Aiming for the Moon
Aiming for the Moon
115. Angels of the Resistance: Return of Noelle Salazar (USA Today and International Bestselling Author)
In this episode, USA Today bestselling author, Noelle Salazar, returns to the pod to discuss her second book, Angels of the Resistance. Longtime listeners might recall our previous chat with Ms. Salazar in episode 24 way back in 2020.
In today’s conversation, Ms. Salazar recounts the inspiration for her Angels of the Resistance as well as how her writing process has evolved and matured since her first book, Flight Girls. She also offers advice to aspiring writers before we jump into the purpose of fiction and its impact on us. How does writing and reading about perspectives other than our own change our view of the world around us?
For those interested in checking out Ms. Salazar’s book:
Angles of the Resistance depicts a fascinating but hard part of women’s roles in the resistance against the German occupation of Europe during WWII. It contains some sensitive scenes that might be triggering to some members of the audience. It is a read recommended for a more mature readership.
Topics:
- Inspiration for Angels of the Resistance
- Balance of fact and fiction in Angels of the Resistance
- Plot process: pantser (no outline) or plotter (extensive outlining)?
- Evolution of Ms. Salazar's writing process
- Balance of storytelling and research in realistic fiction
- The importance of fiction--How fiction inspires and encourages and stretches us
- Writing advice to aspiring authors
- "What books have had an impact on you?"
- "What advice do you have for teenagers?"
Noelle Salazar was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, where she's been a Navy recruit, a medical assistant, an NFL cheerleader, and always a storyteller. As a novelist, she has done extensive research into the Women Airforce Service Pilots, interviewing vets and visiting the training facility—now a museum dedicated to the WASP—in Sweetwater, Texas. When she’s not writing, she can be found dodging raindrops and daydreaming of her next book. Noelle lives in Bothell, Washington with her family.
Her debut, The Flight Girls, was a USA Today and international bestseller. Angels of the Resistance is her second novel. Her third book, The Roaring Days of Zora Lily, is now on sale.
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Today's episode has been a long time coming. I've finally been able to surface from beneath junior years sea of schoolwork and standardized tests and release it. In this episode, usa Today bestselling author Noelle Salazar returns to the podcast to discuss her second book, angels of the Resistance. Miss Salazar is the author of Flight Girls, angels of the Resistance and the Roaring Days of Zori Lilly, which is now on sale. Long time listeners might recall our previous conversation with Miss Salazar in episode 24, way back in 2020. But before we get into today's conversation, this is the Aiming for the Moon podcast and I'm your host, taylor Bledsoe.
Speaker 1:On this podcast, I interview interesting people from a teenage perspective. In today's chat, miss Salazar recounts the inspiration for her Angels of the Resistance, as well as how her writing process has evolved and matured since her first book, flight Girls. She also offers advice to aspiring authors before we jump into the purpose of fiction and its impact on us. For those interested in checking out Miss Salazar's book, angels of the Resistance depicts a fascinating but hard part of women's roles in the resistance against the German occupation of Europe during World War II. It contains some sensitive scenes that might be triggering to some members of the audience, so it is a read for a more mature readership.
Speaker 1:If you like what you hear today, please rate the podcast and subscribe. You can follow us at ataamingformoon on all the socials to stay up to date on podcast news and episodes. Check out the episode notes for Noel Salazar's full bio and links to our website, aimingforthemooncom, as well as the podcast sub-stack Lessons from Interesting People. Alright, with that? Sit back, relax and listen in. Thanks again to Paxton Page for this incredible music. Well, thank you so much, miss Salazar, for joining me again on Aiming for the Moon. It's been such a long time since we've had you on and I feel like a lot's changed for both of us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean three years. Definitely it's been a while. I'm so excited to be back. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, thank you. So you're on the podcast for one of the reasons. You released a new book which comes out. Does it come out tomorrow?
Speaker 2:It does yes.
