Noelle Salazar

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. Salazar lives in Bothell, Washington with her family.

Her debut, The Flight Girls, was a USA Today and international bestseller. It was followed by the critically acclaimed Angels of the Resistance and The Roaring Days of Zora Lily. The Lies We Leave Behind is her fourth novel.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

Titles are a difficult thing for me. After the title for my first book was changed, I became unsure of my ability to correctly title my books. Most of the time now, I just give them a placeholder and then I go through a title creating back-and-forth with my editor, our team, and my agent. For this title in particular, we had our work cut out for us. But I kept getting drawn back to a style of title I'd seen on some other books previously and so we started throwing words around. My team came up with The Lies We Leave Behind and I have to say, I love it. It's intriguing. What lies? Whose lies? How many lies? Why were the lies necessary? So many questions beg for answers just because of the title. Hopefully my readers will find the answers satisfying.

What's in a name?

I tend to choose names with careful consideration to the character. Who is this person and does their name convey who they are? I chose Kate's name because to me, the name sounds strong. No-nonsense. Able. Quick. Sensible. All the things she is - until maybe she isn't. But Kate has another name (and perhaps more...) and they too were chosen for specific reasons. I don't want to give too much away though so we'll just stick with Kate.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your new novel?

Not very. Teenage me loved books with historical elements. I was a huge reader of romance novels (thanks to my Nana giving me the ones she'd finished) and I fell in love with stories that took place in the past. I loved learning other cultures, other names for things, and ways of living that I wasn't familiar with. Teenage me would be so happy we'd made something out of one of our passions.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

Beginnings for sure. I never start writing a book until I know how it ends. And I always write out that ending, which rarely changes. And if it does, it's a small change. My job then is to get my character(s) to this point. How did they get there? I always have a general idea, of course, but then I have to go back to that daunting blank first page and... How exactly do I start this tale? Because often the character is in an opposite place from where they are in the end, I start there. I work backwards. If this is who they are at the end, where do we find them in the beginning? I start to picture them. I imagine their life. I figure out where they're starting from to make the choices they make and end up where they do. My beginnings change a lot over the course of writing a book. And I've come to understand it doesn't really matter how it starts at first, because I can always alter it later. I just need to start.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

I think a lot of the time my main characters have something of me in them - or something in them I wish I had or was. Audrey from The Flight Girls was very much a "I want to be like her" character. I admired her determination and unwillingness to submit to what was expected of women during that time. So often I have lacked those same qualities and wished I were stronger. Lien from Angels of the Resistance carried trauma. Writing her brought out my own trauma. It's my most personal work... so far. I do tend to pull pieces of me for my main characters. Maybe I'm working out something. Figuring out an unexplored piece of myself. Maybe I'm curious what someone else might do in a situation, so I used characters to test the waters. Writing has always been and I imagine always will be cathartic for me. So I imagine you will always find bits and pieces of my heart and soul in my characters.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I consume a lot of television and movies. Imagery inspires me. I take walks and listen to music a lot as well. If I'm working on a particularly hard scene, I put on my headphones and go outside. I choreograph these scenes to music - so that every time I play that song, the scene plays out, and I can change it at will, adding or subtracting to it until it's a perfect dance. I play songs over and over again. It's my favorite way to write. Inside my head. Before it ends up on paper.

Visit Noelle Salazar's website.

Writers Read: Noelle Salazar (August 2019).

My Book, The Movie: The Flight Girls.

The Page 69 Test: The Flight Girls.

--Marshal Zeringue