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bio
It's never easy to write about yourself, especially if you're a writer. Okay, correction: it's easy to write about yourself when you're a writer and it's disguised as fiction. This is not to say that what I write is thinly veiled autobiographical stuff -- except, of course, when it is. But I digress. I grew up in Delaware, the First State, and, more importantly, the Home of Tax-Free Shopping. I earned my B.A. in English-Journalism at the University of Delaware, Home of the Butt-Kicking Chicken (slang for our mascot, YoUDee, which is, yes, a chicken). After a miserable stint as a journalist at a small newspaper in Fort Wayne, Indiana, I ran screaming back to the greater Delaware area and saved up enough money to go to graduate school. I earned my M.F.A. in creative writing at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts, just two days before I sold my first novel, Bringing Up the Bones.
In college I sort of stumbled into journalism. To borrow a phrase from Laura Lippman, with whom I worked while interning at The Baltimore Sun, I wanted to be a writer with a steady paycheck. I spent much of my college career sweating blood into The Review, UD's student-run newspaper. Unfortunately, I didn't find real-world journalism nearly as satisfying as my time at The Review, or as rewarding as my internships at the Sun or The News Journal, Delaware's largest daily paper. Eventually I had to face facts and acknowledge that what I really wanted to do was write for television. Huh? you ask. In addition to being a dork I am also a certified pop culture junkie. So yeah, I wanted to write TV shows like my all-time favorite, My So-Called Life. This is what I was planning to do when I got to Emerson. Instead, I ended up in an Adolescent Novel Workshop taught by Lisa Jahn-Clough, and the rest, as they say, was history. So many young adult authors have said they didn't start out wanting to write for the genre -- Francesca Lia Block, Sarah Dessen, Nancy Werlin, Ellen Wittlinger, and even Paul Zindel, to name a few. And I can't speak for all of them, but I'd guess most of these authors thought they were writing for "big people" when some smart agent or editor said, "Hey, you should rework this manuscript for teens." And if they were anything like me, hearing this made something click. In my opinion, there is no better audience to write for. Perhaps this is because, no matter how old I get, I feel like I live in a state of arrested adolescence. Or maybe it's because the issues that most teenagers deal with don't go away once you turn twenty -- if anything, they only intensify and grow bigger. Even now that I'm in my thirties, I still find myself identifying more with books written for teens than I do those geared toward old- timers like myself. Inside I'm still the same dork I was in high school, only now I have massive student loan debt and a mortgage.
Meanwhile, having a secret identity meant that for the longest time, I couldn't even tell anyone that there was no Lola Douglas - that she was me - and even went so far as to take a publicity photo in Lola disguise. This is the frustrating part; achieving a certain amount of success that you can't take credit for, while the book you can acknowledge as your baby falls flat on its face. Eventually, I started doing a few appearances as "both" of us. I'd talk first, then dive behind a podium and put on my Lola hat and dark sunglasses. When I popped up, I'd say, "Hello! I'm Lola Douglas!" This usually got a laugh.
Here's a story I like to tell kids during school visits: Back in early 2008, I went through a month of obsessing over the highly addictive Sims 2 game. Like most people, I started off by creating a Sim version of myself. I also created one of my real-life fiancé, Joe. (I even, truth be told, crafted a Sim version of our dog, Scout, who I quickly dubbed "Sim Skitty.") Sim Lara had a rough time of things; she got fired from several jobs, was almost always on the verge of a meltdown, and somehow managed to make Sim Joe hate her guts (something that to this day I still find very disturbing). So then I created a Sim Lola, who shared Sim Lara's hair and eye color but had a sleeker cut and a glamour-puss wardrobe. She got promoted in record time, was able to purchase larger houses with more expensive furniture/décor, and caught the eye of a handsome, kilt- wearing Army general who proposed to her while I was still trying to figure out how to keep Sim Joe from growing completely disgusted every time Sim me walked into a room. So, see? Even in The Sims, Lola was the more successful one. As the publication date for The Sweet Life of Stella Madison loomed ahead of me, I realized it was time to combine my web presence and merge my Lola site with this one, which is how the overhaul got started. Even though many people now know that I'm Lola, and that going forward we'll share this site, I still have a tendency to think of Lola as someone else - someone who isn't me. At least I haven't bothered to give "her" a Facebook page; mine will do just fine, thanks.
