NaNoWriMo and Neurodivergent Characters with Leanne Schwartz - A Prayer for Vengeance

In this week’s episode, Marissa chats with Leanne Schwartz about her YA fantasy debut, A PRAYER FOR VENGEANCE. Also discussed: National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), using a theater background to help get into characters’ heads and allowing you to keep your audience in mind, writing neurodivergent characters from the place of a lived experience but still using beta readers, writing the motivations of a villain, bringing a sumptuous setting to life, creating parallel religious and value systems, and so much more!

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Transcript

[00:10] Marissa: Hello. Hello, and welcome to the Happy Writer. This is a podcast that aims to bring readers more books to enjoy and to help authors find more joy in their writing. I am your host, Marissa Meyer. Thank you for joining me. One thing making me happy this week, or at least making me happy today, I slept for almost 12 hours last night, and I don't know, is that a silly thing to be happy about? I don't think so. Full disclosure, I've just been, like, really tired lately, and it's probably part of the weather, and it's just getting dark earlier. But also, I think the hecticness of this year has finally started to catch up with me moving into the new house and of course, doing this podcast, homeschooling the girls. I've also written, like, four and a half books this year, and it's just been a lot. And this past couple of weeks, I've started to feel like I might be inching toward burnout, which I've only experienced once in my creative life, and it was not fun. So this time I think I'm recognizing the signs a little bit sooner and thinking to myself, okay, how can we slow down, maybe make some changes? So I'm not just totally overdoing it. And I think that getting a really great night's rest, which for the first time in quite a while, it was a solid start. So I feel great today. I feel like world's better than I have lately. Yeah. So sleep, that's, like, important and stuff. And there's your public service announcement. I am also so happy to be talking to today's guest. She holds a degree in English and a master's in education and currently teaches English, poetry, drama and history. Her debut fantasy novel, A Prayer for Vengeance, came out this past September. Please welcome Leanne Schwartz.

[02:11] Leanne : Hi, Marissa. Thank you so much. I'm so thrilled to join you today.

[02:14] Marissa: Thank you for being here with me. And congratulations on your book being out. This is your debut. How excited are you?

[02:23] Leanne : Very dream come true. Very thrilled. Thank you.

[02:28] Marissa: Well, it's beautiful. It's a beautiful book, physically. And just the story is a really great story. But I just have to start by throwing out that your cover is gorgeous.

[02:40] Leanne : Page street did amazing. Emma Hardy is a genius miracle worker. I adore it. I never had any ideas about what I wanted the COVID to be, and I love it so much. Thank you.

[02:52] Marissa: I also love it so much. It's like pettable. Sometimes you have a book that you just can't stop stroking the COVID It's.

[02:58] Leanne : One of those everywhere. I take it. Everyone starts petting it, right? You do.

[03:06] Marissa: So the first question that I want to start with is, I'd love to hear your origin story. I know your bio talks about being a teacher and an educator. How did you become a writer?

[03:20] Leanne : Yeah, I was always, like many writers, one of those kids that had a book everywhere she went. I liked escaping into stories all the time, but I wrote a lot of poetry and plays because I worked in a theater company as a kid and went off to college and wanted to find something that would be a career. And my parents I grew up with working class parents, and then my father became a teacher, and so I was like, I will be a teacher, too. And it was only when I was working with high schoolers and reading a lot of young adult literature with them that I started getting into writing young adults novels. I did a lot of Nano, a lot of National Novel Writing Month, and just wrote a lot of really dreadful manuscripts and didn't really do anything with them and took a break while I had young children and just over time just got to the point where I wanted to start actually showing people what I was writing. And that just slowly, eventually turned into finding the community online of writers. And I was very fortunate. I did author, mentor, Match and Pitch Wars and got a lot of really great feedback, but also met a lot of really wonderful writers who shared a lot of craft advice. And I only queried one book, my AMM book before the book that became A Prayer for Vengeance. And when I was querying A Prayer for Vengeance, I actually thought that it was going to be dead. I sent it out one very last time, and I was already querying what became my book two. And then this book came back from the dead, as Gia likes to do, and said, no, very dramatic. You're not done with me. So all of a sudden, very quickly, after a very long time of writing, all of a sudden, very quickly, I had an agent and a book deal.

