"It sucked," Bray said, her voice briefly losing its lilt as she described her years of recovery. "To lose your face -- talk about a loss of identity -- you look in the mirror, and you're not the same person anymore. You're the same on the inside, but not on the outside. It was very informative," she said, "of the role appearances play in our society."
Although it took 13 reconstructive surgeries in six years to put her back together, Bray cultivated a certain grim sense of humor about her injuries.
"Have an eyeball in your highball?" she cheerily offered a college friend one day, setting off shrieks as she held out a cocktail that stared back.
By the time she began writing for kids, Bray already had years of experience in publishing, theater and advertising. Her first books were for Sweet Sixteen and other teen paperback series. Her first editor was Ann Brashares, who later shot to fame with her own young-adult novel, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
The future looked bright when Bray finally signed her pivotal contract, for A Great and Terrible Beauty. She went to bed intending to launch into the manuscript the very next morning -- the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. Fate, of course, took a different turn.
And though Bray ultimately triumphed, her father wasn't there to enjoy her success.
"My dad died 10 years ago," Bray said. "He was an AIDS death. I was fortunate that I was able to take two or three months off and be with him at the end. We were very close." In recent years, life has evened out for Bray, who's happily married with a 6-year-old son.
She spends most days writing in coffee shops, drawing energy from the white noise of the caffeinated crowd as she taps away on "Trixiebelle," her trusty laptop computer.
A secret-keeper no more, she declares that "the conscious act of writing is about telling the truth." In fact, as she hints at the direction of the final Gemma Doyle installment, due out in fall 2007, she might just as well be talking about herself.
"There's a lot about discovering who you are and how difficult that is," Bray said. "And it never stops."
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