← The Shit No One Tells You About Writing
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- [00:01]
Bianca Murray
Omg. Have you seen the Deep Dive Virtual retreat lineup for the 1st and 2nd of February? It's incredible. Gatekeepers galore. As well as the authors who managed to get past them, we've got the editors and agents who worked on phenomenal projects like Station 11, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Crazy Rich Asians, the Flight Attendant, Maame Wayward, the Wife Upstairs, the Tinder Swindler, Big Little Lies, the Perfect Couple, the Other Black Girl, and so much more. The presentation topics are brilliant, so practical and valuable regardless of where you are in your writing journey. One of our speakers, the brilliant Annabel Monaghan, who wrote the best selling Nora Goes Off Script, was a delegate at the very first Deep Dive Retreat and now she's kicking butt all over the place coming back to present. That could be you one day. Those of you who take part in the Thousand Words of Summer will also be super excited to see the fabulous Jamie Attenberg in the lineup as well. Trust me, you do not want to miss this. Head to our website, theshitaboutwriting.com go to the deep Dive page to see more information and to register. We hope to see you there. Foreign hi there and welcome to our show, the Shit no One Tells you About Writing. I'm Bianca Murray and I'm joined by Carly Waters and Cece Lira from PS Literary Agency. Today's guest lives in the Pacific Northwest, where her hobbies include rambling through the woods and appreciating fictional villains. She has an MA in archaeology and is excavated at an Inca site in Chile, a Bronze Age palace in Turkey, and a medieval abbey in England. When not dreaming up whimsical love stories, she can be found reading, dancing, and cuddling her two cats. What that bio also doesn't tell you is that she is the author of A Witch's Guide to Fake Dating a Demon and A Demon's Guide to Wooing a Witch, titles which many of you will recognize. So it's my pleasure today to welcome Sarah Hawley SA welcome to the podcast.
- [02:23]
Sarah Hawley
Thank you so much for having me on. I'm excited to be here and talk about writing.
- [02:28]
Bianca Murray
Yeah, we're excited to have you here. So before we dive into all of that, we are going to read the flap copy for Sarah's latest, which is called Servant of Earth. Here we go. In the underground face city of Mistay, only the most ruthless have power, but a young human woman is about to change everything. Kenna Heron is best known in her village for being a little wild, some say half feral. But she'll need that ferocity. To survive being forced into servitude in the cruel Fae court. With no ally but a sentient dagger, Kenna must help her new mistress undertake six deadly trials, one for each branch of magic, Earth, Fire, Light, Void, Illusion, and blood. If she succeeds, her mistress will gain immortality and become the heir to Earth House. Fail and they both die. But worse dangers await Kenna underground. And soon she gets caught up in a rebellion against this sadistic fairy king. When her feelings for the rebellion's leader turn passionate, Kenna must decide if she's willing to risk her life for a better world and a chance at happiness. So you know on the podcast we are always talking about high stakes, high stakes. And you can see in this copy how Sarah has established that. And we also are always talking about how when it comes to fantasy and world building, authors tend to focus too much in their query letters on the world rather than on the main character and what's at stake for them. And you can see in this flat copy how brilliantly they did it because it's not very long and this is quite a big book, a thick book. So for those of you writing in the genre, pay attention.
- [04:16]
Sarah Hawley
That is almost verbatim my query letter. The. The back cover copy. So they used that.
- [04:22]
Bianca Murray
I love that. Because I just assumed that you didn't do a query letter because of the fact that you had published those earlier books which were so wildly successful. I just had the assumption that you, Sarah Hawley, one day woke up and said to your agent slash publisher, I shall be writing these Fae stories and you shall be publishing. And they were like, yes, but clearly that is not the case. So take us through that.
- [04:45]
Sarah Hawley
No, no, because this was actually the. The first book I queried with. I wrote it in 2017 and started querying then and got agented and then it died on submission and got trunked. It was not the right time in the marketplace for like a new adult Fae romantasy style story. So yeah, no, it kind of went the other way around. And then I had a few other projects that didn't go so well and then I started writing the witchy rom coms. So. And then it became like now oh Fay are in like Sarah, don't you have an old Romantasy? I was like, I do. So that's why this one has a query letter.