I teach freshman composition and creative writing part-time at my alma mater, University of Delaware, in addition to running an adult writing workshop at the Brandywine YMCA two or three times a year. There are school/library visits, conference presentations, and the occasional professional editing job. In my spare time (wait - what's that again?), I like to watch stuff I've DVR'd (some of it good, some of it not-so-good, some of it downright trashy), make crafts and scrapbooks (I told you I was a dork!), and spend far too much time on the Internet. Even so, I'm horrible at returning e-mails; as I write this I have nearly 200 messages in my in-box, at least 75% of which require a response and at least 25% of which have been waiting for one since September 2008. (Yeah, I know. I suck.) If you've made it this far, then I have to give you credit, because the reality is that my life is pretty boring most of the time - and that's the way I like it. I'd rather spend my Friday nights ordering take-out with Joe, snuggling with him and Scout on the couch, and watching a movie on cable than I would just about anything else. What can I say? It's a good life, and one I'm very much grateful for.
(If you're looking for my "official" bio, click here. And if you'd like to know what I'm up to on a semi-regular basis, you can always check out my LiveJournal or Facebook page, the former of which feeds into the latter through the "Notes" feature.)
© 2003-2009 Lara M. Zeises. All rights reserved. |
I am a dork. This is something that all of my friends will tell you. When you are young, being a dork is a terrible burden. But the older you get, the
more you realize that dorkdom is often a great predictor of success as an adult. At least, this has been my experience. Often when I visit schools, I give a
presentation titled, "True Confessions of a Dork: How (and Why!) I became a Young Adult Author." Examples of my dorkiness include once having the theme song
to Quantum Leap as the ring tone on my cell and liking to dress my dog up for Halloween (I even show them this picture as solid proof).
A lot of students ask me if I always wanted to be a writer. I'm not the kind of author who knew this was my destiny long before I gave up my dream of
wanting to marry Corey Haim (this, of course, was long before he slid into a spiral of drug abuse and depression). Even though I'd been writing nearly all
of my life, it never occurred to me that I could make a life-long career out of something I did for fun. When I was in grade school I'd spend summers
"working" in my mom's office, writing knock-off Nancy Drew stories (about a girl detective in Delaware) or Sweet Valley High wannabes (about 16-year-old
twins from Delaware). I'd do this on an actual typewriter, not because I was born before computers existed but because I loved the sound of my fingers
banging on the keys. In middle school I wrote some really bad poetry; by high school I'd moved on to fiction and spent a lot of time working on cheesy novel
ideas and some slightly less cheese one-act plays.
I published my first novel seven years ago; since then I have written/published five more (you can read more about them on the "books" page of this
site). Two of these novels are from my alter ego, Lola Douglas, which is really just a cooler way of saying that I wrote them under a pseudonym. One of the
funniest and most frustrating things about becoming Lola is that in some ways, her career has been far more successful than my own. My first Lola book,
When I knew that the True Confessions movie was going to become a reality, I made the decision to officially "come out" as Lola, because there
was no way this super cool thing was going to happen to someone else and not me, if that makes sense. (If you're wondering, "Then why did you ever become
Lola in the first place, go visit my 
As for my non-writing life, I still live in Delaware - and yes, this is by choice and not by default - only now it's with my equally dorky, amazingly
smart, exceedingly good-looking, and incredibly romantic fiancé. Together we co-parent Scout, a 13-pound schnoodle who's far cuter than any dog should ever
be allowed. We're Scrabble nerds (he actually proposed to me with a Scrabble board that read, "Marry Me Lara"), Wii/Wii Fit enthusiasts, and mad scientists
in our small but functional kitchen. Joe prefers baking, because of the chemistry aspect of it; I prefer cooking, because it's less about precision and more
about intuition. We're getting married in October 2010 and hope to start a family soon after.