happy spring!
happy spring from me and my horrible cat scallion
things you can find in this newsletter:
a little Q&A with questions from readers on instagram
an update on my upcoming books
genius advice on Work Life Balance TM
thoughts about the 400+ hours of critical role i have consumed in approximately two months
pls enjoy this Q&A i am paraphrasing the questions except not the strangling part i've seen that verbatim like 900 times
will we ever get a sequel/when is the sequel coming/if we don't get a sequel i will personally strangle you
listen. LISTEN. i know!!!! wilder girls was originally pitched as a duology and then my agents were like "hey so what happens in book 2" and i was like "well the thing is i very much do not know" and they were like "you... you probably SHOULD.... if you're gonna write it......" and i was like "that's a fair point" and since then it has just not been the right time for me or my publisher. i love the WG girls very much and i would love to write more about raxter someday so never say never! you may take your complaints to getunderlined/random house and maybe if enough people yell they will let me come back to raxter lmao
how many books did you write before wilder girls/what was your publishing journey like
none books! wilder girls was my first Real Book (we are charitably not counting my redwall ripoff from 3rd grade or my wheel of time ripoff from 7th grade). i wrote a draft of it, realized it was...... bad....... and then took a year break to go to grad school for writing (which is not at all a prerequisite for a writing career. it just suited me at the time and was financially feasible). and then after that i rewrote the book, and then was very lucky to have a smooth process from writing to querying to selling.
what is the cover design process like
the designer i have been lucky enough to work with at delacorte/random house is regina flath. she is a genius and finds the BEST artists to work with. the process is pretty much like.
regina: here is this design and a rad artist to work on it
me: wow i love it
regina: great here is the design but even better
me: wow i love it
regina: great here is the design but finalized
me: wow i love it
how much of yourself do you put in characters and where do you draw the line
probably more of me than i realize goes into my characters! i mean they all come from my brain so like. hello. it's a-me mario. but it definitely varies book to book. burn our bodies down cut waaaaay closer to the bone than most of wilder girls. and the process for me is usually like. write it however it's natural to write it, and then step back, and think like.... if somebody asked me point blank "this you" would i feel okay saying yes, and if not, what do i need to do to change this a little bit. and equally important to ask "are these qualities serving the story or is this just what's familiar to me"
where do you get inspired
VISUAL ART BAYBEEEEEEE also shit like geometry and astronomy and landscape and light installations and little fragments of poetry. it usually takes a couple pieces of inspiration to smash together to get something good. for instance the world ends here was this one book cover i saw in a b&n one time + foucault's the panopticon + the word "iteration" + a photo of longyearbyen i saved in like 2015
book update
for in a garden burning gold, i have an EDIT LETTER!!!!!! and i got to have a chat with my editor and i am so fuckin excited to work on this book again. it's so different from my YA books in structure and voice and tone and it's like working an entirely different muscle group or getting in a hot spring after a long hike (lmao as if i would EVER) in the cold. it just feels FUN. i get to write about siblings messing with each other and little clockwork beetle miniatures and greek food and MAGIC and political intrigue and linguistics and arguments over body disposal practices and why youngest siblings are the only ones that deserve rights and and and and i love this book very much.
My Rules For A Healthy Work Life Balance As A Newly Ascended Expert With No Problems
rule one: take weekends (or regularly scheduled breaks)
of course this is gonna vary from job to job and your schedule may not allow weekends, but if there is any day where you can just be like "nope we do not write on this day" holy SHIT it is AMAZING??? i used to work like 80 days on 7 days off basically on repeat and that's just not GOOD your brain needs RECOVERY time and it's truly ridiculous how much better i feel now that i get a little bit of space and perspective every week. i actually get excited to work on mondays which is a feeling i had completely lost touch with. take regularly scheduled breaks that do not occur only when you have finished a project. nobody has ever advised this before; i am a genius.
rule two: LUNCH
important. also even better when you can eat lunch at lunchtime. and even BETTER when you eat lunch while not still working. once again, nobody has ever advised this before; you're welcome; you owe me forty dollars for this advice.
rule three: that's it i have only two rules mostly i just wanted to tell you to take weekends. i do like lunch tho
rory talks about critical role
so in february and early march i watched the entire first campaign of critical role which if you aren't familiar is a d&d liveshow podcast thing that streams on twitch and then uploads to youtube. at least i think that is how the mechanics operate. more importantly i feel absolutely electrified by watching some 400-odd hours of this content bc the d&d model of storytelling is completely different from any approach i've ever taken.
i have never been like a Character Person. some people start with character when they're developing a book, and it works really well for them, but i tend to work backwards, so to speak, and start with setting before deciding what kind of person would be in said setting and who i need to write from to explore the places i want to. i.e. for the world ends here i wanted to write about a very cold place with cool architecture. so like. who would be there. some scientists!!! except it's YA. so some scientists and their KIDS!!
but d&d does character first to an extreme. players build their characters, plus backstory, abilities, etc, and then place them into a story - the character exists first as entirely separate from the story they end up belonging to, and accordingly the world they're in shapes around them. and so i'm sitting here watching critical role just completely weirded out and enthralled bc like!!!! the PEOPLE! came FIRST???? they just HAD PEOPLE and then they put them in the place and were like "okay go do stuff now" and it's just such an expansive way of looking at story instead of like... idk building the box first and then seeing what kind of person you can fit inside it.
i still have a huge fondness for setting-first story development, and i don't think i'll ever leave that behind entirely, but watching critical role has made me a) laugh until i HONKED and b) get excited to try a new development approach as i keep working.
GROWTH! as an ARTIST AND CREATIVE!!!!! incroyable