Meet Diana Elizabeth Clarke, author of “Under Water: Stories”
Tell us what your book, “Under Water: Stories” is about!
Sure! Here’s the summary:
The fiction collection mixes literary fiction with fantasy to tell stories of mothers, daughters, and sisters. Readers will learn what it means to be a bluebottle—someone that cannot survive alone. From sisters torn apart to daughters missing their mothers, “Under Water” shows that being alone is not as magical as it may seem.
What did you love most about writing this book?
Writing “Under Water” was very healing as I got to imagine both the best and worst parts of my life. This book is auto fiction, where each story starts in some truth. What my characters struggle with—I’ve struggled with it too. The only difference is that I gave them the happy endings I didn’t get or I gave them worse endings to help me see that my life isn’t all that bad. Every story explores being alone and where some show the positive side of connecting with family, there are other stories that show the negative side of losing your family. Writing these stories helped me recover from the demons I was dealing with and appreciate the life and family that I have. I also loved finding the magic in real life, per se. The stories in this collection are literary fiction as they are character-based stories focusing on the relationships with others or with themselves, but I wrote these stories with a hint of magic. Issues that exist in the real world are solved by magic or made worse by that magic. It’s not just magical realism because this book makes you envision a different world in these stories; a world where you can write a letter in the afterlife or a world where a riddle could save your mother from her deathbed. Some stories are more like our world than others, so it’s a nice mix of the real and the fantasy.
How did you start writing?
When I was 8 years old, I wrote stories of princesses, mermaids, and fairies. I would live out fantasies through my writing, exploring anything that my imaginative brain thought of. When I was little, I was obsessed with romance and at the age of 12 I wrote my first book. Although, now, it is very cringy and will probably never see the light of day again. I have been writing essentially my entire life and have explored almost every genre from romance to horror to poetry. Now, the genres I write are women-focused literary fiction and fantasy. And sometimes, like I did with “Under Water,” I mix the two and create a new genre called literary fantasy.
Tell us a little bit about your self-publishing experience.
I launched Elizabeth Publications to be the publisher of my books. “Under Water” (released May 2025) is my first publication but I have other books currently in the works. In addition to publishing the books I write, Elizabeth Publications will also publish redesigns of classic literature that I design and create the artwork for. My goal is to create unique books that go outside the box with book design and do things traditional publishers won’t do with their books. An example is from “Under Water,” where I manipulate the margins for a specific story to showcase a character’s weight loss.
What was your biggest challenge in bringing the book to market and how did you solve it?
One of the hiccups I had to deal with while publishing “Under Water” was learning how large the spine shift is for POD printing. I worked with a local printer for the first print run and a color block spine worked great. The pink spine popped against the blue ocean cover nicely. However, the same spine with Ingramspark did not work as great. After several print proofs, I decided the spine shift was too inconsistent and redesigned my cover to have the a blue spine that blends in with the ocean. That way, the spine shift is not noticeable. I have now learned with POD printing to give a larger margin for spine shifts.
What's one piece of advice you have for other writers?
Just go for it. Achieving your dreams isn’t that scary once you do it. Take the steps and dive in to the world of publishing. It might take a while to get your sea legs, but once you have them you’ll never look back. And if you’re struggling to write, just fill out the pages with any words you can think of. It can be pure word vomit, but at least you have something to work with. You can’t edit blank pages, but you can take messy words and clean them up to be something great. And even if you write complete gibberish that is irrelevant to your story, you got the writing juices flowing to help you tackle what you are intending to write. When I’m blocked, I like to people-watch and eavesdrop, documenting everything that I see or hear. I can usually find a story in the randomness I observed from other people.
Anything else you want folks to know?
“Under Water” is not only my debut book, but also my MFA thesis where I did all of the book design and artwork myself. My MFA program awarded me the 2025 Plork Prize for this book.
What's the link to your book?
