Alma Alexander
Author of The Secrets of Jin-shei
About the Author
Disambiguation Notice:
Alma Alexander is the pen name of Alma A. Hromic-Deckert. She first wrote and was published under her own name of Alma Hromic, but changed to Alma Alexander in the early years of the 21st century.
Image credit: Alma Alexander at home
Series
Works by Alma Alexander
Hourglass 2 copies
One of Us 1 copy
The Homemaker 1 copy
The Painting 1 copy
Who Is Quizmo Cartada? [short story] — Author — 1 copy
End of the World 1 copy
Associated Works
Murmurs in the Dark: Thirteen Ghostly Tales from Book View Cafe (2021) — Contributor — 18 copies, 13 reviews
Faerie Magazine, #39 Summer 2017: A Midsummer Faerie Court (2017) — Contributor — 2 copies, 1 review
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Deckert, Alma A. Hromic
- Other names
- Hromic, Alma
- Birthdate
- 1963-07-05
- Gender
- female
- Occupations
- fantasy writer
- Organizations
- Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America
Broad Universe - Agent
- Jill Grinberg (Jill Grinberg Literary Management)
- Relationships
- Deckert, R. A. (husband)
- Short biography
- Alma Alexander was born on the banks of an ancient river in Yugoslavia, a country which no longer exists. One of her novels, “The Secrets of Jin-shei,” has been published in more than 20 countries and 14 languages. The heroine of her popular Young Adult Worldweavers series is as American as Harry Potter is British.
She is married to a man who wooed her over the Internet and lured her to America.
She likes books, embroidery, music ranging from "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" to Dvorak's New World Symphony and "La Traviata", animals, coffee, chocolate, snow, velvet -- and, in people, loyalty, kindness and intelligence (and an off-the-wall sense of humor helps).
She is a punaholic, a chronic worrier, sometimes honest to the point of being tactless. She is sentimental and has an incredible memory for detailed trivia like dates and old song lyric.
She was born on the fifth day of July, six years before man walked on the moon, which makes her a cancer according to the Western horoscope and a water rabbit according to the Chinese one.Alma was a teenage novelist -- 30 years ago. Now she is exposing her first efforts online. When she was 14,
wrote a 200,000 word novel in longhand, in pencil, three years after learning English.
Alma is posting that early novel in a blog online, one chapter at a time, and it is being rewritten with the commentary and suggestions of a panel of teen advisers. "We will continue doing this, chapter by chapter, until the novel is done," she says.
The book project blog is at: http://heritageofclan.wordpress.com/ - Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Novi Sad, Serbia, Yugoslavia
- Places of residence
- Bellingham, Washington, USA
Zambia
Swaziland
South Africa - Disambiguation notice
- Alma Alexander is the pen name of Alma A. Hromic-Deckert. She first wrote and was published under her own name of Alma Hromic, but changed to Alma Alexander in the early years of the 21st century.
- Associated Place (for map)
- Novi Sad, Serbia, Yugoslavia
Members
Reviews
Really excellent werewolf urban fantasy, not at all what I was expecting written with really amazing characters and a gripping plot. The trilogy overlaps, starting with Jazz (Jessica) and then picking up many of the same events from her brother Mal, before repeating again with Mal's friend. It does bog down just a little for the third repeat, but quickly picks up the pace again.
Jesse wasn't even born when the family emigrated from the Old world to the New. Were's like them had been facing show more increasing persecution, and everybody said that in the New World, they were integrated and could live like the 'normals'. This was true by law and theory, but in practise life was not as smooth, requiring special ID cards and locked sanctuarys for the Turn, however this was all she knew. Her elder siblings had not adjusted quite so well. Jazz was 5 when her eldest sister died of complications from a drug overdose. Jazz never quite understood what had happened, but the whole family dynamic was obviously shattered, and she was cocooned by her mother.
The story starts with Jazz at 15, at the age her sister reached, and finding the sister's diaries from the earliest thoughts in her native language to the trials and few tribulations of american high school, including the bigotry of some of the teachers as well as the normal students.
The whole first book is set within Jazz's home, she leaves in only 2 scenes, but despite or because of this it is very powerfully written. The only minor niggle I have is that having made friends with a Corvid Princess, the princess gets ignored just when all the drama happens.