[05:22] Marissa: What a fun story. So you mentioned that you wrote a lot of dreadful manuscripts before you came to this one. What does a lot what does a lot mean?

[05:34] Leanne : There was a trend going around where people were sharing how many books they had written, and I honestly couldn't count them up because I would get partway through. Or I'd write like, a book and a sequel for a planned trilogy and then abandon it. But I want to say probably five or six or seven or eight. But yeah, I'm hard to call them even books, some of them, because they really had no plot way back in the day. And then it was getting to the point where I was like, okay, this is a book, and I can show it to people, and it's a story, and starting to feel like, okay, maybe it's going to happen at this point.

[06:14] Marissa: Yeah. No, I get that. I also is probably in the six, seven, eight category, but it gets muddled, those abandoned projects. If you didn't finish it, can you really say you wrote a full book, or sometimes you write a draft and then you know it's not good, but you steal some things from it and put them in the next idea. And so it's like, well, is that two ideas? Is it just a continuation of the first?

[06:40] Leanne : Absolutely.

[06:41] Marissa: It can be a hard number to pin down.

[06:43] Leanne : Yeah. My AMM book, I definitely scavenged for parts. There's a lot of it in Gia in my debut, and a lot of it in my book, too, as well. With flying machines.

[06:55] Marissa: You've said AMM a couple of times. I don't think I know this.

[06:58] Leanne : That's author mentor match.

[07:00] Marissa: Author mentor match.

[07:02] Leanne : Those big mentor programs are kind of gone.

[07:05] Marissa: Yeah. No, I did one as a mentor, and it was fantastic. I loved doing it. And then you also did Pitch Wars, which I know a lot of guests that we've had on this show also did Pitch Wars, and that was kind of getting their foot into the door, so to speak.

[07:22] Leanne : Right. And it was great that it really taught me how to revise. And I met my wonderful mentors, alicia Dow and Sheena Bokweg. And so many classmates. But then after Pitch Wars, nothing really happened. I tell people just because it's gone. It was great, but you can build that community anywhere. It wasn't like the showcase, like, unlock the door for me or anything. It was an entire year later than anything.

[07:49] Marissa: Yeah, and it's a path, but there are so many paths.

[07:53] Leanne : Right.

[07:54] Marissa: And then quickly, before we move on, you also mentioned Nano, which is very timely because this is coming out, I believe, the first week of November, national Novel Writing Month. How many times do you think you've done Nano?

[08:08] Leanne : Oh, gosh. The official Nano. At least half a dozen, maybe more. And I know I've done camps and things to help me finish up a draft or revise something. I've kind of stopped doing the official Nano just because my youngest birthday is in the middle, and it got to be a much busier month for me. And I always seem to be revising something instead of ready to draft something new. Although I am drafting now. Maybe I should do it this year.

[08:37] Marissa: There you go. Why not? My girl's birthday is November 1, so I get that, too. I also love Nano, but it does seem like the older I get, the more and more things are suddenly crammed into November. Why did November to get to be so busy all of a sudden?

[08:54] Leanne : Very rude of it.

[08:56] Marissa: Were you the sort that would start Nano and usually finish, would you usually accomplish the 50,000?

[09:03] Leanne : Yeah, I would. Before I had children, I would I would not cheat. I would have it all ready to go, and then I would try to hit the finish the story, even if I had to go back and develop it. Yeah, I'm a rule follower, too.

[09:21] Marissa: I am, too. I admit it. So for people who are listening, who are in the first week or weeks of nanorimo right now, what advice would you give to them?

[09:33] Leanne : I have terrible advice for nano. I don't count my words anymore. I never do word counts. I'll sprint with friends, but I refuse to count my words. It's maybe hard advice to follow for nano, but I would say, like, just focus on the story and hopefully you'll get caught up in it and it'll carry you along just as fast. And when I focus on the words, I don't like what I end up drafting.

