Author Bio

Over the course of her sixteen-​​year career, Cheri Lasota has edited fic­tion, non­fic­tion, screen­plays, and short sto­ries for pub­li­ca­tion. Clients include McGraw-​​Hill Publishing Company as well as indi­vid­ual fic­tion writ­ers and screen­writ­ers, some of which have been published.

Cheri also has over twenty-​​four years of expe­ri­ence writ­ing poetry and fic­tion. She has recently signed on with SpireHouse Books, which has pub­lished her debut novel, ARTEMIS RISING. The YA his­tor­i­cal fan­tasy is set in the Azores Islands, Portugal, and is based on two dif­fer­ent mythologies. Currently, Cheri is writ­ing and research­ing her sec­ond novel, a YA set on the Oregon Coast.

She began her edit­ing career in news and non­fic­tion. In high school, she edited books, jour­nals, and newslet­ters for the Ludwig von Mises Institute, a non­profit eco­nom­ics group. While earn­ing her B.A. in Communications/​Film and minor in English, she worked as editor-​​in-​​chief of the University of South Alabama’s weekly stu­dent news­pa­per The Vanguard. Other recent work includes edit­ing doc­u­ments and draw­ings for engi­neer­ing firms Bechtel National, Inc. and WorleyParsons.

Cheri is a mem­ber of SheWrites​.com, Women In Portland Publishing (WiPP) and the NW Independent Editors Guild (NWIEG). She is an active mem­ber of Willamette Writers and attends the Willamette Writers Conference every year. She has also par­tic­i­pated in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) for five years.

Media Kit Information

Author Pictures

Author Q&A’s

A recent inter­view by the pub­lisher, SpireHouse Books:

http://​www​.spire​house​books​.com/​b​l​o​g​/​a​u​t​h​o​r​-​c​h​e​r​i​-​l​a​s​o​t​a​-​s​p​e​a​k​s​-​o​u​t​-​o​n​-​a​r​t​e​m​i​s​-​r​i​s​i​n​g​-​a​n​d​-​e​-​p​u​b​l​i​s​h​i​ng/ (June 29, 2011)

Q: What’s your writ­ing regimen?

A: I sup­pose some writ­ers have a daily reg­i­men. Er, does it actu­ally work like that? Ha! Okay, I con­fess: I’m a cheater. I gen­er­ally kick-​​start another round of edit­ing or writ­ing every November for National Novel Writing Month. Yes, I know. I’m sup­posed to be start­ing a brand new novel for NaNoWriMo, but I can’t help it. I find that sit­ting down with my friends in cozy cof­feeshops dur­ing the bit­ter cold days of November to be one of the most inspir­ing lit­er­ary endeav­or­ings (yes, I just made up that word) I can think of doing. And if I really need to get a WIP fin­ished, then why not?

So I’m one of those writ­ers who is an occa­sional obses­sive. If I’m on a deadline–self-imposed or otherwise–I work like mad until it is done, and every other thing in my life takes a back­seat. Is this healthy? I have no idea. But it cer­tainly works for me. But there are two things I can­not live with­out as I write: cof­feeshops and film scores. Nigh impos­si­ble to con­cen­trate in my apart­ment with my laun­dry, Xbox (oh, yes, I’m a HUGE fan of gaming–bet you didn’t guess that, huh?), and vast movie col­lec­tion to dis­tract me.

And film scores . . . *sigh* I NEVER write bet­ter prose than when I’m swept along to the sound­tracks of Mansfield Park, Lord of the Rings, and Atonement. Absolute silence makes me slightly insane, so I always have to have some noise in the back­ground. But I can’t lis­ten to Top 40 radio, because then I’ll just sing along. You see the dilemma . . . But being obsessed with movies since I was in the womb and sub­se­quently major­ing in film at uni­ver­sity, I have a spe­cial lit­tle space in my heart for film–and most espe­cially for scores and sound­tracks. And since now, I’ve got­ten into scor­ing piano music for local indie films, includ­ing my book trailer, I’m just that much more inter­ested in the topic. I would go so far as to say, I can’t write with­out a score in my ear.

Q: How did you con­ceive of Artemis Rising?

A: This is a dif­fi­cult ques­tion. How does any­one come up with a cre­ative idea? I gen­er­ally don’t under­stand the mech­a­nism which allows me to breathe life into char­ac­ters and weave plots and develop uni­ver­sal themes within the con­text of a his­tor­i­cal set­ting. I am truly only grate­ful that I’m pay­ing atten­tion long enough to write it all down. Some days it comes eas­ily, some days I think and think and noth­ing comes to me. But Artemis Rising? Wow, it is a mish-​​mash of all my long­ings and fears. It is an amal­gam of all my hopes for the future and my mem­o­ries in the plea­sures of the past. It is a laun­dry list of my most trea­sured inter­ests and pas­sions. It is also com­plete and utter fic­tion. Does that answer your question?

Okay, some­thing a bit more spe­cific. I used to live in the Azores Islands, a pro­found priv­i­lege that went by far too quickly. But the place and its peo­ple have stayed with me some fif­teen years later, and I knew that no mat­ter what my book would even­tu­ally be about, I would set it on Terceira Island, one of the great loves of my life. The set­ting being carved in stone, I won­dered what to write about for the plot. No answer forth­com­ing, I played on the Internet (what else is a writer to do?). I remem­ber look­ing up the mean­ing of my favorite name in all the world, Tristan. That’s when I stum­bled upon the Arthurian leg­end of Tristan and Isolde. Ooh, did I revel in this deli­cious story! Mad love and long­ing, knights and ladies, treach­ery and tragedy—what’s not to love? And then another day, per­haps months later, I was research­ing mythol­ogy. Can’t recall why. I came across the story of Alpheus and Arethusa and noticed strange sim­i­lar­i­ties to the Tristan and Isolde myth, and some­thing just clicked in my mind. I thought, what would hap­pen if I squished those two myths together? What if . . .? And my mind went rac­ing on with the possibilities.

