We are really returning to the blog in recent weeks. Hopefully I can keep this up for the final quarter of 2020, got some big gaming articles prepared as well. Latest in my Authors in Isolation segment is my interview with upcoming author Leslie Conzatti.
First of all, tell me about yourself! What do you write?
All right! My name is Leslie Conzatti, and I live in the Pacific Northwest (yes, the part of the U.S. that was on fire for a good long while…). I work as an elementary school paraeducator, and I absolutely love reading and writing and basically anything to do with books! I write mostly in the fantasy genre–but in short story format, and especially on my blog, I’ve done a bit of delving into some sci-fi genres like cyberpunk and steampunk, as well as paranormal and historical fiction. I read very broadly, so that kind of leaches out into my writing!
How do you develop your plots and characters? A lot of times, the character is the first thing that comes to mind when a story idea pops up. Most of the time, I’m just going about my day when something triggers a scene in my mind: either I’m watching a show or a movie and something about a concept there will prompt a “what if” question that grows into a premise, or I see something interesting out and about in my normal life that catches my attention and gets me thinking about “what if…” Sometimes, it’s a dream that I have at night that’s really vivid and completely out of nowhere, and if I can remember it long enough to write it down, it usually becomes a key moment, whether the climax or the “inciting incident” of the story, and the rest of the plot consists of me trying to figure out how the character got there, and what the character does next!
As for developing characters specifically, I tend to relate them to people that I know in some way; with my job in an elementary school, I see a lot of different young kids and adults, so very often the extra characters will tend to be drawn from people I’ve encountered, while the main character tends to have their flaws based on my own tendencies–like they might start out the story very set in their ways, or convinced of some perspective due to lack of clear knowledge about things going on “behind the scenes” so to speak… and so the story comes as the character faces a series of challenges that sort of fly into the face of whatever it is they thought they knew–and the way they respond to these challenges shapes the person they end up becoming at the end.
Tell the world about your current project!
Being a very scatter-brained kind of person, I tend to have multiple projects going at once!
Currently in progress, I am doing my best to finish up a serial story on my blog that’s kind of a Rick-Riordan-style supernatural adventure, titled Priscilla Sum. Based on a random Tumblr prompt, it’s the story of a college-age girl who discovers that her adoptive parents are a pair of minor gods in disguise as mortals, hiding from the followers of a dangerous demon they’d imprisoned millennia before, who wants to hunt them down and steal their divine essence so that he can basically control them. When she attempts to use a special healing amulet to cure a close friend of a terminal disease, she inadvertently releases the demon, and now she must travel to her parents’ altar on a tiny Mediterranean island to retrieve the cache containing their essence–before the demon finds it and kills her.
In the writing world, I’m in the process of releasing a “revised edition” of my first book I wrote 4 years ago, a fantasy re-telling of the fairy tale “The Little Mermaid”, called Princess of Undersea, and once that happens, I’ll start working on the sequel, Fugitive of Crossway! Meanwhile, I’m also trying to pull together the third draft of a full-length fantasy novel called The Last Inkweaver, about a girl trying to fit into a very straight-laced, scientific-method sort of society, and she’s feeling out of place because she’s been having these vivid flights of fancy that are absolutely shunned by the general public. She’s worried there might be something wrong with her, so she keeps it a secret–but as it turns out, this very phenomenon might have connections to an ancient guild of storytellers and crafters!
It’s a lot, I know… but I have so much fun, I don’t even mind!
Who would you say is the main character of your latest novel? And tell me a little bit about them!
My latest novel is the Little Mermaid re-telling I mentioned before, Princess of Undersea. The main character is of course, the mermaid princess herself, Ylaine (pronounced like “Elaine”–I just like the unique spelling!) of Undersea!
She has purple hair, blue, scaly skin, and her tail is covered in black, iridescent scales. I had the idea to make my merfolk less of the “half-fish-half-person” conventional trope, and more of a “hybrid between fish and person: too fish-like to pass as a human, too human-like to be dismissed as a mere fish.” If you’ve ever seen the Freeform show Siren (it just ended a few months ago–and I am sad!!), the mermaids in my imagination looked pretty much exactly like the ones I saw on the show! And I conceived of that idea a whole four years before the show even existed!
