Marilyn Grant
asked:
Hi Lucia!!! Thank you for hosting this Q&A! I connect to Zair’s isolation and loneliness, even if not at quite the same scale! But youthhood and school isn’t always easy to navigate. I feel this story speaks to people who don’t fit in, in a deeper way. Can you say how you were able to bring this to life?
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A Desert of Bleeding Sand,
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Lucia Damisa
I am so so glad you feel so about Zair’s journey!! I think with fantasy books, we generally love tropes like rags-to-riches and lonely-to-popular because these are great arcs. BUT during these recent years of my writing journey, I learned a key lesson (one that probably should’ve been a given haha). To write from experiences because that is what makes a story feel most profound.
I can’t exactly remember what made me decide to make Zair from the desolated tribe, but I do remember those moments when I began to connect with her character and feel the last barricade of strangers-just-meeting-each-other fall away. I remember moments when I channeled certain personal experiences/feelings to understand how she felt in situations, how she got through them, and what her thought process would be like. In high school and long after, when my full personality formed—reader, information lover, introvert type—I began to (in the amazing words of Oh from Home) ‘fit out’.
I come from a place where people are boisterous and highly extroverted, and if you’re not these things, you’re seen as odd. Or dull. So I felt like a misfit for a good chunk of my youth. Long story short, I’ve deeply shared Zair’s feeling of being an outcast and the haven she finds in her immediate family, and that’s why it was possible to write Zair as I have :)
I can’t exactly remember what made me decide to make Zair from the desolated tribe, but I do remember those moments when I began to connect with her character and feel the last barricade of strangers-just-meeting-each-other fall away. I remember moments when I channeled certain personal experiences/feelings to understand how she felt in situations, how she got through them, and what her thought process would be like. In high school and long after, when my full personality formed—reader, information lover, introvert type—I began to (in the amazing words of Oh from Home) ‘fit out’.
I come from a place where people are boisterous and highly extroverted, and if you’re not these things, you’re seen as odd. Or dull. So I felt like a misfit for a good chunk of my youth. Long story short, I’ve deeply shared Zair’s feeling of being an outcast and the haven she finds in her immediate family, and that’s why it was possible to write Zair as I have :)
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