- [05:22]
Bianca Murray
I love that. It's like because for all of our listeners who have had to shelve projects that have died on sub and that were excellent books, this is proof that sometimes you just ahead of Your time. Sometimes it's just not the right time and it's not the time for that book. But it doesn't mean that it's time is over. And so. Okay, give us some advice for people who are writing in the space in terms of how, when you wrote this query letter, did you go, okay, I am not going to write all of this world building stuff because this is a very intricate world and we're going to discuss it soon? I mean, there was a lot of planning that went into building this world, but how did you take a scalpel to all of that when you wrote your query letter and be like, this is what's important. This is what a reader is going to connect with. This is what an agent's going to connect with. And how can I convey that without all the extraneous information?
- [06:24]
Sarah Hawley
Yeah, I mean, because everything, a query letter has to be character focused. First you have to figure out who is the character, what do they want, what is standing in the way of them getting what they want and what's at stake. But when you're writing in a fantasy space, you also have to include enough that they understand the basic outline of the world and what might make it interesting. So for me, the world building, that line about the fairy houses and two of, specifically two of them being void and blood was my little marker that this is something I want you to go, oh, that's interesting. I've never heard of a void house, or like, I understand the concept of houses, but this feels a little different. And then little words like feral for the heroine. It's like you can add tiny little descriptors in there that will start to indicate the broader shape of things. But ultimately it has to be about the journey of this specific character. And in queries, personal stakes work better than you know. And if the world will blow up and end, like you want someone to pick that up and kind of feel a kinship with whichever character is going on that journey, Even if the stakes are fate of the world, the way you describe it has to tie into specifically that character and how they experience that. So I guess that would be my tip. And of course, there's tons of queer resources out there that I use that I'd be happy to talk about as well, if that would be helpful.
- [07:42]
Bianca Murray
Yeah, I mean, it's always, always helpful. So, yeah, if you can, off the top of your head, list a few of them that worked for you, especially in the space, that would be awesome.
- [07:52]
Sarah Hawley
Yeah, I mean, I love Query Shark. I love the archives there of Query letters and workshopping it. And then one other resource I found really helpful is the Pub Tips subreddit where they do query letter workshopping. And so those were two that I was doing when I was learning how to write a query letter. And eventually I learned and then I got good at query letters. And then I of course use like query tracker just for the day to day, trying to figure out who to query and keeping track of submissions. But yeah, but those would be the two I would recommend.
- [08:22]
Bianca Murray
Amazing. Okay, thank you. Well, that was an unexpected surprise and I'm so glad that we, we discovered that. So something that our listeners sometimes struggle with is what constitutes romantasy. Because we have two agents on the podcast. They submit query letters, we help them critique their query letters and their opening pages and we often see things coming through listed as the wrong genre. So you've written in the paranormal romance space now in the romantasy space. What is the difference between those two? And again, I'd love to hear your definition of romantasy versus fantasy with romantic elements.
- [09:03]
Sarah Hawley
Yeah, and this is actually something I'm still debating myself on on Servant of Earth is how much it actually qualifies as a romantasy. So first I'll give. I say that what matters is the word order. So a romantic fantasy, which is what I would think of as a romantasy, the fantasy is the main genre and then the romance would be the subplot or the secondary element. Whereas a fantasy rom com like Glimmer Falls, I think those are solidly romance novels and it expresses in how I talk about them. I would never call Glimmer Falls romantasy because to me it is a romance novel first and foremost. It's got the self contained romantic arc as the A plot, it's got a happy ever after and then the fantasy is the world building and the subplots. Whereas with Servant of Earth it is all about the fantasy plot line. It's about the heroine's journey. And then the romance is. There's a strong romantic element and there is explicit like on page, you know, content. But ultimately that is the subplot. Now within that, I do think I had a really interesting debate at New York Comic Con with some other authors about what romantasy is and how we would define it. And I think I was defining it looser than a lot of people where I was saying if the romantic subplot is strong enough and you know, if it's, if it's like the B plot is the romance in a fantasy novel, I felt Comfortable calling that a romantasy. I do think in the genre, if you're going to use that term, you have to have a happy ever after. Not necessarily the end of the first book. Just heads up for anyone like this, this is a series that I'm writing. But by the end of it, I think if you're going, you have to fulfill the promise of labeling it, embracing that romance term. It has to have a happy ever after by the end of the series. But some of the other authors thought that to call it a romantasy, the plot cannot stand alone if the romance were removed or changed to another kind of relationship. And I think that's a little gray area on Servant of Earth, because to me, like, I would not want to get rid of the romance plot. I would not want to change that. I do think if I did and changed that relationship, the story would still function because ultimately, it's still the fantasy novel first and foremost. So I feel like I'm having a crisis now because I've been calling it romantasy and thinking about it as romantasy because it's got a strong romantic subplot, and that will just be expanded on in future books. But some people, I think it might not hit their definition of romantasy. And I will say, when I was querying it, I was querying it as fantasy.
