Insomnia and Daydreams
interview with Stephanie Escobar
Hello friends! Today I’m delighted to share an interview with fellow writer and poet, Stephanie Escobar. She is a contributor to our anthology The Wistful Wild: fairy tale poems of longing and ferocity. Stephanie’s gothic paranormal romance novella, A Song Beyond Walls, has haunted readers since its debut in 2020. You can find links to both, and her social media, below.
You can also read the previous interviews with poets of The Wistful Wild here:
When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
Since my earliest years, stories have been my greatest delight, escape, and salvation. I remember doodling and crafting little sentences together on whatever paper I could claim, and staying up far later than a young child should, fantasizing alternate lives I wished I could live. I had written a lot as a child, but not until I was about ten – full of insomnia and daydreams – when I began typing out these fantasies on my beloved Windows 98 desktop, well until dawn. It was then that I knew I could do nothing else for the rest of my life. If there was anything I ought to pursue, besides love and family, it would have to be writing.
Does your writing have an aesthetic? If so, how would you describe it?
I write several genres, and they all tend to have the same beautiful, sad, and creepy aesthetic woven in. Tarnished silver and cobwebs, moths and moonlight, ferns and dust, velvet and stone. I love dilapidated-old castles and witchy cottages in the woods – though always with a hint of luxury, even if the luxury is a mysterious bottle of wine brought to one’s doorstep by a traveling merchant.
Is there a particular fairy tale that is near and dear to your heart?
Cinderella, if I had to choose just the one, although I’m a bit of a fairy-tale fiend and lust over them all. As for Cinderella, I certainly have felt on the wrong track of my destiny in the past, wishing a fairy godmother or someone could magick me to a royal ball. (I ended up marrying Prince Charming, by the way). That, and I actually have a partially-written manuscript of a Cinderella retelling I hope to finish someday. I feel it is the most easily interpreted of the fairytales, one revisited time and time again in poignant, beautiful films and novels – and seen so often even in real life.
Would you like to share a future writing dream or goal of yours?
It has changed a lot over the years. Recently I had wanted to, of course, be extremely successful and make the NYT bestseller list and have my work adapted to films and Netflix series. While I certainly would not object to that, I’ve decided since publishing A Song Beyond Walls and engaging with readers around the world, that all I want is simply – to make readers feel something, even if just for a moment. If I can make them smile, gasp at a plot-twist, or wipe a tear from their eye, I will have succeeded.
Stephanie Escobar is the author of several short stories and the Gothic, ghostly romance, A Song Beyond Walls. She devotes her storytelling to the more lamentable, yearnful perspectives of women, mothers, and young girls, as a mother herself – especially, the mother of a daughter.
She resides in the Pacific Northwest, where she finds solace in the rainy woodlands with a steaming cup of espresso. When she isn’t writing, she is either scouring antique shops for unique treasures (let’s be honest, it’s mainly for old books), baking all things able to be dunked in coffee, and searching for new and scenic outdoor adventures to embark upon with her family.