When she was very small, just after she was born, the merfolk held a ceremony wherein they would rise to the surface of the water to interact with a tribe of Air Fairies, who could bestow supernatural gifts upon humans and merfolk they deemed worthy. From one Fairy, infant Ylaine received the gift of Song. She could enchant others with the sound of her voice–not every time she spoke, but especially when her emotions were heightened, it brought out her Gift. It was intended to be a benefit to the kingdom, but ever since her mother mysteriously disappeared shortly after the ceremony, Ylaine’s father, King Davor, has basically forbidden her from singing in his presence, unless it is by his direction, to force others to do whatever he says.
He resents the humans, blaming them for the disappearance of his wife, calling them “pact-breakers” and trying to convince other merfolk that they are inferior and dangerous, and must be subdued. Ylaine would rather find out exactly what the humans are really like, before committing to the war–even as her father is using her Gift to ensure that he has the support of the other Mer-kingdoms. Secretly, she fantasizes about becoming human for one day, and her father as well, and the two of them could explore the human kingdom for themselves, to see what the surface-dwellers are actually like. Such a thing would be impossible, though–after all, there has been no magic since the Fairies disappeared after the breaking of the pact between land, sea, and air…
Have you been to any conventions? If so, tell me a little about them!
Pretty much the only convention I’ve ever been to is my local Comic Con, the Rose City Comic Con. I’ve gotten to go like three or four different times.
The first time, I was actually invited by a friend who had an extra ticket. I had so much fun sitting in panels and just walking around with her–there are so many people and so many cosplays it was absolutely overwhelming! The next year, I invited some friends of my own, and we all had a grand time–I think a larger group of friends is more fun, since it helps it feel less crowded by strangers. That year, also, I met up with an indie author from Seattle I’d followed for a long time, and he introduced me to another local author, who sold me her entire series, all signed, and I absolutely loved them!
The next year, I wanted to get in on the celebrity-guest scene a little more, so I actually paid for a photo-op, with John Barrowman and his sister Carole! They co-authored a series I really enjoyed, the Hollow Earth Trilogy, and actually, I was more excited about meeting her than him–they were so nice and gracious, even though the celebrity-meet-and-greets were poorly managed and ended up going way too late, so by the time my turn came, John was already late for his panel upstairs, and I had about 0.8 seconds to say “HelloIReallyLikeYourBooksAndIAmSoExcited-
ToMeetYouBoth!!” and smile for the camera–but it was so worth it! A lot of the guests at Rose City are usually from the comic book scene, creators and illustrators, or little-known voice actors that people outside the fandom (like me) wouldn’t recognize–but sometimes, they get some really awesome guests, so it’s worth going for those times!
When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?
I think it first hit me when I was a fairly new reader, about the age of eight. I came across a book I thought I’d read before, but when I started reading the words, there were parts that I was remembering quite differently, and when I looked at the illustrations there was a different story running through my head… I realized after a moment that I was very likely remembering the story that I had told myself before I had even learned to read the words on the page, at age five or six–I had made my own story, out of my head.
About the same time, I was doing an English assignment, and one of the prompts was to describe the landing of the Pilgrims in 1621… from the perspective of someone on the shore. That simple exercise spawned a whole Swiss Family Robinson-style “historical fanfiction” that revolved around a family who had attempted to cross the Atlantic to get to the newly-settled land in a previous voyage that failed–but the family survived the wreck and kind of built their own home in the wilderness, and so when the Pilgrims arrive there’s already someone living in Plymouth… And it wasn’t altogether the best kind of story (I was still new to the whole concept of writing stories, so it was kind of a mishmash of whatever my imagination came up with at the time!) but I had so much fun, I kept coming up with more and more stories, and I never stopped!
If you had the opportunity to live anywhere in the world for a year while writing a book that took place in that same setting, where would you choose?
Oooh, this one’s a bit tricky, because I write so much in fantasy worlds and made-up places, but I think I know just the series!