- [11:24]
Bianca Murray
Okay, so you didn't query it as. As romantasy initially. It was fantasy. Yeah. What was interesting to me is this is why I wanted to ask, because I flew through the book. It was. It was just so engaging. It was. The world building was incredible. It was lush. The plot just propelled you forward. But by halfway through the book, I was going, okay, I'm not seeing romance yet. So we have Kenna interacting with a few hotties. But, I mean, they're Fae, so they're all hotties. Right. So I was wondering, okay, for it to be romantic, at what point in the plot must it start to develop? But I think it's also fine to have it more loosely defined. It is a newer genre. And of course, you are gonna have some people who are gonna feel more strongly about one definition over the other. But, you know, I kind of agree with you. It's. It would work without the romance. But certainly, to me, the romance adds a lot to it. So, yeah, I mean, I don't know if you're going to have people coming for you saying, this is not romantasy, because there's always going to be those people. Right.
- [12:27]
Sarah Hawley
Well, because I didn't label it Like, I'm calling Romantasy because that's, that's the term of the moment. But like it's, it's got Romantasy on the back of the book and that's the publisher, the publisher is calling it that. So please don't come for me. Uh, but yeah, also it's not like I do think the romantic element is there in the sense of attraction the whole way along. It's just a slow burn in terms of actual committing to it. And I think a lot of it, also me calling it Romantasy and thinking about is romantic fantasy is knowing where I'm going with it and what content is in future books. So, so I think that's also it where as a standalone, self contained story, people might be like, oh, there's, there's like two spicy scenes and it's a bit of a slow burn. And like all these things. Is this actually Romantasy? And for me, I'm also thinking about her romantic arc in books two and three.
- [13:16]
Bianca Murray
Right, right. And for our listeners, you know, we say the shit no one tells you about writing is that your publisher will decide that they are going to market your book very differently to how you envisioned it. So with the Witches of Moonshine Manor, I was quite surprised one day to go onto Amazon and see that it was being marketed as a witchy rom com. This was a book about six witches in their 80s who were bringing down the patriarchy and someone decided it was a witchy rom com. And that really pissed off a lot of people who picked it up for the rom com. So sometimes these things are completely out of our control. We're always saying, know your genre, know where it's going to be on the bookshelf. But sometimes you know your publisher is going to do what your publisher is going to do. So that's something to keep in mind as well.
- [14:04]
Sarah Hawley
The one I'm a little worried about. Well, like, I'm very like, this is such an honor. Thank you. Amazon named it one of the best books of the month in the romance category. And to me I'm like, oh, no. Because I'm like, yes, thank you. Like, that's, that's wonderful. I'm so glad you liked it. It's not a romance novel. And that's one thing where you cannot mess with the boundaries of what is romance. I feel like something like Romantasy. We're still in conversation, but romance, like, absolutely not. Romance has to have a happy ever after or a happy for now. And in one book, like, I'm Like a purist. Like, I wouldn't necessarily call like, 50 Shades romance because it's. It's over multiple books. Like, I'm very much in the camp of, like, it's a standalone love story in one book with a happy ever after. So I'm like. And I'm going to be like, yep, it's in. Best. Best romance of the month. Sorry.
- [14:58]
Bianca Murray
Like, thanks. But I mean, it's the same as the bear, right? I mean, the bear on TV has been classified as comedy.
- [15:05]
Sarah Hawley
Yes.
