Catina: Hi Liza, I want to take the time to thank you for stopping by and doing this interview with me. Liza Snow is the author of Obedience.
~Ouestions about the Author~
is a debut for me, but I’m very excited about it. I love writing romance. The only other genre I would love to try at some point is science fiction or fantasy, because I adore those books, but I feel like for my abilities as an author, romance is a perfect fit for me and makes sense. And I really enjoy the community and how excited readers get. Outside of writing and reading, I am pretty much the worlds biggest nerd. I love scifi and fantasy as I said, I play video games and board games in my spare time, I love going for sunrise walks and Tai Chi on the beach (and I’m learning to surf this weekend which I’m SUPER excited about). I also LOVE music, I play a handful of instruments and sing. I live with my husband and my three animal children in Florida, and I can watch rocket launches from my backyard, which is pretty freaking cool. I also live off coffee and am a snob about it.
Catina: Do you have any special sayings or expressions?
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost
Catina: What is your favorite book? Why?
Liza: I have a couple favorites. My absolute favorite of all time is Dune by Frank Herbert, it is classic science fiction and I absolutely cannot recommend it to anyone interested in science fiction enough. The Alchemist is another favorite of mine. How beautiful is this quote? “I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.” It melts my soul. The Princess Bride is my favorite romance book, for sure. In college, I read The Fountainhead and it’s also one of my top favorites. Again, it was a quote by one of the characters that stuck with me. “To sell your soul is the easiest thing in the world. That’s what everybody does every hour of his life. If I asked you to keep your soul—would you understand why that was so much harder?” I also used to read the crap out of every Star Wars novel in existence, back in the 90s and 2000s. I loved all of those classic ones.
Catina: When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?
Liza: I’ve always loved to write and tell stories, since I was really young. In high school I thought I wanted to direct musicals for a living and write them, then in college I got an associates degree in video production and sound editing and wrote some scripts then and enjoyed it. It wasn’t until I had a very encouraging friend tell me I had a gift I should share, that I found the courage to self-publish in 2017, and it’s been downhill ever since. I’ll never stop writing.
Catina: What books/authors influenced you to write your first book?
Liza: I have a YA book that’s like halfway done and I worked on for ten years that was inspired by Harry Potter (of course lol) and the book series Enders Game by Orson Scott Card, and then the X-Men series. I wanted to do a book about “extraordinary extraterrestrials.” It is a cool idea, but it’s been sitting there forever. Honestly, it was a friend of mine named Amanda (who’s an author) who encouraged me to publish my first book. She wanted me to write for a minority group of individuals who were very voracious readers and really enjoyed new books, and I found a huge community with them for years. I very much enjoyed it. I just decided to jump in bigger ponds and try to swim and see what happens. Here’s hoping.
~Questions about your book~
Catina: Do you recall how your interest in writing originated?
Liza: If you could ask my family when I was little, every single one of them would tell you how much I loved to tell people stories. I can’t remember when I didn’t want to. And when I started taking English classes in high school I started realizing I really liked it, my brain just kind of shut off and my fingers whizzed on the keyboard and things just came out of my brain that felt like effortlessly.
It occurred to me at that point, know, if you can do this, maybe this is meant to be? Especially since I enjoyed it so much.
Catina: Where did you get your ideas for your book?
Liza: In 2019, I went to the Ringling Museum in Sarasota one day and met a silk aerialist whose name was Cassandra. I went to that museum to write a lot, but I just happened to walk through the museum that day and meet her. She talked a lot about herself and the traveling circus she was with, and she was SUCH a neat person. We went and had lunch together and before we left each other, she told me “You better write a character in one of your books who’s a silk aerialist named Cassandra!” And since then, the idea’s been lingering in my head. There are some things in my book I can’t really tell you how they came about, some of them just came about having been so utterly immersed in the thing for a while it started just popping into my mind and making sense. But that single thread, meeting Cassandra, was what started it all.
Catina: Give us an insight into your main character. What does he/she do that is so special?
Liza: For Cassandra Blackstone, she’s a pretty fierce female lead character in my opinion. The woman has been through a lot, as you’ll find out in the book and she’s still standing. Which makes her a perfect compliment for my male lead, Chandler, because she knows how to deal with some intense stuff and she has a handle of her emotions pretty firmly. She’s also one of the most devoted people and passionate people there is—she spent her entire teenage years and young adult life trying to master the silks, just so she could work with her idol one day. And, I’m proud of her, because she did it! What I’d also like to add that I love so much about Roo voicing her in the audiobook, is that while she brought this really unique, beautiful, youthful voice to her character… Roo also was so good at capturing Cassandra’s “fierce” side. You could tell just by the way she narrated how strong of a character Cassandra is, and I was so proud of her for how she interpreted the character, it was spot on. For Chandler Moreau, my editor likes to say “he’s soft and hard in all the right places.” I know people will turn that dirty, but haha. I mean to say, he’s got a lot of rough edges from a particularly difficult life he’s had to lead, but he still manages to be a kind person with the best of intentions. He’s also the best silk aerialist in the world—and he, ah, to not give spoilers—has a passion for rope? Lol.
And I’d like to add about Danny, I know a lot of people comment how much they love his deeper
toned voice and the growl he now infamously has to do for Chandler haha. But one thing I
absolutely adore about Danny, just in general as a narrator but specifically for Chandler, which
fits my character perfectly, is that while he has this very deep, very commanding quality about
his voice… he also just has this really warm tone to it, too. Chandler, while he makes his fair
share of mistakes and struggles at times, is ultimately a good person, and you can just hear it in
his voice when he’s narrated. It’s the kind of voice you want to hug.
Catina: Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?
Liza: It’s a double-edged sword kind of thing—and that is, that every single book you ever write is always different. You think you have a routine down and a method to the madness, and then it gets flipped on it’s head for some reason. It’s a wild ride, but it’s so much fun, even on the days it isn’t. I also am still learning to perfect strengthening my writing grammatically and stylistically. I am no poet as far as writing is concerned and it’s a struggle sometimes because I have bad habits and will make mistakes with my work, but—I will say I can tell a good story at least. And I read an article about Brandon Sanderson one time, and it really resonated with me, and he basically said that if you can tell a good story and things make sense to the readers, then that’s truly all that really matters. But I definitely still keep trying to improve my craft, regardless.
Catina: What are your current projects?
Liza: I am in the process of rewriting Discipline for it’s October 2023 release! And marketing Obedience/trying to get it some attention, which has been fun. I think most writers LEAST favorite thing is marketing their book. I am a marketer for my day job, and I love marketing at my job, but you couldn’t pay me enough money to want to be super enthusiastic about marketing my book (outside of maybe just talking to someone about it—ask my narrators, I won’t shut up.)
Catina: What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
Liza: Write every single day, no matter what. Even if it’s for 20 mins. If you do miss a day, remember—it’s just one day. Get up the next day and try again. Practice. Read a lot. Read lots of writing books. Keep track of your word counts and your moods when writing (it really helps). Try doing sprints. And, ABOVE ALL, remember… every single human being on this planet is different. What works for one of us, might not work for you. Or some of it might, but you might need to try something else for other things. And that is okay! It’s a learning process.
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