[09:57] Marissa: That is so interesting. I don't know if I could do that. I become obsessive even when I'm not doing nano. Like, I always at the end of the day, I want to see how much I got done, and that would be really hard for me. But I don't think it's terrible advice because I do think that it can trick your brain one way or the other, depending on what you're focusing on.

[10:19] Leanne : Yeah, it was a really weird I don't know when I made that shift, but I kind of stopped paying attention, and I was like, oh, this is working much better for my brain, at least. I'm sure it's different for everyone.

[10:29] Marissa: Yeah, no, it's all about what's going to motivate you. And some people, I think, just really are highly motivated by seeing that word count tick up and by filling in the little charts on the website and seeing the graph go up and all of this. But then, like you say, some people are much more motivated by just being fully immersed in the story and excited about finding out what's going to happen next.

[10:52] Leanne : Yeah. And I do love I use Scrivener and I'll reward myself. Like, if I finish a chapter, I get to change the icon of the chapter to the special picture. So all those little tricks, those little motivators are still good.

[11:05] Marissa: I love that too. Yes. Check that one off the list. All right, so here we are. Was a prayer preventions. Did it start out as a nano book?

[11:17] Leanne : No, I was outlining it, and then I moved house, and so I kind of paused it and then worked on it a little bit more. But I was revising another book that I trunked, and it was during the major pandemic shutdown that I sat down and drafted the whole thing while we were staying home.

[11:42] Marissa: Yeah. Did you still fast draft it? Like, do you find that you use nanotechniques even when it's not officially November?

[11:52] Leanne : Yeah, I was very focused on being able to submit it to Pitch Wars, and so I had that kind of deadline in mind. And I think at the time, it was the fastest draft I ever banged out. I was very focused. Like, I had a writing date with a good friend most mornings, and I had, like, a set routine. And I would go out on the balcony because we couldn't go anywhere, but just to get some distance from the family and work on it at a set time and just be focused on getting through chunks of the story.

[12:29] Marissa: Yeah, no, that's great. And that is also good advice, like, set aside a set time, which can be really hard in our busy lives. But I know the times of my life when I'm the most productive are the ones when I really take it seriously about setting those appointments with myself. Like, this is my time to write. Every day I'm going to be there writing, and that kind of comes and goes during different phases of life. But it's nice if you can establish that pattern.

[12:57] Leanne : Yeah. And I was fortunate. I was helping with homeschooling at set times, and then I could go off and do that.

[13:04] Marissa: All right, so here we are. The book is out now. It's in bookstores. Would you please tell listeners about a prayer for vengeance?

[13:14] Leanne : Yes. A Prayer for Vengeance is a young adult fantasy set in a sort of Roman esque, alt Italian world in a walled city protected by hundreds of sacred statues from the monsters that roam the countryside. And Milo is an autistic scribe and poet who tends to the sacred statues for the temple that took him in when his family was killed by monsters. And he hopes to earn a place as a temple historian. Unfortunately, his statue that he's in charge of tending disappears right as something begins stalking and murdering the city's holiest men. So he races for answers, but only when the murderer targets him does he discover that she is, in fact, the statue that disappeared. She is, in fact, not a statue of a girl, but an actual real girl who was turned into a statue and is actually really very angry about that fact. And the immortal leader of their city who took Milo in. And he lives to serve as actually the man who betrayed and trapped Gia and usurped, her sister. And she now needs to break the curse. He thought it was a miracle, but it's a curse, and she needs to break it in order to avenge her sister. And so they have a bit of cat and mouse. They maybe try to kill each other a few times before they team up, and they have to race to topple this immortal tyrant before Milo's thrown to the monsters and Gia turns back to stone forever. That was a really great pitch. Thank you.

[14:48] Marissa: I can tell you've practiced at a time.

[14:52] Leanne : I may have said that a few times, but I was practicing earlier, I.

[14:56] Marissa: Think, so a lot of times. And I mentioned this before we started recording. It's really common when we're doing these podcasts. That the way the schedule works. I'm usually talking to authors before the book has come out, and it's interesting talking to someone who's now been promoting it after publication for a couple of months, and I'm like, yes. You've had to say this.