- [15:05]
Bianca Murray
You know, you like, what the hell? That is not comedy. And I'm pissed off for all the people who are working in the comedy space. I love that show. I love the bear, but it's not comedy. But, yeah, I mean, marketing and PR people are going to do their own things. All we can do, Sarah, right. Is write the best damn book we possibly can.
- [15:22]
Sarah Hawley
Yes.
- [15:23]
Bianca Murray
That's within our control.
- [15:24]
Sarah Hawley
All you can do.
- [15:25]
Bianca Murray
Right. So I want to chat a bit about plotting a series. So you wrote the first book. It died on sub. Then did you go, okay, obviously I'm not going to bother writing the next books? Or was it a case of once you started querying, you were like, okay, I'm going to start writing the second book. How did you approach this knowing that you wanted it to be a series? How much plotting in terms of the long game was there?
- [15:52]
Carly Waters
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- [17:50]
Sarah Hawley
I did not. I wrote synopses, loose synopses, probably like two, two page synopses for the next two books in the series. But I really resisted diving straight into writing more. Just the advice I'd seen online is that if it does sell, like, first of all there's a possibility it doesn't sell. And then you've just written an entire another book, as was the case with me then was that effort well used or should you have used it trying to write other things to get published? And then second of all, just knowing if it had gotten purchased, the plot would change, probably there would be edits. I didn't know how heavy a hand the editor would have. And then you've already written a whole new book and then there's more work on the back end going back and changing the second book to match whatever happened with the first. So I did not do any draft. I wrote like one scene for my own. Just gratification because especially when it was. I knew it was sort of dying. I was like, I have to have a resolution of this little plot point. So I just wrote that scene just for my own satisfaction. And I don't know if I'll use it in the final version of the. Of the next book. It might have just been a moment for me. Uh, but yeah, but then I. I just put it aside and I started writing new projects. So this is my first time writing the second book in a fantasy series, which has been really challenging. I actually just got developmental edits on that this week. So that's what I'm going to be doing now because I'm. I'm used to like Glimmer Falls is a series, but a series of standalone romances. So a lot of the plot is like you're here we're introducing the characters and here we're having the meet cute. And there's sort of these beats you hit along the way in each self contained story. So even though the world was the same and even though there's a few plot lines that go through all three, the main romantic plotline is its own standalone creature each time. And so this was actually very challenging because it was my first time writing a sequel. And it's different because you're starting up right where the action in book one ended and then you still need the general, you know, narrative structure. And I'm not, I'm not a tremendous outliner, which I would like to be a better outliner. I tend to. I'll have a synopsis and then I'll veer off the synopsis based on what the characters are doing. And I have like a loose three act structure is generally how I think of my plots. But I, I would love to have like Save the Cat make complete sense to me. I would love to be someone who can structure my books like that. So I'm, I'm still, I'm still hopefully working on that because I will say pantsing the second novel of a fantasy series was not great. It was not a good experience. So I need to figure out what hybrid structure works for me because I don't think I'm ever going to be a tremendously detailed outliner, but I need to bring some sort of structure in when I'm trying to balance a narrative across multiple books.
- [20:27]
Bianca Murray
Yeah, listen, I feel your pain. I just finished pantsing a closed room murder mystery and that was incredibly painful. I found reverse outlining near the end helped a lot. But I have tried to outline, I've tried to plot. It just doesn't work for me. So, you know, I think you and I are just kind of gonna have painful writing process. And that's just. It is what it is, man.
- [20:49]
Sarah Hawley
It is what it is. Yeah. Some people, their brains just. And I've read craft books and it's just like it doesn't work. It doesn't work with how my head works. I think a lot of it's just because being a Discovery writer and being like, to me it's more about what the characters are doing. Like I'll have tentpole plot moments, but the character is kind of driving it and that's the most important thing for me. So if a character is Slightly changing in the telling or if there's something that feels not quite aligned with how that character would do that it. To me, that has to change. Instead of making the characters fit the plot beats as I've envisioned them up front. I don't know. It's so interesting. Everyone's got such a different process. There's some people who write out of order, which I don't do, but just completely random order. There's people who draft by hand like it is. It is absolute chaos out there and somehow all of us end up with a book shaped thing and a functional story, which is cool.
