Ask the Author: Zoë Marriott
Answered Questions (9)
Zoë Marriott
Oh, you're super welcome! What a great compliment! My personal theory on why the barista could perceive Shinobu just for a moment is that a) she was super pre-occupied and tired and so in an almost dream-like state which makes it easier for people to see what's actually there (instead of what should be there) and b) that she was quite a sensitive person, with what my Mother would call 'a touch of the sight' (there's another character, later on in the trilogy, like this). But as soon as she started really paying attention, she lost her instinctive feeling that there was a person there, and realised it was just a shadow or something. This happens to me quite often in real life - I'll feel sure I've seen someone from the corner of my eye and turn around to realise it was nothing but a trick of the light or a branch moving. That always gives me the shivers - I can never quite shake the feeling that maybe I DID see something - so I wanted to use it in the story!
Zoë Marriott
Thank you for your question! I'm so glad that you've found FF a re-readable book. I re-read all my favourites on a yearly basis, so that's a very special compliment.
FrostFire - which I wrote in 2010, ach, that's a long time ago! - was the first book that I completed as a full-time writer, and I had a lot of difficulties finding a balance in my working life. I wrote 2000 words each day religiously, directly onto my laptop (because that seemed like a grown-up, professional, full-time writer sort of thing to do). But at the end of the drafting process I found that my manuscript was a complete mess - some bits were barely readable to me. I couldn't even tell what I'd been trying to say, let alone if that was what I *should* have been saying. And I realised that the method I had developed while I was working full-time in an office (scribbling long-hand during teabreaks, my daily commute, and in the evenings, and then typing up and revising those notes at the weekend) had actually been an effective drafting process and that I shouldn't have been so quick to cast it aside. I had to do a massive rewrite before I felt ready to submit it to my editor, trying to make the story anything like the book I'd imagined in my head.
Then my editor came back to me with more problems! She felt the characters were hollow. She had never identified with Frost. She was also deeply unconvinced by the central relationships of the book - at that time, Luca was a female character, and the editor simply didn't like or sympathise with her, or her love for Frost. There were also a lot of pacing problems in the middle. She said she felt the book was unpublishable as it was.
So then I spent three months doing ANOTHER massive rewrite, changing the story from third to first person so that I could really find my way into Frost's character in a way that perhaps the third person hadn't allowed me to do (this was the first time I realised that the reason I'm drawn to first person isn't about voice, but about characterisation). I wrote an entirely new middle section for the book and then changed the beginning so that the stuff which happened in the middle of the original one instead became the first section. And I changed the gender of every single person in the book except two: Frost and Arian. So the character of Luca (although remaining the same in almost every other way) became a man, and the love triangle at the centre of the story became a more traditional one.
My inspiration for Frost came from many, many, many places! I can't put my finger on even half of them now. But I do know that one of the sparks of life for her was a recurring dream/fear that I had as a child, about wolves chasing me, or finding me in my bed and eating me. This was partly to do with Little Red Riding hood, and that queasy idea that an animal could consume you, but you might still be alive and trapped inside them, while they impersonated you. It was also partly to do with my sister telling me that if I left my foot or arm outside the covers, wolves would come from under my bed and snap it off (thanks, big sis!). I was playing with ideas one day and this voice spoke in my head: 'In my dreams, the wolves come for me...' and Frost basically grew from there.
Finally - if you've read any of my other books you might have noticed that a lot of them feature music, poetry, songs... before I was a novellist I was a poet, and I am also a music geek. All my books have multiple playlists. When I start to worldbuild one of the first things I imagine/invent/research is the music, poetry, ballads and stories of my fantasy world. Sometimes, if I'm lucky, there's a place thematically in the story for some of the material that I come up with, such as with the songs in FrostFire (or the haiku and music in Shadows on the Moon, or the ballad in The Swan Kingdom). So it really comes from a love of poetry and music and how I use them to world build.