[15:17] Leanne : Yeah. Rehearsal is always good, right?

[15:21] Marissa: It's a good reminder. Practice your pitch, everyone. It's important.

[15:24] Leanne : Right.

[15:26] Marissa: So the first thing I want to talk about, about this book is that we are in dual POV. We get perspective from both Milo and Gia. And I cannot remember the last time I read a book with dual points of view that were so different from each other. And I think I saw somewhere on your Instagram or something, maybe like, this idea of opposites attract, like, wow, they couldn't be any more different. And I loved it. I loved getting to be in both of their yeah.

[15:57] Leanne : Yeah. This was the first dual point of view book that I like I got a stack out from the library, read a whole bunch to kind of be like, how are people doing it in Ya? I had read a lot of romance novels when I was querying as a great escape, but I read a whole bunch in Ya just to see. But, yeah, I love putting together two characters who look like they wouldn't go together, but they kind of balance each other out and fulfill a need with each. Gia's, actually, when I first drafted it, gia's Points of view was written in present tense, and that was the first thing that Pitch Wars told me to do. Every single mentor who had requested my book was like, knock that off.

[16:38] Marissa: Change that.

[16:40] Leanne : Make them the same.

[16:41] Marissa: But she was.

[16:46] Leanne : Already in creative no, but she was always just very, like, stab first, ask questions later in the moment action. And Milo's very contemplative and dreamy, recursively, pondering things. So it was fun to put them together. But yeah, they have very different voices.

[17:03] Marissa: Yeah. Did you have to do anything when you were switching from one to the other to try to get into their head and establish their I think I.

[17:14] Leanne : Think it kind of comes back to a background in theater that I just think of it as getting into character. And I do use different playlists, so I would have different music that I would put on. But I don't know, maybe it was a little too easy just to be like, she's really angry. Let's be really angry right now. It was very easy to slip into that. And then Milo, his inner narrative and his mindset is just very me. That was very easy to just try to get on the page. That was the main challenge, was, like, how to get what's going on in his head on the page.

[17:50] Marissa: Yeah. Which one do you feel like you relate to more, or is there one?

[17:56] Leanne : Yeah, I think that Gia is more aspirational that. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to just say what you were thinking and not try to soften it ever? And that you could just go ahead and be blunt like she is? I relate very deeply to Milo very much. You might seem very stoic, but inside it's just like flames everywhere. Panic.

[18:23] Marissa: I get it. Oh, so much. I also related a lot to Milo because I'm an overthinker, and so I totally get that in his dreaminess, he's a poet, a writer, right. Whereas Gia exactly like you're. Like, I loved being in her head. I loved just watching how bold she was and how unapologetic. But also part of me is like, oh, honey, turn it down a little.

[18:52] Leanne : She needs someone to come temper it a little bit. Just as much as Milo needs someone to get him to stand up a little bit.

[18:58] Marissa: Absolutely. No. And they both have these wonderful character arcs which are very much supported in getting to know each other. And she really kind of helps pull him out of his shell and helps him become more brave and more confident, whereas on the other side, knowing him, you can see her starting to soften around those edges and starting to learn how to love and forgive and all of these things. And so it made for a great love story. But I really enjoyed how their love story was so well, I don't know how to say this, but it just paralleled their character arc so well.

[19:37] Leanne : I love doing that when you're planning who the love interest is going to be or who they're going to be. And I start off and they're just kind of like vague blobs, and I don't even know what gender they're going to be yet and who's going to be who. But just once you start developing it planning. How does this person fill in the missing piece or catapult them in the way that they need? What is it about this person? Why would they fall in love with this person? Not just that they're standing nearby, but what is it about this person that makes them fall in love? And it's almost always that it's that they have something that they wish that they had, that Gia needs, that knowledge of how to be more of a protector instead of aggressive. Once somebody actually listens to her story, then she can move on. That needs that to be validated. And so that's the key thing.

[20:30] Marissa: He's fair.

