Page Created: 05/03/19. Last Updated: 08/15/19.
LARA ELENA DONNELLY
Books:
Amberlough
Armistice
Amnesty
MEETING DETAIL
Meeting Date: August 10, 2019.
Meeting Site: Barnes & Noble Booksellers. Paramus, New Jersey.
Attendance: 28.
Meeting Program: Talk / Q & A by Science Fiction Author.
Newsletter Account
The following account is reprinted from THE STARSHIP EXPRESS Copyright 2019 Philip J De Parto:
The Science Fiction Association of Bergen County met at Barnes & Noble in Paramus, New Jersey on Saturday, August 10. 2019, Phiiip De Parto led the Ice Nine pre-meering general discussion. David Willison led the Writers' Space Salon pre-meeting discussion about Breaking Genre Rules in the store's cafe. Author Lara Elena Donnelly spoke and answered questions at the 7:30 PM main event.
Our guest has written a trilogy for Tor Books: AMBERLOUGH, ARMISTICE, and AMNESTY. The works are set in the 1930s of a parallel world and deal with the rist and aftermath of fascism and it affect on art and culture. You can think of the works as a cross between the show, Cabaret, and the film, CASABLANCA.
AMBERLOUGH took our speaker 1-1/2 years to write. It was planned as a standalone. However, the marketing department believed that give the nation's political climate, the book could break out into a much wider audience. Ms Donnelly cranked out the second book in three months and the third six months after that.
Her path to publication was a bit out of the ordinary. As a teen she entered into a correspondence with fantasy author Holly Black, which (over a period of years) led to one day Clarion Writers' Teen Workshop which led to the Alpha Teen Workshop which led to becoming friends with a number of academic writers who wrote about science fiction. She attended the International Conference on the Fantastic Arts with academic friends and found herself in a hot tub with two academics and editor Diana Pho of Tor Books who asked if she was a writer. The brain shut down, the elevator pitch short circuited, but enough of the keywords dribbled out that Ms Pho asked to see the manuscript. A contract came in short order. The advance enabled our speaker to move to New York.
Lara Elena Donnelly's stories are character-driven. The plots ensue from the actions of the characters. AMBERLOUGH began with the vision of her her in a bind. What, she asked, caused him to be in this situation? She worked backwards from there to develop the story.
(To Be Coninured at 2019 - 08/2019 Meeting at www.sfabc.org)