Candidly Elite [Interviews]

🍬Persistent Silence || ARLockhart🍬

❤️INTERVIEW:-

@ridampanesar: Hi, I'm Ruby, your interviewer! How are you?

@ARLockhart: Hello! I'm doing alright, slowly losing my voice since I'm training two new people at work, but other than that, I'm good!

R: Oh wow! That's terrible. I hope you feel better soon.Anyways, I want to start off by congratulating you on your first place win for the Jinxed July Contest by @theelitesupportclub! Your book deserves it!

AR: Thank you!!

R: So, how did you come up with the idea of 'Persistent Silence'?

AR: The first inkling of Persistent Silence came to be in 2012 after my friend sent me a let's play of "Slender, The Eight Pages" without telling me anything about what the video would be like besides "scary". At the beginning of the game, the unnamed female playable character jumped a fence into the woods at night before Slender Man started chasing her, and something about that set up sparked my imagination; why would a character *knowingly* go into the woods where a monster would hunt them down?Persistent Silence has evolved a lot throughout the years since then, but the core idea was me trying to answer that question.

R: Oh wow! That's incredible, how stories can come from seemingly little things. Also, I remember the Slender man hype XD so scary!

AR: The Slender Man hype was real! It's what got me into horror in the first place since ghost sand haunted locations never scared me, but an unknowable, incomprehensible *thing* that was hunting you down? That scared me. Originally, the story was straight up Slender Man fan-fiction,but after the 2014 stabbings, I completely removed any Slender Man references and made Persistent Silence its own thing. But, fun fact, the title comes from the original Slender Man Something Awful forums: One of the original photo-shop photos was posted with the caption,"We didn't want to go, we didn't want to kill them, but its persistent silence and out stretched arms horrified and comforted us at the same time..." and I loved the phrase.

R: What's your favourite character so far from your book? And how did that character come to be?

AR: My favourite characters would be a toss-up between Mark and Jonathan. Mark's motivations and struggles are deeply personal and he keeps them close to the chest, so I loved exploring and finding situations that would spark conflict for him and removing the layers to show who he is underneath.For Jonathan, I love him because he has some really effed up morals and I have always had a soft spot for bastard characters.

R: Same, I have a soft spot for bastard characters too, LOL. I love deep and complex characters,and you are doing a great job of that in your story!You said you like horror, is there any other genre you like to read or are planning to write?

AR: While I mainly enjoy horror, I also really like fantasy! I really enjoy god pantheons, so my next story will be about an old pantheon fighting against the new gods that cursed them and the mortals who are forced into the conflict due to the old gods being cursed to not have power unless they are possessing a mortal.

R: Wow that sounds so exciting! I will be looking forward to it.Your writing really stands out to me! You have an excellent way of portraying suspense with the perfect balance of short concise sentences and long flowery ones. How did you learn this?

AR: Practice, practice, and more practice. Writing is a skill, and the only way to master it is to do it a lot for a very long time, the same way an athlete trains for years before they're able to compete in the Olympics. There are no shortcuts to learning a skill; you have to do it, and do it a lot.There's also a lot of benefits from practicing outside of your chosen genre and style; while I personally hate writing poetry, the multiple poetry classes I had to take to graduate taught me how to boil down an idea into a sentence, as well as what goes into a memorable description.My poetry classes were also what inspired me to break up the nightmares visually as I did in Persistent Silence; the poetry I loved reading and creating in that class were the ones that played with the structure for an effect, and I used it to liter ally show the world falling apart in a way that I couldn't show with words alone.

R: That's really interesting! I'm not a fan of poetry either, because it looks so hard, but there are definitely lots you can learn from it! And you're absolutely right about practicing writing.Tell us more about yourself! Do you have any other interests besides writing?

AR: I'm a really big animal lover! Horses are my true love; I've been riding since I was ten, and I used to compete a lot while I was in high school. I don't have a horse of my own and quarantine has prevented me from starting it back up, but I'm absolutely planning on taking it back up once a vaccine is out.For pets, I have two dogs and two cats. My one dog, Starling, is an absolute doll. She's my emotional support dog and if she detects any sadness in the house, she will run in and jump on whoever is upset and force them to love her instead.

R: Awww! Starling sounds so cute!! What breed is she?

AR: She's a cocker spaniel mix! She's all black with feathery fur.

R: So cute!!!Was there any specific reason you chose Wattpad as a suitable platform to publish your book?

AR: The same friend who gave me the idea to write the story was a Wattpad regular back in2012 and introduced me to the site, and I've been on here since then. The website was *very*different back then (they used to have an instant messenger!), but I liked the ease of Wattpad and liked that it allowed you to consider publishing your story after you posted it, as my goal is to be traditionally published.

R: Nice! You answered my next question: what is one of your long term goals as a writer? Isthere any other goal you plan to achieve?

AR: My ultimate goal is to be published with one of the big five publishers, but realistically, I'd love to be published with Tor or Wednesday Books. I'm the type that, once I have set my sights on something, I don't stop until it happens, so I'm certain I'll be published one day!

R: I hope you achieve your goals because you have so much potential and are an amazing writer!! I will definitely support you and buy your books when you get published!

AR: Thank you!!! It means a lot!! ♥

R: Thanks so much for doing this interview with me and @theelitesupportclub! I had so much fun interviewing you! Good luck with 'Persistent Silence!'

AR: Thank you! Good luck with "After School" as well!

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