FrostFire - which I wrote in 2010, ach, that's a long time ago! - was the first book that I completed as a full-time writer, and I had a lot of difficulties finding a balance in my working life. I wrote 2000 words each day religiously, directly onto my laptop (because that seemed like a grown-up, professional, full-time writer sort of thing to do). But at the end of the drafting process I found that my manuscript was a complete mess - some bits were barely readable to me. I couldn't even tell what I'd been trying to say, let alone if that was what I *should* have been saying. And I realised that the method I had developed while I was working full-time in an office (scribbling long-hand during teabreaks, my daily commute, and in the evenings, and then typing up and revising those notes at the weekend) had actually been an effective drafting process and that I shouldn't have been so quick to cast it aside. I had to do a massive rewrite before I felt ready to submit it to my editor, trying to make the story anything like the book I'd imagined in my head.
Then my editor came back to me with more problems! She felt the characters were hollow. She had never identified with Frost. She was also deeply unconvinced by the central relationships of the book - at that time, Luca was a female character, and the editor simply didn't like or sympathise with her, or her love for Frost. There were also a lot of pacing problems in the middle. She said she felt the book was unpublishable as it was.
So then I spent three months doing ANOTHER massive rewrite, changing the story from third to first person so that I could really find my way into Frost's character in a way that perhaps the third person hadn't allowed me to do (this was the first time I realised that the reason I'm drawn to first person isn't about voice, but about characterisation). I wrote an entirely new middle section for the book and then changed the beginning so that the stuff which happened in the middle of the original one instead became the first section. And I changed the gender of every single person in the book except two: Frost and Arian. So the character of Luca (although remaining the same in almost every other way) became a man, and the love triangle at the centre of the story became a more traditional one.
My inspiration for Frost came from many, many, many places! I can't put my finger on even half of them now. But I do know that one of the sparks of life for her was a recurring dream/fear that I had as a child, about wolves chasing me, or finding me in my bed and eating me. This was partly to do with Little Red Riding hood, and that queasy idea that an animal could consume you, but you might still be alive and trapped inside them, while they impersonated you. It was also partly to do with my sister telling me that if I left my foot or arm outside the covers, wolves would come from under my bed and snap it off (thanks, big sis!). I was playing with ideas one day and this voice spoke in my head: 'In my dreams, the wolves come for me...' and Frost basically grew from there.
Finally - if you've read any of my other books you might have noticed that a lot of them feature music, poetry, songs... before I was a novellist I was a poet, and I am also a music geek. All my books have multiple playlists. When I start to worldbuild one of the first things I imagine/invent/research is the music, poetry, ballads and stories of my fantasy world. Sometimes, if I'm lucky, there's a place thematically in the story for some of the material that I come up with, such as with the songs in FrostFire (or the haiku and music in Shadows on the Moon, or the ballad in The Swan Kingdom). So it really comes from a love of poetry and music and how I use them to world build.
Zoë Marriott
This answer contains spoilers…
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Zoë Marriott
Hi Louise,
Thank you for your question! I'm really glad that you've enjoyed the two books set in the Moonlit Lands. I'd love to write more stories that utilise this setting - but it honestly depends on whether my publisher (or any publisher!) want to buy and publish them.
At the moment I'm working on a fairytale retelling which is loosely connected to that setting - it takes place in what the characters in Shadows on the Moon refer to as the Old Empire, which is inspired by Tang Dynasty China - but I don't have a contract for this yet.
I do intend to write a Little Mermaid retelling in the future (have you been looking at my Pinterest? It has a board there) but at the moment my mental image the setting for that story is wildly different. And again, I don't have a publisher for it yet.
So basically: I hope so - cross your fingers for me!
Thank you for your question! I'm really glad that you've enjoyed the two books set in the Moonlit Lands. I'd love to write more stories that utilise this setting - but it honestly depends on whether my publisher (or any publisher!) want to buy and publish them.
At the moment I'm working on a fairytale retelling which is loosely connected to that setting - it takes place in what the characters in Shadows on the Moon refer to as the Old Empire, which is inspired by Tang Dynasty China - but I don't have a contract for this yet.
