I am so honored to welcome Francesca Zappia, the author of one of my top five books of 2017, to the blog today. I bought Eliza and Her Monsters on a whim and loved it with every fiber of my being. If you haven't read it yet, maybe this post will persuade you to.
The Book
Her story is a phenomenon. Her life is a disaster.
In the real world, Eliza Mirk is shy, weird, and friendless. Online, she’s LadyConstellation, the anonymous creator of the wildly popular webcomic Monstrous Sea. Eliza can’t imagine enjoying the real world as much as she loves the online one, and she has no desire to try.
Then Wallace Warland, Monstrous Sea’s biggest fanfiction writer, transfers to her school. Wallace thinks Eliza is just another fan, and as he draws her out of her shell, she begins to wonder if a life offline might be worthwhile.
But when Eliza’s secret is accidentally shared with the world, everything she’s built—her story, her relationship with Wallace, and even her sanity—begins to fall apart.
The Author
Francesca Zappia lives in central Indiana. When she's not writing, she's drawing her characters, reading, or playing video games. She is also the author of Made You Up and Eliza Mirk's favorite, The Children of Hypnos, a biweekly serial novel posted on Tumblr and Wattpad.
The Interview
Emma: How did your writing process for Eliza and Her Monsters differ
from when you wrote Made You Up?
Francesca: Made You
Up was
written over many years, with many many drafts. It was a lot of a mess, then a
bit of a mess, then kind of okay, then published. It had a LOT of time to go
from bad to okay. Eliza and Her Monsters had…a couple of
months. Basically, I had to be really on my game while I was writing it. It was
also a lot harder to write because it was so much more personal, so instead of
trying to hurry to get to the next scene I wanted to write, a lot of it was
convincing myself that someone would want to read about all my different
anxieties.
E: To
some extent, there are three different stories in Eliza and Her
Monsters. There's Eliza's life, Monstrous Sea, and Children of Hypnos. How
did you balance creating all three?
F: Luckily,
I had Monstrous Sea and Children of Hypnos already
drafted, so it was largely a question of how to place them inside Eliza’s
story. I knew she was going to have one story as inspiration and one story that
she created. Monstrous Sea is my favorite story and much of
Eliza’s feelings for it are actually my feelings for it, so that made it a
natural choice for the story she created. The idea for Children of Hypnos came
from a lot of things I’m inspired by (mostly anime), so that became the story
Eliza was inspired by. I knew CoH wasn’t going to have any pieces in the book
but was still going to be a big part of it, but Monstrous Sea would
have pictures, panels, and Wallace’s fanfiction. For that, the big question
was, “Where can I put these things that it’s going to enhance Eliza’s story and
not interrupt it?"
E: How
did the idea for Monstrous Sea come about?
F: I’m going
to be real with you, I don’t know. I started working on that story when I was
eight years old, so the best answer I have is that it came out of some cesspool
of my eight-year-old mind, some combination of anime and video games. Over the
years it has changed A LOT. You wouldn’t recognize some of my early ideas for
it at all.
E: If you
could introduce Eliza to any other book character, who would it be?
F: Hmmm
probably Cath from Fangirl. A lot of Eliza and Her Monsters came
about because of my love of Fangirl and wanting to do my own take on it, and I
think Eliza and Cath would have a lot in common.
E: When
it comes to writing, are you a plotter, pantser, or a combination of both?
F: Combo.
Plot out that main plot so I know where I’m going, then wing all the details in
between. Fix it later in edits.
E: What
advice do you have for writers who are still in college?
F: I promise
that if your major is not English or Creative Writing, you will still be able
to get published. If you’re worried that you’re wasting your time with another
major, or you won’t be able to be a “real” writer/author because you’re
pursuing a major that will get you a more secure job, don’t. You don’t need any
particular degree to be a writer or author. You’ll still have the exact same
amount of free time to write what you want to write, and doing that is the
important part.
E: Conversely, what's the weirdest writing advice you've ever received?
F: Hm… I’m
not sure! I’ve gotten good advice and cliched advice and bad advice, but I
don’t think I’ve ever gotten weird advice. I can say one of
the worst pieces of writing advice I’ve ever gotten is to never use the word
“said.” Apparently, you should ONLY use more expressive dialogue tags!
“Laughed,” “barked,” “growled,” etc. (The truth: This is TERRIBLE advice.
“Said” is an amazing dialogue tag because it’s invisible. It lets the dialogue
speak for itself. Typically I only use other dialogue tags when I can’t make it
clear from the character’s actions or words exactly how they’re saying
something. Or if it would make the situation funnier.)
E: I like
to ask authors what recent YA releases they'd recommend. Are there any you've
loved?
F: Oh man,
this is where I’m gonna flail. I haven’t been able to read many recent
releases, but I know there are so many good ones. I did love The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, but let’s be real, if you haven’t read that one
yet, what are you doing with your life?? I’m also in the middle of reading
Laini Taylor’s Strange the Dreamer, which I’m loving, but I kind of
expected that because I also dearly love the Daughter of Smoke and Bone
series.
E: Cake
or pie, and what kind?
F: For the
record, this is a vicious question. Normally, I’d say pie. But I just made a
Swedish princess cake a couple weeks ago and it was amazing. And I love cake
pops. BUT sweet potato pie with whipped cream is maybe the greatest confection
on earth. Okay—for Wallace, I’m going to say sweet potato pie.
E: Thanks, Francesca!
