Aurora: Let’s talk about Heart of the Moors! I read it in one night. It’s targeted to middle grade, but captures some quite fantastical elements. How was it writing about Aurora and Maleficent?
Holly: I think when you get asked to do a story (like a retelling) you must be a fan. I was allowed the opportunity to play in a world that otherwise you would not have had the opportunity to play in. It was a really fun, good, exciting story to tell and a great experience to get to figure out what the story could be and where the spaces where in the story that existed already and what I could do with it.
How was it like diving into the Maleficent character for this book?
The hardest thing is that film by its nature doesn’t have interiority. And so you have certain assumptions from characters thinking of them, but when you move into writing you have to actually be willing to make some big conjunctures about “this is how she really feels” and “this is what’s really going on” inside their heads…we know them from the film but it’s different to express it in a written story. Having that interiority is the fun part…but also the intimidating part. Because you want to get the voice right, sound right and you want to use the speech quirks right. It was truly a great experience.
How was it writing Aurora, since they’re so different?
I think that when you look at the two films, the space where we didn’t really see entirely what was going on was with Aurora. And, you know, she was the place where we didn’t stay. So I wanted to get to write about her more because when you’re looking to write something in a world you look for what’s not there? And so, it was fun to write her, she’s a very different character than a lot of characters I have written before…but she had some really big challenges at the end of the film facing her…you know she was in charge in a way that she had not been in charge before. And it was great to explore what she was going to do with that and with these two very different communities of people that she cared about. How much did she consider herself human…so I had a lot of questions, so she was extremely fun to explore and write.