The Rambling Rilla
Thank you for being here!
I’m Rilla Jaggia, a writer, mainly of fiction for younger readers, YA and MG, plodding the rough, sometimes hair-raising, often depressing terrain toward getting my novel-length manuscripts traditionally published. I have published short stories for younger readers, articles, and interviews with leading members of the industry, and won awards, grants, and a scholarship for my pre-published manuscripts.
I also paint, mainly in acrylics nowadays, images of another journey—the psychological landscape I travel shaped by my childhood, growing up mixed race, and mixed up, in several parts of India, land of my father. A childhood of strange combinations—mango lassi and apple pie, parrot greens and plain pastels, heel-pounding Bharatnatyam and tiptoe ballet. I took refuge in books, fairy tales and fantasies and stories set in far flung lands.
After immigrating to the US, land of my mother, for higher education and a misguided foray into a career as a professor of finance, I returned to my first love—books of fantasy, adventure, and inclusion for young readers, this time as their creator. Now, I live in southern California and Arizona with my husband and the ghosts of my beloved cats.
And if that wasn’t enough information—
I was born in the capital city of the largest democracy on the planet with two irrefutable signs of greatness—un-tameable hair and a permanent frown.
Right from the beginning, my brother tortured me...and I learned how to fight back. Watch out for my lethal flyswatter! (Perseverance is key to being a writer and I learned fast.)
By my first birthday, I had a few likes sorted out. Cake was not one of them. I HATED CAKE--period! Pass the bread, please.
I couldn't stand dresses either. (Remember that permanent frown?)
But soap boxes and stages were a whole different matter. I was perfectly happy being in the entertainment business, especially when it included famous people.
In my tween/teen/YA years, I retreated into confused introversion, finding it easier to face the world from behind stage footlights. And so, I acted and sang,
danced….
…and was just about the biggest bookworm ever.
Get a load of my honking, ginormous glasses. That's what comes of reading with a flashlight under a blanket, or more often than not...forgetting the flashlight altogether. How do you explain needing that many batteries to the parents?
I read Enid Blyton and Georgette Heyer in the bathroom, Victoria Holt and Barbara Cartland under the bedcovers, Charles Dickens, Tagore, and Shakespeare in the living room, Rosemary Sutcliff and JRR Tolkien under the lid of my desk at school, Tintin and Amar Chitra Katha between the pages of my text while "doing homework..."
I read to be someone—someone who could fight dragons and win, solve crimes, have adventures, fall in love, fly…but mainly to find a place I could belong.
My brother grabbed all the looks and smarts and height the family genes had on offer. (Did I mention he was funny, too?)
So when my hair stopped standing straight up on my head, I convinced myself I was not destined for greatness, after all.
DEVASTATING, RIGHT?
Yup. Like any teenager, I was drowning in drama, addled by angst.
Now, centuries later, I have discovered there was a purpose for all that reading and all that angst (not the permanent frown, though). Without them, I couldn’t write fiction for young readers on their own quest to find wonder and a place to belong!
I invite you to join me on the this journey.
I’m also at http://www.rillajaggia.com
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