[20:31] Leanne : Stop being so angry. No, go ahead, be angry. Yeah.

[20:35] Marissa: No. And I love that. And I love the idea of them finding the person that fills something. How did you word it right then? It was so beautiful. They're finding the missing piece.

[20:48] Leanne : Right.

[20:50] Marissa: What was the inspiration for making Milo autistic?

[20:53] Leanne : Myself being autistic, I had been writing autistic characters without calling them autistic for a little while. He was the first character that I set out and shared with other people. I don't know that I actually got the word on the page until revisions, but that it was in the pitch, and so people knew.

[21:19] Marissa: So I was going to ask about did you need a sensitivity reader. How did you research? But clearly you were able just to write from your own experiences there.

[21:28] Leanne : Right, so I drew a lot on my own experiences. But also, it's still something that I feel like a lot of people, when I was not diagnosed as a child when they go on their journey of discovering and figuring out what's actually been going on with them a lot of people find it through their writing. Before I had talked to anyone, people kept going like, Is this character supposed to be autistic? And I was like, Well, I didn't say that, but maybe we should go find out. Interesting.

[21:58] Marissa: Yeah.

[21:59] Leanne : And I still drew on expertise of many people and I still had a lot of autistic friends read for me because the experience can be very different for each person. If somebody is writing an autistic character, you never want to go do research and then put every single thing you find into one person. In my book, two, there are two autistic leads and they're very different from each other in key ways too because there's just a lot of different ways that it can present. So I still had a lot of people look it over for me just to make sure that it was reading. But it's been lovely hearing from readers saying that they found it relatable and that I didn't miss the mark. Thank God.

[22:42] Marissa: Yeah. No. And I think that's a good tip too, if you are writing someone who you maybe don't have that personal experience with. And, of course, we all try to research and try to learn as much as we can and want to be authentic with our characters. But I can also see how if you try to cram everything in it would just start to feel like a giant cliche.

[23:03] Leanne : Right? Exactly.

[23:06] Marissa: The other character I really want to talk about is our villain, Enio. Who is he's made himself immortal. He's clearly power hungry, but he's also so beloved by his community. And it was so fascinating for me the differences in how Gia sees him and how Milo and the rest of this city see him and walking that line between is he a villain? Is he a bad guy? Is he a protector? I mean, it was really fascinating.

[23:46] Leanne : Right. Because he does keep the city safe from monsters for 1000 years. And he very much casts himself as the hero of the piece that in his value system. Being strong enough to be able to protect everyone like that is the most important thing. And so he sees himself as completely good and valid and the people who have questioned him as being pieces that necessarily had to be moved off the board for the better of everyone. A lot of that was me just kind of playing around with the idea of a lot of times it is the people that are in our communities that are very beloved who turn out to be the real monsters and they just don't show it to everyone. And that facade that they build up of appearing so loving and caring can actually help protect them. In fact, more than anyone else, it's a way to protect them from anybody believing such horrible things about them that they've done. Yeah. No.

[24:50] Marissa: That's so interesting. Was it hard to get into his mindset?

[24:56] Leanne : Yeah, he's probably the character that took the longest to kind of get there. It was late in revisions, I was clarifying a few things and it was really exciting to be able to add more of his motivation. That when you're the victor, when you've won everything, what do you want next? Or what's the shadow side of that? And he finds himself growing quite bored with immortal victory. And he's just so desperate for everyone to love him. Yeah. And he knows the people that know him the best didn't. And he had to turn her into a statue to silence her. Yeah. It was really fun by the time I got there. But at the beginning he was much older. That was a revision that I did in Pitch Wars, that he was more of just a mentor figure. And in Pitch Wars, I received the advice in Ya that any characters that you can make younger make more young adults. And so that opened up the whole still inappropriate relationship between him and Gia. Still in a position of power that should not have been used to get her compliance. But that opened up a lot of really interesting things about more of his motivation of not just being power hungry, but wanting that personal validation too.