Really was very impressed with the whole trilogy it's very powerfully written huge empathy for the teenagers, and a realistic and believable world. Feel free to skip over the biological explanations, although they are sort of possible (ish). show less
Jesse wasn't even born when the family emigrated from the Old world to the New. Were's like them had been facing show more increasing persecution, and everybody said that in the New World, they were integrated and could live like the 'normals'. This was true by law and theory, but in practise life was not as smooth, requiring special ID cards and locked sanctuarys for the Turn, however this was all she knew. Her elder siblings had not adjusted quite so well. Jazz was 5 when her eldest sister died of complications from a drug overdose. Jazz never quite understood what had happened, but the whole family dynamic was obviously shattered, and she was cocooned by her mother.
The story starts with Jazz at 15, at the age her sister reached, and finding the sister's diaries from the earliest thoughts in her native language to the trials and few tribulations of american high school, including the bigotry of some of the teachers as well as the normal students.
The whole first book is set within Jazz's home, she leaves in only 2 scenes, but despite or because of this it is very powerfully written. The only minor niggle I have is that having made friends with a Corvid Princess, the princess gets ignored just when all the drama happens.
Really was very impressed with the whole trilogy it's very powerfully written huge empathy for the teenagers, and a realistic and believable world. Feel free to skip over the biological explanations, although they are sort of possible (ish). show less
Niiice - I like! I'm a regular con-goer, and I have a love-hate relationship with con stories - too many of them focus on personal antagonisms between people running the con, although I enjoy "seeing" another con because they're always a lot of fun. This one had a bit of the personal conflicts, but aside from the first chapter they were most definitely not the focus - not forgotten, but not important either. The con itself rang true - the questions at the panels, the parties, and especially show more the elevator signs. I enjoyed trying to catch all the references - there were a lot, some quotes and some just mentions in passing. I know I missed some, too. The story was utterly improbable, and therefore worked perfectly with the con setting (though I was a little surprised no one suggested a time loop); I liked the sense-of-wonder parts too, though they didn't trigger the real feeling in me (well, that's sort of the point, it was actually seeing what they saw and experiencing it for real that brought the feeling to them; I didn't, I only read about it). And there were very few typos - that's a problem, these days, even in professionally published and edited books; this one had notably few. Great story, and now I have a new author to look up! show less
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
Fascinating. A neat intertwining of multiple mythologies - though I don't understand why selkies need an origin, none of the other fae seem to. I was as lost as Sabrina for the first part of the book - the flashbacks helped a little, and I liked the way they were marked out in italics, but I had no idea what was going on. And the revelation of who/what Mike was - both times - surprised me. Actually the whole thing surprised me, over and over. Lovely writing, great story, fantastic characters show more - it was nice they paired off so neatly, a trifle convenient but nice. Yeah, this is why I look for Alma Alexander. Next! show less
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.
Hmmm. I'm really not sure about this one. It's very well written (unsurprisingly); the descriptions, of places and people, are vivid and evocative and very rich. The motivations...I had a little problem with some of them, particularly Callidora's "sin" - I suppose I can see it, but the mix of self-confidence and lack of self-esteem is weird. But my biggest problem with the whole book was the way she changed the names of things. I was, throughout, trying to work out how much of it was show more historical and how much she'd made up, and the fact that the names were different (Visant for Byzantium, etc) only distracted from the story itself. One change actually really annoyed me - the Wheel for the Cross. It felt like she was trying to say she'd made all this up, when it was clearly based on historical fact (I even (vaguely) remember the heresy about the divine vs human nature of Jesus). The afterword made things clearer - she'd used Justinian and Theodora as a base, but altered events, sometimes considerably, to suit her story. I think that she could have done that without changing the names, and had a stronger book (with an afterword explaining her changes, pretty much the one she did have).
So. Well-written, very rich, some painful bits (for the characters) but few that seemed gratuitous. But the changed names kept me from sinking into the story, and now that I've finished it - they're still distracting me from thinking of the story smoothly. Very good but could easily have been better, is my conclusion. show less
So. Well-written, very rich, some painful bits (for the characters) but few that seemed gratuitous. But the changed names kept me from sinking into the story, and now that I've finished it - they're still distracting me from thinking of the story smoothly. Very good but could easily have been better, is my conclusion. show less
This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers.Lists
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Statistics
- Works
- 42
- Also by
- 13
- Members
- 1,618
- Popularity
- #15,920
- Rating
- 3.7
- Reviews
- 141
- ISBNs
- 112
- Languages
- 10
- Favorited
- 3