I do intend to write a Little Mermaid retelling in the future (have you been looking at my Pinterest? It has a board there) but at the moment my mental image the setting for that story is wildly different. And again, I don't have a publisher for it yet.
So basically: I hope so - cross your fingers for me!
Zoë Marriott
Sweetie, I love your enthusiasm and I'm very glad that one of my books made such an impression - but there is no need at all to beg. All book people are already my friends. Goodreads just makes it official :) xx
Zoë Marriott
Thank you so much! It's been over a decade now since I wrote The Swan Kingdom, and to hear that people still read it, and still like it, is humbling and uplifting.
Growing up The Wild Swans was always my favourite fairytale. I had a gorgeously illustrated picture book of the story which was (and is) one of my most treasured possessions, and when I started borrowing books of myths and folklore from the library, variations on the tale (a sister toiling to save brothers from a terrible, beastly or birdly enchantment) would crop up very often. So it never really occurred to me that it was considered a lesser fairytale, or that people wouldn't know it. I always wanted to explore it further and write my own version, and I was grateful that as far as I was aware no one famous had gotten there first, but that was all.
It was only when The Swan Kingdom was published, and I saw some readers praise it for retelling an 'unknown' fairytale, and different readers assume that I had plagiarised the work of another author (whose book was also based on that fairytale) that I realised how few people had grown up with this story as I did.
Since then, I've written two more fairytale retellings - Shadows on the Moon, which is based on Cinderella, and another one (yet to be published) based on Beauty and the Beast. Obviously, both of these stories have been made into Disney movies, which means everyone thinks they know what the 'original' version is, or should be. There's a certain flexibility in retelling a story which is very well known. You can feel free to make all kinds of changes to the plot and subvert the characters or invert certain parts and know that people will understand exactly the way you're bouncing new ideas off the old ones. But at the same time, there will also often be people who think you've ruined the best parts - even if those things were literally only added into the Disney version ten years ago.
The truth is that even extremely well-known fairytales are not nearly as well known as you might think. Most of us imagine, say, Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Beauty and the Beast as a single story, a fixed thing with certain characters and plot points which are inviolable. But these usually bear at most a passing resemblance to the spoken versions of folklore which were originally transcribed by people like Anderson and Grimm. There are a million variations on every story, and the further you go back in time the darker and scarier many tales of this kind are. So when I choose to explore any fairytale, I'm most likely retelling a hidden, not very popular version of it - and I'm also remaking it anew, making it into something that no one else has ever seen before.
Having said all that, I have next to me now a copy of The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales by Franz Xaver Von Schonwerth, which is a treasure trove of tales that were basically lost to time until very recently. And I am still a fan of Celtic and Greek and Japanese mythology. So it's entirely possible that in the future I'll stumble across an obscure fairytale that will inspire me to explore it. I just don't know it yet.
Growing up The Wild Swans was always my favourite fairytale. I had a gorgeously illustrated picture book of the story which was (and is) one of my most treasured possessions, and when I started borrowing books of myths and folklore from the library, variations on the tale (a sister toiling to save brothers from a terrible, beastly or birdly enchantment) would crop up very often. So it never really occurred to me that it was considered a lesser fairytale, or that people wouldn't know it. I always wanted to explore it further and write my own version, and I was grateful that as far as I was aware no one famous had gotten there first, but that was all.
It was only when The Swan Kingdom was published, and I saw some readers praise it for retelling an 'unknown' fairytale, and different readers assume that I had plagiarised the work of another author (whose book was also based on that fairytale) that I realised how few people had grown up with this story as I did.
Since then, I've written two more fairytale retellings - Shadows on the Moon, which is based on Cinderella, and another one (yet to be published) based on Beauty and the Beast. Obviously, both of these stories have been made into Disney movies, which means everyone thinks they know what the 'original' version is, or should be. There's a certain flexibility in retelling a story which is very well known. You can feel free to make all kinds of changes to the plot and subvert the characters or invert certain parts and know that people will understand exactly the way you're bouncing new ideas off the old ones. But at the same time, there will also often be people who think you've ruined the best parts - even if those things were literally only added into the Disney version ten years ago.