[26:24] Marissa: Yeah. How much do you know about so the book we open with a prologue in which this curse is enacted. And then you skip forward a thousand years in which Gia has now been trapped as a statue for 1000 years. But Ennea is still around. Like, he's been hanging out and doing his villainous thing now for ten centuries. How much did you think about what those years looked like for him? I mean, I'm fascinated by it kind of goes to the vampire thing. What does a person do with their time when they're immortal?

[27:02] Leanne : Yeah, I think he's just like, on a constant goodwill tour of himself. Like, he's just soaking up the adoration and stamping out any questioning of the true story of what happened and maintaining his version of events. But his temple in the book, there are three temples and his patron goddess and his temple, their values are all about stasis and stability and convention and tradition. And so for him, this is great. Nothing's changing. When I was first planning, I thought, maybe the city has been cut off and it's like Italian brigadoon. They haven't changed in this thousand years. And I changed that. But it was very much like it wouldn't have evolved and changed that much because he's been keeping it the way that he likes this whole time, but growing bored and just I think that it talks about in the book just a little that he starts to feel very apart from everyone and like they're all children and they're all just kind of like blinking into existence and blinking out again so fast compared to how long he's been alive. And so he really loses his sense of valuing anybody else at that point.

[28:20] Marissa: So you mentioned the city and the Italian vibe. The inspiration that we have, which I loved because of all the places I've traveled to, I think Italy is my favorite. And so it was like getting to be there a little bit again. How did you research? What tricks do you have for just bringing that setting to life?

[28:44] Leanne : Well, my family is Italian and I've only been to Italy once, but I am a teacher and I've watched Zaparelli's, Romeo and Juliet about 50 gazillion times. Some of that was like that visual of people running sword fighting in the streets and sneaking around at night. And I drew on stories that have been passed down through my family and then just reading that I had done about the different value systems and the different history. But I based it mostly on details that I was the most interested in. So the art obviously became sculptures and the churches, the temples, and I don't know, I think I've just done a lot of research into Italy over the years, just studying the language and everything, and I drew on that for this book. I didn't do a lot of extra research, but one of the things that I love doing is trying to make sure going through and putting in different sensory details in each chapter and not just relying on sight, but putting in scent and texture and just kind of going through and going through them. And it's kind of fun because you kind of get to travel there yourself in your mind and then you put it on the page. Yeah.

[30:03] Marissa: Oh, for sure. It's one of the joys of writing. Do you have an inspiration board? Like, do you collect pictures on Pinterest or anything like that?

[30:14] Leanne : I tend to make very small little aesthetics and then I put them everywhere, like the background of my computer and on my phone and my music playlist. So I had a bunch of Italian music on my playlist and had my aesthetic there so I could kind of stare at it and listen to my music.

[30:32] Marissa: I love that. That's smart.

[30:34] Leanne : Try to get into the vibe before writing so we can't talk about this.

[30:40] Marissa: Book without digging into the religion and the faith that you have created. It's so steeped in it. The whole plot is driven by I mean, it's almost like you had to create two different religions in a way.

[30:55] Leanne : Yeah.

[30:57] Marissa: So how did you go about that? Because everything. The curse and the beliefs and what's pulling people apart. I mean, all of it is so just buried in their belief system.

