To celebrate 13 weeks of winter, Hàlön Chronicles is conducting one interview a week for 13 weeks. We’re also partnering with other sites and artists to bring a fuller, richer experience to our readers.
Join us on the hashtag #13Winterviews, or check out this season’s articles:
Welcome to the Season | Winterviews Partners | 2019 Blog Hop | Book Pairings | Winterviews & Solstice Eve
This week on Winterviews we travel into the world of the fantastical as we say hello to Molly Lazer.
Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I am a writer of long-form YA fantasy and short-form stuff that’s usually fantasy with elements of horror. In a former life, I was fortunate enough to realize my fangirl dreams as an editor at Marvel Comics, where I worked on books like Captain America, Fantastic Four, Avengers, and Spider-Girl. Now, I am in my tenth year as a high school teacher of reading, creative writing, and drama. I also direct the play for the school at which I teach. I spend the rest of my time doing other theatre projects, quilting, and sometimes managing to eke out a few stories or work on my second novel. Oh, and I also have twin two-year-olds, so a lot of that other stuff I just mentioned often doesn’t actually happen.
What types of books do you write, and why?
I write almost solely fantasy and horror-fantasy, usually with a twist on an older tale like a fairy tale or a myth. I find a lot of inspiration in old tales—and a lot of things I want to change. Sometimes these ideas take me in a wildly different direction. I enjoy reading this type of story as well—I have multiple shelves of retellings, and I almost exclusively find myself reading fantasy and magical realism. I find it easier to relate to characters in a fantastical setting than I do to relate to characters living in the real world. Fantasy allows the reader to explore real-life issues in an unfamiliar world. When I read realism, I find it pretty easy to distance myself from characters who aren’t like me, but in fantasy, there are more touch-points where I can identify with a character emotionally, personality-wise, or relationship-wise.
What were your early influences, and how does this manifest in your work today?
I saw a home video of myself one time, in which I was about two years old and was playing the piano, as well as a two-year-old can, anyway. My mother asked what I was playing, and I told her that it was “A Boy Like That” (from West Side Story). I then proceeded to tell the camera the story of Cinderella. After watching this home movie, my life suddenly made so much sense to me. I’ve always been influenced by musicals, fairy tales, and super hero comics. (My dad introduced me to Marvel Comics when I was five years old, and I never looked back.) Today, these things manifest themselves in almost everything I do, write, and read, from being a theatre director and occasional actress, to writing my own fantasy and fairy tales, to my former career in the comics industry and the fact that I still go to my local comics shop a few times a month to pick up my books.
Are there aspects of the craft that excite you more than others?
I enjoy the planning process of writing, which I do mostly in my head. It may sound odd, but I just think about my stories a lot, run scenes through in my head, and try to reason out plot issues before I put words to the page. (Of course, things happen once the characters take over when I am drafting that negates the things I have planned!) I also really like revising, much more than I do drafting. Getting out the first draft is tough, and it’s sometimes hard to keep motivated when I’m not happy with what I’m writing. But the idea that I can go back and fix it later goes a long way towards making me want to keep going.
What books or websites are your go-to places while editing?
I found Donald Maass’s Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook to be really useful when I was revising Owl Eyes: A Fairy Tale. It helped me see places where I needed to make serious revisions that I think drastically improved the story. I usually end up at the Mignon Fogarty’s Grammar Girl website for editing to get fast answers to my grammar questions. But ultimately, my best sources for revision help are my readers. I have a few friends from my MFA program who are willing to read my work and critique it. My husband, who is also a writer, does the same and offers good input.
Tell us about your writing space (music/snacks/interruptions/etc).
What writing space? (Ha!) I have a room in my house that should ideally be my writing space, but I also use it as my sewing room/place to dump random stuff, so there isn’t a ton of room in there. I also find I get really distracted when I write at home, much more so than if I am writing somewhere in public. Most of my recent work has been done at a coffee shop or at the library. For some reason, I find it easier to plug in my headphones, open my draft, and concentrate there than I do at home. Maybe it’s because all my stuff isn’t there or the wifi might not be as good, which might limit my access to distracting websites (hello, Facebook!). I also did a good amount of editing for my novel by hand while on the treadmill at the gym. My notes might not have been legible, but I’d have 30 minutes or so to focus while I was walking. The last two go-throughs of my novel were done that way.
Tell us about your current WIP or your latest book release.
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My first novel, Owl Eyes: A Fairy Tale, came out in March 2018 from Fire & Ice YA, an independent publisher that is the YA arm of Melange Books. When I was first thinking about writing my own version of the Cinderella story, I decided to deal with a few of the issues that bothered me about the fairy tale in various versions: to answer the question of why Cinderella wants the prince (other than the fact that, you know, he is the prince), to give Cinderella some agency in getting herself to the ball, and to deal with Cinderella’s father, who really seems like a villain to me—if he is alive, which he is in many versions of her story, he either permits her to be a servant in his household or tries to marry her himself, and in the famous Charles Perrault version, he actively works against Cinderella as the prince pursues her. I needed to discover why he was the way he was by writing about him. On a similar note, I found that in most versions of the Cinderella story, the title character only won out in the end because she was “good.” She didn’t really have a personality aside from her virtuousness. I wanted to discover what Cinderella would be like if she wasn’t all goodness and light. So I ended up with Owl Eyes: A Fairy Tale, which takes the story in a different direction. |
As for my works-in-progress, I am working on a revision of “The Little Mermaid.” It is set in the same fantasy world as Owl Eyes: A Fairy Tale, and is very loosely related to the first book. It is not a direct sequel (in fact, it takes place a year before Owl Eyes begins), nor is it exactly a prequel, but there are some characters that cross between the two books. They are meant to be read separately from each other, though. I like the idea of creating a universe of thematically-linked stories rather than a series of books that all contain the same characters and follow after each other plot-wise. So I’m working on that novel, 15,000 words in and trying to work out some plot wrinkles before I go on to write more.
I’m also putting together a collection of short stories that I intend on self-publishing, featuring most of the stories I have previously published in online and print literary journals and anthologies as well as a few new stories. To make that happen, I need to write a few new pieces (one down, two or three to go), decide on an order for the stories, and get a cover. My cousin, who is an artist who works for Disney, is working on a cover for me. I’m really excited to see what she comes up with. I’m hoping to have the collection out in print and e-book form by this summer.
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Connect with Molly Website For Owl Eyes: A Fairy Tale |
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Great interview! I love fairytale retellings…the darker the better!