The truth is that even extremely well-known fairytales are not nearly as well known as you might think. Most of us imagine, say, Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Beauty and the Beast as a single story, a fixed thing with certain characters and plot points which are inviolable. But these usually bear at most a passing resemblance to the spoken versions of folklore which were originally transcribed by people like Anderson and Grimm. There are a million variations on every story, and the further you go back in time the darker and scarier many tales of this kind are. So when I choose to explore any fairytale, I'm most likely retelling a hidden, not very popular version of it - and I'm also remaking it anew, making it into something that no one else has ever seen before.
Having said all that, I have next to me now a copy of The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Discovered Fairy Tales by Franz Xaver Von Schonwerth, which is a treasure trove of tales that were basically lost to time until very recently. And I am still a fan of Celtic and Greek and Japanese mythology. So it's entirely possible that in the future I'll stumble across an obscure fairytale that will inspire me to explore it. I just don't know it yet.
Zoë Marriott
This answer contains spoilers…
(view spoiler)
Zoë Marriott
The first YA novel that I wrote was called BLOOD MAGIC - but it was never published, so you can't read it. The first book I wrote that actually ended up being published was called THE SWAN KINGDOM and luckily it's still in print, so you can easily get hold of it. Because I'm not a very fast writer, I don't stockpile manuscripts or have them published out of order, so you can tell the order they were written by the order they were first published. That's one of the pieces of information that Goodreads gives you on each book's individual page :)
Zoë Marriott
Excellent question! I think the key is to see characters as whole people, just like yourself and the other people in your life.
We all - everyone of us, even the ones that seem totally perfect, confident and together on the surface - have damage of our own that makes us feel weak and flawed and hurt somewhere deep inside. But we all also have strengths and wonderful, powerful, worthwhile things about us, too. Vulnerable and strong may seem to be opposites, but actually it's the way they exist together within someone's personality that makes them who they are. Characters have to be the same. That often means reaching down into yourself as a writer and putting some analogue of your own pain and weakness on the page, and it's difficult - writing about Suzume was especially hard for me - but ultimately really rewarding because you feel as if you've reflected reality and created something really truthful in your fiction.
The good thing about writing YA is that often you're able to show a young person just beginning to grow all their strengths and their passions around the places inside them that are vulnerable and flawed, learning how to be who they need to be to survive and thrive. Sometimes you see this right from the start, as with Suzume and the events at the beginning of Shadows on the Moon, which she spends the whole book learning cope with. Sometimes, as with Frost in FrostFire, you portray a person desperately struggling and then go back and show the reader what has left them this way before you begin to build them back up again.
Tl;dr: strong and damaged are two sides of the same coin, and every character should have some of each inside them.
We all - everyone of us, even the ones that seem totally perfect, confident and together on the surface - have damage of our own that makes us feel weak and flawed and hurt somewhere deep inside. But we all also have strengths and wonderful, powerful, worthwhile things about us, too. Vulnerable and strong may seem to be opposites, but actually it's the way they exist together within someone's personality that makes them who they are. Characters have to be the same. That often means reaching down into yourself as a writer and putting some analogue of your own pain and weakness on the page, and it's difficult - writing about Suzume was especially hard for me - but ultimately really rewarding because you feel as if you've reflected reality and created something really truthful in your fiction.
The good thing about writing YA is that often you're able to show a young person just beginning to grow all their strengths and their passions around the places inside them that are vulnerable and flawed, learning how to be who they need to be to survive and thrive. Sometimes you see this right from the start, as with Suzume and the events at the beginning of Shadows on the Moon, which she spends the whole book learning cope with. Sometimes, as with Frost in FrostFire, you portray a person desperately struggling and then go back and show the reader what has left them this way before you begin to build them back up again.
Tl;dr: strong and damaged are two sides of the same coin, and every character should have some of each inside them.
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