Speaker 1:Well, that's awesome. It's Angels of the Resistance. It's about World War II and these two girls who fight in the. Is it the Dutch Resistance? Is that the Mm-hmm Okay, I wanted to double-check that and the Dutch Resistance? Can you kind of talk about why you wrote this?
Speaker 2:book. Yeah, so the idea came from a friend. I have very nice friends. She sent me an email. In the subject line it said write this book. And then I opened the email and there's this article about the overstiganed sisters who were these real-life teenage sisters that lived in Harlem in the Netherlands and they, at 14 and 16, joined the Dutch Resistance.
Speaker 2:And to me that was just incredible. I mean, I can't imagine at 14 or 16, or I don't want to say the age I'm or at 47, making a choice like that. And so I wanted to explore that, because not only were they just, they were doing this really brave, incredible. You know several, many, many jobs that they did were brave and scary, but they were dealing with trauma, which I don't think a lot of people you know you're just like, oh, they're brave and so courageous and all that stuff, but that's trauma.
Speaker 2:What they were going through. I mean war is trauma period but the very specific jobs that they were doing and the way they were basically using their faces and their bodies to lure Nazis, I mean that's just, and putting themselves in these situations, that was incredible. And I, at 15, had my own trauma. So I mean I definitely don't identify in that I wasn't in a war and I wasn't, you know, trying to survive, but I know what trauma feels like in my body, and so to me it was kind of just this exploration of these young women and wanting to just that explore that.
Speaker 1:So, whatever you say that you got sent a story or whatever and there's nonfiction characters that you've based your book on I always want to ask how much of this is true and how much of this is. Obviously these are your own characters, but you've based them in this real situation and the 10 booms are mentioned throughout the book from the hiding place, and I'm curious how much of this is real and how much of this is your imagination and stuff that you've created for fiction and the sake of storytelling.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. You know about the 10 booms. That's amazing. Most of it is fiction. It's very much inspired by them. But there's, you know, there's a redheaded girl and the 10 or not the 10 booms, the oversteigans. They worked with a redheaded girl and she was very much known as the redheaded girl and that's actually what got her caught was her roots. She had dyed her hair and then her roots started to show.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I mean there are some things that are real, like the town is real, the kinds of jobs they did are real. But the research I did it didn't give specifics about, like how they carried out these jobs necessarily. So I had to like I mean, I read a lot of books about different kinds of resistance work, like in France and all over the place, just to kind of get more of a sense and try and figure out like what this would be like, what the details would be. So it's kind of hard to say, like what exactly is real. Like the situations were based on real situations but I had to create them myself. I mean there was no like this is what it's like to stand behind a tree and wait for the person that's gonna come out that you're going to shoot. Like I had to like put myself mentally and emotionally in those spots as best I could, which is not an easy thing to do.
Speaker 2:I've never been in that situation and it was really dark actually.
Speaker 2:I mean it was a really dark few months when I had to go through my edits and where my editors like hey, what did they feel here and what was this like in this situation, and I was like, well, it wasn't good.
Speaker 2:And I mean I really dig and try and figure out like what would that be to stand there in the freezing cold and I've got a gun in my pocket and I have to commit murder? And even though it's for the sake of my people, it's still murder. And so I mean it's just really hard to say, like what the ratio is, but it's very much inspired by very real jobs that they did and the like the hunger winter that really happened and the way these people had to try and survive is pretty well based in. It's based, in fact, and I just did the best I could with the information I had and trying to make it. Also, you know, I'm trying to weave in my story and keep it engaging and move it along. So yeah, I don't know if that really answers the question, but no, I mean, I think it does.
Speaker 1:I think with a lot of nonfictionists not sorry, not in with a lot of historical fiction. You base it in fact and you base it in a situation and then you kind of go from there Maybe base it with one or two characters that might be real or based on real people and then kind of expand around that. I'm curious. We've talked to other fiction authors before about how they plan out their stories or if they do plan out their stories and kind of the brainstorming that goes into that. Do you, are you one of the people who just kind of flies by, they see their pants and figures it out along the way, or do you sit down and methodically go through the story before?