It’s an idea I came up with back when I was in college, that I put on my “Shelf of Future Projects” for just such an opportunity.
I have always been fascinated by the “island country” known as Great Britain–England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. I came up with a series of four books, each focused on a different one of those countries, each occurring during a different time period (starting in Victorian Era with historical fiction, and stretching on toward a future dystopian cyberpunk!), and each referring to a staple icon for that country (i.e., for England that would be swans, the story for Ireland refers to snakes, and so on). I haven’t figured out what that connection might be, and there are only a couple that I’ve actually thought through, even just a little bit–but if given the chance to travel out to Great Britain, I would definitely seize the opportunity to focus more intently on those books and get them written, for sure!
What advice would you give new writers?
To new writers looking for advice: Write fearlessly, and read often! Don’t worry about if an idea that runs through your head has been “done before.” Don’t worry about whether people will eventually think it’s “any good.” Maybe it’s been done before, but get the first draft done, and then figure out how you would change it! Maybe people won’t think it’s any good–but that’s just your first draft. I always remind myself that “the first draft is me telling myself the story.” Then, once you reach the end of that draft and you know what the story is supposed to be about, you go back and you start at the beginning again, this time only keeping those parts that belong to the story you’re trying to tell. The more ideas you can spit out in the beginning stages–whether they work or not–the more opportunity you give yourself in knowing what works and what doesn’t.
Also: Reading Is Fundamental. It scares me when professed writers say they don’t or “can’t” read in the genre they’re trying to write in. If storytelling is as vital as breathing, then reading is “breathing in”, while writing is “breathing out.” If you’re constantly breathing out without breathing in, you’ll asphyxiate. In the same way, I notice if I’m just writing all the time without reading or even listening to music, watching shows and movies for story inspiration, I get burned out very quickly and my ability to communicate lessens. In the same way, if I’m watching TV or movies a lot and reading and consuming media without writing for long periods, I start feeling “congested” or “hyperventilated”–I am “breathing in” without “breathing out.” Keep those two in balance, and you’ll find a never-ending stream of inspiration right at your fingertips.
If you’re concerned about another writer’s voice “tainting your own voice”, as I’ve heard would-be-writers complain about, the answer to that is simply to “read broadly.” The only way another writer’s “voice” could possibly seep into your psyche so deeply as to overwhelm whatever natural voice you might have is if you exclusively read the one style, the one author’s work. As long as you keep it varied and plentiful, you’ll find that while you might be able to detect small patches of one writer or another in your own writing, this “patchwork” of multiple authors comes together and blends, and your own unique voice is borne out of the contributions of many.
What real-life inspirations did you draw from for the worldbuilding?
The world-building of Princess of Undersea? It being fantasy, not a whole lot of real-world went into it–except perhaps memories of sailing in the San Juan Islands inside the peninsula of Washington State. The varied landscapes there, and the relative seclusion all helped in creating a basis for the island of Overcliff, in particular.
What inspires you to write?
The thing that inspires me most is just the inherently universal nature of storytelling. I look around at bits and pieces of the world around me, and my mind immediately finds parts of stories, little musings of “what if” that set me on a journey to come up with a character who asks that question.
The inspiration for Princess of Undersea came from growing up and loving the story of The Little Mermaid and being enamored by the concept–except for a few things which I wished were different. In the course of changing those small details, though, I realized that the whole story was different: in giving Ylaine a voice instead of rendering her mute as a human, I gave her a level of agency that allows her to be an influence in the lives of the people she encounters. She can have discussions and express her own thoughts, without someone having to guess what she thought or dismiss her in ignorance.
Another work-in-progress came about from a sudden idea I had of a girl who grew up not believing in stories, a society where fiction is shunned in favor of “real world” things–and yet this girl happens to experience dreams and visions of metaphorical and hypothetical things, so she must learn where they came from.
Even something as simple as a random name, place, time, and object can spark a story!
I write because if I just let these stories spin around in my head, I wouldn’t be able to think about anything else!
What is the hardest part of writing for you?
