Q&A with Elayna Mae Darcy
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“I had nothing to lose by submitting. What I gained was my first published piece, a place in a magnificent community, and some of the best friends I know.”
Elayna Mae Darcy has been a friend of Wizards in Space since the beginning! She’s an incredibly supportive friend, mentor, writer and now podcaster in the writing community. Elayna works tirelessly to raise up creative voices and is always creating places for writers to network and find resources. On top of that, Elayna’s story CONTINUUM appears in our second issue. A wonderful video-game style short story that uses sci-fi elements to dig into very real world emotional and personal issues.
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How did you find Wizards in Space, and what made you decide to submit to us?
No puns intended, but it really was a stars aligning moment. I had written CONTINUUM to be part of a “video games inspired” short story anthology, and the publisher pulled the plug on the project after month of leaving us hanging. I was devastated. That very night it got pulled, I was scrolling through Twitter, where I followed Olivia because of her involvement in the Potter fandom. She had just shared that it was the last night to submit for Issue 02. I figured I had nothing to lose by submitting. What I gained was my very first published piece, a place in a magnificent community, and some of the best friends I know.
What kind of writing do you do? (genre, style, themes, etc)
If I’m writing it, you can bet there will be lots of hand holding, found families, hope, and stardust. I love stories that explore love in all its forms, from romantic relationships to dearest friends to supportive mentors. Everything I tend to write ends up being magical realism at the least, and epic space fantasies when I’m doing the most. I also have fun weaving poetry into places you wouldn’t normally find it.
Are there any specific writers who inspire you and/or have influenced your own work?
A lot of foundational credit goes to Cornelia Funke’s book INKHEART and D.J. MacHale’s PENDRAGON ADVENTURES. The former taught me about the lyrical magic that language can have, and the later gave me my longing for adventures across time and space. In recent years though I finally read A WRINKLE IN TIME, which made Madeline L’Engle my favorite author I’ve ever read, and I’ve been beyond inspired this past year by the staggering genius that is Elizabeth Acevedo. She plays with story and form in a way that made me fall in love with writing all over again.
In CONTINUUM, you’ve built such a rich and compelling speculative world for the reader within such a short period of time. How do you balance whimsy with believability in this kind of sci-fi piece?
Well I mean first of all, heck thank you for saying that. But the honest truth was that this world stemmed entirely from the character and the fact that I related to her so deeply. The crisis she goes through was one I was deeply feeling when I wrote it, and just the idea that there could exist a game to change my fate was something I'd have loved to press the PLAY button on. So I tried to approach the story the way I approach all my works, which was, give people a character they care about & let the world fill in the blanks. I also really just wrote the kind of story I would want to read -- existential questions about life with heaping teaspoons of pop culture references and feelings.
If you were to give your past self any bit of advice about creating things, what would it be?
I would tell young me to be kinder to herself, because she is capable of creating so many things that she was too afraid then that she couldn’t. At 14, when my sister told me about NaNoWriMo, I didn’t think I could write a whole book. I’ve now written 7. Then I didn’t think I’d be decent at screenplays because my background was in books, but I won a screenwriting scholarship on my senior thesis film, which also was an Honorary Mention for Best Picture that year. I was convinced I was too long winded to ever successfully write a short story, and yet CONTINUUM exists in Wizards in Space. In high school I thought I’d never have the guts or be good enough to write poetry, but my first published collection included 76 of them.
Do you have any special writing rituals (or places or songs) that get you pumped up to put words down?
OMG yes of course. I wear these now very worn in and ink stained arm warmers that are essentially my writing gloves. They not only are comfy and give my wrists some cushion while writing, they are also covered in sci-fi references, and kind of remind me of Wonder Woman’s arm bands. When I put them on to write, I mean business. As for songs, I make a new playlist for every project, so the song that amps me up to write is usually different project to project, but I always end up having one. Current project’s song is Your Light by THE BIG MOON.
What are you reading right now?
The most recent things were SLAY by Brittney Morris which was a knockout of a YA novel and GREAT GODDESSES, a heart rending and healing collection of poetry by queen of my heart Nikita Gill. What I am really hype for next though is diving into CHILDREN OF VIRTUE AND VENGEANCE by Tomi Adeyemi, which drops the first week in December, and SPELLHACKER by M.K. England which is out in January.
Where can we follow/support you on the internet or elsewhere? Plug away!
I have a Patreon for my writing and other creative endeavors, which can be found at patreon.com/elaynamusings. There’s also my website, www.elaynamusings.com, which has a ton of my poetry, blog posts, and my portfolio of video/photo/podcast works. I am also launching a podcast for writers called BE ALL WRITE. Episodes won’t start streaming until January, but you can follow @BeAllWriteCast on Twitter to be first to know when the pilot drops.
Photography credit: Lauren Renner