Holyoke teacher publishes debut novel ‘Born of Fire: The Phoenix Knight’
HOLYOKE — In Lisette Martinez's debut novel, " Born of Fire: The Phoenix Knight ," Roux, an underground fighter, must rise to the challenge when he learns he is humanity's last hope in a war between light and darkness.
But, while the novel's plot is fantasy, the Holyoke teacher says there's a deeper message in her characters' struggles.
"How do people keep going when it just feels like barrier after barrier after barrier? I wanted to explore that, but in a sense of a much larger scale," Martinez said.
The answer? Meaningful stories behind the characters to keep people reading, she said.
"Fantasy is a great way to bring someone into a beautiful world — or a not-so-beautiful world — but how does this world connect with us, connect with me as a person?"
Lisette Martinez has been a teacher for Holyoke Public Schools for the past 20 years. (Provided photo)Submitted
That's the question Martinez has been seeking to answer with "Born of Fire: The Phoenix Knight" since she was a child. As a kid, she said, she was "very curious about how people handle things."
"I'd always write fantasies, because I always felt like it's a great way to explore hard times, but with a little bit of a magical edge, making it a way to explore my feelings in a safe way as a kid," she said.
Martinez struggled with reading when she was young. She was diagnosed with a learning disability — dyslexia — so while she had to work harder to enjoy the fantasy novels she picked up, she said that only "fueled her determination."
"Reading was such a gift. As a kid, I was around all these literary people, and my parents were teachers, so it always seemed like a magical skill," Martinez said. Eventually, reading became her "favorite thing to do," and she decided she wanted to write a book.
By day, Martinez is longtime teacher in Holyoke — for nearly 20 years now — where she works as a reading interventionist with second through fifth grade students at the E.N. White School.
While her work as a writer uses the fullness of the English language, her schoolwork with children begins with the most basic of elements: the alphabet.
"It starts with just being able to decode, knowing each letter is a symbol, learning the sounds that come from the symbols and then putting it together," she said. "And once kids have (it), we say, 'Once they break the code,' (they) know that these are words and what each word represents, then it's moving into, now, what do they need?"
Martinez keeps a personal library in her classroom where she stocks books of all genres for her students, including comic books.
Where, when 'Born of Fire' started
Martinez began working on the first version of "Born of Fire: The Phoenix Knight" in high school and picked it back up again while a student at Springfield College. One day, she found the book had been deleted from her computer, and she spent the next several years reworking and rewriting it.
It was important to Martinez to bring in the feelings she was experiencing as an adult.
"I wanted (Roux's) emotional growth to reflect my own growth through life, of just trying to explore, 'Why do I feel this way?'" she said. "While he's talking, he's taking on big, very complicated topics, especially for a post-apocalyptic world. I was like, 'OK, this is an extreme emotion. How would I deal with it? How should he deal with it?'"
"Born of Fire: The Phoenix Knight" is available for purchase online on Amazon and Barnes & Noble . It also can be found at several local bookstores, including Book Moon Books in Easthampton, Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley, and Broadside Books and Booklink Bestsellers in Northampton.
Asked what she hopes readers take away from her novel, Martinez said that, first, she hopes they enjoy the adventure.
But second: "I hope they see the idea that a lot of barriers can get in the way, but that doesn't mean things have to stop. Things can keep going and you can keep getting stronger from it."
Read the original article on MassLive .