The hardest part of writing is anytime research becomes absolutely necessary. I write fantasy because I can make up the details of how the world works. I don’t have to deal with the minutiae of real-world history, physics, or technology. I love and admire those books full of nitty-gritty details that have been meticulously studied by the author to produce epic and wonderfully-detailed stories. I just haven’t gotten to the point where that’s a priority to me. I’d rather just shelve an idea that I can’t “wing” my way through, and save it for whenever in the future that I can really knuckle down and focus on procuring the necessary information.
That being said, I have no trouble with little trivia things–the pieces that can be answered with quick Google searches. For one novel I wrote a couple years back, I had to look up Japanese WW2 Military uniforms, translate a few phrases into Japanese, and find out what animals were native to the Amazon Rainforest. That’s trivia to me, and as long as specific details aren’t a huge issue, then I can get by.
The other thing that gets hard is when the draft seems to stretch on further than I could have anticipated. There’s a story I’m working on now that I originally thought I could finish in about a month, and I thought it was going to be a serial about 17 installments long. I’m now due to work on Installment 29 out of “over 30” (because I still don’t know how long it will actually take me to resolve the climactic conflict!). That kind of situation gets disheartening, but I keep soldiering on because storytelling is my jam!
What is your routine when writing, if any? If you don’t follow a routine, why not?
Okay, I’ll be honest here. As much as I would love to have a routine, as much as I think I would be able to accomplish and feel good about myself for being so productive and efficient with whatever little time I can carve out for it…
I’m not. I can make all the plans, I can find the chunk of time to commit to, but all it takes is one snarl that messes up the “attempted routine,” and it all flies out the window. I am so gloriously inconsistent, I might as well embrace it. My Muse likes to show up when I’m supposed to be focusing on another task, or (even worse) when I’m trying to fall asleep… As much as I would love to have a routine that accommodates my full-time work schedule, I just can’t really guarantee how I’m going to feel in a given day.
The one thing I’ve been able to maintain since the start of The COVID Shutdown is the habit of at least writing something every day. It might be one hundred words at a time, or it might be a whole 2K in a single sitting. But it’s something, and I’m on a 135-day streak that I don’t intend to break anytime soon!
What was your favorite chapter (or part) to write in any of your books, and why?
Oh gosh. Just about every story I write has a part that I’m really excited about. I can’t single out just one. But I will say that probably the best part to write is the part when everything begins to make sense. The part of the story that hits the reader and makes them go “OH CRAP THAT’S WHY ALL THIS WAS GOING ON!” The part when the strange title starts to make sense. The part that I’ve been slowly and carefully foreshadowing this whole time–and when the payoff hits, I hope my readers find themselves frantically flipping back to the first or last reference they can remember, comparing it to the “payoff scene” with a sense of fulfillment, that everything is coming together and it all makes sense. Those are my favorite parts to write, because of the sense of euphoria and balance they bring.
Did you learn anything from writing your latest book? If so, what was it?
From revising Princess of Undersea, I learned how much fun it is to foreshadow when you know what’s going to happen later on!
I learned how to create a fairy-tale-like story without relying on the “and they lived happily ever” and the “love at first sight” tropes. I learned just how much I’ve grown as a writer in the last four years, thanks to everything I’ve read and written in that time. I learned that even things I hadn’t fully realized four years ago were actually good ideas that served to expand the world and gave me inspiration to connect it with the other books to come in the series.
I learned that I can write good ideas–and write them well enough to be enjoyed by other people, too. All I need to do is keep writing, and keep reading.
Are you a plotter or a pantser? A gardener or an architect?
I am a… plantser. More of a gardener, I’d say, than an architect. Yet I’m a “structured gardener.” I definitely have an outline, I definitely write out my entire plot from start to finish as notes before I actually go and put “meat on the skeleton”, as the saying goes… But I’m not a “hardcore, stick to the plan” kind of person, by any means!
I only tried “pantsing” a story once. And I lasted about three days carried by my own whimsy. For three days, I just wrote where the story “took me”, with no real sense of direction, just whatever was running through my head when I sat down and read over what I’d written the day before. I tried “sensing” my story through my characters’ perspectives.
