Today, instead of a blog about knitting, I'm happy to post an interview I did with Christina (DZA) Marie
What genre(s) do
you write in and why? Do you write flash fiction, short stories,
novellas and/or novels? Graphic novels, anime or comics? If you do
multiple genres and/or lengths, which do you prefer? Have you ever
written any poetry?
I’ve also
published a handful of novellas, which I prefer more than short
stories simply because I like having room to maneuver. This year has
been my first venture into graphic novel territory with the start of
my new series Sovadron.
It’s an epic fantasy (grimdark?) story with a world based on
post-colonial America, and features demons, gods, werewolves, giants,
goblins, and all that good stuff.
What writers do
you admire? What are you currently reading?
I admire many
writers, from grimdark George R. R. Martin to hilarious YA
surrogate-dad Rick Riordan to sarcastic steampunk scientist Robyn
Bennis. My bookshelf is bursting. At the moment, I’m borrowing my
roommate’s trilogy Daughter
of Smoke and Bone
by Laini Taylor. It’s basically grimdark fantasy for YA audiences.
Good stuff!
Have you
self-published anything? What was your experience like?
This year has been
a whole exploration in self-publishing. In the summer I released my
short story collection Gary
the Gecko,
and a month later I published my urban fantasy novella The
Minnesotan Witch.
On November 16th,
I’ll be self-publishing the first chapter of Sovadron.
I’ve found that
the success of self-publishing depends a lot on your preparation and
how much you’re willing (or able) to outsource. For Gary
the Gecko,
I was completely unprepared and sold only one copy (to my roommate).
Minnesotan
Witch went
better, primarily because I gave myself time to promote ahead of the
fact and recruited people to leave honest Amazon reviews and blog
posts.
Sovadron is
going to be difficult, mostly because it’s a much more involved
project, being a series. It’s also a graphic novel, which is going
to be more tedious to convert and upload onto Amazon Kindle. Not to
mention I, as the publisher, have to pay for everything,
including the illustrator—which is why I can only publish one
chapter
at
a time rather than one book
at
a time.
However,
self-publishing is also very freeing. When you’re doing traditional
publishing (re: going to a publishing house), everyone gets their
sticky fingers in your work: the editor, the publisher, the agent if
you have one. But with self-publishing, it’s all your vision. You
have complete creative freedom.
MN Witch link:
What are the
hardest kinds of scenes for you to write? Romantic? Sex? The death of
a character? Fight scenes? Others?
The hardest scenes
for me are the “filler scenes,” I guess you could call them. I
bounce around a lot when I’m writing, always hitting the most
important, most intense scenes first—which means all those
“difficult” scenes you just listed as examples are technically
the easiest
for
me to do because I love doing them.
The result is I get
the intro of the book written, the ending, the climax, and several
other big moments. But then I have to add the link-up scenes, the
exposition, the less exciting but still very important moments that
provide a break from the action or give us a clearer view of the
character. Those are difficult because they’re not as fun to write.
How much time do
you spend on research for your writing?
Probably more than
I should, and I blame my inner history geek for that. Although, I
never regret spending time to thoroughly research a culture or part
of history for a story because the whole point of research is to
learn things that you never knew before. And, too make things even
more interesting for me, when I’m trying to decide what real
country or person to base my fantasy culture or person on, I usually
choose one that I don’t
know about or
have a gap in my learning specifically so I’m motivated to learn
more about it.
For example, in
Sovadron,
the new country of Luria is based off of post-colonial America, which
I already knew quite a bit about. But I didn’t know that much about
18th/19th
century England and France—which is what Daerstyn, the country that
used to rule the former Lurian colonies, is based off of. The dwarves
are based on the Inuit and Alaskan natives, so I had to research
their culture and the effect of colonialism (spoiler alert: it
sucks). And on top of that, several major characters are in the
LGBTQ+ community, which meant learning about history I already knew
in a completely different light as I read about how those people had
to navigate in that kind of world. It’s fascinating.
Your character
decides to go a different way than you planned. What do you do?
Usually:
I just go with it. Having a character do something unexpected is a
very good thing, because it means I, as a writer, have done my job.
Humans are unpredictable and difficult to manage, so when a character
is the same, then that’s great!
However,
if there is a specific way a story has
to go, then I do either one of
two things. I either change the character, or change the situation of
the story. Sometimes changing the character is easy (re: if I need
the character to not enter
the dark cave until later, but they’re naturally adventurous and
spontaneous, then I’ll probably give them a crushing fear of
bats—which live in caves—that they have to overcome in the story,
thus adding another layer to the narrative). But if it’s too
difficult or I like the character as they are, then I change the
situation, usually by throwing some more bad guys at them so they’re
occupied/injured/can’t muck up my plot.
Bio:
Christina “DZA”
Marie runs the feminist geek blog Dragons,
Zombies & Aliens—as
well as the YouTube
channel
of the same name—and is a sci-fi and fantasy author. She’s
published several short stories and novellas and is one of the
writers of the global illustrated novella series Earth’s
Final Chapter by
Endless Ink Publishing. Her hobbies include smashing the patriarchy,
paying for horror movies and then being too scared to actually watch
them, and defending her furniture from her roommate’s evil cat.
Links:
