To celebrate the release of Perchance to Dream, I’m interviewing some of the authors featured in the anthology. Today’s interview is with Patricia Scott!
Tell us a little bit about your story, “Mark Corey.”
“Mark Corey” translates Coriolanus from the battlefield to a baseball diamond. It’s the story of star pitcher Mark Corey, who has his life planned out and probably is a little too attached to his own hype.
What drew you to write an adaptation of Coriolanus? It’s one of Shakespeare’s lesser-known plays, so I was very interested in your choice!
I’ve always liked Shakespeare’s tragedies more than his comedies. The thing that really drew me to Coriolanus is that Coriolanus himself isn’t a very likeable character and the play doesn’t head towards any kind of happy ending. It’s a revenge story where nothing turns out okay in the end, which I find very appealing. Doing things out of a misguided sense of retribution doesn’t help anyone and it usually makes things much worse.
Your short story, “The Stars Were Stolen,” was adapted into a short film for HitRecord on TV. Can you tell us a little something about that story, and the process of seeing it turn into a short movie?
“The Stars Were Stolen” is an autobiographical piece about the first time I saw the Milky Way. I’m blind in the dark, due to Retinitis Pigmentosa, which is a genetic eye disease. My family used to watch meteor showers and look up at the stars quite a bit when I was little, but while they were seeing a magnificent night sky, I was seeing a handful of bright spangles on blackness. That all changed when my dad got a pair of night vision goggles.
I submitted the story to Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s open collaborative production company HitRecord and then just kind of left it there, until they started calling for contributions for the TV show. One of the themes was Space, so I submitted it there. The next day, there was a YouTube video of Joseph Gordon-Levitt himself talking about my story and saying he wanted to see it made into a short film. It was incredibly surreal. He’s an artist that I really admire, so seeing him talking about something I wrote and being so enthusiastic about it was mind-blowing.
Over the course of a few months, the HitRecord community created voiceover work for the narrative, a musical score, backgrounds and animation, and actors came in to play me and my dad. Suddenly, this story that I had written had evolved into this beautiful piece of film. It was moving and alive in a way that I had never imagined when it was just black type on a white page. I could never have done something like that on my own, but it was nothing short of miraculous seeing what everyone came together and made.
I haven’t written any other works for young adults and I don’t have any current plans to, but I certainly wouldn’t rule out writing more. I really don’t think it’s much different from writing for any other audience. There are so many cool stories being marketed as young adult that I can’t imagine not wanting to share in at least a little part of that.
I hope you enjoyed this interview with Patricia Scott! You can read her story, “Mark Corey,” in Perchance to Dream, which is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other major retailers. If you’d like to learn more about Patricia, you can visit her Tumblr, or find her on Twitter at @roswellgray.