My Muse didn’t take kindly to it, and “retaliated” by giving me the entire remaining plot all at once on the morning of Day 3 of this experiment, and I immediately got so excited about it that I just had to write it down so I wouldn’t forget it.
That’s the main reason I can’t really be a “pantser”: I’m just so forgetful that if I don’t write something down, chances are good that I won’t remember it when I go to write it. Even before the age of mobile devices one could use for typing out notes and keeping one’s writing in digital format (I was sixteen when I received my first iPod Touch, and my life was never the same!) I would buy and/or collect notebooks small enough to fit in a purse, bag, or pocket, and use those for writing when I was away from the computer, because one never knew when that errant Muse would deign to strike!
That being said, I do have a penchant for playing “fast and loose” with the plots that I write down. More often than not, I’ll get an idea that works out in my head, and I’ll write it down… but when I get around to crafting the actual scene in the story, some of the details might find their way into a conversation between characters that I didn’t really plan ahead, or they’ll take too long discoursing with one another and I’ll need to shift things around because who am I to stand in the way of character development?
So I’m kind of a “garden architect.” To use a video game metaphor, I treat my outline like “checkpoints” in an “open concept world.” They’re there to keep the game moving, to ensure that the campaign can still be accomplished, but the player doesn’t have to specifically go straight from Point A to Point B without stopping to look around on the way! And as long as my story hits the “checkpoints” of things that need to happen in the narrative, I am not too hung up on the “exploratory” things that happen in between times.
If you had to give up either snacks and drinks during writing sessions, or music, which would you find more difficult to say goodbye to?
At this very moment, I happen to be drinking water and munching on a snack (I’ve been writing for a couple hours now), so I’d have to say music is not too much of a necessity for me. In fact, while I have on occasion found certain inspiration in music, I am also quite susceptible to it, so the music becomes more of a distraction than an enhancement. Food and drink, on the other hand, are necessary components that fuel the energy of my brain to keep me focused and keep me writing.
Which is your favorite season to write in, and why?
I like writing best when it is grey and gloomy outside. More still when it’s raining. I suppose that would be fall or winter that I like best, then. My reasoning is that when it’s clear weather, I want to be outside, and it’s too bright to be writing or reading outside. It also gets very hot indoors when it’s hot outside, and I need it to be a cool, moderate temperature or I get very uncomfortable.
It’s sometimes difficult to get into understanding the characters we write. How do you go about it?
It takes me a few tries. Sometimes, I feel my main character very clearly because they’re a lot like me (or sometimes even “the Me I wish I was”!) in many respects, so the character does tend to respond and react to different situations in the same way I would. Sometimes they’re not like me, though, and that makes it really interesting to build up and keep track of their unique personality. If I’m having a hard time figuring the character out while I’m writing the plot, I’ll sometimes sit down with a blank notebook page and write out their personality quirks, archetypes, and the way they might perceive different things. Doing this gives me something to refer back to so that my character stays consistent, even as they’re changing over the course of their own arc.
Sometimes it takes a few drafts, running through scenarios multiple times, letting the characters react in slightly different ways and giving it a different outcome, to figure out which fits best for both the character and the plot.
What are your future project(s)?
Ha! Nice use of the plural, there! Yes, as has already been stated, I’m currently working on multiple projects, and I definitely have more on the way!
Starting in November, I’ll be starting on the sequel to Princess of Undersea. It’s called Fugitive of Crossway, and it takes a bit of inspiration from the tale of Pinocchio. I chose this for two reasons: First of all, that all the books in “The Undersea Saga” are going to be fairy tale re-tellings. Secondly, the main character is male, and there aren’t a whole lot of popular fairy tales where the main character is male! They’re usually princesses or damsels. Not this one! It’s kind of fun because the timeline overlaps a little bit with events of the first book, so I can throw in a bit of references to things that maybe happen immediately after the first book ends. As for how it relates to the story of Pinocchio–it’s not that he’s a puppet and he wants to become a real boy. I’m going “old school”, taking inspiration from the whole journey Pinocchio takes, making one bad decision after another that takes him further and further away from home, and not really getting to return until he starts making better decisions. It’s not so much a straightforward re-telling as it is an “inspired by” sort of thing.
