Vermilion native pens novel, aims at Hollywood, too

When I read Carol Masciola's young adult novel, "The Yearbook," I thought it was once of the best books I had read this year. Aimed at young people, it has enough substance to satisfy adults, too. Other readers also apparently liked the book, which made the USA Today bestseller list. For example, the USA Today reviewer wrote, "The sweet ending is a perfect collision of the past into the present I am a sucker for a good time-travel romance, and this is a story that will resonate with many readers — teen and adult."Masciola lives in Geneva, Switzerland, with her husband and two sons, but she has ties to the Sandusky area. Masciola grew up in Vermilion, graduating from Vermilion High School in 1982. She graduated from Oberlin College in 1986. Her parents lived on Cedar Point Road in Sandusky for seven years.And she still returns to the area to visit family. "My sister, Chris Riddle, lives in Vermilion and my mother, Jane Masciola, lives in Lorain," she writes.Before she switched to writing novels and screenplays, Masciola worked as a newspaper reporter in southern California for 12 years, including seven years at the Orange County Register. She's written six screenplays, but "The Yearbook" is her first novel.More information about her and the book can be found on the official site. SANDUSKY REGISTER: You've lived all over the world. Why did you decide to set your first novel in the area where you grew up? Is Ashfield modeled after any particular city?CAROL MASCIOLA: I think because the story is set in a school, mostly in an old school building, I placed it in Ohio. I have never been to school anywhere else, so when I think of school, it's pure Ohio. Ashfield is a version of Lorain.SANDUSKY REGISTER: Do you think of "The Yearkbook" as a fantasy novel, or simply as a novel? What readers were you aiming for?CAROL MASCIOLA: I think of it as a suspense novel with supernatural elements. I wanted to write a completely escapist book that could appeal to teens and adults. I'm getting a lot of mail and reviews from adults who've liked it, and that's very gratifying. I've also heard from a few very young readers, as young as ten or eleven, who enjoyed it.SANDUSKY REGISTER: Did you enjoy researching the 1920s? Why did you choose 1923 as the year to send Lola Lundy back to?CAROL MASCIOLA: I got the idea for the novel from my grandmother's yearbook, which I inherited when she died. She was a high school student in the 1920s at Charleston High School in Charleston, W. Va. My grandmother's yearbook was a very good historical resource. The students had written a lot of little columns and had talked about their favorite things. It helped me understand what my characters might be into -- what movie stars they liked, what their hobbies were, how they felt about school. There was also a lot of 1920s slang in it. I scrutinized the book, even the advertisements in the back. As I wrote, questions came up -- what does the dashboard of a 1922 Nash look like? when was air-conditioning invented? -- that were easy to answer online.SANDUSKY REGISTER: Would you have liked to have lived in the 1920s? Or are you happy to live in the world of cell phones and the Internet?CAROL MASCIOLA: Gee, I think I would like to visit, but not live there! I love the clothes, the jewelry, but ultimately I think my imaginary version of the twenties is probably preferable to the real thing. You wouldn't want to have to go to the doctor for something serious back then. The progress society has made since then, socially and technologically, is so vast that it would be pretty exasperating for somebody from our time to have to live in the 20s. As a writer -- sending manuscripts and screenplays around, doing conferences over Skype, 2016 technology is a massive advantage for me over my peers from the past.SANDUSKY REGISTER: When I finished "The Yearbook," I thought it would make a good movie. Have any of your screenplays been made into movies so far? Anything in the works?CAROL MASCIOLA: I have always envisioned "The Yearbook" as a movie and wrote it in a way that I thought would lend itself to a film. I will be making efforts in that direction for sure. One of my screenplays, a supernatural horror story called "The Fiery Depths", is being produced by Clever Girls Productions and Under the Stairs Entertainment in Los Angeles. It's a European-vacation-gone-horribly-wrong story. The setting is the Italian Alps, in a bed and breakfast operated by nuns. A pair of American tourists accidentally stir up a 17-century ghost who has axe to grind against the convent, with disastrous results.More author interviews also are available. Carol Masciola