Meet Mara Duryea | Author of The Monsters and Demons Fantasy Series

We had the good fortune of connecting with Mara Duryea and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Mara, what role has risk played in your life or career?
If you’re going to take a risk, you need the faith to believe that it will work. In this way, risk is not a gamble, although the outcomes love to be insane.

I took a risk when I became a writer, because writing is not the “normal” career. It isn’t a guarantee. I wanted to be a writer so bad that I took a jump. It felt like I was leaping off of a tower and confident that I wouldn’t go splat at the bottom, but would sprout wings and fly.

I didn’t have a lot of support. I had people telling me I needed to make beds over at the hotel, people saying I’d never get a job after a certain period, people looking down on me for the path that I chose, others saying I might never be published, and I’d also get discouraging comments from other writers who said that the bulk of us would never be anything special. We would only be the rabble and only a lucky few would make it.

I started out with nothing. I had no connections and no idea how to even start becoming a writer. All I had was this burning, driving, mad desire to be one. I rushed in headlong, searching the internet for answers. I ran into other writers who refused to help get me on the right path. I had to ignore all the naysayers.

With prayers that begged for help and a mother who never gave up on me, I finally found my way into the short story route, where I was forced to learn how to write better than I’d ever written before. All my learning came from reading books like Sense and Sensibility, Dracula, Redwall, Treasure Island, and so on. I started reading blogs on writing techniques. I had a LONG way to go. At this point, it was do or die. I’d burned all my bridges. Maybe I burned them so that I wouldn’t give up and turn back, so that I wouldn’t take an easier course.

My writing career has become one risk after another. I risked my heartstrings for every rejection letter I received. I risked my stories being stolen whenever I sent them out to the magazines. I risked my safe zone because I had to widen it for interviews and interactions with people I didn’t know if I trusted or not. I had to put trust in people who were total strangers.

I took a giant risk when I decided to self publish my book instead of going the traditional route. It was so hard. When it was finally published, I was a nervous wreck and had to recover for a spell. After that, my book was out there, risking its neck because there were cruel people ready to just hurt someone with their reviews. I risked a few review swaps, which didn’t go very well, so I stopped doing it. I had to feel out what was right and wrong.

I risked unpublishing that book, scaling it up, and then sending it back out. When it came to marketing, I risked what little money I had on Amazon Ads. In the end, I started doing things differently from other authors. This was a risk in itself, because if it failed, I didn’t know what I would do next. I took a massive leap of faith and I didn’t splat on the ground. Am I flying yet? Not yet. Am I climbing a mountain? Yes. When I reach the top, will I sprout wings and fly? You can bet I’m going to take that leap and I AM going to fly.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
One of the nicest things I’ve heard about my writing was when I was about to be interviewed for a podcast. A few years back, I had written a story called “The Hairy Man” for a Halloween anthology. The interviewer had read the story and had wanted to read it for his podcast. He’d been on the verge of sending me a request when I had sent the story in for consideration. He told me my story had stood out from all the other stories. He said it had a depth to it and that I could flesh out a character in the first few sentences.

I love writing in third person omniscient. I’ve always written that way because I love diving into all the characters’ heads, and not just sticking with one. Later, I found out that this was extremely hard to do. I was called masterful by a college professor because I could do it. I can juggle many characters, hop into all their heads in the same scene, and not get anybody confused.

My editor told me I taught her to write in a new way. She said she can tell I love my characters. Some authors don’t love their characters. I can also write fight scenes very well, which is something not everyone can do. I have inadvertently placed Native American values into stories. They have a Native American flair. My characters are also minorities, mainly Apache because that’s where I grew up.

None of this was easy. I cried the whole way, I struggled, I melted my brain. The only thing that came easy was third person omniscient. I read blogs and I read books. I wrote like a madwoman every day because if I didn’t, I was going to shrivel up and die. Writing every day was no problem. It was stopping so I could do the less important things, like going to school, that was hard. I usually did all my homework on the bus during high school so I could write. I finished assignments early so I could write. I read Gone With The Wind in two days and made a report out of it in a day so I could write. I got an A+ on it, too. My teacher was so bewildered. In college, I made a checklist so that everything was done by Friday so that I could write all weekend.

When the naysayer and all the wretches who tried to discourage me appeared in my life, all their hurtful comments just vanished in the wake of that madness that drove my every move. I had to write. Their words became gibberish in the flow of words written from a feverish hand. Later, when I heard of authors about to quit writing because people were being cruel, I couldn’t comprehend it. I deemed them as false writers, for how could they stop because of some stranger’s opinion? Where was the fire in their bosoms that should have burned away all negativity? No rejection letter, no matter how cruel, could make me desist. Negative comments only made me angry. I WOULD prove them wrong. I began to see rejection letters as written by dumb idiots who didn’t have the brains to see the beauty of what I had written. And then, I got them published anyway. Some of the harder sells became the favorites. One time, it took me four years to get a story published. I knew it was good. I just had to find a magazine who wasn’t stupid.

Writing has been my mainstay. Loved ones have died, and I escaped into my writing. I went through a spell of depression where all feeling vanished. Feeling only came back when I wrote. It was the only time I felt alive in those dark years. My dad lost both of his legs. The strain of those harsh months were relieved only when I was writing. From all the deaths and hardships I had no control over, I had a place where I could escape. I had a place I could control. I spurn the saying, “Kill beloved characters to put more meaning into something,” as if death is the end all and be all of good writing and a good story. What about redeeming arcs? What about things that have more meaning than a quick bullet or an arrow shaft? What about a good old fashioned happy ending? This world is dark enough. There are plenty of authors who go in that direction. They don’t need me on their bandwagon. I am a creative. I can do as I please.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
I live out in the sticks. I could take my friend out camping and then we can look for bigfoot. We could go star gazing, because we have the best stars. And then we could go look for big foot. There are so many haunted cabins out there. And bigfoot. I’d take my friend fishing and all the way to this gorgeous place that looks like a fantasy land.

There are a lot of little restaurants in town about fifteen minutes away. Most of them are occupied by old retired people, and there’s a place that looks like Barter Town from Mad Max. There are antique shops all over the place, pretty creepy and full of things that look haunted. Why would anybody buy a lock of hair cut off from a dead corpse and framed from the 1800’s? Not me.

I’d take my friend hiking. Of course, the last time I did that, some massive black thing ran across the road and I ran home…I almost left my friend there, too.

About thirty miles away, for the whole mountain is connected, there’s a museum. They made the whole fort a museum, so you can go to all of the old houses when General Custer was there. They even have his cabin and his boots. The man had some tiny feet. Down a hill, there’s an old Apache village. Very cool. You can even go to the old boarding school. They still use it today. Whatever you do, don’t wear yellow down there. Tiny, red, itchy bugs will swarm over you and burrow into your skin. Then there’s a lot of screaming involved.

Up the hill thirty miles in the other direction is the Sunrise Ski Resort. It has a hotel, you can go horseback riding, a restaurant at the top of the ski mountain, and some seriously beautiful forests and meadows that legit look like Hyrule Field. Even Sunrise Lake looks like Lake Hylia.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I would say my mom. She has been right there with me the whole time and is now my sounding board. She’s been in everything that I’ve done. She’s been in mourning with me whenever I received a rejection letter or a bad review, she gave me pep talks, and when I was depressed, she lifted my spirits until everything was better again. She was my first fan, editor, and beta reader.

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Image Credits
Jeff Brown Graphics, Julia Benally, @brainsandsocks, Gwendolyn Kiste