- [21:39]
Bianca Murray
Yeah. And it's finding what works for us. There is no one size fits all. And I love that about writing. You know, we are, we all writers, but we are completely different human beings. Our brains work completely differently. We all have different skill sets. And so it's finding 100 what works for you. What I'd love to pick your brain about is your world building. Because that was just so. It was dense, it was lush, everything was there. I mean, we've got different creatures, we have hierarchies, we have each different house, how their clothes look, what the living spaces look like, what their powers are, their politics, their history, etc. Etc. And so it goes. So do you have the kind of approach to world building that as you're writing you stop and go, hmm, what would this space look like? Let me think about this house. What are these people like? Or is that the kind of thing you really focus on before you begin writing so that you have all the scaffolding in place to build upon?
- [22:36]
Sarah Hawley
Some of the scaffolding had to be there in advance. So the houses, I put a lot of thought into that before I started drafting this one because I didn't want anyone to be overpowered compared to the others. So it was thinking about what are their strengths, what might be their weaknesses? The social structure of the fairies that was in place beforehand. But a lot of it, even in the world building, is discovery. Drafting. I really hate moving on before I fully described something. So I recently had somewhere as I knew what had to happen at this ball in the second book. And I was like, I need to get to the action. But I was like, but what does this ballroom look like? And I was just spending so long just thinking about what this ballroom looked like. But I was also in a deadline. So eventually I just put insert ballroom description here. And I hate doing that because to me, a lot of like the little details and little beautiful things are discovered on the way just based on knowledge of what's come before. I'll add a lot of things for world building in edits. That's. That's something I definitely do. So, to me, it's like knowing the broad shape of the world but not getting so bogged down in the preparation for the book that I don't start drafting the book. Because I think there's a danger of that, especially in fantasy, is you're falling in love with your world and you're coming up with absolutely every detail and the history of it. And then you've got basically this huge encyclopedia of everything about the world, and you have not started drafting the characters or anything that happens to them. So I don't like losing momentum like that. So usually I will get just enough of the structure in place that I'm like, okay, I know what this world is, and then I will just go and I will discover the details on the way.
- [24:12]
Bianca Murray
Yeah, I approach it the same way. Something that is interesting that you can do as well when it comes to plotting is. So, for example, there might be skills that your main character might require later in the story. Right. To get out of a very tricky situation. And I hate it when I'm reading a book and suddenly we get to that point and suddenly this character, who's never known anything about fighting or, you know, fencing or guns or anything, armed combat, suddenly out of nowhere, just has all these skills that they need in the moment. And I find that inauthentic. It's implausible, and I struggle with that. You have your main character very early on in chapter one and two. We see her doing things that allow for the skill sets that she's going to have to sharpen later on in the story. Was it a case of you knew you had to begin with that, or was it once you got to the point where she needed these skills, you were going, oh, she needs to know a little bit more of how to do these things. So I'm going to go back and flesh that out more in the beginning.
- [25:17]
Sarah Hawley
Well, it's interesting because I think specifically you're probably talking about the labyrinth trial, where she has to navigate a labyrinth in the dark. I feel like writing is magic sometimes because I did not set out. I didn't start knowing that it was going to be a labyrinth. I kind of. I decided what the trial would be when we got there, but I had already written the bog. And so that's her original base skill, is that she spent a great deal of time just tracing and tracing, retracing paths through this bog and keeping a map of it in her head. And so therefore when she's thrown into a labyrinth in the dark, she's like, this is actually like, I have very good spatial memory because of this lifetime of doing this. So I mean, that was probably why I came up with the idea of the labyrinth. It was so long ago. Also, I'm like, how did I come up with that idea? But no, I totally agree. Like, they shouldn't be. The characters can't be good at everything right away. They need to have areas in which they're already competent. And so then there's also a bit of a survivalist trial. And it was like, well, she's a survivalist character from the beginning. So it's like these are areas in which she will be okay. And then the rest of it is even if she doesn't really know what she's doing, it's a character strength of hers that will carry her through where she's very stubborn, she's very curious, she's very resilient. And so even if she's not like she's not going to be like an amazing swords person. And that actually that's something I explored in the second book where she's like, you know, gets in a fight and there's this expectation of like, here's the fight where it's going to be so great and she's like immediately disarmed and defeated because that's realistically like she has not been practicing with a sword for 100 years. Like she is, she's someone who's very scrappy and very tenacious, but it's not going to win all the battles for her. And then you build in the element of how do you actually train this person up so that then they can have the amazing action scenes. But I didn't want to just jump in. And it's like she's amazing at everything right off the bat because that's very much not Kenna either. Like, it's not a Chosen One story. It's almost like the opposite of a Chosen One story because she is only here because of a choice she made. She was not selected to go to the fae and it's almost in a sense, her best friend at the beginning of the story is more the traditional Chosen One archetype where it's like this very beautiful, good hearted woman from an impoverished background who is selected to go, you know, become a fairy prince's bride. And Kanna is like her dirty, feral best friend who's like, I Don't know if I trust that the fairies are benevolent and I'm going to choose to go with you. And that was important to me as I think that makes them more compelling characters when they make choices. And even if they are in circumstances where they are at the mercy of others, their choices still have to propel the plot somehow.