Speaker 2:So with this one is interesting because it was kind of mapped out for me, right. So this is inspired by real people and a real set of events. So it was again like basically mapped out for me. But that didn't actually make it easier, because when I started writing it we had just gone into lockdown and for some reason my brain stopped working and I kept it's like it kept trying to write their biography and I had to remind myself like you're writing fiction, stop writing their story and create these characters. And so my first draft was terrible. In fact I was so embarrassed by it when I sent it to my editor. I had this deadline and I'm like, okay, well, here it is. But this is not it.
Speaker 2:For my first book, the Flight Girls, I was kind of a pancer at that point. I really didn't know what I was doing. So basically I'd taken a timeline of World War II and pulled out like some headlines and just like major things that had happened, and then I weaved a story around it. But as I want to be a career author who makes her living doing this, I have decided that it would probably benefit me to be more of a plotter. So definitely for my third book I plotted quite rigorously and I think I was always afraid that it would take some sort of the creativity out of it for me, but actually it just didn't.
Speaker 2:I mean, people still showed up in the story that I didn't know you were gonna be there, like, what are you doing there? So I still, even though I had this map, I still got to be surprised by my characters. And so that was a happy surprise, because I really thought like if I plotted it too much, I would take some of that out of it. And that scared me because I very much loved to just see what happens, and though I will say I'd never start anything without knowing how it ends, I like to know where I'm going. It might like change a tiny bit, but it always ends the way I imagined it would end. So yeah, I mean in the beginning didn't know what I was doing at all and it really flew by the seat of my pants. But now I'm a little bit more methodical about it and it's definitely helpful.
Speaker 1:So I guess that kind of burges naturally into the next question, which is how has writing? This is being your second book, how has your process changed? Has it gotten easier at all this now publishing a?
Speaker 2:book. That's a funny question.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:In fact, I was just having lunch a couple of weeks ago a name drop with Kate Quinn, which I don't know if you read Kate Quinn, but she's an amazing historical fiction writer and we and I was so happy to hear that. You know, she her saying it never gets easier. Every single time you start a new book, you know you've mapped it out now, you've done all this research. You have notebooks filled with notes and then you open up the document and you just stare at this blank page and you're like, okay, well, how do I start it though? Like what's? And a lot of times it's like you just have to type a bunch of garbage, almost to just like feel your way through.
Speaker 2:And I go in now knowing like that first chapter might completely change. You know I just need to like get something out of me to just to start the process, because otherwise I could sit there in labor over that first sentence, that first paragraph, forever. It is, it's awful, it just it doesn't ever get easier. I see authors on Twitter all the time like, okay, how do I do this again? I mean, because that's really how it feels. And you know you have it in you, you know you've got the story, but just that, really that beginning part is the hardest.
Speaker 1:I'm curious. So a question I always have for people who write about things that are based in reality and don't just invent their own worlds completely and build their own world building stuff how do you know you've done enough research before you jump into something such as historical fiction? Do you ever know that you've done enough research or do you just kind of like how do you balance research with the actual story you want to tell?
Speaker 2:I never feel like I'm done researching With the flight girls. I would find out stuff afterwards, after it was out. Even I would meet people and they had known like their mother was a wasp or their grandmother, and they would tell me, like these little stories, I'm like, oh my gosh, I wish I had known that I would have put that in there. With this second story, with angels, I mean, it's the same thing.
Speaker 2:I feel like there's just so much information and so many cool details and you can't get them all that first go or second or tenths go around. I find it is usually through meeting people after the book is published or after I have no chance of making any changes. Someone will read an early copy and send me an email and they'll mention something from their own life or something they heard from a friend once and I'm like, oh, I wish I had known these things, yeah. So I think it's just kind of never ending and you basically just have to like, okay, tell yourself you're done and just be done with it, because it will drive you crazy. You could edit a book forever, I think forever. So, yeah, you just kind of have to like shut it down.
Speaker 1:So you just kind of have to go to it after two months of research of five or six books or I don't know how much book count or whatever you want to do for research. And then I'm just going to start and get on the journey and the hamster wheel, get it all out and then deal with it in the next one.
