into the emotional and personal challenges of kids transitioning from childhood to adulthood. I want to empower kids with stories of struggles and triumph and adventure. Humor mixed with serious issues. YA seemed the perfect niche to accomplish that goal. A lot of YA content is, frankly, not very YA friendly, so I strive to make my books accessible without being dumbed-down.

How do you approach crafting characters that resonate with your readers?

Characters are my favorite part of writing! I love to take cliche characters and dig deeper, turning the cliches on their heads or at least giving reason and depth to the flat villain, prince, or damsel. Everyone is the hero of a story in their own mind, so I love getting deep into each character’s motivations and how their individual strengths and flaws will affect how they deal with the world around them. The world is pretty dark right now, and a lot of media reflects that. But I believe in hope, and that people can be both complex and kind, be relatable but unique. In my small way, I want to offer a little brightness with characters who may struggle but eventually triumph over adversity by doing the right thing.

Do you have a favorite young adult book?

Several! Depends on the day. I do love standards like The Hunger Games and Harry Potter, and sci-fi like Ready Player One (that counts as YA, right?). Loved the Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman. When I was a teen I adored fantasy books, especially the Harper Hall of Pern books by Anne McCaffrey. But I end up having a new favorite all the time.

Can you describe your typical writing day?

It’s easiest for me to be creative in the mornings, when I’m fresh from the dream state and before the day’s mundane minutiae pile on. One or two days a week, after I drop the kids off at school, I try to get out of my house and meet up with writing friends side-by-side for an hour or two. Writing next to another writer is a great way to stay focused. My writing BFF and I will usually go out to lunch afterwards and fill our creative cups by just chatting about the world, not necessarily about writing. On the other days, I still try to get words in in the mornings, and sometimes right before bed after I’ve finished my daily tasks. I like to write a little something every day, even if it’s just reviewing my notes, to keep the plot threads active in my brain.

What do you hope young readers will take away from your books?

I hope they’ll be entertained and emotional, and leave the book feeling positive. My greatest wish is to empower readers, especially girls and young women, to feel comfortable making mistakes, being strong, standing up for themselves, and feeling validated to be whoever they are. To have some hope that even in a messy world, there are good people trying to do the right thing. There are still those who fight the darkness in the world.

Can you share any tips or advice for aspiring YA authors?

Writing is about communicating. Figure out what you’re trying to say before you get too into your story. It doesn’t need to be some big moral. Maybe you’re trying to communicate a mood, or a setting, or character. Or you want to say something you can’t say in a brief conversation. Learn about structure, not to give you a template to fill out but to use as a tool to help you build your story. And write because you love it. If your book connects with you, it will connect with someone else who needs to hear your words.

How do you incorporate humor and adventure into your stories?

I like to think my stories are built on humor and adventure. My characters provide the humor with sarcasm, and clashes of personality. I love smart humor, like wordplay, too. Adventure though, that’s what keeps a reader reading. We read books to see how others see the world, so in my mind, any trek into someone else’s experience is an adventure. Action can be hard to write, and hard to maintain, but to show wonder and a new experience through a character's eyes, in my opinion, is to take the reader on an adventure every time.

What upcoming project can readers look forward to from you?

I’m working on two projects right now, and have a lot planned for the future. The Zodiac Files is a new YA paranormal mystery series about the skeptical teenage daughter of a psychic who teams up with the paranormal-obsessed son of the mayor to investigate strange happenings around a small resort town. It’s sort of like a blend of The X-Files, Buffy, and Supernatural. I’m on the second draft of the first book in the series, The Mist in the Garden, right now.

My other project is a graphic novel fairy-tale retelling of Sleeping Beauty that I’m creating with my teen. It’s called The Shallow Edge of Time, and is still in progress. The art on a graphic novel takes a long time!

Other than that, I hope to continue my Sarah and Simon series, and eventually close out my Renegade series with the final fourth novel.

To learn more about Terri Selting David and her writing, visit her website at: http://www.TerriSeltingDavid.com