- [27:59]
Bianca Murray
Yeah, I mean, that's similar to Katniss Everdeen, right, in the Hunger Games. So again, she makes that choice, although that wasn't necessarily the Chosen One trope, that was more, you know, the lottery system, etc. But again, it's a character who makes a decision and then making that decision is like the defining moment, you know, the. The moment at which there's no turning back. It's the key event in the story and all they can keep doing is. Is going forward.
- [28:25]
Sarah Hawley
Katniss is also. She is at the mercy of the state throughout that story and she's still finding moments of resistance and making choices, even as someone being tortured by the state and forced into this horrible, horrible, high stakes experience. So I think that's like a perfect example of why, of how to make a character who is at the mercy of outside powers still have power.
- [28:46]
Bianca Murray
Yeah, I mean, that leads to a question that I had in terms of authors who write in this space. You know, we seeing things about standing up to tyranny, we seeing things about the underdog rising up against oppression, etc. Etc. So, you know, it's. It's fantasy, but there's so much that's being said in the space about lessons about the real world, about kind of how we want the real world to be. And when you sit down to write this with the things about the world that you specifically felt that you wanted to say, and that's why you chose this particular character, this particular story. Or do you think it's more subconscious than that?
- [29:26]
Sarah Hawley
That's so interesting. I actually, I just had this conversation yesterday with a different podcaster because the context of this is immediately post election in the United States is when we are having this discussion and when this book is coming out about someone in a terrible, horrible. Under the rule of a tyrant. And I was drafting this during the first Trump term, at the very beginning of the first Trump term. So I didn't set out to want it to be a commentary on the current political times, but I. That was definitely something, an element of what I was thinking about and grappling with. And it's what I, I've always been drawn to with, with fantasy and science fiction is that it allows you a way to explore. Explore the dystopia, but in a way that allows you to seize power because, like, it's. It's gratifying seeing, you know, a human woman with. With nothing going for her, try and rise up against impossible odds and, like, defeat the evil. And it offers that. That. Just the pleasure of seeing that happen on the page in a world that is not your world, that is slightly apart. But then you. You can also feel like, oh, okay, like, tyranny was defeated. And at least in this. In this instance, in this world, tyranny was defeated. And I feel good about that. I think the structures of power and the corruption at the top and of the oppression of people and how you fight that, that's always been something that I gravitate towards in reading and I think, therefore, in writing, because I think it's easy for a lot of us to feel disempowered living in the societies we live in, and there aren't any easy answers in our real lives. So fiction can provide an escape and a way to work through those feelings, both in the. In the drafting and in the reading.
- [31:13]
Bianca Murray
Yeah, I love that. Something that's been driving me sort of nuts the last few weeks is hearing from readers say, we don't want to hear your political opinions. We don't want to hear your views on the world. Just do your job and write and entertain us. And it's like, oh, my goodness, if you do not understand that picking up the pen is one of the most political things that you can possibly do. Even if you don't mean to be political, you are constantly influenced by the world and you're having reactions to the world. And it's been actually wonderful seeing writers standing up against that and being like, if you've read my books at all, you will know that X, Y and Z are the things that really, you know, get me going. And if you don't agree with that, move along, read another author. That's entirely your prerogative. But don't try and muzzle me.