[31:07] Leanne : And it was yeah, yeah. Figuring out that there was going to be two versions of history, the truth and what Ennio makes up. I was like, oh, this was really silly of you. You now have to world build twice and get it, explain it twice. It used to be much more of a mystery. You found out by the midpoint what the truth was. But then we added the prologue and Pitch Wars, and I was like, oh, this is a lot to get into. One chapter I think I had read for a long time about the history of more male focused monotheistic faith, kind of supplanting, more polytheistic paganism, and lots of where many of the deities were female. And just like that, I had done a lot of reading. My mother had given me my grandmother's book that was a nonfiction about that topic. I was just kind of fascinated by that. And so when I was like, okay, what's the enduring truth and what's the actual original truth? It just kind of made sense. If you go even to the Vatican, you'll see it's the Vatican, but then there'll be statues based on Roman pagan myths right there as well. And so just that overwriting of the different stories was so interesting to me. And so when I was figuring out what they were going to be, I was like, okay, it'll be like this. It'll be like the more male same and then the more changeable buried religion. And yeah, I just kind of put in stuff that I liked. They each had their own little icon, and they were made out of different materials. And I actually brought in phase change, like the three states of matter. Like, each temple is sort of solid, liquid, gas, like more solid or more adaptable or changes all the time. And that was probably because I was homeschooling through the pandemic and reading about elementary science. And I was like, yeah, I'm going to put that in. Sounds good. But it was really fun to show what the different value systems would be for each temple and their patron goddesses of that. Some of them are more like, you got to hang on to your tradition, which can be a great value when it's not taken too far. They have to be in balance. And Anya throws it all out of balance. And then the more adaptable water and wine community and getting along, and then the one that's connected to the moon and inspiration and incense smoke and flashes of epiphany. Yeah, so it's just kind of like fun building those out and then they get buried and overwritten and lost.

[33:49] Marissa: Bring them back. Bring them back to the surface. As we're on that topic of developing the faith system, every chapter also starts with would you call it a scripture? I guess.

[34:07] Leanne : Yeah, because it is from the temple, kind of like an educational book.

[34:13] Marissa: And I love that they're thematic to the story, but also really dense, where they feel like they require someone smarter than you to interpret them for you. Were those difficult to write or how did you go about creating those?

[34:32] Leanne : I added those during pitch wars to help work in more of the world building. And I looked at some examples, and I did want them to sound like a very ancient text, but I don't know, I feel like that's more like my natural original writing style of having gone through spending many years writing analytical essays, and I've had to train myself out of that to write more accessibly. I think I just drew on just having listened to readings in church for many years. Sometimes I had to set a funny construction because I was like, no, this is like biblical syntax. Or just reading older texts all through my English degree and just drawing on that. But I loved making each one relate thematically, like, either reveal a little detail that you might need to know for that chapter or something about the goddesses that would relate to what the characters were going through in that chapter.

[35:34] Marissa: Yeah. No, it's one of those where you almost after you've read the chapter, you almost want to go back and, like, wait. I feel like I was given a.

[35:42] Leanne : Hint earlier, and I knew that not everybody would take the time to read it, especially when it was in the middle of the world's ending and people are dying.

[35:50] Marissa: Right.

[35:51] Leanne : But I was like, It'll be there if they want to go back.

[35:54] Marissa: That's true. That's true. It's the sort of book that you could read again, and you probably pick up on new things. All right, my last question before we move on to our bonus round. You brought up drama and Romeo and Juliet. And also your bio in the book mentions that you've performed in a lot of plays. And I love drama. I was in it a little bit as a kid, and now my two girls are recently getting into it. What do you think being involved in theater has done for you as a writer?

[36:30] Leanne : I think theater was the way when I was a kid, that's how I could travel the didn't I didn't leave California. Most of my you know, being on stage, you could be in ancient Greece and you could be anywhere, and I just love that. I think it just really breeds imagination and creativity and also makes you pay attention to being very effective with each word, because scripts aren't as long as novels. But what I loved about theater was just, like, the huge, intense emotions, like people bursting out into song or screaming or holding back their tears. So bravely, but within a very set structure and an artfulness to it. And that connection with the audience and I think that that was something that took me a long time to rediscover in my own writing. But keeping the reader in mind, just like you would when you're vibing with the audience, really helped me. I feel like I didn't start doing that until this book.

[37:38] Marissa: No, that's interesting. And I'd never really thought of that before. But I also love that about theater and just the heightened emotions. And it's funny that with writing and storytelling, on one hand, you do want things to be believable and realistic, and we're kind of striving for that suspension of disbelief with your readers. At the same time, fiction is supposed to be a little heightened. Like, everything should be a little more romantic, a little more heroic, a little more exciting, because that's fun.

[38:21] Leanne : You can dig into all the drama and angst and live in that moment.

[38:26] Marissa: No, I love that. And then you mentioned earlier, too, I think that acting and drama kind of helps you get into some of the character voices as well. And I can totally see that, too.

