Jaz Azari was a senior at Penn State in December 2005 when one of her professors gave her advice that not only led her to change her honors thesis topic but would help her make a significant career change more than a decade later.
“He told me, ‘It’s better to start over and do something you love than continue to do something you don’t,’” Azari said. “That was the advice that allowed me to be a writer, and I’ll never forget it.”
Azari, who would graduate with degrees in international relations and German studies the following spring, switched her thesis topic from the European Union to comparisons between the Vietnam War and the Iraq War, which helped land her a job with the United States Marine Corps as a research analyst for The Center for Advanced Operational Cultural Learning (CAOCL).
From there, the former Schreyer Honors Scholar worked as a Foreign Service Officer for the Department of State, spending time all over the world, until this past October, when she decided to become a professional author.
Azari is seeking to publish a young adult fantasy fiction novel, The Obsidian Staff, the first in a four-part series called The Lost Legacy Series.
“This is expressing who I am in an entirely different way,” she said. “People say it’s taking a risk, but I don’t think it’s taking a risk because I truly believe that my passion will make it a bestseller.”
Azari had self-published her first book, The Noble Rogues, during her senior year at Penn State, “just to see whether or not I could.” She came up with the idea of a strong female lead character (orphaned teenager Kate Smith) in 2012, went home and wrote the first 10 pages of The Obsidian Staff that night. She completed the first draft in six months.
“The reason why I am really drawn to fantasy fiction more than anything else is that I think it’s the one genre that can inspire people, particularly the younger audience, the preteens, teens and college students,” she said. “That’s when you’re trying to define who you are. Everything seems so urgent and seems so important, and the emotions are so heightened when they don’t need to be.”
Azari wants to help people identify and pursue their own passions as she pursues her own. She has spent time mentoring high school students and knows the pressure they put on themselves, the high-achieving students in particular. She wants them, and her Lost Legacy Series audience, to know that it’s OK if their path doesn’t lead them exactly where they thought it might. In many cases, it winds up being more than OK.
“Often, what we see as 'failures' or 'rejection' in the present are something that become blessings in the future," she said. "For example, you might be frustrated if you are turned down for a fellowship or angry that you weren't promoted in your job. You might think you are being denied your heart's desire. But we can't know in that moment why something happened the way it did. We can hope that the result means we are close to getting something even better in the future."
Azari had never imagined that she would work with the military, but the research she did on her 150-page thesis helped her establish a strong network of contacts in the Marine Corps, who were intrigued enough by her conclusions on cultural training that they offered her a job in the CAOCL, which was still in its infancy.
“That never would have happened without the thesis, and never would have happened if I hadn’t had Schreyer backing me the whole way,” Azari said. “You just had support like a family that you wouldn’t get elsewhere.”
One of the most meaningful lines in Azari's novel is, “Trust the questions of the present to the clarity of the future.” It is a mantra that helped her find success in different fields while allowing her to follow a long-held dream.
“Something might not seem like success, but there is absolutely a reason,” she said. “It will be clear, but it might not be clear right now.”