- [32:02]
Sarah Hawley
Yeah, no, definitely. And. And it's interesting drafting in these political spaces for. So. For A Demon's Guide to Wooing a Witch. I was drafting that when the Dobbs decision was leaked, which would be taking away abortion rights in the States. And I was. I was, remember just being just furious and heartbroken. And how do you write a happily ever after for these characters when a lot of people are now no longer going to have happily ever afters and. And women are going to die and fundamental Rights are being taken away. And so that book is actually very much me grappling with the alt right in, in a fun fantasy space in the structure of a happily ever after. Like, there's a. There's a conservative demon High Council that just happens to have the same number of people as the Supreme Court, and it's split between the liberals and the conservatives. And they're very worried about what happens when a conservative majority takes over. And, you know, there's like a demon autocrat that doesn't want anyone, doesn't like immigration and doesn't want anyone who was not purebred demon in the demon plane. And then I, when the Dodds decision linked, I explicitly wrote my heroine to be child free by choice. Just. And that was my personal reaction to that. So even though it's a very. It's a very silly, fun, whimsical rom com and like, they defeat the evil because it's a rom com and there's a happily ever after. But that was, that book was me processing a lot of, a lot of those feelings and also writing a space where the tyranny was defeated and where even though it's a very light, frothy thing, the themes are things that you are seeing in today's world. So to me, it was just kind of impossible to separate the political from the art. I don't think you can.
- [33:43]
Bianca Murray
Yeah. And for our listeners who are feeling, you know, very deflated at the moment, who are struggling to write, who are struggling to come to the page, who are feeling very overwhelmed in general, I love everything Sarah has just said. So, you know, take time for yourself and then return to the page again anew with fire in your veins and in your fingers as you, as you type. Sarah, thank you so, so much for joining us. This was a wonderful discussion for our listeners. We're going to be linking to Sarah's books on our bookshop.org affiliate page. If you purchase them there, you support an independent bookstore and you support the podcast at the same time. We hope to have you back next time.
- [34:24]
Sarah Hawley
Sarah, thank you so much. This was wonderful.
- [34:27]
Carly Waters
A reminder that this is an unscripted program and our conversations have been edited and condensed and is not a full picture of our feedback or conversation directly with each author. As always, refer back to our written notes for the Folsom picture. Carly Waters and Cece Lira are agents at PS Literate Agency, but their work on this podcast is not affiliated with the agency and the views expressed by Carly and Cece on this podcast are. Are solely that of them as podcast co hosts and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, policies or position of PS Literary Agency. A reminder about all the ways that you can support us as a show. Rate us five stars on Apple Podcasts. Tell your writing friends about us. We'd love to help as many writers as possible and follow us on our Substack newsletter. Get our Stacked newsletter on a weekly basis. Bonus videos, articles, essays, advice and more. You can find it at theshitaboutwriting.substack.com that's.
- [35:17]
Bianca Murray
The shitaboutwriting.substack.com and that's it for today's episode. I hope you'll join us for next week's show. In the meantime, keep at it. Remember, it just takes one. Yes omg. Have you seen the Deep Dive Virtual retreat lineup for the 1st and 2nd of February? It's incredible. Gatekeepers galore. As well as the authors who managed to get past them, we've got the editors and agents who worked on phenomenal projects like Station 11, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Crazy Rich Asians, the Flight Attendant, Mame Wayward, the Wife Upstairs, the Tinder Swindler, Big Little Lies, the Perfect Couple, the Other Black Girl, and so much more. The presentation topics are brilliant, so practical and valuable regardless of where you are in your writing journey. One of our speakers, the brilliant Annabel Monaghan, who wrote the best selling Nora Goes Off Script, was a delegate at the very first Deep Dive Retreat and now she's kicking butt all over the place coming back to present. That could be you one day. Those of you who take part in the Thousand Words of Summer will also be super excited to see the fabulous Jami Attenberg in the lineup as well. Trust me, you do not want to miss this. Head to our website theshitaboutwriting.com go to the deep Dive page to see more information and to register. We hope to see you there.