There are two more books in the series after that, too, so I have those to look forward to!
The other work-in-progress I mentioned before, The Last Inkweaver, is another 4-book series I aim to publish someday.
I have a whole lot of other future projects that I hope to someday write–and also projects I started in the past that I intend to come back and rewrite at some point in the future, too. If you want to read about them you can go to “The Shelf” on my blog, The Upstream Writer, and I have a lot of them listed there!
What is your favorite book ever written?
Well, that just depends on the genre, doesn’t it? I read so broadly that I can’t readily answer that question at the drop of any hat–there are some books that I specifically like from an author, while I wouldn’t necessarily recommend anything else they wrote; others, I don’t have a specific book in mind, just everything ever written by this person, because I already know it’s going to be awesome. Thankfully, the next question is dealing with the latter category, so for this one I’m just going to be naming specific series and books.
My favorite series of fairy-tale re-tellings hands-down is The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer. The way she takes all the fantastic classics and turns them into a cyberpunk adventure is beyond awesome! In classic fantasy the clear winner is The Princess Bride by William Goldman. Say what you will about how campy it is, and how annoying the “editorial commentary” might be… but it’s an endearing story that definitely ages quite well, and I love going back and revisiting the nostalgia again and again!
The single best series I’ve ever read that seamlessly combines sci-fi tech with high-fantasy sword-and-sorcery magic is The Chronicles of Lorrek by Kelly Blanchard. I cannot say enough about it–and there’s just so much in nine books! I can hardly wait for the spin-off series to be released!
As for sci-fi, one series in particular kept me hanging onto every word until I reached the last book: The Lorien Legacies by Pittacus Lore. An obvious pseudonym–but the story was no joke! A bunch of humanoid alien children sent to live in hiding on Earth–but their superhuman abilities soon give them away among the humans, and their enemies arrive and chaos ensues as these teens must fight for their survival, and the survival of their culture and species. Also, the Reckoner novels by Brandon Sanderson is a marvelously unique take on the superhero genre that I absolutely enjoyed!
Who are your favorite authors?
Here we go!
In the realm of fantasy and all it’s subgenres, I’d go with authors like Naomi Novik, Cornelia Funke, Nils Visser, Kimberly Rogers, Amy Hopkins, J. E. Mueller, Kelly Blanchard, Jeffrey Cook, Mark Lawrence, Pauline Creeden, R. R. Virdi, E. A. Copen, and J. D. Cunegan–anytime I’d see these names on a book cover, I know I’m in for a good time! The same goes for David Baldacci (crime thrillers), Michael Crichton (classic science fiction), Anthony Horowitz (crime novels), Patricia Loofbourrow (steampunk thriller), and S. E. Anderson (contemporary sci-fi)–there’s just so much great stuff to read out there! And so little time to read it in!
What makes a good villain?
Oooh, interesting question! Whenever I think about villains, I always think of the quote from somebody who said “Every villain is the hero of their own story.” When we think of the “heroes vs. villains” dichotomy, we have the archetypes stuck in our head that a hero is one who fights against all odds to accomplish his goal and we are more than willing to root him on for that–but when we’re presented with a villain who exhibits the same tenacity, we’re not so eager to throw in our support.
Good villains to me are ones that you “love to hate.” They are intelligent, poised, cunning, and extremely efficient–but without any kind of noble quality that makes them a worthwhile person to support. The best villains are the ones with contingencies for any and every situation, the ones that can think twelve steps ahead of anyone, and they’re not blatantly malicious about it. They just simply don’t care about how their choices are affecting other people, so long as they can get the outcome they want, and force people into the situations that give them the most control and prestige. You have to admire their skill and finesse–even if they make your skin crawl every time their name is even mentioned.
What do you like to do in your spare time?