Speaker 2:Sometimes you'll find like you need to cut some of it out, like it just doesn't go, or and you know, we definitely take liberties like changing little little details, like in this no, in the flight girls, there is a lake.
Speaker 2:I really, really wanted my girls to be able to like have a weekend at the lake every once in a while, and there was a lake that existed not far away, but it didn't exist until like the year after or something like that, until after that part of the story took place and I was like I'm going to take a little liberty and just the lake has it exists now, you know.
Speaker 2:I mean, so, yeah, research is funny because you, you do you research that you will go down a rabbit hole for the smallest detail. That will end up like not mattering at all, but you know it in your body and your brain and so it kind of just like helps you as an author to like know the backstory or know, know what this little I don't know this little vase, like when it was created, in what country and whatever, and it literally just sits on a shelf, you know, you just happen to mention it, but now you know, like all this information that will never be used. So yeah, research is just. It can make you kind of crazy, but it's so fun, and I think that's why I love writing historical fiction.
Speaker 1:One of the interesting lines in your story was you. There's a line and I don't remember which character says it, I want to say it's the kind of grandmother figure of the story, with Aunt Liv, and she says basically that one of the main characters is reading the Hobbit at the beginning and she talks about how the fiction that we read, it inspires us and makes us brave and gives us encouragement and it's interesting for shadowing. But also I'm curious. I wanted to talk to you about that just a little bit. How do you think the, what do you think the importance of fiction is and how does it change us as individuals and like, inspire us to go on?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I that's a great question. I have loved reading since I was little. I just think it's opens your mind and your heart to new places and all kinds of people and different kinds of love, and I mean it could be different kinds of food, different cultures. I just think it's because fiction is based in reality. For them, you know, like people don't just like yeah, I mean they add dragons that are basically pulling that from their brain and, like you know, a vampire in this story might do something one way and then in this story they do it a different way. So we definitely like, are, you know, creating? But a lot of it like what the characters feel that's based in maybe what the author has experienced in their life or somebody else's experienced in their life that the author knew. So I just think, you know it just opens up our world, our personal world, of what we accept or don't accept, or know is right and know is wrong. So yeah, that's how I feel about that.
Speaker 1:You know the interesting thing just writing little short stories and writing a little bit on my own. There's something about having to write the experiences of different people that puts you in their shoes and changes your perspective, even though a lot of the stuff that you write it comes from your own mind. But there's something about changing your perspective and not looking through your own eyes literally. In a sense that I don't know it's very impactful in moving something.
Speaker 2:It is interesting because even when, like, I'm writing like the bad guy or the snotty girl or whatever, like I have to put, I'm like, I'm not like this person, I'm gonna put myself in their shoes and I'm gonna feel what it is to feel, what they might feel in their how they feel like they have a right to have these feelings and whatever it is, and like and then spew this stuff on the page. It's not me, but you get into character. I imagine it's kind of like what actors do they have to get in character, whether it's a good guy or a bad guy? And so, yeah, it's really interesting.
Speaker 1:And some of my favorite characters to write are characters that are not like me at all in any way. There's something about putting on the character that I don't know. It's rewarding in itself, just kind of discovering who that person is and what they would do, yeah no, I feel exactly the same.
Speaker 2:I love exploring, like just different personalities and like how would this person respond to this? I know how I would respond to this and I know how this character would respond to it. How would this person with these character traits and their history, like how would they respond to this? So I think it's really a really interesting study in people.
Speaker 1:I completely agree. Now I wouldn't be able to end this interview without asking about writer advice, as I would love to be a writer and a lot of my friends would also like to be writers. So what advice do you have for people, young people who wanna be writers or wanna publish a book or just wanna get into that field?