[38:39] Leanne : Yeah. And I always love theater. And there's, like, a little nod to this in the book. They're putting on the festival play. They would do miracle plays back in the day. And just like, the idea of having a set script is such an autistic way of being in planning it out ahead of time. And I love that about theater, that you could plan everything out, but then also and I'll do that. I'll just have conversations with the characters that never make it onto the page, onto the final page, but just kind of pretend to be them and improv with myself. Yeah, it helps.

[39:15] Marissa: No, it's so funny that it is this art form that is both very planned and rehearsed, and yet also you need to always be prepared for things to go wrong. There's a lot of improv, and the show must go on if something bad happens. You just have to keep going and figure it out. I think that relates so much to writers and writing.

[39:40] Leanne : Right. Especially if you're, like, a planner, but you also like to veer from that, right?

[39:47] Marissa: No, I am a planner, but I've also come to realize that no matter how much I plan and outline, things always change once you actually get into the writing of it. And you just have to be a little flexible.

[39:59] Leanne : Yeah.

[40:00] Marissa: All right, are you ready for our bonus round?

[40:03] Leanne : I am ready.

[40:04] Marissa: What book makes you happy?

[40:08] Leanne : Oh, I mentioned that I started reading a lot of romances when I was querying just as, like, a mental escape, and I think I would have to say actor age eve Brown by Talia Hibbers. It's two autistics falling in love in England, and it's just so deeply relatable and they're know loving the heck out of each other just the way they are, and it just makes me giddy. I put it on at night. If I can't sleep, I'll put on the audiobook. If my brain is being an existential nightmare, I'll put on the audiobook and just go away to a happy place instead.

[40:39] Marissa: I love that. What are you working on next?

[40:44] Leanne : Well, so my book two is about an autistic inventor who goes to hell to avenge her best friend, but it turns out he is still alive there, but he turned into a monster that's to a darker shore. And when I thought that I wouldn't be able to sell any of these ya fantasies, I wrote a contemporary rom.com because I have been reading so many of them and so that's still something I'm working on. But right now I'm drafting another Italian inspired ya fantasy. It's the first single point of view, first person point of view that I've done in many books now. And it's just about an absolutely feral girl who's just full of love and chaos and gets into so many shenanigans. And I'm having a lot of fun drafting that now.

[41:29] Marissa: Fun is it ya? Middle grade it's ya.

[41:33] Leanne : I've been thinking if I should make it adult, but I think I want to keep it ya just because of some of the it's just it's very based know, prayer ended up being very based like Florence sort know, like a northern walled city. But this one draws a lot on stories that my mom told me and my family in southern Italy about wolf hunters. And she read part of it and she was like, oh, your great great grandfather was a wolf hunter. I'm like, I know you told me about it, so I put it in the book.

[42:04] Marissa: Where do you think it came from, mom?

[42:07] Leanne : That's also why they all left, because maybe someplace without so many wolves.

[42:13] Marissa: Lastly, where can people find you?

[42:15] Leanne : I am online on Instagram and TikTok and Blue Sky and Threads and all those places as Schwartz Words and still on Twitter sometimes as lifebreaking in my website's, Leanne schwartz.com. Also awesome.

[42:32] Marissa: Leanne, thank you so much for joining me today.

[42:35] Leanne : Thank you so much for having me. I was thrilled to be here.

[42:39] Marissa: Readers definitely check out A Prayer for Vengeance. It is available now. Of course, we encourage you to support your local independent bookstore. If you don't have a local indie, you can check out our affiliate store that is@bookshop.org slash shop slash Marissa Meyer. And don't forget about our merchandise on Etsy, instagram and T Public. You can find all the links on our Instagram profile. Next week, I will be talking with Kate Pierceall about her eerie mystery, bittersweet in the Hollow. If you're enjoying these conversations, please subscribe and follow us on Instagram at Marissa Meyer, author and at Happy Writer Podcast. Until next time, stay inspired, keep writing and whatever life throws at today. I hope that now you're feeling a little bit happier.