My spare time? When I’m not working, I’m writing or reading. When I don’t have the energy for either of those, I “recharge” by watching various TV shows or movies, playing mobile games, or coloring in an art therapy book. I can’t sketch worth beans, but I can color in the lines! My favorite ones are the ones with geometric patterns or lots of flowers. Those are fun to color!
If you couldn’t be an author, what ideal job would you like to do?
I do kind of really like my normal day job, as an elementary school paraeducator. For those who haven’t heard of that sort of job, we’re the ones who are supervising the kiddos of all grade levels for the parts of the day when they’re not in the classroom, like recess and at lunch, and we are also the ones who lead small groups of students who maybe have trouble keeping up with the rest of the class in reading or math, giving them that extra boost in a small-group setting that’s more focused than in a classroom.
I suppose if I couldn’t be an author, I would devote that time and energy to more teaching, like a private school English teacher, or a college professor. I really love teaching and I really love books and writing! In my current life, I just don’t know how I could balance both writing as much as I have been and teaching more than I already do–so being a paraeducator and an author is kind of as balanced as I can be!
Coffee or Tea? Or (exult deep breath) what other drink do you prefer, if you like neither?
Coffee. But only before noon. If I drink coffee anytime after 12 o’clock (even if I start drinking it at like 10 and then set it somewhere and forget about it until 12:30!) I won’t be able to fall asleep till after midnight.
You can travel to anywhere in the universe. Where would you go, and why?
A whole lot like my answer to the “writing on location” question–Great Britain! Everything just looks so gorgeous, I love the Gaelic language, the food, the culture, the history, the art, the scenery–I think I could go there and just stay till I got tired of it… Which, let’s be honest, might never happen!
Do you have any writing blogs you recommend?
As a matter of fact, yes! Thanks to a few years of doing regular blog hops with a fun group of people, there are several book blogs and writer blogs that I’ve encountered that were a whole lot of fun! Check out Jo Linsdell’s Blog, Tangled In Text, Entertainingly Nerdy, The Writer Side Of Life, and A Book Lover’s Adventures, to name just a few!
Do you have any writer friends you’d like to give a shoutout to?
So many!! One of the best things that ever came out of writing a blog (besides getting some of the short stories that originated there published!) is the network of indie authors I now keep up with! I’ll start with my local “writing buddy”, Lisa Rae Morris–I am so glad she took my advice and wrote up that “weird time travel story idea”, and that it’s now become a series! Shout-out to Lee French, Jeffrey Cook, and Ripley Patton–thanks for welcoming me into “the fold” as a shy, nervous little fangirl-newbie and really showing me how classy authors do it!
R. R. Virdi–one of the first authors to send me a review copy to feature on the blog, and definitely the best book I read that year! Larry Correia thinks his stuff is badass, and Jim Butcher says his books are “worth [the] time [to read it]”… So if you haven’t read his Grave Reports series, what are you even doing with your life??
Shout-out to Kelly Blanchard–she’s a rock-solid sci-fantasy author in her own right, creating an entire universe of meticulously-organized kingdoms spanning millennia–but she’s also an ardent supporter of the literary community at large, bringing creative minds together and giving encouragement without hesitation–she’s a great friend to have!
Pick any three fiction characters. These are now your roadtrip crew. Where do you go and what do you do?
Oooh, this is hard! There are so many characters I’ve encountered over the hundreds of books I’ve read, that would be so much fun to road trip with! But I have to pick just three?
Okay, here goes!
I’d start with Megan O’Reilly from Jeffrey Cook’s Fair Folk Chronicles, because with her connections to the Fae Court she could ensure that we had good weather for our trip, and clear roads and stuff! Plus she’d be the DJ–she knows all the good music!
I’d bring Cinder from the Lunar Chronicles series by Marissa Meyer. She’d be our mechanic, our GPS, and she’d keep things running–frankly, it would probably be her car that we’re riding in, anyhow!