Speaker 2:Never give up. I mean, it can take a long time, but it only takes one. Yes, and know that not every story is for every person, and just remember that deeply, because, as I've read, I shouldn't read reviews, but as I've read some bad reviews over the years, you do have to keep that in mind because even when you're like looking for an agent or looking for an editor, that is what you're told all the time is not every story is for every person, and we know that. We know that because we've picked up books and we've read them and been like why was this on Oprah's list? You know like that's a horrible book. You know what I mean and so you do. That is the truth of it and you just need to remember that.
Speaker 2:But also, I would say my favorite piece of advice is to write everything down, because and I mean everything, because I come up with titles, book titles, all the time and I like put them in the notes in my phone. I have a document that just has like sentences I come up with, I'll watch, I'll see somebody walking and they walk in a very specific way and it makes itself like, it describes itself in my head and I'm like, oh, that's how they, you know, and I capture it and I write it down, or I just, you know, I'm very visual, so I'm like always watching nature, listen. I always listen to, like, what the tires sound on wet pavement or, and I just try and capture those things and I write them down because you never know, when you know, five years later, you're writing something and you're like, oh my gosh, I, you know, I've seen this in my mind or I've heard this or whatever, and I wrote that down and you can put it in there. And so I say this mostly because in Angels of the Resistance there is a scene that I want to say, like eight years ago now, I actually wrote that scene. So I was like I don't know what I was doing, but daydreaming basically I think it was just like daydreaming, and for some reason I had this really kind of horrendous daydream and I was like, well, I don't know what that was, but it was kind of creepy. So I wrote it down though, because it was so interesting to me. I also like, I dream very vividly and so I try and remember, right, the ones that are kind of impactful, I write those down. But so I'd written this down, this just kind of terrible scene.
Speaker 2:But I was writing Angels and I had no idea that it was gonna come to this. But I'm writing away and I was like getting near the end I was probably in the last third of the book and I knew the scene was gonna happen. I had kind of worked my way up to it. I was like, oh, this is gonna be, oh, this is gonna be bad. And then I was like, oh my gosh, I've already written this scene. I wrote the scene like at that time it was like five years ago so I went digging for it and there it was and I was like this is amazing.
Speaker 2:So I always just encourage you to write everything down, like sentences, turns of phrase, like I'll be in a conversation with somebody and they'll say something a certain way. I'm like, oh, that's such an interesting way to say that. And so I like log it in my brain and as fast as I can like go put it in my phone. So write everything down and just like never stop. And you'll hear that from every author, but that's because we know like I mean, it took me eight years to get the Flake Girls into the world, so I very much know that it can be a very long haul, but it only takes one, yes, so you just have to kind of keep going.
Speaker 1:You know what's interesting? And I was reading a book I believe it was daily, yeah, daily Rituals by Mason Curry, and Victor Hugo did a very similar thing. Oh, really, his, yeah, his son said that they would be sitting at the dinner table and he'd say, hold that thought and turn around and like scribble something in his book. Yeah, I mean, and yeah, I find that very interesting.
Speaker 2:I just, I think it's so because if you lose it you're gonna be so mad Like one day. You're like, oh, I had that thing. Like one time I had the perfect sentence that would describe what is happening in this moment, or how that person is walking or what that sound is. And so I just always noticed, like I remember I was looking out the kitchen window one day and the sun was coming up over the hill and through the trees, and I was like, and in my brain, I'm like anybody else would look at this and think what a beautiful sunrise.
Speaker 2:And my creative brain was like a fire is coming and it's gonna burn down those trees and it's gonna come ripping through the neighborhood. And then what's gonna happen? And I was like, okay, you're sick, like what is wrong with you? But it was like such a moment of like that really could have been what was happening, like maybe that was the light of a fire coming through, or I'll see like mist hanging between the trees and I'm like what if that's like deadly gas? And then I'm like ooh, and there's a scene in my head and I would go write it down. I don't know if that'll ever find a story to be sitting in, but I just I capture, like their photographs in my mind, and I just try and capture them and, like I said, sounds or people's turns of phrases, and so write everything down.
Speaker 1:Well, we have to wrap up with our last two questions, and the first one is what books have had an impact on you?