Q: How long did it take you to write Artemis Rising?

A: I think I ought to be embar­rassed to answer this ques­tion. In some ways I am, because for many years, I was actu­ally ter­ri­fied of writ­ing. I would start a bit, con­fuse myself with the com­plex plot ele­ments, and then give up, slink­ing away into the dark of night (or rather, into the TV room, where all my favorite already-​​written sto­ries played out beau­ti­fully on screen). My goal was to take a uni­ver­sally well-​​loved story and turn it on its head, using mul­ti­ple lay­ers and char­ac­ters who played not one role but three. This sounded all very well in my head, but it was another thing alto­gether to coax it out of my over-​​confident imag­i­na­tion and have it make sense on the page. It was like one of those giant puz­zles of some scenic place with tiny, con­fus­ing pieces that rather frus­trate you before you bother to fin­ish it. I knew the pieces would fit, I just knew it. But how? And what would it all mean once I got the puz­zle together? I began the research for Artemis Rising in earnest when I was 22 years old. I am now 31, and am only just now feel­ing con­fi­dent in the puz­zle. It was, I con­fess, the most dif­fi­cult endeavor I’ve ever under­taken. But I wouldn’t give it up for the world.

Q: Who is your favorite character?

A: A sim­ple ques­tion and a sim­ple answer: Tristan. Must I elab­o­rate? He is my ideal, you see. Flawed, yes, but his inten­tions are hon­est. He has a good soul, and I trea­sure him for that. And Eva needs kind­ness, given what she’s been through. He is her per­fect match.

Q: How did you approach your research?

A: With trep­i­da­tion . . .? There is so lit­tle research avail­able about the Azores Islands in the 1890s. Education had been abol­ished by the freema­sons for many years, so much of what daily life was like has been lost to oral his­to­ries only. I did my utmost to cre­ate a world as authen­tic as pos­si­ble while remain­ing true to my vision of the story. A great resource I must men­tion: James H. Guill’s A History of the Azores Islands.

Q: Who are your writ­ing influences?

A: Ooh, this is a fun one. The clas­sics were my teach­ers, first and fore­most. Some of the nov­els that have had a most pro­found effect on me in one way or another: Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities; Bryce Courtenay’s The Power of One; Tennyson and Wordsworth’s poetry; Herman Mellville’s Moby Dick; J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings; Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, Kate Chopin’s The Awakening; Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’urbervilles . . .

Q: Who are your favorite writ­ers today?

A: M.M. Bennetts is my favorite his­tor­i­cal author writ­ing today–melding mat­ters of the heart and authen­tic his­tory with exquis­ite prose. Diana Gabaldon has also been a great influ­ence on me, I think. It’s her abil­ity to write with unflinch­ing hon­esty about the harsh­ness and details of life that I admire. And my God, that woman can spin a beau­ti­ful tale well-​​told! More writ­ers who have enchanted me: Jenn Crowell, Bryce Courtenay, Rosalind Miles, and Judith Lindbergh.

Q. Who is your favorite lit­er­ary char­ac­ter? Why?

A. Sydney Carton. Why? Because he gives all with no thought for him­self. He is flawed, surely, but in the end, his self-​​sacrifice is a test of courage we all secretly hope to pass in the strug­gle of life. His final act never fails to bring tears to my eyes. After all, what is fic­tion if is does not ele­vate and mir­ror our great­est hopes in this life?

Q. Which of your char­ac­ters do you relate to best?

A. Arethusa, beyond doubt. She is very much fully fic­tional now, but she started as a reflec­tion of the strug­gles I went through as a girl, blun­der­ing about in the dark­ness of my con­fu­sions and fear. She’s since become her own per­son, with her own hopes and desires and fears. I am glad that she is both me and not me. It makes her jour­ney that much more pro­found for me.

Q. Do you secretly har­bor a love for Diogo?

A. Doesn’t every­one? *wink* Diogo rep­re­sents the darker side of love—lust, jeal­ousy, and the pur­suit of power. But there is some part of him that truly loves this girl, despite his obses­sive attempts to con­trol her. I will say this, he was a dream to write. He fell effort­lessly onto the page, and I rather enjoyed the ease with which he wreaked havoc in Tristan and Eva’s lives. Ooh, does that make me sadis­tic?  *evil grin* Well, I think all writ­ers are sadis­tic to some extent (whether we admit it or not).

Q. Why did you pick the Azores Islands as the loca­tion of this story?

A. I answered this best here, I think.

Q. There’s a spir­i­tual, reli­gious, and mytho­log­i­cal theme in this story. Is this on pur­pose, or did it just develop on it’s own accord?

A. The mythol­ogy was def­i­nitely there from the begin­ning of this par­tic­u­lar ver­sion of the novel. And the paranormal/​spiritual ele­ments were a direct devel­op­ment from that. But the reli­gious aspects of the novel evolved dur­ing the writ­ing process. I didn’t real­ize the story was so much about Eva’s strug­gle with faith. It is so inter­twined with her strug­gle for love, though, that it can­not be sep­a­rated. One directly effects the other to her mind, and the con­se­quences of the wrong choice are very grave indeed.