For my third pick, I’m going to “cheat” and choose a couple: Baran and Raina from Kimberly Rogers’ Therian Way series!! I became obsessed with them when reading the first book in that series, and they’d definitely be a great influence on the rest of us girls. Raina would have way too much fun getting along with Megan and comparing Fae connections (“Do you know Titania?” “Girl, she’s family! How about those Brownies, tho?”) and Baran might be a little weirded out by Cinder, but he’d be just fine watching over us–and the fact that the two of them are therianthropes (animal shifters) of such power (Baran is a tiger shifter, and Raina is a Jaguar) just adds to the fact that they can basically be our Group Parents!
What superpower would you most like?
There’s a few that have crossed my mind and had me thinking, “You know, that would be a nice one to have!”
The ability to freeze time, for one. Just so I can take time to get things done that I “need” and still have plenty of time to do things I “want” without having to exclude things in either category! I could freeze time if I just wanted to get through that whole stack of books, or when I felt in the mood to just get all of my chores done at once, so I didn’t have to worry about them for the week. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Also the power of teleportation would be sweet, because then I wouldn’t have to worry about how long it took to travel anywhere, or packing for long absences–I can just put on the appropriate outfit for my destination and “blink” myself there!
What are two of your favorite covers of all time? (Not your own.)
Just two?? Ok… I’m going to pick at random two books I’ve really enjoyed, which I’ve liked the covers.
The first is Dangerous Ways by R. R. Virdi. It looks pretty simple at first: shiny pennies in the snow–but then you come to realize the heady significance these images contain–and the story is beyond amazing! I’m always a sucker for the “minimalist” covers, so if a designer can convey the entire crux of their story in just one or two images, that always catches my eye, more than half-naked people thrusting against each other…
Second, I’m going to have to go with every cover in the Hollow Earth series by John and Carole Barrowman. I will always remember seeing those for the first time at the library–the first book carries this fascinating image of a ghostly stag bursting through a window–and couple that with the fact that my second thought was “HEY I know the name John Barrowman–but who the heck is Carole??” and you’ve got yourself a cover that makes a really great first impression! The story is definitely worth reading, too. (For those who, like me, know of John Barrowman and have also never heard of Carole–it’s his older sister! They write books together which I think is absolutely perfect!)
I’m going to finish off by saying that it’s completely not fair that you made me pick just two–already there are about six more that I’d love to rave about! But I can’t, so let’s just move on.
It’s a very difficult time right now for the world. When quarantine and pandemic comes to an end, what is the first thing you would like to do?
I hate to be “THAT PERSON”, but honestly, I’d like to just go to a bookshop and browse/read/write without having to wear a mask!! Like, I get being considerate about others and I’m not one of those who would go out and just refuse to wear a mask in public if it’s required–I just am less likely to go out as long as that’s the case!
I’d also want to meet up with friends on a more regular basis. There’s one that I’ve been texting this whole time–we’d “met” through a forum online, and stayed in touch off and on for a couple years… Then out of the blue, just after the pandemic shutdown, she contacts me to let me know she just freaking moved to my city! But of course we haven’t been able to meet up since then… But yeah! That’s what I would do. Visit friends, go shopping, hang out at a bookstore–boring stuff, but that’s what I miss the most!
Finally, what is your preferred method to have readers get in touch with or follow you (i.e., website, personal blog, Facebook page, here on Goodreads, etc.) and link(s)?
Oh man! I love interacting over any of my principal social media sources–anything about writing, and I’m good! Follow, Like, leave a comment or write a post, ask me questions about anything that sparks your curiosity on my Facebook Author Page, Leslie Conzatti–The Upstream Writer https://www.facebook.com/LeslieConzattiWriter/ ]
Comment on a particular blog post that you found the least little bit intriguing, or tell me what you’ve been up to on my blog, “The Upstream Writer” https://upstreamwriter.blogspot.com/
Those are the two places where I’m the most active, by far! To see a listing of my published works, you can find my Amazon author page on the other side of this link: https://www.amazon.com/Leslie-Conzatti/e/B08C1G68S3 or if you’re on Goodreads, then I’m here: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16183739.Leslie_Conzatti Fair warning, I don’t really interact on that side, much, but follow me there if you like!
Thanks so much for hosting this interview! It was a lot of fun, and I really liked the unique questions!
The Thousand Scar's Muse 