(That was the case with Aaron.) How did the novel evolve and change as you wrote and revised it? Are there any characters or scenes that were lost in the process that you wish had made it to the published version? (That was how I came up with Ruth-she seemed to jump out from a photograph fully formed, with a name and full personality.) Other times, I built characters from the ground up, giving them backstories, families and personalities, but wasn’t able to find any photograph that matched the exact feeling I had when I thought of them. Some characters were built directly from individual street fashion photographs-I looked at thousands of portraits, and saved the ones that gave me a strong sense of character and personality. I created the characters in a variety of ways, but I would say all of them contain the seed of an archetype (eg Nick is a classic hero who protects the weak and vulnerable from monsters). I didn’t base any of my characters on real people. Are Joan, Aaron, Nick, or any of the other characters in the novel inspired by or based on specific individuals? It gave me the idea to write about a very classic upright, decent hero from the point of view of someone who has to fight against them. But I did sometimes see myself in ‘bad guys’-nameless characters who would turn up just for the fight scenes, and would get beaten up or killed by the hero. When I was growing up, I didn’t often see myself represented in movie and TV heroes. I was inspired by that feeling when the hero of a story isn’t necessarily the hero of your story. Only a Monster has a central rivalry between a monster girl and a monster hunter. What was your inspiration for Only a Monster? Only a Monster is her first novel and she recently talked about it with Daryl Maxwell for the LAPL Blog.

Vanessa is a graduate of the Clarion Workshop in San Diego, and she lives in Melbourne. An educational editor, she has worked on everything from language learning programs to STEM resources, to professional learning for teachers. Vanessa Len is an Australian author of Chinese-Malaysian and Maltese heritage.

Vanessa len only a monster