Today, Feathered Quill reviewer Tripti Kandari is talking with Maria Giakoumatos, author of Midnight Waltz.

FQ: The bond of Anthony and Emily at times seems to tread a delicate line between friendship and romance. Did you consider altering the dynamics of their relationship at any point during the writing process? What informed your ultimate decision?

GIAKOUMATOS: I never planned to have Emily and Anthony actually end up as a couple. Yeah, he does develop feelings for her, but for the themes of this book, it was really important for me to have these two points: (1) Emily doesn't need a man. She starts off dependent on Anthony, but as the story progresses and she develops, she learns to take care of herself and stand up for herself more. (2) Anthony learns to handle rejection and be a friend to Emily without any ulterior motives. The story all started because he was rejected by a girl. I think it's important for him - and anyone, really, but especially young men - to understand that you can be a good friend to a girl without having the intention to end up with her. I really wanted to have Anthony just be a really good friend to Emily and not show any resent to her for rejecting his feelings.

FQ: Anthony’s anxiety about memory manipulation recurs throughout the story. What insights do you hope to convey to readers regarding the nature of memory?

GIAKOUMATOS: Our memories make up who we are. Anthony's fear of losing his memories is mostly around losing Emily and his friends, but it's also a loss of identity. Emily makes the choice at one point to forget her friends and go back to her past life, but once she learns her life with her brother wasn't all that she believed it was, she's ready to move on and leave him. Even our bad memories make up who we are. Midnight Waltz is a lot about accepting trauma and learning how to grow past it. While I'm sure most people would rather forget about our trauma, it's better to move away from toxic environments and people than to live in ignorance.

FQ: What inspired the creation of Eden, an exorcist organization?

GIAKOUMATOS: I just think secret organizations are heckin' dope, and what's cooler than a group of ass-kicking, demon-fighting exorcists? I came up with the idea for Eden back when I was a kid, making up spooky stories for fun to scare my classmates. It just made sense to me that there should be a group of exorcists that work to keep ghosts and demons away from the general public. My parents took me to church when I was a kid, so I guess I got some inspiration there. 

FQ: What was your thought process behind blending fantasy with psychological realism in Midnight Waltz?

GIAKOUMATOS: I kind of brushed upon it already, but Midnight Waltz has a lot of themes around trauma. Gothic horror has historically been used as a dark fantasy lens for subjects that were taboo in the Victorian Era. Vampires were often used to portray sexual abuse, specifically by an older male to a younger woman. Midnight Waltz is what I like to call a modern gothic horror story. It starts off with the typical tale of a girl locked away in a spooky mansion at the hand of a male oppressor. But as the story goes on, it becomes less gothy and romantic and much more real and bleak. Emily was abused physically and mentally by her brother Zalem - not sexually, obviously, we're not THAT taboo here. But like authors before me, I wanted to use fantasy/horror to tell a very real story about growing up with and beyond an abusive past, and using fantasy/horror as a lens for all the difficult decisions older teens like Anthony and Olivia are forced to make without adult support.

FQ: What narrative element posed the biggest challenge in your writing process?

GIAKOUMATOS: I honestly HATE writing action scenes! It's funny because there are so many in Midnight Waltz. I can't even begin to discuss how many times the action scenes needed editing to flow better or just make sense visually. If I could make all the action scenes into comic strips or animated features, I would, because writing an exciting action scene is so much harder (at least for me) than writing any other type of scene. If mixed-media story telling becomes a thing, someone let me know. I'll publish a book that is also a comic that also comes with a download code for movie cut scenes or something. That being said, there's a reason the next books in the series have less battle scenes.

FQ: Were there any literary works or authors that inspired you while writing Midnight Waltz?

GIAKOUMATOS: Not really literary, but I was really into fantasy/action anime like InuYasha while writing Midnight Waltz. A lot of them used Japanese mythology and religious elements to fight demons, so I thought it'd be cool to do something like that with Christianity, since that's what I was familiar with. Then I watched Supernatural and Constantine and realized the idea was done already, but I was too deep into the story at that point. Another work, total curveball here, but All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy. I loved how it started off romanticizing cowboys, and then it just gets so dry and stark on what it's actually like, you have to re-read passages because major things like death just kind of happen. I wanted to do the same thing with Midnight Waltz, but de-romanticize tropes of the damsel trapped in the spooky mansion and vampires.

FQ: You have nicely balanced the supernatural elements in the text with the themes of friendship and family. How did you ensure that these elements intertwine without overshadowing each other?

GIAKOUMATOS: Like I mentioned before, I use a lot of the supernatural elements as a parallel to difficult decisions older teens face with their friends and families. A lot of it is things I struggled with as a teen and young adult; my own instances of abuse, learning adults (especially parents) don't always have the kindest ways of showing love but they mean well. I guess they don't overshadow because it all goes hand-in-hand. The Mavor family is loaded with drama. Supernatural drama, yes, but it's all within the family. How they handle it feels very real to me. The parents often seem distant because they are trying to protect the younger members, and the younger members resent their parents for that. They don't understand their parents mean well, but their parents also don't understand they are hurting those they love. By the time the younger ones grow up and realize this, it's often too late to say, "I love you." I think this is a situation many families face. . . But without literal demons in the mix.

FQ: Which character did you find the most challenging to develop?

GIAKOUMATOS: Honestly, most of them felt really natural to me as far as the main cast goes. Sakura wasn't a challenge, but I did have to be very intentional with all her actions to make sure her "plot twist" didn't feel too out of left field. Maybe Karin? A lot of my test readers didn't like her in the early drafts because she was too "annoying." I didn't get that feedback in the final draft, so I guess I did something right. I think as I grew up, she became more natural and real because I could see her struggles better. She's really just a lonely teenager, clinging to Simon, a cool older peer, that she admires for validation. She never had a family, Eden is all she really knows, so on the one hand I can see how she can come off as annoying and clingy. I think that was harder to portray when I was 16, because I - like her - also sought validation from older peers (and was probably really annoying about it). Once I got to my 20s, I was out of her shoes and had lived through her experiences AND was now the older peer that younger people clung to, had crushes on, etc. In general, growing up gave me a new lens for most of the young characters I write about. I no longer agree with their angst, but I can empathize and sympathize.

FQ: What aspect of the narrative-building process required you the most effort to effectively convey to readers?

GIAKOUMATOS: Aside from action scenes, probably the exposition in the early chapters regarding Eden. The idea for Eden and the main exorcist characters have been in my brain since I was like 12? So trying to convey all that information effectively and without just vomiting info on a page was a challenge. There were certain bits of Eden that I still wanted to remain a mystery to the readers if they weren't relevant to the plot yet, and I want the readers to learn with Anthony. But I also wanted to make sure that enough information was given at a time so things made sense.

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