Speaker 2:Wow, well, um, I mean, I love different books for different reasons. I love the Night Circus because I feel like Erin Morgenstern writes magic in such a magical way. That's lame, but truly the way she tells a story which is so intricate, I just think there's so many like there's stories that you just kind of I don't want to say not necessarily skin, but you like race through them. And then there's stories that you like sink into and I usually read books really fast and that was one of the books that I just made myself really just sit and like sink into this world.
Speaker 2:So that had an impact on me in that I think I thought I had to tell stories a certain way and it taught me that you know I can, if I want to, if I find the story, sink into something and let it, you know, kind of be I want to say a world of its own and they're all a world of their own. But I don't know. It just taught me something about storytelling and the intricacies of it and just how really absolutely beautiful and otherworldly and I don't know. I mean because sometimes you get talk to you about like too much detail and that book has so much detail, but it's just to me, it was just so worth every single moment. So I don't know. It just taught me something about taking your time with stories, whether you're writing them or reading them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's. It's been interesting because I used to not like stories that would go into very dramatic detail, like we were reading the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings a few years ago and it was just the. The scenes about forests were like oh my gosh, there are 500 pages about trees. What is going on? They're not even hobbiting these trees. I know, I just thought it was kind of ridiculous at first, but now I can. I think I could appreciate it if I reread that part.
Speaker 2:Yeah. No, there are some times where I'm just like, okay, I'm going to just skim this, but that book just taught me like really to just like appreciate that someone like took so much time and it must be important, you know, and so so, yeah, I think I have a more like more appreciation for that.
Speaker 1:The first book that kind of gave me that appreciation was like F Scott Fitzgerald's the Great Gadsby. There was something about the way he describes things that I found just so wonderful and very intriguing is that sometimes just the turns of verbs and phrases that they use to describe the mundane turn out to like, give it such a very different meaning and importance to characters and the audience.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I love when you're like reading pages and pages and you're like you know that's great, whatever, and then there's just this beautiful sentence, just like thrown in there and you're just like er, like you hit the brakes and just have to read it over and over again. I think that's just like, yeah, like just. It makes me so happy.
Speaker 1:It's one of the best feelings, as, like a writer, when you type a sentence yes, that was what I was going for.
Speaker 2:And then, as a reader, like, yes, look at this, I know I'll write like I will write pages and then write one little sentence that I'm just so proud of and I'm like, yeah, the rest of it's probably crap, but that one's. Whatever happens, that sentence has to stay.
Speaker 1:I completely agree. So our last question is what advice do you have for teenagers? And I'm curious if this, if your answer has changed, because previously you said honor yourself and stick to who you are and don't let the don't change to the world. Basically, honor who you are and keep to that, and that's how you have a happy life. So I'm curious have you modified your advice? Have you? Has it changed? Do you have a completely different limb? You'd like to go on?
Speaker 2:That is exactly my same answer, and I'm not being I'm not even being lazy, that is my answer. I have a young child who's we are getting towards teenage years and, as they are questioning gender, it has never, never been more more. My answer is to just, you know, honor yourself, because I'm watching them. Really, just be okay with themselves and they they could be questioning, they could be embarrassed, they could be all kinds of things and they're just like living their best life right now.
Speaker 2:And I'm, and I'm just in awe and I was, because I personally was just that I was such a self conscious teenager, I had really low self-esteem and so, and I didn't know what it was to like just embrace who I was, which was just kind of like little reading nerd girl who loved like 80s movies and roller skating and stuff like that. But I thought I had to be something else and I wish I would have just honored who I was, because I know I would have found my people. It was like I couldn't find my people because I was constantly looking outside at other people trying to be this or be that, because I thought that's how I would be accepted and so so, yeah, that is still my answer. I do think it's really important to just like honor exactly who you are. You know, and don't worry about finding your people. You will find them or they will find you.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much, Miss Salazar, for coming on the podcast. I'm so glad that you were our first return guest.
Speaker 2:Oh, I am it was really fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're the first one that's exciting.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for having me again. I'm so thrilled to be on. I was so glad you asked. Thank you,
